When I Fell From the Sky

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When I Fell From the Sky Page 3

by Juliane Diller (Koepcke)


  As if Europe didn’t want to let him out of its clutches this time, his return journey to Peru proved extremely difficult: First he intended to depart from La Rochelle on the Reina del Pacífico, which was delayed. After a long wait he found out that the ship had hit a coral reef and had to be repaired in England. So he traveled back to Paris to book a new passage, only to learn to his horror that all the ships were already booked up until the end of the year. By chance he was able to get on the Luciana, which left from Cannes. But the Luciana only made it as far as the Canary Islands, having suffered a serious mechanical breakdown on the way. So he had to look for a new passage and found it on a ship named Ascania, which brought him to Venezuela, where he didn’t arrive until September 7. And from there he had to conquer the remaining three thousand miles to Lima on the land route via Bogotá and Quito. This odyssey must have seemed to my father like a déjà vu of his first journey to Peru! But there will be more on that later.

  I hadn’t seen my father for nine months—no wonder I at first called him “Uncle Daddy” after his return!

  Another person who is inextricably connected to my childhood is Alida, our former maid. She belongs to the black minority in Peru and was eighteen years old when she came to us. I was five. At that time I was very thin and never wanted to eat. Late in the afternoon I could still be seen strolling through the garden with something in my mouth, and most of the time it was the leftovers from lunch. Today Alida is pushing seventy, and whenever I’m in Lima, we see each other. We always have a lot to talk about. We swap recipes, and at some point we turn to the past.

  “Do you remember,” I ask her, “when a poisonous snake escaped from that German scientist? Fortunately, you didn’t know it was poisonous.”

  “Yes,” she replies, rolling her eyes, “but I was the one who discovered its trail in the garden! At the last moment your father caught it and had it brought to the crazy guy on the ship.”

  We remember how she allowed me to roast marshmallows with my schoolmates over candle flames, and how none other than Alwin Rahmel, a very close friend of our family—a German businessman who has lived in Peru for over fifty years, has known me since I was born and lends his help and support to this day—persuaded me in a restaurant to order a quadril.

  “You had no idea it was a gigantic steak,” Alida recalls, laughing. “Then it was served and it was bigger than you.”

  When I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid of the Tunshi—or Tunchi, as it’s sometimes spelled—a legendary Peruvian bird from the jungle, Alida would comfort me.

  “Tunshis only live in the jungle,” she said. “Here in Lima, there’s no Tunshi, far and wide.”

  She could not have suspected that we would actually move into that jungle a few years later. But I never saw Tunshis. However, when I was not even five years old, I did see an angry bull.

  At that time we once again took an excursion into the rain forest. There lived Peter Wyrwich, a German cattle rancher who lent my parents a hand, and now and then caught specific birds and mammals at the behest of the natural history museum. When we visited, I romped around with Peter Jr., his son. We had to stick our little noses into everything, whether it was machines or the animals in their stables. I never played with dolls, anyway, and was always much more interested in technical things.

  “Come on,” Peter said self-confidently one day, pulling me into the stable, “now I’ll show you how to milk the cow.”

  Though this “cow” was, in fact, a young bull, neither Peter nor I had any idea that there’s a small but important difference between female and male animals. When Peter pulled hard on the thing on the bull that he took for the udder, it reacted extremely crossly. The bull kicked me in the head and I went flying across the stable. That’s just the way it is: If you grow up with animals, you sometimes have to be able to take things as they come.

  If you have zoologists for parents, it’s also better not to get the creeps too easily: Once my parents bought a gigantic shark at the market, in whose stomach there was a human hand! It probably came from a victim of the prison island out on the sea, which, like Alcatraz, was notoriously escapeproof. Anyone who tried would end up in a strong current pulling him irresistibly out into the open sea: It was said that no one had ever made it to the mainland. The shark, however, was not a man-eater, and the hand was undoubtedly consumed only after the man’s death. Later this shark—without its contents—could be admired in the museum.

  As long as I wasn’t in school yet, my parents took me with them most afternoons to the museum. There, in the huge halls with their tall double doors and the many specimens of Peruvian animals and plants, I wandered around. Sometimes I would get a little scared, especially from the mummies on display, until these strange things became a part of my life like everything else.

  Then, all of a sudden, I was told: We’re going to Germany. That was in the summer of 1960. I was five years old and now I would be going for the first time to the country of my ancestors. Actually, all three of us wanted to travel across the Atlantic, but someone had to look after the Humboldt House and its guests. My mother wanted to meet well-known colleagues in Europe and compare findings with them, and since I couldn’t stay alone with my father for five months, she simply took me with her. I was really excited, because the journey promised to be thrilling. First we took a roaring propeller plane to Guayaquil in Ecuador. From there we went on a banana freighter named Penthelicon via the Panama Canal toward Hamburg. I watched the bananas being loaded at the port—gigantic still-green bunches. If one of them had even the smallest yellow spot, they were just thrown into the water and fished out again by natives who circled the steamer in their dugout canoes. That really made an impression on me, because at home food was never just thrown out like that.

