In the early days of the filming of The Holy Mountain, a young American named Robert Taicher approached me, expressed admiration for my previous film, and offered to work for free as my assistant. It turned out that I needed someone to run errands, bring me an occasional sandwich or drink, and help me learn English, a language that I spoke poorly but was obliged to use for economic reasons. He proved to be an exemplary assistant — modest, intelligent, dependable, hardworking, friendly, and understanding. He followed me like my shadow, immensely lightening the heavy work of shooting. When I insisted on paying him a salary, he refused. He said that because he was himself an aspiring filmmaker, this was the best school he could have hoped to find.
Suddenly, without any indication, my executive producer, Roberto Viskin, fled with his family to Israel, taking with him three hundred thousand dollars of our money. This theft paralyzed us. It was impossible to continue shooting, and the actors waited idly at the hotel, the costs continuing to mount.
“What are you going to do now?” Robert Taicher asked me.
“Nothing,” I answered. “Miracles happen. In order to find his successor in China, Bodhidharma sat in front of a wall for years, waiting for the disciple to come to him. I shall do the same — I’m going to stay at home and wait for someone to come and bring me three hundred thousand dollars in cash wrapped up in a newspaper.”
My assistant stared at me with such wide eyes that they seemed like two shining wheels. “Robert, your expression suggests that you think I’m mad — but in my view, real madness is to refuse to believe in miracles.”
And I did as I said. I did not lift a finger in an attempt to obtain this money — and, in any case, my financial situation was such that no bank would agree to lend it to me. A week passed, during which Taicher disappeared. I learned that he had flown to Miami. Then he reappeared, knocking at my door. Happy to see him, I welcomed him in. In his hands, he held a newspaper, which he handed to me. Opening it, I found three hundred thousand dollars in cash! It turned out that Robert’s father was extremely rich — the largest shoe manufacturer in the United States. Robert had asked for an advance on his inheritance. From unpaid assistant he had become my executive producer!
When my son Brontis was eight years old, I enrolled him in a modern private school in Mexico City called La Ferrie. All seemed to be going well until one day, when Brontis came home earlier than usual.
“They’ve suspended me for three days.”
“Did you do something bad?”
“Well, the toilets were recently painted white, and I found a can of black paint in there. I wet my hand in it and made my handprint on the wall. The principal called me to his office, told me I was a bad boy, and sent me home. He says you will have to pay the costs of repainting.”
I sat right down and wrote a letter to the principal.
Toilets are less important than the mind of a child. If toilets are damaged, they can be repaired easily, but when the mind of a child is hurt, the damage is not repaired so easily. When you told Brontis he was “bad” because he put his handprint on the wall, you committed an error. What do you mean by a “bad” child? When we label others in this way, it is because we are afraid to look reality in the face. No child is “bad.” A child may have problems, may lack vitamins, may dislike their study material, or may be trying to test the limits of an outdated form of education. Perhaps Brontis was attempting to express himself artistically. I can well understand how tiresome it is for children always to have to relieve themselves surrounded by pure white walls. (If you have ever read the works of Jung on the creative significance of defecation in children, you can agree that children’s rest room walls should instead be covered with colors and designs.) A hand wet with paint and used to imprint a wall or a cloth is an expression of one of the purest and most ancient forms of the pictorial instinct. We find such handprints in many prehistoric cave paintings as well as in paintings by artists of the stature of Miro, Picasso, and many others.
Frankly, I admire such an impulse in a child, whatever the color of the handprint or the wall. The black color of the print no doubt unconsciously suggests “filth,” which places it in a system of mental associations that make it seem worse than it is: white = cleanliness, milk, virginity, a bride, and so forth, and black = stain, filth, poverty, sickness, and death. For Taoists — who accept death as something beautiful rather than horrible — a bit of black upon a vast white expanse represents a manifestation of life.
In summary, I propose a solution. If you accept my solution, I will not withdraw my son from your schooclass="underline" Instead of paying for a new coat of paint, I will instead purchase for your school an entire collection of cans of paint of different colors. Then you can have your children use this material to cover the walls of the toilet with handprints in all sorts of beautiful colors.
As might be expected, I had to find a different school for Brontis.
How I loved Teo, my departed son! Perhaps because I had a premonition of his early death, I did everything possible to offer him a happy childhood. On his seventh birthday, he asked to go alone with me to a Chinese restaurant, which we did. His mouth watered when he saw that the menu contained twelve different kinds of soup. All of them sounded delicious to him, and he became distressed when faced with having to choose only one. He asked me to decide for him, but I sensed that no matter what I chose, he would feel frustrated. Then I remembered an old joke.
A family sits down in a restaurant, the waitress arrives, writes down the orders of the adults, and then asks the little boy what he would like. Looking timidly at his parents, he says: “A hamburger.”
But the mother protests: “Out of the question! Bring him a steak with mashed potatoes and carrots.”
The waitress, however, seems not to have heard: “How would you like your hamburger? With ketchup or mustard?” she asks the boy.
“With ketchup.”
“I’ll bring your order right away!” the waitress answers, leaving before the mother can say anything else.
There is a stunned silence around the table. Finally, the little boy looks at everyone and says: “Wow! The waitress thinks I’m a real person.”
This joke gave me the solution to the koan: I was there to satisfy my son’s desires, not my own. I called the waiter and ordered all twelve soups at once. When Teo saw the table covered with these bowls filled with exotic soups, he was in ecstasy. He ate only a few spoonfuls of each, but he was happy.
While I was working on The Holy Mountain, I had just finished shooting at the revered Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Some groups of fanatic Catholics had spread the rumor that I had performed a black Mass inside the sacred place, and suddenly I was greeted by a parade of a thousand believers whipped into a frenzy by right-wing extremists. They shouted insults, comparing me to the murderer Charles Manson and demanding I be expelled from the country. This whole business was so baseless and absurd that I didn’t worry about it, thinking that the rumor would soon die down of its own accord. But it only grew worse. Newspapers seized on the situation to create a scandal, writing articles in which I appeared as the Antichrist.
One morning, there was a loud knock at my door. Three huge detectives, looking like professional killers, said roughly: “Come with us!” Without even allowing me to get my coat, they dragged me in my shirtsleeves into a black car and shoved me into the backseat, crushed between two of them.
They refused to say where we were going. After an anxious half hour of biting my lips, the car stopped in front of the Ministry of the Interior. Just as I feared, I was about to be deported from Mexico. I was led through numberless offices and waiting rooms full of solicitors, secretaries, bureaucrats, and policemen until I arrived finally before an imposing door. It opened.