Henning Koch: The Maggot People

“I don’t know. I noticed you, that’s all,” he said awkwardly.

“Well, if you’re sure.”

She turned round and started walking away at a good pace. With her back turned, he had an excellent opportunity to look at her some more. She was wearing espadrilles and a dark strapless dress that showed off her smooth limbs.

She stopped at one of the non-Chilean, non-Chinese stalls to buy eggplants and grapes and pack them into her cloth bag.

Within a matter of hours, the locals were aware of the presence of a tourist who must have rented somewhere to stay near-by — yet another of these puzzling individuals carrying plenty of money and wandering about in search of something. No one knew who she was, nor did it particularly matter; although, in a village, such things are considered important.

Michael began to keep tabs on her, though more carefully, to avoid detection. Next time they spoke, he felt, it had to be more purposeful and not so foolish.

She crossed the square every morning at nine o’clock precisely and this suited him perfectly. It gave him time for ablutions and coffee. Sometimes he followed her and sometimes watched her in the distance.

A few times he saw her sitting motionless and amphibious in the sun, a pair of oversize sunglasses obscuring most of her face.

When he learned where she was staying, it made perfect sense: a scruffy bungalow by the beach with a fence of old car doors, prickly pear trees, and rusting bed frames lashed together with wire. The place had been abandoned for years and lay shuttered and steeped in silence, its overgrown garden populated by stray cats drawn by the fish she put out for them and left to go putrid in the sun. Burgeoning fig trees pressed against the walls, plunging the front entrance in welcome shade. He never saw anyone sitting on the rusty cast-iron chairs by the table on the patio.

In the drive was a beaten-up Ford Transit with Spanish plates. He assumed it had to be hers.

Many times he followed her to the edge of the dunes, then stopped and watched her scaling the sandy mounds, the cloth bag slung over her shoulder. He always stopped in the shadow at the edge of the trees and let her merge with the yellows and browns of the blowing sands.

She never looked back.

One day he found himself sitting on the beach just below her house. The cicadas were scraping monotonously. He was stupefied; he’d been there an hour or more when the gate screeched and he saw her coming in a very straight line towards him, stopping at a distance of about ten paces.

With her hands on her hips, she called out in a flustered voice: “I know you like me, but why do you have to follow me all the time?”

It was a fair question. He stood up and said, defensively: “I’m only sitting on the beach. I think I’m entitled to sit here. It’s not your beach, is it?”

“Every morning I wake up, I open the door and I see you sitting right there. Or I go to the village. And what do I see?” She moved a little closer. “I see you, I see your face; your big eyes watching me.”

Michael felt caught out; he had to come up with something convincing. “I think I’m just bored. I’m not from here; I’m from England. People here don’t like me. They think I’m just a foreigner… and I am a foreigner.”

She laughed and the sound of her voice carried across the sands, reaching the ears of the other bathers who seemed to accept Michael’s presence more readily now that a lovely owl-faced girl was laughing with him.

She tilted her head and judged him, which made him feel much better. No one had judged him in a long time, at least no one with warm eyes. “So you’re following me and you admit it. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”

“Being busy is overrated. People who know what they’re doing don’t do a bloody thing.”

“Even something nice like having an ice cream?”

“That’s different.”

Her name was Ariel; her hand was cool and dry. They went back to the house, where a big Alsatian was sitting very neatly on the porch with its paws together.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said.

“Does he bite?”

“Only if you bite him first.”

She went inside and closed the door.

The dog gave him a heartbroken look and sighed deeply. Michael sat down on the step and muttered under his breath: “I know how you feel.”

From somewhere — maybe inside his head or carried by the wind? — he heard the dog’s reply: “Go home, never speak to her again, she doesn’t belong to herself, she’s property. I’m property, too. Do you understand?” Then, with another sigh, the dog added: “Oh Lord, how could he understand?”

When he looked at the Alsatian, it was sitting there in what broadly speaking he would describe as a doglike manner, its long pink tongue on its massive teeth.

Ariel came back wearing a short camouflage-print dress that showed her softly muscular legs and well-formed hips — her skin was like an almond kernel under the husk, polished and smooth.

They walked down a sun-dappled path under Mediterranean pines and Michael tried to recompose himself.

Ariel didn’t waste time. “So you’re bored, are you? That’s such a waste; don’t you have family here? A wife? Girlfriend?”

“No. My folks passed away. I only came here because my grandmother left me her house.”

“So you decided to live here, in this little shriveled anus. Correct me if I’m wrong, but just because someone leaves you a house doesn’t mean you have to live in it. Right?”

He laughed, slightly forced. “I don’t really live here…”

“Sorry, but you do, you know.”

What about you? What are you doing here, he thought to himself. How did you end up here?

Ariel glanced at him. “I’m convalescing. That’s what I’m doing here.”

“You’ve been unwell?”

She nodded. “I had a breakdown, I lost the will to get up in the mornings. Have you ever had that? One day I just decided to die. I lay there like a lump for a month without moving. I didn’t eat for two whole months. I was on hunger strike. Just the odd mouthful of water.”

“Hunger strike against what?” He tried to smile: “You’re not being serious, are you?”

“So I made myself get up,” she said, ignoring his question. “I drove down here and found this house. I thought I’d get some sea air and straighten myself out.”

“This is the last place I’d come if I wanted to straighten myself out.”

“Places don’t straighten people out. It’s the other way round,” said Ariel.

He did not quite understand what she meant. There was a rush of excitement bubbling through him, the mere thought that all this might soon be his . Soon he would touch that overwhelming presence: woman, like a valley with green slopes and a stream flowing through the center. When he looked at her, she seemed less excited about it all: she wore a sort of peeved expression as if life was an inconvenience to her.

By now they’d reached the hinterland of the village. Walking up the main street towards the square, they seemed to be forcing their way through a tangle of staring eyes. A group of builders outside the wine cooperative elbowed each other and winked knowingly. Ever since Ariel’s arrival they had been sharpening their knives, assessing and weighing up her thighs, buttocks, and breasts as if she were a Christmas sow. The two old madams in the ice cream shop stared at them with their usual bleak disapproval and horror.

Outside, Michael tried not to look as Ariel licked her ice cream.

“Michael. I’m nothing special, you know, so don’t start fantasizing about me. I’ve had a hard life. I’ve got nothing to show for it except a rusty old van, a dysfunctional dog, and nowhere to go.”