  Along with the fruit that was loaded, animals came on board: lizards, huge spiders and snakes. I think I was the only person who found that so great. The crew was not at all thrilled about it! While my mother was still polishing her lecture in the cabin, I explored the ship, getting on some of the seamen’s nerves. In the Atlantic, we saw whales and flying fish, and I stood at the railing and was really impressed. And I was impressed again, later, after our arrival in Berlin. There lived my maternal grandparents and my aunts and uncles. There was snow! And double-decker buses! And crows, at the sight of which, to the amusement of our fellow travelers, I said: “Mommy, look at the vultures! They’re so little here!” All these things were new to me, and I was fascinated.

  During those weeks my mother took trips to Paris, Basel and Warsaw to meet colleagues and work at the famous museums there, for they had interesting bird skins—that is, prepared stuffed birds—from Peru in their collections. When she went on those trips, she left me with relatives. And then Christmas was approaching; and to my great horror, I had to participate in a musical as an angel, even though I fought tooth and nail against it. I was a shy child, and then suddenly I was standing on a stage with golden wings and everyone found me “cute”!

  I saw my aunt Cordula again, who was now working as a writer in Kiel—and who was aghast that I knew all the animals only by their Latin names. When I saw an owl in a picture book, I said: “Oh, an Otus.” At that, my aunt turned indignantly to my mother and said: “Really, Maria, you can’t do that with the little one.” But those were the times before the animals were given German names; most of which my parents didn’t like, anyhow, because they found them unsuitable or misleading.

  For my mother this was the last time she saw her father. He died unexpectedly six years later, when I was eleven years old. I will never forget how shaken I was when my mother closed herself in her room for hours and wept heartrendingly. Only after she explained to me why she was so sad did I calm down again. In my young life there was nothing worse than seeing my mother cry.

  She was a kind and gentle person and often had to offset my father’s irascible character. Even though she was married not only to him, but also to science, she was interested in many other
subjects. As mentioned above, she was among the leading ornithologists in South America, and to achieve that required a great deal of commitment and a certain willingness to sacrifice. My mother had those qualities. I once experienced something with her that I never forgot. We were in the jungle and observed a sunbittern in its nest, while countless mosquitoes swarmed around us. I wanted to swipe at them, but then that so rare and shy bird would surely have flown away. My mother whispered to me very softly: “You must not move now, even if you get stung.” And so we remained in the cloud of mosquitoes without making a sound for a quarter of an hour. My mother also said: “If you want to be a biologist, you have to learn to sacrifice.” This sentence encapsulates really well what our research work consists of. She and my father complemented each other perfectly—after she died, he was never the same. Then he was only half. For me, too, it was unspeakably hard, because my mother was simply torn from us much too soon. There were still so many conversations for us to have, which would never come to pass.

  Suddenly we hit turbulence. That’s not good for me, not good at all. For even though I have my fear of another plane crash pretty well under control, the shaking that seizes our plane now, high over the Atlantic, immediately brings back those images. The nightmare of every airplane passenger returns: the roaring of the turbines, which I hear in my dreams to this day. And that blinding light over one of the wings. The voice of my mother, which says …

  3 What I Learned About Life From My Father

  My father exploring the rain forest of Panguana, 1968. (Photo courtesy of Juliane (Koepcke) Diller)

  … “Now it’s all over!” My mother says that quite calmly, almost tonelessly.

  I feel for my husband’s hand next to me and force myself to return to the present. That’s never easy when I’m overcome by memories. Is it really my husband’s hand I’m holding? Or is it my mother’s hand?

  “Don’t worry,” I say to my husband. “It’s only a bit of turbulence, nothing more.”

  Then we look at each other and can’t help laughing. For it’s clear to us, of course: I’m the one who’s more scared than he is. But it’s easier for me to give him the courage that I lost for a moment. “Thanks for comforting me,” my husband says, squeezing my hand. Of everything I love so much about him, his wonderful sense of humor is sometimes the most important.

  And then the turbulence calms down. The airplane moves very peacefully through the air, and I take several deep breaths.

  Phew, that roller-coaster ride went right to my core.

  “Look,” says my husband, pointing out the window. “The coast of Brazil! We’ve reached the South American continent!”

  And I’m already distracted and look out the window. I always want a window seat; that didn’t change after the crash. On the contrary, when I can see what lies below me, I’m somewhat calmer. And from that point on, I don’t come out of my astonishment, even though I’ve already experienced this flight so many times. The apparent endlessness of the Atlantic gives way to the same apparent endlessness of the Amazon Rain Forest. And today the visibility is so good that you can see clearly different twists and turns of the rivers glittering in the sun. Apart from that, the monotony of the jungle resembles the monotony of the waves. Even the color is almost the same, a washed-out green from this height. When I fell from the sky, the approaching treetops looked like heads of broccoli, densely packed. But right now I don’t want to think about that.

  Instead, I tell my husband how much time and effort it cost my father to get to Peru after the end of the Second World War. When we groan because our backs hurt and our legs become heavy after the twelve-hour flight, that’s nothing at all in comparison to what my father took on back then. And if he hadn’t set out for a new world, my life certainly would have gone completely differently.

