The last leg of the journey, our hike, begins.
In the past we used to have to fight from here on—of course, only after a revitalizing stop at Doña Josefa’s—through dense secondary and primary rain forest. Today the forest between the Módena farm and Panguana has been largely cleared. Even though that makes our hike easier, I regret it, of course. Over the past thirty years, more and more landowners have switched to cattle ranching and cleared the forest for that. But they have not had much success. For the pastures attained in this way by no means meet the requirements for profitable cattle ranching. After a brief fertile phase, due to the slight amounts of nutrients in the wood ash remaining from the slash and burn, the already nutrient-poor grounds become barren. Since they don’t have the forest’s network of roots, they can no longer become saturated by the rain, and they dry out. The water drains much too quickly. The already scarcely present topsoil is washed into the rivers, and there’s increased erosion. The grass grows sparsely and is not particularly nutritious, so that the cattle rancher is forced to supplement it with expensive concentrate feed. The infrastructure in the jungle also makes it hard for him to make a profit on his cattle. On the long journeys, often crammed together on boats, the animals lose weight and are usually lean by the time they arrive in Pucallpa, where they don’t sell for a good price. Nonetheless, every year many acres of rain forest are destroyed. For want of knowledge and genuine alternatives, the myth of possible affluence through cattle ranching persists.
In the evening of this long journey, we now march cross-country over the pastures of the Módena farm and are glad that the sun is no longer so high in the sky. We wade through a deep mud hole and the Río Yuyapichis at an old ford, where the water reaches just up to the upper edge of our rubber boots. Moro’s wife, Nery, and their two daughters, who joined us in the village of Yuyapichis, are already far ahead of us. Now we continue a couple more miles along an oxbow lake of the river, where caimans have recently started living again, which pleases me immensely. For too long they were gone, eradicated by the Indians and farmers, who were afraid for their small animals, and for whom the really tasty meat of the caimans, which they hunted and ate as a delicacy, was nothing to sneeze at either.
And then, finally, I can see the lupuna tree. It rises proudly from the multitude of other trees and spreads its mighty crown—the emblem of Panguana, 150 feet tall and many hundreds of years old. Moro’s house comes into view next, then the two guesthouses. They’re unremarkable wooden huts, nothing more—for me they mean heaven on earth. For two years we have even had a shower cabin; and even though there is only cold water, it’s an enormous luxury for us. Previously we washed down in the river, where there are many blackflies and midges, whose stings often get unpleasantly inflamed and itch terribly. River water is regularly pumped into a large container on the roof of the cabin. The earth that washes in with it settles to the bottom, and out of the pipe comes clear, gloriously refreshing water. Drinking water, however, we have to bring with us from Pucallpa, like most other food.
Moro’s dogs bark. We’re home. Smoke is rising from the chimney of Moro’s house: Nery has already lit a fire in the stove and begun preparing dinner. I’m sure that she will conjure up a customary delicacy for us even without the provisions that were left behind in Yuyapichis.
On this first evening in Panguana, despite our fatigue after the arduous journey, we remain sitting for a long time by candlelight on the terrace, so that the generator can remain shut off. We share a few beers, which Moro wonderfully took along in his backpack, and listen to the noises of the tropical night. The sounds of the jungle envelop me. Above us circle bats. There are over fifty species of these alone here in Panguana. I studied them for several years and recorded the results in my dissertation. For even though it would take years after my departure in 1972, eventually I returned to Panguana.
Back then, when I flew from Lima via New York to Germany, and finally landed completely exhausted in Frankfurt, I just accepted the fact that here, too, journalists were waiting for me and trying eagerly to shoot a photo of me. I hadn’t slept a wink during the flight, and I still had to get used to the phenomenon of the time difference.
In Frankfurt, friends of my parents were waiting for me, who had arranged a plan for my stopover. I still had to continue on to Kiel.
