When it was time to get going, she drove me to my hotel. In parting she pressed a letter into my hand.
“Please don’t read it until later, when you’re in your room,” she said. “And don’t feel obligated to answer.”
I was surprised, of course. I couldn’t imagine what this woman had to write to me. But as I’d promised her, I read the letter that same evening.
She was the mother of one of the boys who had stood directly in front of us in line at check-in for the LANSA plane on December 24, 1971, with whom I had joked and laughed. Like all the others, he had died. She wrote that she had long wrestled with her God over why I was allowed to survive and not her son. This question had plunged her—who, like everyone else in the mission community in Yarinacocha, had devoted her life to spreading Christianity—into a deep crisis. She had struggled until she had finally made her peace with this fate.
That night I couldn’t sleep for a long time. My past had caught up to me after all the years in Kiel. Why did he have to die and not I? Why did my mother have to die, and I was allowed to live? At the natural history museum, a former colleague of my mother’s, who had been close friends with her, had only recently said to me with tears in her eyes: “When we heard the news of the crash, we all said: ‘If anyone survives, it will be the doctora. For she knows exactly how to handle herself in the jungle.’ Oh well. And then it was the daughter.” I know she didn’t mean it that way, but her tears and that so resigned-sounding “Oh well” reawakened in me what I had felt back then with my father—the feeling that there had been some sort of mistake. That the wrong one had died. Actually, my mother should have survived the disaster. Or perhaps that boy, instead. But not I, of all people.
At that time I was twenty-three years old. The crash had been six years earlier. I was overjoyed to have returned. But for the first time, I thought about whether my father might have been right to send me to Germany. There I had gained a certain distance from the disaster. Here I was reminded of it at every turn. Still, I would come back again and again, for the rest of my life. Deep in my heart I knew that even then.
Back in Kiel, I set to work on the analysis of my investigations. My thesis work was great fun for me, and I finished my studies successfully. There was no question that I would go on to pursue a doctorate—another good opportunity to spend time in Panguana. Though I didn’t know yet what I was going to work on this time, there was no better research field for me than Panguana. Despite all the sad memories associated with the place, I was always drawn back to it.
I was, incidentally, not the only one who visited my parents’ research station on the bank of the Yuyapichis during those years. My father repeatedly sent thesis and doctoral students to our jungle station with topics that they could work on there. As in earlier days other scientists traveled there with my father’s consent as well to complete studies already under way or to begin new ones. Moro was the one who attended to the visitors on-site, when necessary. Thus my father continued to control the fate of this spot while he found his feet in Hamburg and, to everyone’s astonishment, never left. Still, he continued, of course, to take numerous excursions. Most of the time, I would then look after his small Hamburg row house. But he never went to Peru again.
I, however, was already looking forward to my next chance to go there. Just a year after I finished my thesis, with the title “Species-Specific Patterns of Camouflage Coloring in Carrion- and Dung-Eating Butterflies of the Peruvian Tropical Rain Forest,” I traveled for four months with a few friends through the country of my birth, and had a few adventures. A trip over the Andes turned out to be particularly eventful. In a secluded area an off-road truck came toward us. One of the passengers had a handkerchief tied around his head. We stopped, and then I saw that the cloth was blood-soaked. They told us that they were Germans and had been attacked that night. It had happened near one of the copper, silver or bismuth and wolfram mines, when someone knocked on the car in the middle of the night. At first the travelers didn’t want to open the doors, of course, and then machine-gun fire began pounding the car. A bullet hit the man and went straight through his neck without tearing a vein or his throat, but the blood was pouring out, nonetheless. Despite his injury, the man immediately flung himself at the wheel and drove away under continued fire.
