It's All In the Playing (35 page)

I closed my eyes as I pictured the sun shining on third-dimensional clouds. I could feel the fear of failure creep in momentarily. I pushed it away. I opened my eyes and observed Stan, Simo, and Esther. Each was meditating with eyes closed.

About five minutes went by. A spiraling curl of smoke rose above the twigs. Then suddenly, coming toward us up the stone steps, was a man. He was dressed in an official raincoat with a rain hat and had a badge on his shoulder that indicated he was the fire warden for the ancient ruin.

He began to gesture and yell at us in Spanish. It startled us out of our reverie, but nobody said anything. And then, as though we were conducted by a puppet master, the four of us turned and looked at the fire warden at the same time. He stopped talking. He stopped gesturing. No words were exchanged, and as though guided by an invisible force he looked away from us and, completely changing the direction of his attention, walked up the hill until he was out of sight. It was an out-of-focus, dreamlike encounter. He actually stopped objecting to our fire in midsentence and never looked back. None of
us
had uttered one word.

Esther glanced at me and winked. We then returned to our misty meditation. Then rain birds began to sing again. A rush of energy went through my body. Then I became profoundly peaceful. I could almost hear the clouds drift through the mist. The seven guides Benito
had talked about swam into my mind. I meditated on them. They didn’t have form really. I just acknowledged their presence. I asked them for help. I visualized the way I wanted Machu Picchu to look. I could feel the others meditating with the same intensity.

About half an hour went by. Then, as though on cue, the four of us broke our meditation. The “element package” was ashes now. There was only a thin waft of smoke left from the mystical ceremony. We stretched, as if to signify its conclusion, and then we embraced each other. There was nothing left to do or say—except for something I felt very strongly. So I said it out loud.

“It will be sunny in about an hour,” I announced, absolutely sure of my words. The others nodded and shrugged. “So I’m going down to the hotel to get made up and dressed so I’ll be ready.”

As I began to descend through the mist down the steps of the ruins, a queasy dizziness came over me. I was suddenly very sick at my stomach and could hardly keep my balance. I thought it was the altitude, or maybe the jam cookie I had eaten on the train. I kept walking. The nausea became worse. What was going on? Then I remembered the small packet of herbs Benito had given me. “You will become ill because of the energy swirling through you. Make a tea with this.” But I hadn’t remembered where I’d put it. I kept walking. When I came to some of the crew at the bottom I could hardly speak, but I heard them talking to me.

“What were you doing up there? Making more rain?”

“When do we leave? We’ll never get this today either….”

I couldn’t answer. Just smiled. I needed to walk until I could lie down in my room. I could feel a strange pressure on my body, a sense of literal decompression. I’d never felt anything like it in my life. I made my way to my room and lay down for a minute. Then something made me get up immediately and go to the makeup
room, where Tina was set up. I sat down in the makeup chair. She commented on how white I looked and wondered why I was bothering to get made up at all, considering the weather. I could hardly breathe. I needed to hyperventilate to keep going. I sat there nauseous and dizzy until she was finished. Then I put on my wardrobe, which felt as though it belonged to somebody else. My body felt detached from me. I heard some of the crew talking excitedly outside. With painful difficulty I walked to the window and looked up. The clouds were lifting. The drizzle had stopped. The crew was carrying the equipment to the top of the mountain.

“Hey,” said Tina, “look at that. What did you guys do up there?”

I couldn’t answer. I walked outside. Simo could see how sick I was. He walked beside me.

“Let’s climb now,” I said. “I want to be ready when the sun breaks through.”

Someone had already alerted John, so he would be ready too.

As I climbed I found my legs wouldn’t work properly. There was no strength in my knees. I needed to climb stiff-legged which meant bearing down on Simo’s arm for support to raise my body step after step. Thank God he was powerfully built. The sickness was worse now. It was overwhelming. I didn’t understand what was happening. It felt as though some energy pattern was grounding itself through me, and the intensity of the vibration was more than I could take. I looked up. The sun was breaking through. A few crew members applauded. I climbed higher, wanting to vomit with each step, yet unable to. Simo helped me walk. It felt almost as though he were a battery of some kind—that I needed the physical contact of his arm.