  It all began in 1947. My father was a young, ambitious biologist seeking to achieve pioneering work in the field of ecology and zoogeography, and was therefore interested in lands with the highest possible biodiversity. South America was a possibility, but also Sri Lanka. Practical-minded as he was, he wrote a letter to the university in Lima—in German, because he had not yet mastered Spanish. Did they have any use for a young zoologist with a doctorate? He wrote a similar letter to Ecuador. That was two years after the war’s end. A whole year later he actually received a reply from the natural history museum in Lima, to which his letter had been forwarded. The reply was as simple as his question had been: Yes, he could come. They had a position for him.

  It was a letter with consequences. Travel in postwar Europe was a difficult matter, above all for Germans. There were no passports, so it was impossible to receive a visa. Though my father had the longed-for job in Lima, he had no idea how he would get there. His university girlfriend, Maria, who would later become my mother, shared his enthusiasm for research and definitely wanted to accompany him. To my grandmother she said resolutely: “I’m going to marry this man. Him or no one!” At the end of 1947, the two of them got engaged. When my father received the invitation to Peru, it was a foregone conclusion for both of them that he should accept the offer. Maria would simply follow him later, as soon as she got her doctorate.

  With the letter from Lima in his pocket, my father proceeded to the German branch of a South American bank, where he was advised to travel to Genoa and embark there. There were shipowners who would take German emigrants with them for free. So my father decided to try this. In the middle of winter, he went to Mittenwald, where he soon learned that he could enter Italy only illegally. On his first attempt to climb over the Austrian border fence, he took a bad fall and had to be brought to the hospital in Innsbruck. Once he recovered, he didn’t let that prevent him from making a second attempt. This time he sensibly crawled under the fence. Then he traversed the Alps, walking and hitchhiking, and reached Genoa in an adventurous way. How great was his disappointment when he found out at the port that a steamer had just cast off for South America. No one knew when the next would arrive. There were no timetables in those confusing times in the aftermath of the war. My father was not a person who was content to wait. He traveled on to Rome, where he managed to get a Red Cross passport, which was issued by the Vatican. This, he was told, would make his journey considerably easier. But Rome was full of Germans who had already been waiting for weeks and months to get to South America. My father learned that the chances were better in Naples, so he headed south on foot. On the way he was arrested and was put in a notorious prison camp. Under the pretext of checking his papers, the Italians held him there for several months. A group of fellow prisoners eventually tried to persuade him to escape. In particular, a North African young man raved to him about his native land and urged him to come along. Even though my father was a man of action, he didn’t get drawn into that. And that was a good thing: Anyone who broke out was rapidly caught again and harshly punished. But then a miracle occurred—about which he told me fondly and often. He prayed all the time for the Lord to make the walls that enclosed him collapse. And that’s exactly what happened: In a night of heavy rain, the wall of the camp simply crumbled next to him, and he was able to escape. Of course, his pursuers were right on his heels, but he was smarter than they were. Instead of running away as far as he could, he hid in a bush very close to the camp. He covered himself with ferns and stayed there for a night and a day. Only when the search for him was aborted as fruitless did he continue his escape. Of course, he was now much more careful and trekked mainly at night. During the day he hid or knocked on the doors of farmhouses, where he was taken in hospitably most of the time. One time, however, he came to the house of a bird hunter. He and his wife were particularly friendly and shared their meal with him. For that reason he gave the signora his last object of value, a brooch. But when he wanted to continue on his journey, the bird hunter said he would never find the way on his own, and it would be better if he came with him. En route my father realized that the man intended to betray him, and he just barely managed to get himself to
safety.

  But that adventure was far from the end of his odyssey. In Naples, too, there was no ship, and so he continued on his way to Sicily. In Trapani, there were indeed fishing cutters at anchor. My father didn’t hesitate to speak to all the owners, but none were willing to ferry him to Africa.

  I think many people would have lost heart by now. But my father was cut from a different cloth. He told himself that if he had found no ship in Italy to bring him to South America, then he would find one in Spain. So he trekked back up the entire Italian boot and headed north from Genoa toward France. When he finally reached the border city of San Remo, he was told that it was completely impossible to cross the border. It was still one big minefield, but my father was much too resolute to let these dangers deter him.

  On a dark night he crossed the mountains at the border and walked on toward Nice. There, for the first time in a long while, he was picked up by a car. In Aix-en-Provence, he got out and right at the next gas station asked the driver of an expensive car whether he could give him a lift. He refused categorically when he heard my father was a German. Only once the cashier put in a good word for him did the man take pity and give him a lift, after all. It turned out that the driver was Jewish, which cast his initial refusal in a different light. When he heard my father’s story, he even gave him 150 francs. That was very largehearted, because at that time anyone found at a checkpoint with less than one hundred francs was arrested as a vagabond. “Someone who has come as far as you have,” said the man in parting, “will make it to South America too.”

  But it didn’t look that way at all. When my father arrived in Marseille, he didn’t find a ship there either. Rumor had it that every four or five months a South America-bound steamer left from Portbou. But my father didn’t want to wait that long. He decided to follow his original plan and tramp to Spain.

 

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