So it happened that among the first people I met in Germany was Bernhard Grzimek, who was not only a popular animal expert, well known through the media, but also director of the Frankfurt Zoo. I’ve always liked visiting zoological gardens, and now I had the opportunity to see that famous one. But I was so tired by that point that I was indifferent even to the visit to the zoo, and I just accepted stoically everything that was proposed to me. Only later, when I learned that Grzimek’s son Michael had been the victim of a plane crash in the Serengeti thirteen years before, did I realize that our encounter must have been moving for him too. Michael had been exploring the Serengeti in a small plane, had collided with a vulture, lost control of the aircraft and died in the crash.
From Frankfurt, a smaller airplane was to bring me to Kiel, where my aunt and grandmother lived, and I had a terrible fear of getting on this plane. Perhaps the kind married couple looking after me in Kiel could sense my fear, for they asked me several times whether I wouldn’t prefer for them to drive me to Kiel. I would have so liked to say “yes!” But I didn’t have the courage. And so I clenched my teeth, sat down in the turboprop airplane—like the LANSA plane, but smaller—and made it through this flight as well. Everything went well. But when I arrived in Kiel, I was completely beat, and the first thing I did was sleep thirteen hours straight.
My aunt Cordula and my grandmother gave me the warmest welcome imaginable. In the three-room apartment, I got my own little realm—for that, my aunt gave up her room and slept and worked from that point on in the living room. She never made me feel that this might have been a sacrifice. For her, it simply went without saying. From the beginning I got along well with both women. My aunt, in particular, took care of me devotedly, and I will never forget that as long as I live. Still, the adjustment was anything but easy for me. The first thing that struck me about Germany was that I was freezing all the time. It was early April, and I had previously experienced coldness like that only in the Andes.
Here in Kiel my aunt also told me how they had found out the terrible news in Germany. For at that time there wasn’t any e-mail, and even making a phone call to a distant continent was not so simple. My father couldn’t be reached in Panguana, anyhow, and so my aunt’s contacts as a journalist came in useful for her.
At first they thought that my mother and I had already flown on December 23, so they were not yet that worried when they heard about the crash. But then they heard that we were on the plane, after all, and the uncertainty began. During those days the Bonn, Germany, office of the Agence France-Presse proved extremely helpful. On December 26, the editors obtained the passenger list of the LANSA plane within three hours with the help of their office in Lima. Aunt Cordula’s colleagues also kept her updated on the rescue operation. In a thank-you letter, she wrote: The news that my niece was found late in the evening of January 4, 1972 was of extraordinary importance for the family members living in Germany, for whom I’m speaking.
To this day I find it fascinating how difficult it was in those days to get reliable information and how resourceful and well connected my aunt, nonetheless, was.
Yes, I spent those first weeks in Kiel in a daze. I didn’t feel good, I was constantly nauseous, and so I just let everything wash over me. First of all, because I had come so hastily, a school had to be found for me, where I could take my Abitur. I was lucky, for the husband of one of my mother’s relatives was the principal of the Wellingdorf Gymnasium in Kiel, which had been the first school far and wide to introduce a reformed Oberstufe, which is the higher secondary-school level in which students obtain their university entrance qualification. He offered me the opportunity to go directly into the
eleventh grade. Then we would see how I did. Indeed, that level was simpler for me. I could choose the subjects that suited me best. In Lima, however, the school year began in April and here in the autumn, so I was barging into the middle of the ongoing classes, which I found really awful.
The first day of school confirmed this: I didn’t find the right classroom immediately and so arrived late. The teacher scolded me: “First you’re new and then you also come late!” On top of that, I first of all had to adapt to the German customs; for example, in Lima, you stood up when it was your turn to say something. I quickly broke that habit, though, after I had provided general amusement with it in the class.
