Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

by Paul Cronin

  Later on I saw in front of me the brush of a fox disappearing round a bend in the path, but the way the bushy tail vanished did not suggest flight. Quickening my steps and moving really quietly, after the bend I suddenly found myself standing directly behind the fox. He whirled halfway round, looking to my mind as big as an Alsatian dog. Given the extreme astonishment with which he contemplated me, he was only half able to cower down, and he remained standing like this for a moment without further reaction. He seemed to be listening to find out whether his heart, having stopped, was starting to beat again. Then, with an agile turn, he was off, running steeply down through the wood. From down below I could still hear the snapping twigs of fear some time afterwards. Then the peace of nature was restored in Germany. Basically, however, it was only an ostensible peace, nothing more than naked indifference.

  The first person I encountered in the valley was a little girl on a plastic tricycle that wouldn’t steer properly any more. She gave new names to all things. The dreams she had at night she called “films in her pillow.”

  Up in the mountain ranges with their massive farms and in the valleys below – I had the increasingly intense impression – there is nobody left alive. No dogs, no cattle, no hens, no human beings; all is totally still. Now a few birds are singing, quite tentatively, in the woods. So far, fortunately, I have been under tree cover during the day. The sun would be the death of me. I wish I could join a circle of monks, be their godless guest. A friendly notice in the woods, painted on a sign, said that all things born in the forest had met face to face with the great Lord God, and that you yourself were blessed by God if you remained dutifully silent.

  I hope, if only on account of this sign, that the first atom bomb falls on the Black Forest!

  *

  The railway station in Offenburg was full of French recruits with their short back and sides. Obviously they are allowed home over the weekend, and their mood was correspondingly high-spirited. When a girl walked by in tight white trousers, two of them turned on their heels to salute her. All day long the air was full of swallows going about their business. What can anyone do to protect me against the Black Forest? I succeeded in doing something extraordinary, something I discovered myself more by chance than anything else. I managed to describe a gathering of roughly a hundred women in such tiny writing that you needed a microscope to have any chance of deciphering the scribbles that crossed the paper like strings of beads. It then transpired that with this miniature handwriting I had not only described the gathering in the form of a text, but that the fine lines and loops also actually yielded a sketch of the women, sitting there in distinct rows on the benches and looking out attentively from the sheet of paper. Even shadows round the eyes and fleeting glimpses of facial features were identifiable because of the varying strength of pressure from my drawing pen, yet on the other hand it was clearly a piece of handwriting. Taking a handy microscope with me, I went to the cafe where Einstein was sitting with colleagues in the open air eating cake. At that time he was younger than he normally looks in the photos one knows of him, and his name had not yet become a household word. I showed him my writing, and he was astonished. We talked about information storage. At one point he choked on a piece of cake, and I slapped his back hard between the shoulder blades until his face returned to its normal colour.

  *

  Then I got held up in Strasbourg. Unable to leave, I was living in a ground-floor room that opened onto a narrow, park-like garden. The reason why I had to stay was, I think, that I was ill. During the endless afternoons, I liked most of all to take a cushion and lie across the threshold of the door on the garden side, gazing up into the big, wide-spreading tree that stuck doggedly to its position there in the sultry heat of the day. An oppressive breeze started to blow, causing all the leaves to tremble, flicker and shimmer like those of a boundless aspen. I could see the movement of every single one of the millions upon millions of leaves as something separate and unique, and yet at the same time I saw the collective movement of them all, as when a wind ruffles the smooth surface of a gigantic lake. All at once the lake now becomes old. Earlier periods of its history come and go. Dwellings built on piles emerge and vanish; quiet, peaceful prehistoric reptiles laze in the swamps by the shore; and finally the lake grows flat, the ruffling of the trees in the forest merging with a bashful ruffling of its reeds. Right at the end, pterodactyls circle over the reeds, their jerky flight paths not at all like those of birds but resembling those of powerful bats. There are as many of them as one sometimes sees gulls over the sea. However, when I return to the flickering of the leaves and can see it all simultaneously, my whole life, lying there so ill on the threshold, starts to quiver finely. An extraordinarily imperious North African man strides past, then a stocky, ugly woman with a Great Dane the size of calf. I can feel the oak doorstep under me, bleached by the sun and full of grooves made by the rain. A coating of dry algae was growing in the grooves of the wood’s grain like a film of plaque on bad teeth. Two men are stepping solemnly and quietly into the open from a farm. Everything has an air of morning about it, still sleepy, as on Sundays. During the night the men have been helping out with the birth of a foal, and one of them still has a blade of straw in his hair.