Who the attackers had been, we didn’t know at the time. Only after the terrorist movement around Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, called the “Sendero Luminoso”—the “Shining Path”—spread more widely and turned Peru for years into a country to which one was better off not traveling was I able to place this incident in a larger context. At the time we faced the problem that we still had to go through the exact area where the attack had occurred. I remember clearly how tense we all were, for we were driving via Tingo María to Pucallpa, a route that was especially dangerous, and were coming at night as well. The driver remarked: “If the car dies now, God have mercy on us.” At the time it was strongly discouraged to pass through those inaccessible areas by car, especially traveling at night. Luckily, our vehicle did us the favor of holding out, and we made it successfully over this perilous stretch without one of the feared encounters.
It was an ominous time in Peru. In 1980, during the election year following the end of the military dictatorship, Abimael Guzmán declared an armed war on the state. In the spring his followers burned ballot boxes in a small village near Ayacucho, where the movement originated. There followed attacks on police stations and villages. Finally, at the end of 1982, the government declared a state of emergency and sent military units into the area. The ensuing violence was of a previously unknown brutality, even for Latin America. The leader of the movement, whose followers called him Presidente Gonzalo or the “Fourth Sword of the World Revolution,” demanded absolute submission. He and his followers had absolutely no regard for indigenous traditions or any property or human rights. If the peasants were not willing to support the movement, then there were bloody revenge campaigns. Thus forced to support them, the peasants had to suffer as well from punishments imposed by the military, a cycle that would persist for many years.
We only perceived a distant echo of all this on our journey, for the movement initially spread across the country only slowly, but steadily. There had always been attacks in remote areas. My parents too, during a trip in the late 1950s—I was only three years old and stayed behind in the care of my aunt and grandmother in Lima—had experienced an almost deadly encounter. This one wasn’t political in nature, though, but was due to a widespread superstition among the inhabitants of the Andes. My parents were backpacking by themselves in the Andes and would pitch their tent in secluded places, which usually didn’t cause any problems. One day they came to a village where no one seemed to speak Spanish and apparently no European had ever passed through before. There were only women in the village. The men worked in the fields. These women thought my parents were pishtacos. According to folklore, those are supernatural evil spirits that appear in human form, have blond hair and carry backpacks on their backs. They come to kill people surreptitiously at night and suck out their body fat. The terrified women in the secluded village believed that my parents were such creatures. They didn’t let on anything, invited the unwelcome guests into the schoolhouse and locked them in. When the men came home that evening, they appeared with pickaxes and machetes to kill my parents.
Luckily, there was also a teacher in the village who had studied in Lima and knew very well that my parents were definitely not pishtacos, and also meant no harm. She was just barely able to persuade the inhabitants to let them live. They were allowed to spend the night in the schoolhouse and leave the village at once, the next morning, under the suspicious glances of the people.
It wasn’t so long ago, Moro confided to me, that some of the people in the area around Panguana still believed that we and our scientist guests were pishtacos too. To put an end to this mistaken belief, once and for all, he suggested composing a broadcast for the local radio station “La Voz de
l Pachitea” in which we would explain exactly what Panguana is and what goals we are pursuing. So I wrote a text that was read repeatedly on the radio over several weeks, and that generated a great deal of understanding for our cause. In the meantime everyone in the area knows all about our work, and Moro, who in younger days had himself been skeptical and saw the forest more as a supplier of resources, is today the best advocate for the preservation of the rain forest. From the surrounding villages school classes regularly visit, which Moro leads through the forest with contagious enthusiasm. There he explains to the children as if they were adults the peculiarities of the flora and fauna—and how important it is for them and their country to preserve them.
When I returned to Kiel in November 1980, I was greeted with sad news: My grandmother, with whom I had lived together with my aunt for so long, had died. We buried her a day after my return.
It wasn’t long before I was already planning another stay in Panguana, this time lasting more than a year. I only needed a suitable topic for my dissertation, one that would allow me to return again to Panguana and that was so fascinating that I would enjoy spending several years of my life working on it.
And that’s when my father came up with a suggestion that completely surprised me.
