Henning Koch - The Maggot People

Michael stepped in. “If you send Honey to St. Helena she’ll be the one who ends up dead. They’ll find out who she is and what she’s done and they won’t even have to kill her; they’ll just deny her when she’s due.”

“Keep your worries to yourself!” Giacomo shot him a poisonous glance. But when he refocused on Honey he was unctuous: “Whatever you want, my dear girl, we can make it happen for you. We have enormous reserves of money, we have a portfolio of quite beautiful properties all over the world, and we have an endless supply of drugs and fresh maggot. How about an island off the coast of Thailand? Or a penthouse in Tokyo? Just rid us of this Cardinal and it can all be yours. We’ll open the coffers for you; you can take what you want.”

“You don’t have to go for the hard sell. I’ll do it just because I’m bored stiff and I fancy a challenge,” she said.

“First we have to tell you how to snare him. We know all about his appetites,” said Paolo.

“Yeah, yeah! You’re going to teach me how to get some twisted old geezer’s rocks off. You rate yourselves, don’t you?” She shook her head in wonder. “Just give me his fucking address, I’ll stake out his place tonight. And if I don’t see him I’ll go back tomorrow.”

“Take care, he’s not a nice man,” said Michael.

“Don’t you worry, mister, I always did take care of myself. I met a lot of bad men and I was fine until the day I met you.”

“I am grateful to you, Michael,” said Giacomo, after Honey, loudly complaining, had been taken off to a nunnery. “I’ve rarely felt so murderous, but you are quite right; it is much prettier to let O’Hara choose his own gin-trap. Messier, too.” He chuckled contentedly.

They were standing on a palace roof inside the Vatican compound, looking out over the myriad housetops and television aerials of Rome.

“It all seems so violent,” said Michael.

“Ah, you think so?” The old man shook his head with wonder. “I’ve seen so much death and violence over the years, I no longer think of humans as anything but deranged, thoroughly objectionable, psychopathic apes. I’d prefer them all dead and buried in mass graves.”

Michael shuddered. Giacomo’s humanity had withered like a fruit left too long in the sun. He’d been tempered and shriveled, salted and oiled, until finally he lay potted under a screw-top lid and bore no resemblance to his original nature. Yet, in spite of this, some tiny portion of it remained as a super-concentrated essence, and this was the charming part.

“Are you wondering why I’ve brought you up here? Did you think it was just to admire the view?”

Michael decided to be truthful. “No. I suspect you have some reason, and I am hoping I won’t be threatened or arm-twisted or in some other way turned against myself.”

“How unfair you are! How spoiled and self-pitying. I treat you almost like my son. I agonize over your spiritual development.”

“I’d rather just be left in peace.”

“Left in peace. Ha! Who wouldn’t?” Giacomo’s hand made a sweeping motion, taking in the entire city. “Flawed,” he said. “All flawed. Give up your hopes, abandon your illusions, they are not serving you.” As he turned to look at his young protégé, Giacomo’s eyes had a strange light in them, a mixture of guilt, eagerness, and affection, emotions that seemed left over in his psyche like driftwood washed up. “I tell you this now because I need you to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why, yourself. What else is there to understand?”

“I feel I’ve done everything you could possibly ask. Now I want to have some freedom. And I’d like to understand why Ariel had to be taken from me. Why couldn’t you let us be together? I love her, you know…”

“Ariel! Good Lord, the fuss you make about her. And as for freedom…” His face softened. “But you are young, I was also young once. The problem with wanting a thing, Michael, is that it almost always takes you away from your true needs. It would be better for humans not to want so much; they’re not equipped for their own ambitions and they won’t pay for their desires. Humans want a free lunch and there’s no such thing; any quantity surveyor could tell you that.”

From downstairs, in one of the expansive salons, came the voices of a hundred diners, the slamming of their cutlery, loud voices declaiming. While in Rome, Giacomo and Paolo felt it was good politics to have the inner circle over for dinner two or three times per week — for feasting and scheming.

Michael hung on. “I’m not an opportunist. I do want to survive, though, and I’d like to enjoy surviving.”

“You’re very fond of making irrelevant distinctions. But I forgive you, I forgive you as a man who once held a gun to my head and chose freely not to shoot. But yes… survival… this bugbear of our race, a remnant from our time in caves.” Giacomo laughed bitterly. “Look at this vast city filled with lost sheep struggling to survive. They think they need money, preferment. They’ll grasp at anything; they’re drowning in ignorance.”

There was a scrape of a metal door behind them, and when they looked round, they saw Paolo stooping as he emerged. “Thank goodness, you’re still here,” he said. “I thought you might have…”

“Might have what?” said Giacomo ferociously, as if afraid that Paolo was going to say too much. “I am having a quiet word with Michael, if you please.”

“Ah…” Paolo stopped indecisively in the doorway. “Should I go?” When Giacomo failed to answer, the monk simply held out his hand and muttered a quiet blessing in Michael’s direction: “‘Amici, ascende superius,’ that is all you need to know for now. Ascend higher, my friend’. For in the bone house none will be able to recognize your bones. You’ll be dead and gone.”

“Why are you telling me all these things?” said Michael. “Are you going away?”

Paolo and Giacomo grew shifty. Their thoughts seemed to rise up, whirling about and skimming across the flushed evening sky like starlings hesitant to settle for the night.

Then Paolo said: “Yes, we are going away.”

“And you can no longer go through life as a stupid little prick from Provence who wants his girlfriend back,” said Giacomo. “You have to give her up.”

The two men inched towards the door. “We’ll take our leave, then,” said Giacomo, with a little wave. “God-speed.”

Paolo came forward and offered his hand for Michael to kiss, which he did, reluctantly: it stank of garlic and vinegar.

“Don’t let me down,” said Giacomo in the background. “Don’t sadden me.”

“I don’t think you could be saddened by anyone.”

Paolo intervened again: “An ambitious man does not have time for sadness, and that is because his time is valuable and he has many things to do before he sleeps.”

Cardinal Patrick O’Hara reclined in his favorite chair by the fire, sipping a cup of first-flush Darjeeling while he waited for the Mercedes Pullman to turn up. He was on his way to a private service at St. Stephen’s Chapel of the Abyssinians, far from the unwelcome crowds and their beloved cameras.

In another age, long ago, congregations had watched services through carved screens — had not even understood the chants and rituals, which were all in a different language from their own. Religion had been a mystery in those days. People had done as they were told and the priesthood held sway over society.

But democracy had invaded the world and now they were bound by its simplistic rules.

It had been a heavy night for his soul, one in which he had besmirched himself with a harlot. The narrow lane outside was usually deserted, but today he had seen her several times on the corner, a long-legged stork of a woman in a yellow leotard and tiny latex skirt, tottering unsteadily over the cobblestones in her thigh-length boots. Her availability had made him savage and restless. Ritually he’d repeated one of his favorite maxims, from St. Augustine, ‘God is to be enjoyed, creatures only used as means to that which is to be enjoyed.’ After his long, empty life, why should he not enjoy the delicacies on which others habitually gorged? It was a disturbing and delicious thought. Also a venal sin, yet why so venal? What in the name of God was so venal about reaching out and plucking the sweet cloven fruit of womanhood? Murder, yes, that was certainly an offense to His eyes. Murder had become commonplace — the death squads were constantly liquidating maggots. And most certainly it was justifiable.