  *

  In Strasbourg I was sitting on a bench, and after a while an Algerian came and sat down politely beside me. Soon afterwards another Algerian came up, carrying a white plastic bag. He shook the hand of his friend next to me, then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, shook mine too, which I found deeply moving. I had switched over to the French side of the border. Germany lay beyond the Rhine like an invention of the imagination. The fact that I’m walking is also more of an invention than anything else, only it’s a bad one because something horrific is dogging my steps. Lots of people were crossing the bridge to Germany, slowly, their movements stretched out as in slow motion, while beneath them the Rhine was flowing at an even slower, more crippling pace. The grasses under its surface were swaying immensely slowly in the turgid flow of the currents. Everything, it seemed, was about to come to a definitive standstill. In Strasbourg Minster, bikers were walking quietly through the silence of the church, only their tight-fitting leather suits making slight creaking noises. They were carrying their helmets under their arms like mediaeval knights. At night, out in the open fields where I was sleeping, the cows groaned in their dreams right by me. In the morning, very early, I woke up with a fright I had never known before. I was totally numb. Germany had gone, everything had gone. It was as if I had suddenly lost something entrusted to my special care the evening before. Or perhaps it was like being expected to take over guard duty for a whole army one evening, only to discover that one has in a mysterious way suddenly gone blind, and the troops are thus without protection. Everything had vanished, leaving me totally empty, without pain, without joy, without longing, without love, without warmth and friendship, without anger and hatred. Nothing, nothing remained. I was like a suit of armour without a knight in it. Slowly I at least began to experience something like fright. I only awoke fully when the sun, filled with hate, was shining in my face. I saw black swans. Heavy boughs were falling in the deadly still forest. For every five fish there are eighty anglers. Even on Sundays they make steel. The River Saar is unfortunately burnt out. Near a slag heap, four workers were running after an injured pheasant. I am collecting wheat fields for my dreams. At night the valleys and villages became empty. I slept out on a hillside under the open sky, my shoulder aching strongly, which caused me to just lie there motionless in the silence. Hours later in the night, caught in distress between the lights of the valley and the stars above, I got up, and was sick. Towards morning I managed to get some sleep, but it was already getting light and soon the sun rose. Above me on a branch I heard a bird first shake itself and tidy up its plumage before eventually starting to sing.

  When it is all up with Germany, when human beings cease to exist, and ants and cockroaches have taken over, and subseq
uently algae in the oceans that have started boiling; when the earth is then extinguished and the universe goes dark, collapsing in on itself to nothing, it is possible that something abstract will remain behind, perhaps something akin to a state of happiness. But I have a deep fear inside me that what will fill the darkness and the space that no longer exists will be a form of stupidity. It does not need a particular place, it is everywhere. Happiness, at least, requires open space.

