Henning Koch - The Maggot People

Even as they were settling in, he saw the deranged figure of the Mama, sitting to one side on a sort of throne at the edge of the terrace. She was in a world of her own, her hooked nose fixed like a compass needle on the setting sun over the sea.

Every half hour or so, a group of attendants with sponges and bowls of hot water entered the compound. Gently they undressed the dozing people and swabbed them down. The heroin, forming a glistening film on their skin, had a sticky quality, like crystallized honey.

“It’s all recycled,” Janine whispered. “Everything is recycled here, even people…”

Michael was too tired to ask her what she meant by that. He returned to his hut farther down the slope, where, if he opened the window, he could hear the waves lapping against the rocks below. The bed was crisp and comfortable, and when he lay down he noticed that also this ceiling was made of split bamboo canes. There was a shelf of books by American beatnik writers: Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr. He leafed through a book by Allen Ginsberg, then threw it at the wall. It landed with the sleeve photograph of the poet with his big black beard and melting eyes staring at him and his smooth voice in Michael’s ear:

Be cool, man, be kind to yourself, you’re repressing it kid-do, I don’t know what you’re repressing, you oughta just feel it and do it… you know? Feel it and do it, in that order. You know why? Because you’re okay, that’s why .

No sooner had his words guttered than Michael felt a smoke of heavy drowsiness lifting him, almost levitating him off the bed slightly, so that he lay there hovering. His mind was pleasantly distended. Sleep! For the first time in many days the maggots let their host lose himself.

At some point in the night he was awoken by a click of the latch, the door creaking and the weight of someone sitting down at the foot of his bed. There came a whisper: “Are you awake?”

“I am now.”

He turned on his bedside lamp and saw a young woman sitting there, about twenty years old, more or less a carbon copy of Sophia Loren, only slightly less buxom.

“Yes. I know,” she said. “I’m eye-candy, but who cares? God gave me my looks for nothing. And what’s the real advantage of being good-looking, anyway? All that happens is you get guys swarming all over you until you can’t tell the rotten apples from the good.”

“I suppose you must be Elvira?”

“Yes, I suppose I must be.” She hung her head, then added, “ By their deeds shall ye know them.”

Michael cleared his throat, slightly guarded. “Sorry, but what are you doing?”

“I came to see you. I thought I could talk to you. Is that so wrong?”

He shrugged. “I guess it’s okay. To be honest I don’t know what to make of this place. What is it? Where are you from?”

“Oh, nowhere.” Elvira pouted like a child deprived of her will. “Rome, of course. Everyone’s from Rome. I never thought I’d end up serving some old bag who pinches my butt and makes insinuations all the time. But I’m used to bitches. When my mother wasn’t having her nails done or lunching with girlfriends she was on tranquillizers — it’s just a polite word for drugs, isn’t it? She never gave a damn about me.”

Elvira shifted in the bed, pulling her foot up against her buttock. A good girl does not open her legs, Michael remembered his own mother used to say. Nor does she show a white gleam of cotton covering her fuzzed pudenda. As he lay there watching her, Elvira got out a piece of semi-melted chocolate and broke off a piece for him. “You know something, I actually like you. I was watching you earlier, you seem like a nice man, not completely sex-mad like all the others.” She put the chocolate in her mouth, with a simpering look. “I never chew chocolate. I suck it, to make it last longer.”

There was a pause. Baby talk, was that supposed to be sexy? Or was she just habitually seedy? Michael asked: “How old are you, Elvira?”

“Oh, old enough, you’ll find,” she said. “Old enough to do what everyone else does, only a hell of a lot better. Basically I go out and find fresh meat for Mama. I bring it back for her and they fuck it.”

Michael reached down into his bag for a bottle of Courvoisier. He took a stiff gulp at it, then rolled himself a reefer.

Elvira continued: “Mama gives me hell all the time. She fancies me. She likes to be clear about it, she says I mustn’t work up any feelings for her. As if I would. Feelings, what a lovely word. What does it really mean? Having feelings actually means you only care about yourself, your own precious emotions.”

“So Mama’s a lesbian?”

“No, she’s a maggot woman; that’s what she is. It’s the old Sapphic dream, the Kingdom of Women, right? The problem used to be that lesbian women needed men so they could have children, hence the impossibility of an all-female world. Boys could be thrown in the river, of course, but they’d have to keep one or two. For breeding. But now women really don’t need men anymore. With the maggot tank they can live for ever. They don’t have to bother with childbirth.”

“What’s the maggot tank?”

“Mama says I have to treat her well, she says I’m not the only half-decent looking cunt in this world. I guess she’s right. There are a lot of cunts in this world, Michael. Most of them are not worth bothering with.” She stood up. “Put something on. She wants to see you; that’s why she sent me here.”

“To ask me to come?”

“To tell you.”

“I expect you’re wondering why you’re here?”

Mama Maggot, stooped in a high chair like an old and twisted parrot on its perch, seemed to hover above Michael, who found himself semi-reclined in a leather armchair, blinking up at her face.

She looked unassuming and reasonable and he knew he was supposed to believe that maybe she actually was unassuming and reasonable. Except he didn’t believe it. She was acting, and actors have to make it clear what they are doing or they become sinister or just plain odd.

The room was refrigerated; their breath came out in puffs of steam. Mama Maggot luxuriated in a white fur coat, though her skinny pale legs stuck out at the bottom like sticks, which rather spoiled the effect. On either side of her stood a small girl also dressed in a white fur coat, balancing on gold-sequined high-heels. From time to time, if Mama Maggot grew agitated, one of them would totter forward and kiss her cheek to calm her nerves, and whenever this happened Mama Maggot would turn to the child in question and kiss her full on the mouth, whilst intermittently shaking her head in wonder and whispering, “Thank you, my child, thank you.” As if their concern came from the goodness of their hearts.

Michael had only thrown on a cotton slip when he left his room. He was already shivering. “Do you mind my asking?” he began.

“Yes, I do mind!” said Mama Maggot, doing her best to maintain her benevolent smile. “You’re to be quiet, I require nothing but two words from you and those words are ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Just occasionally you may say ‘I don’t know.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And don’t talk to Elvira again. She’s very mixed up.”

“I didn’t talk to her. She talked to me. There’s a difference.”

“To me you’re nothing but a sack of glorified fertilizer, so shut up and don’t try to impress me!” After her venom had spurted forth, she slumped with deflation and received a volley of little kisses. Then, to his amazement, she began to talk like a normal person. “The truth is I do love Elvira. She’s a little miracle, the way she’s made. Like a Swiss watch; everything works so well. But what good has it done me to love her?”