Henning Koch - The Maggot People

They got on a train to Marseilles, then took a cab to the towering ferry in the harbor. Michael stood with Janine on deck, watching the tiered city basking in the late evening glow. Everything seemed perfect and dead as the great humming ship slipped its moorings and glided out.

Janine had booked a super-luxury cabin with a bedroom and separate sitting room. Ensconced in a comfortable if slightly plasticized sofa, they had a fine view of the sea through a big, salt-stained window.

To ease their passage, they had bought two bottles of Black Label, two of Courvoisier, two hundred cigarettes each, and more bananas. (Maggots have a liking for bananas — they’re basic starch.)

After a calm night, the ship docked sedately the following morning, and they wasted no time in hiring a car and driving into Cagliari, where they made their delivery and walked away with more cash than Michael had ever seen. Apparently cash would no longer be of primary importance to him. It was nothing but printed paper to be stuffed into his wallet and carelessly flung about when he needed something.

Janine seemed in excellent spirits as they emerged from the slightly down-at-heel apartment block (having just transferred their contraband into the grasping hands of a small-time villain).

“Come on, mister,” she purred at Michael. “I’ve already saved your life and made you a pile of money; now I’m also going to make you immortal. Which means a short trip to St. Helena to meet the Mama.”

“The Mama? Who the hell is that?”

“Oh, just the greatest stoner this planet has ever known. Once you’re with her you’ll never have to ask yourself again who you are or what your life’s about. She’ll tell you.”

“I should probably think about it,” he said, remembering Günter’s words about never trusting anyone.

“ The man who thinks, deceives his own desires . Mama told me that.”

Janine drove inland from the rocky coast by Olbia, skirting inactive volcanoes, threading through hilltop villages. They saw a great number of ruined stone towers, and Michael reflected that there must have been a great civilization here once, though its people had failed, somehow, for they were all dead.

Slowly the landscape flattened out as they reached the western shore not far from Oristano. Towards midday they arrived at a covered black gate, with surveillance cameras on both sides peering down at them.

They sat waiting until the gates swung open.

Three or four hundred meters down a winding drive there was a slight incline towards an expansive terra-cotta roof partially hidden behind juniper trees. On the other side, the sea’s horizon lay stretched like a massive, slightly curved rim. The courtyard was neatly swept but the banks on either side of the drive were overgrown with knotty, climbing geraniums that were more like small trees.

The door opened ahead of them, revealing a statuesque black maid in a pinafore dress — an emanation of the old Dixie South, practically singing a cotton-picking song as she stepped aside and let them through: “Just in time. She’s getting impatient.”

Janine lengthened her strides. “And what’s happening?”

“Not much. Elvira brought some fresh people up, she found them in Olbia; they’re all hopelessly in love already. Engorged. They don’t know what’s going on, but they’re up for an orgy.” The maid turned round and gave Michael a pointed look. “Don’t mind my getup,” she said. “It’s Mama’s idea of fun. She likes to put people down.”

As they followed the maid’s hips down a long, padded corridor, Michael poked Janine in the side. “What is this place?”

“A convent.”

“It doesn’t seem like a convent to me.”

“That’s the thing…” she said, with a wink.

They walked into a circular room with a bamboo-covered ceiling. At the center of it, encircled by a large group of white-robed chanting followers, sat a woman, a hawk-nosed late-fifties apparition, thin as a wishbone with hair so tightly pinned back that it looked more like a swimming cap. Her protruding eyes revolved back into place in her skull as soon as she grew aware of them, and seemed to linger on him especially. Michael had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being summarized or reduced in some way, and when she spoke he was slightly nauseated by the fastidiousness of her presence:

“Ah good. Janine. I was waiting for you. I don’t like to wait.”

“I’m so sorry, Mama,” said Janine with exaggerated politeness and flopped down on a cushion, motioning for Michael to do the same. “I found this stray in Marseilles, hounded by the police. We weren’t followed.”

Mama seemed to find this amusing. “Really, Janine. Someone is always following us, don’t you know?”

“Well, yes, if you put it like that, Mama,” said Janine, clearing her throat. “We delivered two kilos to a Russian client in Cagliari.” She got out her bundles of money neatly held together by rubber bands and passed them across to Mama. Michael did the same. Mama casually weighed the dough in her hands, then threw it in a bag and called for the pinafore-wearing maid, who came across the cushions in her high heels and took it away.

When it seemed they could no longer bear the silence, Mama opened her mouth wide and began to chant once again in a plaintive voice:

Oh cruel world, for too long have we waited here, for too long have we felt the lack of you, the hollow of you .

No love for us and no making of love. Lord, how can we survive in this shadow?

The congregation joined in:

Lord, hear our prayer, feed our despairing hearts. Give us peace now and tomorrow… Amen .

Once the ceremony was over, the cant and ritual was immediately discarded. Mama Maggot stood up and clapped her hands. “We break for tea!” she announced.

Twenty or thirty individuals — all waiting for this signal — bounced to their feet and hurried off like pupils released by the bell, flinging their white robes untidily into a small anteroom. Michael and Janine followed suit.

They went down a wide corridor ending in big glass doors sliding open automatically, then crossed a courtyard through a wicket gate onto a walled terrace shielded from view in every direction but open to the sea. Here one could persuade oneself that nothing else existed in the world but the clouds passing over and the sea like a dark band between the white walls.

The terrace was in immaculate order.

There were cushioned chairs, teak tables decorated with fresh-cut flowers, tea lights lowered into glass lanterns. There was fine china, which must have been carefully collected by a connoisseur. The tableware was strikingly elegant, perfectly balanced in the hand and solid silver. There was Sardinian sheep cheese, also imported Stilton from Harrods and shortbread biscuits from Fortnum & Mason and tropical fruits imported from only God knew where, guavas and horned melons and papaya and guarana berries. Raku-fired bowls, each a small masterpiece in its own right, were filled with açai and bergamot preserves or freshly churned unsalted butter, and there were baskets of toasted white bread under starched, very clean linen napkins.

By now, Michael was familiar with the tendency. If one must live as a maggot, one’s available pleasures are severely limited. Everything one does must be calibrated for maximum pleasure. The guiltiest pleasure of all, of course, is to lose oneself in artificial stimuli. To this end there were sealed plastic bags scattered everywhere, each containing three syringes pre-loaded with the very finest pink Afghani heroin. The trick was to dose oneself until a small portion escaped into the brain, inducing a pleasant high lasting no more than ten or fifteen minutes. After that, the maggots pushed out the toxins.