a parasite on a parasite.. (UPDATE)

I found a copy of Vice in Seoul last weekend and it ALSO has an excerpt from Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo diary. Apparently the whole thing was published a few days ago in a book called Conquest of the Useless. Here's my favorite paragraph from the Vice excerpt. To give you some background, the ship they're filming on had just rammed into the side of a cliff causing a cameraman named Mauch to drop a huge camera onto his hand, splitting it between his pinky and ring finger. They rush to the medical tent and find that the anesthesia supply had been used up; two indians had been attacked with arrows the night before. So Herzog, out of options, takes Mauch's head into his arms.

Mauch said he could not take any more, he was going to faint, and I told him to go ahead. Then he thought he was going to shit in his pants from the pain, but he could not decide between the two options, and in the end did neither. On a hunch I sent for Carmen, one of the two prostitutes we have here because of the woodcutters and the boatmen. She pushed me aside, buried Mauch’s head between her breasts, and comforted him with her lovely soft voice. She rose above her everyday existence, developing her inner Pietà, and Mauch soon fell silent. During the operation, which lasted almost two hours, she said over and over, “Thomas, mi amor,” to him, while the patient yielded to his fate. As I stood watching, I felt a deep affection for both of them.