The cameras were set up above me. As I walked toward them a few crew members rushed forward to help me. I explained it was the altitude and a drop in my
blood sugar which was creating the nausea and lack of strength. That seemed to satisfy them, but some of them were enough in tune with me to understand there was more to it.

John was ready to shoot. The script girl held the script in front of me. I took a quick glance at my lines, took a deep breath, and was ready.

“Are you okay?” asked John.

“Sure,” I answered.

“I guess when you witch out the weather, it makes you sick, eh?”

He was remarkable, really.

“Yeah,” I answered, hanging on, not eager to spend energy on anything but the shot.

I looked around me. The sun had broken through the clouds completely and was shining over them so as to cast an outlined aura around the ruins as well as the trees. The third-dimensional mystical quality was even more pronounced than I had visualized. It was a poetic painting … perfect.

“It’s beautiful,” said John. “Worth it.”

That was all that was said and the cameras rolled. The scene called for me to walk to the edge of a cliff, look down, and say some dialogue. John saw that I could hardly walk, so he helped me. I found myself lifting my legs much higher than I needed to because I was so unsure of my footing. We got the scene.

The camera guys set up quickly in another location. We got that scene too. All the while I was stabilizing myself so I wouldn’t throw up. My face was white, my skin clammy, and I couldn’t wait for it all to be over with. I desperately wanted a bottle of Coca-Cola. Someone ran down the mountain to the hotel dining room and found a Coke. I needed sugar to ground me. I drank it all at once.

For two and a half hours we shot. I was suspended
in a bubble of sickness. The crew wanted to stop and take a lunch break.

“Please,” I said to Yudi. “Ask them if we can shoot straight through. I can’t hold this energy much longer and if I let go of it, I’m sure it will pour with rain.”

Yudi asked the crew. They complied.

Esther came over to me.

“You know,” she said, sounding impossibly assured, “you are going through a cleansing process along with everything else.”

I began to cry immediately. What kind of cleansing? I didn’t know. I only knew it was true. I hadn’t eaten since the early morning, and the thought of rich food repulsed me. I hadn’t had a cigarette all morning, either, which was unusual for me. Suddenly it was difficult for me to be around those members of the crew who were smoking.

We continued to shoot. We shot every conceivable angle of the Machu Picchu ruins so we’d have plenty to choose from in the editing room. I stood and sat with tense rigidity so I could hold the energy, whatever it was.

Finally we got the last shot. The crew applauded. I relaxed. We looked up. As God is my judge, a cloud drifted in front of the sun. In fact, clouds seemed to materialize from out of thin, clear air.

“Quickly. Quickly,” yelled Yudi. “Let’s get a crew picture of all of us here. Everybody line up.”

The still photographer set up his tripod, checked his focus, and shielded his camera with a plastic coat while the rest of us lined up dutifully, feeling the drizzly mist moving in around us. There were hurried shouts of direction. And then something happened which I will never forget as long as I live. The photographer took about five shots of the entire crew. We all smiled and shouted as though the camera could record it. Then, as though by direct cue from an unseen director, the still photographer said, “That’s it—I’m out of film.” And
immediately the skies literally
dumped
sheets of rain on us. Our small band of movie-makers was drenched within one minute. It actually made us laugh, it was so “coincidental.” Everyone turned to me and at that moment my nausea and weakness went away. If it hadn’t happened to me personally I wouldn’t have believed it. But somehow the pressure of holding the energy was released, and with it I was back to normal.

I raced down the narrow steps of the ruins until I reached the hotel, whereupon I collapsed on my hotel bed and slept for three hours while the crew got some second-unit footage and finally packed the equipment onto the train.