I was immediately accepted by the other students and soon had a really nice circle of friends. Of course, here, too, people knew who I was and what I had experienced, and curious questions were inevitable. I found it hard to talk about the whole thing, especially ever since I had also been “exiled” from my homeland of Peru. But all the people in my new surroundings strove to make the adjustment as easy as possible for me. And yet—what had been rushing in on me over the past weeks was simply too much, and my body made it clear to me once more that I had far from gotten over everything.
Ever since my knee swelled up back in Yarinacocha, I had intense pain when walking. My aunt brought me to an orthopedist to have it looked at. He not only looked at my knee, but also into my face and said: “Your eyes are really yellow! I’m sending you immediately to a hospital for examination!” They admitted me then and there and put me in the isolation ward, for I not only had a cruciate ligament rupture, but also a full-blown case of hepatitis. This was most likely caused by the water I drank from the stream in the jungle, which I had needed in order to survive without food. My liver was swollen—that was the cause of my constant nausea.
So there I lay, and it was basically all right with me. All I wanted was to have my peace, and now I had it. I had to maintain a strict diet, but that didn’t bother me either. Yes, I liked it in the hospital.
The doctors and nurses were friendly, I had a lively roommate, and I felt more secure than I had in a long time. As far as I’m concerned, I thought, I could stay here forever. Isn’t it strange that I had to be admitted to the hospital before I finally got some peace? But everything I’d gone through had overwhelmed me.
In Yarinacocha, despite the restful environment, too much had still been rushing in on me: There were the journalists, the daily accounts of the recovery of corpses, the gruesome news and the realization that I was the sole survivor. And ultimately there was the fact of my mother’s death. On top of that, there was the imperceptible tension between me and my father, and his grief, which he couldn’t show, but also couldn’t hide. There was so much that had remained unsaid between us, and ultimately my hasty departure from Peru, which I had yet to get over. Now I had time; now I had the peace I so urgently needed. That’s why I didn’t want to leave this isolation ward.
After four weeks, when I was already doing much better, the doctor found out that I did not have health insurance in Germany and had to bear the costs myself. Bed rest and diet, he said, I could also maintain at home, and he released me then and there. And I thought: Oh no, now I have to go somewhere else yet again! But my aunt took such loving care of me that I gradually began to feel at home. I remained bedridden for a few weeks. My new classmates came to visit me now and then, and summer break, by then, had already arrived.
In September, I began the new school year at the normal time, and lo and behold: With my aunt’s support I got into the twelfth grade and did not have to repeat the eleventh. I chose a concentration in biology—of course!—and German, the latter at the advice of my aunt, who was a writer and supported my enthusiasm for literature in any way she could. I was always good in that subject, but she helped me improve my style. Only in mathematics was I downgraded, because we hadn’t done set theory in Peru and the curriculum was somewhat different there. In the end I aced my German Abitur, and I was very proud of that.
Aunt Cordula was an extremely interesting woman, and each day I came to appreciate more the opportunity to live with her. She was, as mentioned, a journalist and a writer. Because she was unmarried, she lived with her mother. She was always in the know about everything that was going on in politics and in art. My aunt sharpened my awareness of such things, which had not particularly interested me before. Among other things, she wrote quite successful biographies of the intellectual Lou Andreas-Salomé and the philosopher and nun Edith Stein.
When she could help me with my essays, especially interpretations, she was really in her element. I’ll never forget how she taught me to interpret poetry. She wanted me to figure out for myself everything that was in a poem. She encouraged me until I succeeded. Those were hours that brought us very close to each other, and I remain grateful to her to this day for opening my mind to all things cultural.
In those first two years in Kiel, I drew and painted a lot. I liked to use chalk and charcoal. Certainly, I inherited the abilities for this from my mother, who was an excellent animal illustrator. She had learned under Professor Hans Krieg in Munich how to draw birds in flight and other animals in swift motion, and perfected her rapid sketching technique. She also illustrated my father’s books and made hundreds of drawings for them. In Peru, a set of postage stamps with five of her bird drawings came out after her death. My mother had been commissioned to design these stamps half a year before the crash and completed the task shortly before her sudden demise; for my father and me, the issuing of the stamps became a sort of posthumous testament to my mother’s life’s work.