  *

  In Waldkirch I ended up on a road very busy with traffic that I avoided by walking along parallel to it in the forest. However, the path changed quite abruptly into a woodland nature trail with signs, serving at the same time as a fitness trail equipped with sets of rings, horizontal and high bars. Instructions for the use of these were posted on boards. On one of the high bars I encountered a muscular, very young man in white karate trousers. Swinging his legs wildly, he was kicking out in all directions into the air, then immediately afterwards doing pull-ups. I left this terrible path as quickly as I could, and since Waldkirch itself gave the impression of being one great town-size fitness trail, I steadfastly refused to pay it attention, practically not seeing the place at all. I lay down in a field of beet where, since big green leaves sprouted from my ears, I was well camouflaged. Then I grew electricity pylons in place of my arms and, using these steel tongs as hands, I fetched down lowflying aeroplanes from the sky, often two at a time. Then a black dog ran along the isolated tarmac road at full gallop. It had leapt straight from a Hieronymus Bosch picture, directly from hell, in fact. A man wanted to get rid of his Alsatian because it was always moulting too much on the carpet. Taking the dog with him on a business trip, he released it at the service station on a motorway. Weeks later the animal turned up at home again, emaciated but whimpering with joy. The beast’s instinct and loyalty had led it home over a distance of a several hundred miles. Thereupon, its owner put an end to it by mixing rat poison into the starving dog’s first meal.

  Low-lying clouds, a gentle wind, the fields have wings and raise themselves towards the sky. The people here seem like albinos turned in on themselves, aseptic, free of pain, without sins, without vices, without joy. The leaves were trembling in the wind, and I knew they were whispering to one another, so I listened closely. Although I understood only a little, about this much I was clear: in the Hürtgenwald, in the Hürtgenwald, all hell had broken loose. The countryside, however, lies flat, bored. The maize fields are bored as they slowly ripen, and the cows are lying around bored too. Above me, low-flying jet fighters are pursuing each other. What with all the flies, it’s impossible to think, even of something evil or stupid. For days now, a line of poetry I made up has been beating with gnawing intensity in my brain, ringing with every step I take, impossible to blot out. What I had written was: “The Watzmann’s racing, the Watzmann’s racing, hey-de-ho, my wooden leg is blazing!” And now I’ll never get it out of my mind again. It’s the same to this very day, by the way. Whenever I’m walking, the verse comes into my head and simply won’t go away. It’s a terrible thing. “The Watzmann’s racing, the Watzmann’s racing, hey-de-ho, my wooden leg is blazing!” May God protect you from this poem! Meanwhile, the hawks are entering their names in eternity.

  *

  A loving couple, country dwellers, were looking at each other for ages without exchanging a word. They did so for as long as the money they had put in the fruit machine lasted. At one point, a few coins came rattling out into the dish, but they didn’t turn to look at them. Crouching, as if ready to leap, mean-looking park benches made of faded plastic were waiting for me to arrive. I sat down on one of them, under the dripping branches of a weeping willow. I saw mechanical heathers, arranged military-fashion in pots. Then I saw mechanical hens. When one of them started to run after seeds, they all took to running.

  Today is a grey, cold, wet and motionless day. By a miserable field I had seen an abandoned fire engine surrounded by nettles and clumps of grass, and in retrospect I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that a fireman must have committed suicide in the derelict vehicle. I saw lots of toads lying as if crucified on the edge of the road, their bright, spotted bellies turned upwards. They hadn’t made it right across, yet lying there stretched out, they looked as if nothing at all was the matter with them, except that their entrails had come out through their mouths.