18 The Secret Soul of the Forest
Scary spirit of the night: a vampire bat in the Amazon Rain Forest. (Photo courtesy of Juliane (Koepcke) Diller)
“What?” I ask indignantly. “Bats? You can’t be serious!”
I had always wanted to work on mammals or birds, but definitely not on bats, for I found these nocturnal spirits somewhat ugly. What was appealing or interesting about them?
“Don’t underestimate the bats,” my father replied, smiling slightly. “They’re fascinating animals, possibly even the most interesting mammals of all. And in Panguana, there’s an abundance of them.”
I rolled my eyes. I remembered the bats in Panguana all too well. Just thinking of the vampire bats, which drank blood from the cattle at night, made me shudder. One even bit me in my big toe once while I was sleeping, and I didn’t find that funny at all.
“True,” my father conceded, “they definitely aren’t among the cutest animals. But just consider: You would be the first person to write about them in Panguana. And what a fascinating life-form that actually is: They’re mammals and fly; they’re nocturnal and orient themselves by echolocation; and their behavior patterns and ecology are really special. Just think about it.”
I did so. And the longer I thought about it, the more persuasive I found my father’s arguments. In particular, the diversity of their feeding habits and their choice of roosts had not been studied at all in Amazonian Peru, let alone in Panguana. And in comparison to other mammals, they could be caught relatively easily with nets or observed in their roosts.
And so I entered unknown territory and have never regretted it. There were only a few works I could consult for comparison, and they came from remote areas of Peru’s neighboring countries. But who in Germany could adequately advise such a dissertation?
In Munich, there was a professor, a South America specialist, who was recommended to me from all sides: Professor Ernst Josef Fittkau. So I went there and presented my project proposal to him, and he accepted me as a doctoral student. The next years of my life were now predetermined: I would go to Panguana for at least a year and devote myself to the fluttering nocturnal spirits, and would then write my dissertation in Munich.
So it happened that almost nine years after my arrival in Kiel, I pulled up stakes at my aunt’s place, packed my things in boxes and put them in temporary storage. For after my return from Peru, I wanted to move directly to Munich. Sitting in the plane to Lima in August 1981, I felt a great euphoria. I had finished my Abitur and thesis. Now I would write my dissertation, and then I would be free to decide what to make of my life and where to live.
The first weeks in Panguana, I had company. An assistant professor at the university in Kiel, named Michael, was researching leaf-miner flies and had already gone to Peru a month earlier to get to know the country and people. Unfortunately, Michael was one of those people who seem to attract bad luck irresistibly. During his journey through Peru, he was robbed three times, and a bus he was on suffered an axle fracture. While he was spending the night in an Indian hut in the High Andes, he was actually peed on by a rat. On top of that, he got dysentery, which gave him horrible diarrhea, and he lost at least thirty pounds. When I met Michael in Lima, I scarcely recognized him: He was terribly emaciated and had grown a full beard. While I was flying to Yuyapichis on the plane, he had set off from Pucallpa a few days earlier by boat, taking along our luggage and a tank of kerosene for our new refrigerator, during the acquisition of which he had almost driven me crazy. For it had to be sealed absolutely tight, which is an enormous demand in Peru. But with much patience he had actually found the “perfect tank” and was very happy—and I was too, of course.
Before his departure he also bought eight gigantic watermelons. I smiled at that, because I found this rather excessive for the two-day boat trip. There wasn’t unlimited space on those boats. You had to somehow make yourself comfortable on the cargo consisting of cartons, barrels, boxes and possibly various machines too, and that was mostly an uncomfortable undertaking. But it’s true that there was nothing to eat. A day after the departure, Michael’s boat had engine trouble, and he had to spend several days with the other passengers on the bank of the Río Pachitea until the boat could get going again. Then, of course, the melons were right on cue, and his fellow passengers also benefited from Michael’s foresight.