In my sleep I had several visions (dreams, images, apparitions—whatever word applies). First I saw Gerry. It was so strange, because I hadn’t really thought much about him since our meeting in London. But there he was—sort of hovering over me, curious and somehow needing to make contact.

Then I saw a funny vision which had such impact that its message continues to hold me in its meaning even today.

I have never been a really heavy smoker, lighting about a pack a day. I
never
inhaled. It was a social habit, not an addiction, something to do with my hands, or to induce a sense of relaxation by being companionable. Nevertheless, I stuck to one brand. I smoked Vantage 100’s.

My vision was a huge package of Vantage 100 cigarettes. The package was the size of a human being. I climbed up the side of the package and looked over the top of the interior. It was empty. There were no cigarettes in the package. As I peered down into the empty package a voice rang in my ears: “See to it that it stays empty.”

I laughed at the vision. It woke me. It was as though
my higher self had painted a picture so graphic I couldn’t ignore its message.

I am now one of the legions of people who have given up the filthy habit. I haven’t had even a puff since that bizarre vision. I’m not sure I can recommend my method of quitting to anyone else, though.

   All the way back on the train I gazed out at the wild Urubamba swirling and crashing against the rocks of the Andes. I thought about my original trip to the Andes, how the whole adventure had inspired me to write
Out on a Limb,
how the conflict with Gerry had propelled me to understand more of what life meant. And Gerry was still a part of me, still a character who seemed to impose himself on the drama of my life, even if it was only in a dream.

But then what was the dream? Was life the dream or was life the theater? Where did one stop and the other begin? Or was there a difference?

When we returned to Cuzco it wasn’t long before the word got around that I had controlled the weather and made sunshine happen in Machu Picchu on a day that was intrinsically gloomy. After that came the Peruvian newspaper articles that claimed I believed I was the reincarnation of an Inca princess. Between that and the extraterrestrials the papers said I claimed built Machu Picchu, I could have started my own
Peruvian National Enquirer.

Chapter 22

   T
he next day’s shooting in the Chinchero market began pleasantly enough. The mayor of the town honored me with a ceremony and a presentation of an antique textile representing the color combinations of the village. Bob Butler was honored with an antique plow which was the symbol of work.

I heard some of the crew saying they might stay on after the shooting because they found the people so simple and pure.

During one take I fell down in the mud.

I read some Spanish movie magazines at a vendor’s stand.

I was having a sense of disjointedness. All day I felt a sort of longing loneliness, as though something I couldn’t touch was missing. I tried to brush it aside, but it was like a gentle, gnawing pain, the kind you keep worrying at even while you are trying to ignore it.

I kept thinking of Gerry, as though I should call him or something.

At the end of the day I looked forward to a hot bath with my heel stuffed in the drain.

Just as I had undressed, the telephone rang. When I picked it up I realized it was long distance, and then I heard Bella’s voice.

“I’ve been trying to call for two days,” she said. “You’re in a place that doesn’t exist.”

“Well, I never got your message.”

“I know,” she said in a tentative way.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to tell you what I have to tell you. I didn’t want to be the one.”

I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about.

If it was something to do with my daughter, or Mom and Dad, Bella wouldn’t have been the one to call.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“It’s Gerry,” she said.

“Gerry?”

“Yes,” she said. Then she hesitated. “He was in an auto accident on vacation in the South of France.”

My thoughts of him swirled back to me; the longing, the feeling something was missing. I stopped thinking for a minute. Then I knew.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I asked.

There was a slight strangled gasp.

“Yes, my darling. I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t say anything. She went on.

“It’s so strange,” she said, “that you’re shooting a film about him and I’m yet again the character in your real-life play that tells you he’s gone.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I didn’t want to tell you. That’s why I didn’t leave any messages.”

“Oh,” I said, the full implication of her reluctance hitting me.

I thought of the tiny silver star that had fallen through Benito’s fingers, and how distressed he had been.

“When did it actually happen, Bella?” I asked.

She told me. I figured out the time difference, but I already knew. It was at exactly the hour of Benito’s visit.