  For a long time during my misty walk through the woods, I, the misty, solitary wanderer, was called after by a buzzard who was probably even more solitary. Thus I find myself walking over the Eifel range, taking short, very hurried strides. Totally unprepared for it, I suddenly came upon an American airforce base. Surrounded by a fence, it looked very strange. There were lorries mounted on concrete plinths, carrying radar screens that turned ceaselessly in circles. There were warning signs, strong electricity generators, a baseball pitch and broken-down American cars behind the fence, while in the damp mist the radar screens circled ceaselessly on the camouflaged lorries. All the way along the fence, I peered closely into the base and into the open windows of the barracks, but I didn’t spot a human soul. I took it that the Americans stationed here must long since have fled. When rain began to fall heavily, I turned off into a forest clearing, suspecting that there might be a raised hide there. And indeed I soon found one, well roofed over. At the foot of a ladder was a metal sign, indicating that according to such-and-such a paragraph it was forbidden to enter these forestry premises. Diagonally opposite, on the other side of the clearing, is another such hide, no doubt bearing the same sign. I see more hides than human beings. Human beings are increasingly taking refuge in the mine works, in crevasses and in the earth’s interior because it’s warmer there, as the earth’s core is still glowing a little, whereas the universe is freezing. The raised hides are staring at one another out of their empty rifle slits. The foresters smoking their pipes up there in them are the only people left throning over the land, like high priests. As I walked up the track to Rescheid, the rain stopped. At the edge of the track, there are dark wild roses. Emerging from the forest, I found the hills full of lapwings. They flew away listlessly as I came a bit nearer. To the west the view disappears deep into the haze of Belgium. Wide ranges of hills, lined with dark hedges; little wooded hillocks; the hamlets darkly scattered. To the right, the land drops away for a long distance; you can see the steam rising from the valleys, no more. There lies Germany. What on earth am I doing in this area, forsaken by both God and man? Astonished at myself, I paused by a stop for the “motor vehicle post bus.” When there is serious flooding, of course, the motor vehicle post gets delivered by motor vehicle barque instead. O God, who art not, take me to the last of all countries, and you human beings – since that would bring more comfort – please put me in the last of all villages!

  *

  The first thing the farmer did that raised people’s suspicions was to sell his hens one day and to keep peacocks from then on. After going to church on Sundays, he would crouch down on the floor in a corner of the pub with his beer, no longer recognising anyone. He ordered a telephone connection for the little hut on his allotment because he wanted to phone God from there, but he was worried about the right dialling code.

  Walking down the Rhine, I found the greyish-brown river under a gloomy sky full of rain clouds. The lines of jet fighters were compressing the already flat scenery more profoundly and depressingly, making it appear thin. The ferry that according to the map should be here no longer exists. Everything else is still in place: the landing stages on both sides, the ferry’s inn, a West German flag, chairs made of red and white plastic. At the landing stage, a man was standing holding a dog on a lead that unreeled mechanically. Next to him was a girl with Down’s syndrome, keeping one eye almost shut. She had very bad teeth. “Ship, ship,” she said to me, stressing the words strangely and looking at me as she did so. I nodded to her because there were lots of ships. One, a pleasure boat, was passing by quite close, going up the Rhine. It pulled by us like a strangely stressed word. The people o
n board in their deckchairs, with sunglasses on, had an unreal air about them, like sentences producing no meaning. Orderly thinking, which is not without its ugly side, is only to be found hiding in the geometrical fields. In the evening, Bocholt died away very quickly. There was nothing, I mean absolutely nothing left in the town. On discovering a few helpless schoolboys who were helplessly groping helpless schoolgirls – and taking care in the process that their mopeds shouldn’t fall over – my heart beat, and I was what you might call relieved to have encountered living creatures. Increasingly, instead of being a matter of walking in a circle round a country, walking round Germany is turning into a circling round into myself. Often I don’t notice at all now that I’m walking, and then I’m startled because I seem to have been walking around myself as one walks around a hill.

  Most of the time I was walking along avenues of tall deciduous trees with very smooth black tarmac between them. Birds sing; peaceful, noon-day aircraft above the extensive countryside; ivy on tall beech trees. I stumbled upon a sheep, a triangular wooden yoke fastened round its neck. Things dreamt up in scarlet settle upon me. I don’t recall having passed through Wrede, though I know I did. I found a flat cola can that must have lain there flattened for two winters because it was a faded whitish yellow rather than red. And then the people vanished. You couldn’t see how it happened. All at once they simply were not there. There was nobody in the supermarket; the shelves were full, the fruit fresh and the milk had a new date stamped on it, but no one was buying, and there were no girls at the checkouts. The houses were empty, their doors open.