Henning Koch - The Maggot People

For the first time, Mama Maggot seemed to find his rebelliousness amusing. She had a slightly magisterial tone: “Listen carefully now. Injecting yourself with heroin won’t help at this point; they’re far too libidinous. So stay off the dope for a few days.”

“This is a bloody disgrace.”

“Oh, no doubt about it,” said Mama, with a wry smile. “Except there’s no blood with us. We’re not fans of the stuff. We’re the keepers of the life force, my little man. You may be a giver of roses but you forget roses also have thorns.” She looked at him almost with affection. He noticed she had a very upper-class English accent, which came out particularly when she grew verbose. “Anyway, we gave up on grace a long time ago.”

“I can see that.”

“And you should, too. There is nowhere else to run, no more quaint notions for you. The perfume has run out, my little fool. You must come and show me what you’ve got; you must drop your pants, my dear, and reveal your equipment. Lead on if you please.” She maintained her clawlike grip on his neck as she opened the door for him then shepherded him out into the brightening morning. “It’s time for pudding…”

Inside the enclosure, the Tantric orgy had descended into sedate conversation and herbal tea-drinking. Entwined, temporary lovers now waited for the sun to rise over the sea. In the windless air, acrid cannabis fumes hung over their bubbling water-pipes.

The Buddhists, of course, had not yet realized the Earth-shattering implication of their lovemaking. They felt themselves at home among these hospitable and libidinous strangers, this lavish complex by the sea with servants and even a plentiful supply of weed brought by a wisecracking black maid who, during the night’s revels, had also revealed herself in her full vigor. One or two of the men had never before had sex with a black woman, and, to their surprise, had found she was much the same as a white one — undeniably with the same anatomy, although there was a kind of power in her haunches, a heat that spoke (to their projecting minds) of thousands of years of burning African sunlight.

But when the reed screen slid open to reveal Michael standing there in ceremonial robes, the Buddhists looked up with a slight sense of trepidation. Surely the amusements were over and done with?

Maggot Mama pulled the robes off his shoulders and let them fall in a heap to the floor. There was a sense of dismay among the Buddhists, which rapidly turned to relief when it grew clear that they were not expected to participate in what followed.

Michael was led very slowly towards a young Sophia Loren lookalike in the corner — Elvira — who, at the beginning of the night’s revels, had single-handedly extracted orgasms from the three men and also fired up the three women with deep kisses and dexterous handiwork. The rest of the group had sat thoughtfully watching her expertise as if it were a performance of rare art. Which, in a way, it was.

In spite of her willingness earlier, Elvira was reluctant to participate. She held out her hands defensively. “Please! No, Mama.” Something in her voice made them fearful. There was a plea in it, a timbre that connected them to the ancient fear of dying. “I’m sorry, Mama. I love you, I really do love you utterly, Mama. Without you I’m nothing.”

She sank down on a cushion and started to cry. Mama nodded at her followers. Elvira’s light cotton tunic was removed. By now she was limp and weeping uncontrollably, her face creased with pain and anger. But she was picked up by strong arms and positioned in a leaning stone chair at the edge of the terrace, with a narrow ledge for the buttocks and leather straps on the armrests and at the base of the legs. In no time at all she was secured in the contraption, her legs prized wide apart so that she immodestly revealed herself.

The Buddhists snuggled together, trembling and asking themselves how they came to be here in this place, among these people they did not even know?

Mama walked up to Elvira. Cupping her hands, she could not resist nibbling her luscious little earlobes one final time, whilst whispering audibly: “Prometheus, the rider with his lance, you must have seen him in the paintings? He does not ride out to kill the monster, my darling girl. Prometheus does not save you. He is not the prince. He is the monster and you are the sacrifice. Do you understand?”

“Oh, shut up, you crazy old lesbian! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” screamed Elvira with all the force she had left in her lungs. Mama Maggot pulled back abruptly, her ears ringing. Then she motioned for Michael to be brought forward.

He, meanwhile, was almost swooning, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His body was bloated like a gammon left over-long in brine, and he felt the maggots swarming against the outer reaches of his brain. By some preternatural ability the maggots seemed to be sensing what was about to happen. They moved ferociously inside him; making it clear to him that if he did not steer himself towards Elvira — if he did not allow them passage — he would be burnt up and consumed. He took one step, then another — like a prisoner walking the plank with a sword poking into his back. Even his eyes were pushing outwards, as if about to pop out of his skull.

Elvira pleaded with him, but there was no way back for him. Strangely enough he felt no remorse as he quickly moved closer to her and without a second thought plunged into her and — while Mama’s lips murmured into Elvira’s ear — spent himself. His spasms repeated again and again until he thought he’d die with the exertion of it — continuing for as long as it took the sun to rise, spreading an oily redness over the spent waves, rising and falling indecisively like aimless afterthoughts.

The next morning, after hanging around for as long as he dared on the beach, angrily throwing stones, he sneaked into the canteen, where he saw Elvira in a hooded black robe. She was sitting in a corner with Janine. Her skin looked very pale, and as he drew closer he realised it was because she’d been dusted in wood ash. Her hair had been shorn; her scalp was pockmarked and sickly gray.

As soon as Elvira caught sight of him she turned away, making it clear that she had no wish to speak to him. Janine stared at him. “It’s okay, Michael,” she said in a flat, expressionless voice. “She knows it wasn’t your fault. But she doesn’t want to speak to you. Anyway, you don’t need me anymore; you have to listen to others who are more important than me. I’m just a courier, Michael; I thought that would be good enough for you, but apparently not.” She paused, frowning at Michael, who stood there overwhelmed by the awfulness of what had happened last night. “Just go. Spare us the theatrics.”

At the other end of the canteen, Mama Maggot was holding court to two high-ranking police officers in uniform and a delegation from the Vatican fronted by a cardinal in purple robes. When she noticed him hovering by the hot drinks counter, Mama waved Michael over and introduced him. Monsignor O’Hara was a tall, slightly stooped Irishman, his silvery hair shot through with insipid streaks of yellow. There was a fixed, glazed leer on his face: a sense of outrage, also an unwholesome fascination with the absurd — to him, all things that were not his own thoughts were a huge absurdity.

“Ah, so here he is, the fellow you’ve prepared for me.”

O’Hara picked up his briefcase and shambled off towards the sunbaked terrace overlooking the sea, apparently expecting Michael to follow him. He spoke grandly and remotely, though with a lilting Irish accent.