Henning Koch - The Maggot People

“Tell you what,” he said, “before those candles burn down, let’s give them a real surprise. Let’s get out of here.”

“Funny.”

“I did it once before, remember? You told me to do it; you could tell me again.”

“Michael, it’s time to settle up!” Her green eyes shone with agitation. “You have to understand most maggot people are just slithering sacks with a semi-vegetal brain on top and a gnawing urge to fuck. They couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag, let alone an underground dungeon. You may not like to hear this, but you’re going to have to face up to it. You’re not so different. And neither am I.”

The subterranean Gnostic basilica was filled to bursting with dignitaries watching with outraged disbelief as Cardinal O’Hara, once the most outspoken of all maggot critics, lifted the Holy Grail to his lips and, visibly disgusted, swallowed its squirming contents. The congregation seemed to hold its breath as he struggled against the gagging reflex. The sound of his gulp, with the movement of his Adam’s apple, drew wails from the back pews — where his most dedicated supporters had gathered. When the ceremony was over, the top brass retired to the da Vinci Chambers — a room designed to be an exact replica of the artist’s Last Supper painting, with a long table on a dais at the front. Here sat the replica Apostles, slightly elevated above the lesser ecclesiasts at rough trestle-and-board tables. Bread and wine were served, but it wasn’t quite as impoverished as it seemed; the bread was stuffed with beluga or veal. The wine was sublime, transubstantiation in its own right.

Not ten minutes into their supper, O’Hara clattered his jeweled goblet and stood up. “May I humbly ask,” he said pompously, “for a few moments of your precious time?” Silence fell in fits and starts. O’Hara looked down on his enemies and bared his teeth in a ferocious, reflective smile. “We all know that in our congregation there has always been a lot of quarrelling between friends. This is inevitable. When people care about things they are always bound to see different solutions… and resolutions…” he blundered.

“Nicely put, Cardinal,” someone roared.

There was scattered laughter. Who the heck did this O’Hara shit think he was, coming here and drinking from the Holy Grail and behaving as if he had some sort of authority? O’Hara swallowed hard, looking out over a sea of hostile ecclesiasts nodding and conferring amongst themselves while knocking back huge amounts of red wine. Waiters sprinted round with ten-liter flagons, continuously refilling the carafes on the tables.

My God, he thought. This is not a Christian congregation; this is something diabolical. I must steel myself. He raised his hand and soldiered on. “The quarrel in our beloved Church has always been this: should we make Eden, or should we pray for it. And the answer, my dear friends, is that… I no longer know.” He raised his hand. “But I will say this…”

Giacomo stood up abruptly, with a scrape of his heavy chair. “Thank you, Brother O’Hara, for sharing your uncertainties. Now if you wouldn’t mind shutting up for a moment.”

This time there was a roar of laughter. Then to his right, a bishop from Trieste, in the very action of raising his goblet to his mouth whilst fiercely cackling at Giacomo’s retort, was struck instantly dead. His stare grew glassy as he slumped forward and spilt his wine over the table.

So silent was the room that, as the wine dripped onto the flagstone floor, each drop seemed like a spurt of blood from a severed artery.

And yet there was something routine about this death.

A group of waiters came running in. By their combined efforts they had soon removed the dead bishop and even wiped the table where his crumbs now seemed an offense against decency.

Slowly, conversation resumed everywhere; muttered words, small-talk… all trying with every fiber in their beings not to give in to panic.

Giacomo frowned deeply, lingering on the spot where the bishop had sat alive and well not ten minutes ago. In the last month, he had lost three abbots, one bishop, a cardinal and close to twenty priests in Italy alone.

No one liked to say so, but the fact was: mortality was back.

The maggot, once a guarantee of immortality, had become a lottery. Their ranks were being depleted. Maggots were dropping everywhere.

Giacomo turned to Paolo: “O’Hara’s finished eating. Why not show him round?”

Paolo wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Absolutely.” Then, turning to O’Hara: “Come on, let’s go.”

The two clerics set off arm in arm, looking like two friends reminiscing about the good old days.

Two discreet guards accompanied them.

“Don’t try anything,” said Paolo. “I’ll blade-bugger you if so much as fart without my say-so.”

“So this is it, is it?” O’Hara said, looking at Paolo. “You’ll suck my innards out and dump my head in a coffin for five hundred years.”

“Well, not yet we won’t. You haven’t blossomed yet.”

“But once I have?”

“What have you really done to deserve the light? There are others competing for the same privilege, most of them far worthier than you. Particularly now that people are actually dying, we have to weigh up who we should keep. And of course we won’t keep people who make a nuisance of themselves,” said Paolo. “You know what Giacomo’s like. He likes a quiet life, so he can concentrate on recipe research and eating.”

The two men made their way down a long corridor that reached far into the gloom. O’Hara was doing his best not to look too impressed by the scale of the caverns, which he’d never seen firsthand although of course he’d heard all about them. Instead he took refuge in disapproval. “Who paid for all this?” he said. “It must have swallowed up huge resources over the years.”

“Oh, we constructed it all with our own hands, and with faith, of course; nothing can be done without that,” said Paolo smugly, although he knew very well how enormous the bills had been since the expansion program.

“So what’s next? Are you going to frog-march me to the gutting rooms?”

“I can show them to you,” Paolo offered. “We have time. I was going to check on our protégés, Michael and Ariel, but we can do it afterwards. They’re undergoing self-purification in readiness for enshrinement.”

“You do have some lovely words to describe disgusting things.”

Shadowed by two clinking bodyguards, the two men came down a long concrete corridor more or less like an underground military complex, lit by sodium lights.

Brother Paolo was still holding his old enemy firmly by the arm.

“If you’d be kind enough to accompany me this way,” he said, eagerly turning off into an ultra-modern passage, the walls of which were decorated with silver fish moving in highly decorative shoals towards a gilded arch lit by shimmering lights, a sort of imitation of sunlight passing through water: “We commissioned this installation; it was done by a Dane. You know, they really are the best at design — of course she had to be maggotized afterwards to keep her quiet.” Paolo’s grip tightened. “Come on, I’ll show you the new processing center. We’re very proud of it.”

As they entered an expansive, brightly lit complex, O’Hara felt he had entered a world of fiction — an industrialized, genocidal facility of the spirit.

There was a good deal of machinery in there: tracks ran beneath the ceiling, with hooks sliding along, locking onto and picking up tubular aluminum chairs lowered by an automated crane.