Now I, too, took great pleasure in drawing, so that I even seriously considered studying art instead of biology. A teacher at the Wellingdorf Gymnasium, with whom I had a special connection, encouraged my interest too. She took me with her on trips to view this or that exhibition. She also invited me to her home, and on those occasions I met some artists of the Kiel cultural scene. All this was really enriching for me, for in Peru I experienced nothing of the sort.
Even though I would have liked to forget the past, it was necessary time and again to remember what had happened. Stern had sold the rights to my story to a film production company, and an Italian director named Giuseppe Scotese (not to be confused with the famous American directer Scorsese) visited me to get firsthand information. So I had to tell him everything again from the beginning and answer his numerous questions. I did so patiently, but was not involved further in the film work. That was all right with me. The less I had to do with it, the better, I thought.
My first year in Kiel was approaching its end. My aunt might have been wondering anxiously how I would feel during Christmas, the anniversary of that terrible experience. But it was strange: Maybe because Christmas in Germany was so completely different than it was in the jungle, maybe because I still could not really acknowledge my grief—another relapse did not occur. Instead, I made plans for the coming summer. That might have been my way of coping with my homesickness. And so my aunt wrote to my father that I would like to visit Panguana over the next summer break in 1973.
Actually, the most normal thing in the world, you would think: A daughter wants to return home over summer break. Wasn’t I doing everything my father expected of me? Hadn’t I, despite my serious illness, mastered the foreign school curriculum with flying colors and even skipped a grade? In my aunt’s letters, which she wrote to my father during my first year in Germany, I repeatedly find the same refrain: These weeks Juliane has to work very hard for school. Curiously, I don’t remember at all having so much to do. Undoubtedly, that was the best way for me to put all I’d gone through behind me and keep homesickness at bay.
So I had slowly arrived in Kiel, not only outwardly, but also in my heart. I had recovered to the point where I was healthy, and was looking forward to seeing Panguana and my father again. Until I calculated how little of my five-week summer break would remain once I subtracted the long and arduous journey. My aunt advised me gently
against it, and stressed what a strain it would be: so much time in airplanes for a mere two weeks in Panguana. At the idea of having to fly again, I got goose bumps. And when my maternal grandmother urged me to come and finally visit her on Lake Starnberg, I gradually abandoned my plan to go to Peru.
What I didn’t know was that my father had forbidden me to come, anyway. In my aunt’s posthumous papers, I found a letter that made my blood freeze in my veins. While my father accepted various visits from zoologists, he wrote:
I am dismayed that Juliane wants to come back here already. I don’t find that advisable at all. Please talk her out of it: there are too many things that make her coming here appear ill advised. If Maria’s brother wants to come, he should do it…. He should take into consideration that I have no staff here and that this is no summer resort. If Juliane shows up here against my will, then she will experience something she wasn’t expecting.
My aunt replied:
Juliane has already abandoned her Peru travel plans on her own, when she realized that she could have had at most seventeen days in Panguana, for the break is only five weeks long. You certainly don’t need to threaten with angry words, as in your letter of December 30. That will only jeopardize her difficultly attained and easily shaken mental and physical equilibrium. That’s why I didn’t tell her about it at all.
Only now, forty years later, do I learn about this, and wonder: Why didn’t my father want to see me? What “things” made my visit “appear ill advised”? Was he unable to bear my presence? Did he resent that I was alive instead of my mother?
Even after so many years, his roughly phrased letter forbidding me to come home still hurts me. But what is still odder: Until I found this letter a few weeks ago, I had completely suppressed the fact that I had at that time considered going to Panguana at all. If someone had asked me, I would have denied it with utter conviction. And yet here it is in writing. Why did I forget that so completely?
When I Fell From the Sky Page 18
