Henning Koch - The Maggot People

The clever little swine were learning empathy now as well.

Or were they just warning him, telling him to concentrate?

The taxi drove through the late evening rush hour, up the Via Laietana past the old Roman fortifications, then headed north out of the city through bleak industrial hinterlands, past stinking chimneys and cemeteries shaded by yew trees. Cities were like people — surrounded by inhospitable boundaries and densely compressed into small, trampled areas. In the end, he reflected, even the human personality became a sort of tourist destination.

Honey whispered softly into his ear that she could do with another hit. She had the soft insistence of a child. If she were careful about it, did he think she could shoot up without the cab driver noticing? Michael ignored her and tried to prepare himself for what lay ahead.

His feeling of disquiet did not leave him as the taxi exited the highway outside Ripoll and dropped them off in the town square. The balmy evening, the strolling people, the slumberous cafés: all seemed sinister to him. Michael looked at Honey, flouncing along with her ricotta limbs, making a spectacle of herself. Potentially, she was a bit of a liability, but there had been no alternative but to bring her. He had to do his duty by her — he could not abandon her to a short, painful, and miserable existence as a rogue maggot. He left her in a hostel, gave her a syringe, a foil parcel of heroin, a bottle of water, and a copy of Vogue and told her he’d be back soon.

After checking that his gun was clean and loaded as he’d been taught at St. Helena’s, he made his way down a sunken lane towards the monastery. The intermittent sound of sprinklers on the front lawns was all that could be heard from the other side of the wall.

There was a small group of men by the gatehouse — tough-looking T-shirted fellows with short-cropped hair and tattoos on their stocky arms. Mainly out-of-work neo-Nazis by the looks of it, stuffed dolls held together by nails, rope, and empty rhetoric.

Michael showed his letter of introduction and explained that he had an appointment.

On their way to the main building Michael saw more security people secreted in the bushes. A glint of the dying sun caught the barrel of a gun. He was struck by a thought: O’Hara had never explained to him how he was supposed to get out in one piece.

By the front doors he found himself facing a large jovial monk who introduced himself as Brother Paolo.

“Welcome, Brother Michael.” A stout, hairy arm reached out and shook his hand warmly. “We’re all most pleased you got here in one piece…”

Michael frowned, remembering something Günter had said about a fat monk from Rome who used to give him sweetmeats. “Paolo? You don’t know a man called Günter, do you?”

“Let me see? A man called Günter; no, I don’t know a man called Günter, no, decidedly not.”

An understanding passed between them. Michael could not quite understand how Paolo, a flesh-head, should be a good friend of Günter. It made no sense.

“Who are all these men in the grounds?”

“Oh, they were offered to us. Apparently we have a security scare on our hands. Some lunatic on the loose or something.” Paolo led him into the bowels of the building as he spoke. “The trouble with guard dogs is you never know who they’ll bite next.”

“Who are they guarding?”

Paolo sniggered and turned round. “They said you’d be a joker.”

“Who said?”

“Well. I imagine Cardinal O’Hara might agree. You saw him recently, did you not? In Sardinia?”

Michael felt himself suck air into his chest cavity, a mental reflex. Truth seemed the most sensible option, and he deployed it. “Yes. I did.”

“Good. Thanks for being honest about it; that speaks volumes. Now follow me and I’ll take you to Giacomo.”

Outside the abbot’s main suite there were more security men, frazzled unshaven brutes with cigarettes behind their ears and chunky rings on their fingers. The place smelt of cheap hamburgers or intestinal gas — that indistinguishable global perfume of the underclass. The brutes glared at him as he passed. He caught the unmistakable whiff of hostility.

The highly polished mahogany doors opened. Paolo waved him into the enormous, air-conditioned chamber beyond. Michael ventured in like a nervous ice skater gliding onto a glittering rink.

Paolo vanished and the doors closed behind him with a heavy clunk, followed by a sonorous click as the key was turned on the other side. He heard voices raised, a discussion on the other side: the sound of Paolo’s booming affability and the growling opposition of the security men, who seemed to prefer to keep the doors unlocked.

For a while he stood there, unsure of himself. There was no sign of the abbot. To his right, a table with carved griffin legs looked ready to spring at him.

There was a crackling sound as if a microphone had been switched on and some muffled fidgeting. Then a fluid, confident voice with a clear agenda.

“Good evening, Michael. Do you know who Ignatius Loyola was?”

Michael looked round. The voice came from speakers all around, a sort of unnerving quadraphonic effect, an omnipotent intelligence coming at him from every direction. “Yes, I think I do,” he replied at last. “Does it matter?”

“Does it matter?” There was a long-drawn chuckle. “Very good. So hear this. St. Ignatius Loyola, when asked how he would feel if the Pope suppressed the Order of Jesus, answered: ‘A quarter of an hour of prayer and I should think no more of it.’”

There was a silence. Michael sank into a heavy, ornate chair. “I’m sorry, why are you telling me this? I don’t even know who you are?”

“I am telling you this to explain the pitfalls of holding on to things. The satchel on your shoulder, my friend, is full of all the excrement you have squeezed out of your bottom from the day you were born; still saying goodbye to your bobbing little friends, are you not? Am I right?”

Michael clutched his head. “Do you know, the only person who tells me the truth is a heroin-using prostitute I met on the streets of Barcelona.”

“Of course. The desperate have no agenda except to eat. Look, can I be frank with you? I can’t stand another day of these Vatican-financed apes clogging up the place and oiling their blessed guns.”

“Where are you?”

“Not within range of your fire stick, you can be sure of that. Do you think it’s possible that Judas Iscariot did have God on his side? If so there might be hope for you.”

Michael looked round the palatial room — the thick, four-meter-high curtains in the windows, the wainscoting, the rough gray floors without a speck of dust.

He touched the long, warmed barrel of the gun against his leg.

The voice kept talking: “See the mirror at the other end of the room?”

“Yes.”

“Walk towards it unless you’d rather be gunned down like a wild hog by O’Hara’s people.”

“I thought all these men were your security people?”

“Oh dear Lord, no. They’re Vatican personnel sent by O’Hara to finish you off, or both of us. It’s a classic technique. Think of Lee Harvey Oswald — first kill the target. Use a simple guy; dupe him or threaten him in some way, then once the job’s done get some deranged footman to bump him off.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“You believe the one who tells the truth,” came the answer. “‘Multi multa sciunt et seipsos nesciunt.’ It’s Pseudo-Bernard: ‘Many know many things yet know not themselves.’ Very true, particularly of you, Michael.”

“Now what?”

“Turn round, go back towards the doors. Stop by the first window. Good. Now look to your right. See that little painting of Joseph and Mary? Go there. Move yourself! Press the frame on the top left side.”