In Panguana, he once fell down a slope, and another time he got a huge load of bird droppings on his head. That time he had been investigating particularly interesting flies on a large glob, and hadn’t been aware that its source was nearby—to be precise, directly above him. It was a boatbill, a large heron. Luckily, none of this led to anything worse. It was just a funny series of mishaps, and we laughed a lot together. Incidentally, Michael baked excellent bread in a cooking pot in the ashes of our fireplace, and he was, like many others, excited by the immense diversity of species in Panguana, especially among the grass flies he specialized in. Unfortunately, he soon left. And I devoted myself entirely to my bats. That meant that I had to adapt my rhythm to theirs. During the day I looked for sleeping quarters, climbed into hollow trees or under banks, and night after night I went into the forest in order to set up and check my traps in the proper places. On one of those dark nights, I saw an ocelot. People encounter these nocturnal loners extremely rarely, and I consider myself lucky that our paths didn’t cross.
Another time I heard approaching footsteps, indicating that a larger animal was moving toward me. I stayed completely still and waited. Then a tapir suddenly came out of the bushes and stopped directly in front of me. With its snout it sniffed me, apparently just as astonished as I was. It was probably wondering what sort of strange animal I was. For a long time I didn’t dare to move, for I knew that these animals can become unpleasant, especially when they have young. Finally I cleared my throat—and the tapir turned around and disappeared again. And the next night, returning to Panguana from a party in Yuyapichis, I had a still more incredible encounter. I was carrying a carton on my head and feeling my way more than I could see it, for my flashlight battery was almost dead. I deviated a bit from the path in the darkness and ended up at the slope leading down to the river. And there something suddenly growled very deeply and resonantly next to me, like a very large dog and yet somehow different. I shone my flashlight into a small hollow below me, but couldn’t make anything out in the dim light. Then there was that sound again, deep and rolling, so that I thought: I have to get out of here. The next day I found out that it must have been a jaguar, for a torn-open calf was found in that spot. Apparently, I had disturbed it while eating. If my flashlight had been stronger, I might well have shone it directly into its face.
I grew accustomed to being out mainly at
night. Before dawn I was again on my feet, for I had to fold up the bat nets before the birds awoke and could get caught in them. The woodcreepers are awake especially early, and I didn’t want the poor animals with their arrow-shaped tongues to get tangled in a net. In those early-morning hours, the ground fog creates a unique atmosphere, for it lies like a white sheet over Moro’s pastures and fields. It can get pretty cold and the moisture can get unpleasant. At 100 percent air humidity, the dew falls like rain on the trees.
I could observe many bats at particular clay licks, or colpas. These are areas at forest springs or on riverbanks that contain especially mineral-rich earth, an important food supplement for numerous birds and mammals. I had found one of these colpas, where bats flocked to drink. I asked Moro to build me a sort of raised platform there so that I could better observe the animals. There were also swarms of mosquitoes, however, and I had to think of my mother, who had such discipline. She managed not to move, even if the sweat was running into her eyes.
On especially dark and soundless nights, I could sometimes hear deep inside the jungle a series of thin, high, almost disembodied whistles, which wafted through the silence as if they were not of this world. They came from the Tunshi, which frightened me as a child in Lima, until Alida came and calmed me down. The fact that I was now hearing those distinctive sounds in the middle of the jungle, all by myself, able to see something only in the beam of my flashlight, was also eerie for me as an adult. No wonder the Tunshi is regarded in Amazonian Peru and in the neighboring countries as a jungle spirit that can be heard only on the darkest, grimmest nights. According to folklore, it is a sad, wandering soul that finds no peace. According to other legends, however, the Tunshi is also a guardian of the forest, for it will do something only to those who harm the forest, chop it down or kill its animals. It can make people deaf or blind and also bring madness or even death. But in reality, it’s a perfectly harmless little cuckoo that can almost never be glimpsed. Still, due to its soundlessness and the especially dark nights when it calls, it always affected me strangely.
When I Fell From the Sky Page 21
