Henning Koch: The Maggot People

“Will you come back? Have lunch with me?”

“Where do you live?”

“There.” Michael pointed to a big gray stone house across the square.

“Oh, God… looks like an old hornet’s nest.”

“There’s one only hornet left now, and he’s lost his sting,” said Michael.

They crossed the emptying lunchtime square, bathed in strong, liquid light. Michael led her into his front yard, past the rusty car, through a stand of nettles growing in calcified manure. The house had a kind of infested charm. If you could ignore the years of neglect (but you couldn’t) and if you could forget about the smell of depression (but you couldn’t), it was really a quaint old charming house deep in Provence where nothing — not even time — would ever change anything.

He called out over his shoulder: “I’ve been here a few years, can’t think where else to go.”

She strode ahead of him into the house. He directed her into the kitchen and decided not to take her upstairs to show her the sad warren of neglected bedrooms with sunken beds, soggy plaster, and water-stained prints of the Madonna.

Ariel stopped in front of the painting of the mountain. “This I like,” she said and seemed relieved that she had found one thing that pleased her. She pointed, finding the tiny smudge of the girl in the window, leaning out to fix something to the washing line. “I like the girl. I’d like to know her name.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise she’s just a figment of your imagination. Do you mind if we eat on the porch? In case I need to leave in a hurry.”

He knocked up some vichyssoise , which they had cold with crisp white wine and fresh bread with a good strong goat’s cheese. They sat on the stone steps and ate in silence. He was uncomfortable: even a monosyllabic exchange seemed beyond him.

Ariel put down her half-finished plate and stretched. “Delicious. And don’t worry about not speaking. It’s utterly overrated, this constant pitter-patter of words. Drives you nuts. Most of it doesn’t even mean anything. It’s fear.”

Michael thought about putting on some music, but once again she seemed to have an eerie ability to preempt him. “Listening to Leonard Cohen in a haunted house can drive a person to suicide. Especially Avalanche.”

“I always listen to Leonard Cohen. I love that song.”

“That’s what I mean.” She stood up. “I always find there’s something sinister about other people’s houses. Let’s go to my place?”

“Your house is far more sinister than mine.”

“Subjectivity will be the death of us.”

They made their way through the narrow streets past the church immodestly covered in threadbare stucco and across the main highway with a sprinkling of traffic in the early afternoon sun. With relief they put civilization behind them and took the sandy track through the pine woods to the dunes and the ever-fresh sea.

By the time they stopped he had broken into a sweat.

Ariel was cool as porcelain in his hands but she wriggled out of his grip.

“You’re fast; that’s good. I mean I’ve known faster , but you’re not bad,” she said, slightly flustered.

“You’re quite fast yourself.”

“Waiting is pointless. Pursuit is also pointless.”

Below her bungalow, intrepid bathers had put up parasols on the blinding white beach. A few of them were standing in the water, partially submerged, mostly looking out to the horizon as if puzzled by this expanse that stood in their way.

Ariel ran into the sea, diving athletically into a wave. He followed her and caught up with her under the water. Her skin had a lubricated quality a little like a dolphin, he imagined. They kissed fleetingly as they surfaced, but again she pulled away.

“All right, then,” she said, slightly wearied by foregone conclusions. “Shall we go back to my place?

Without waiting for his answer, she waded back.

Inside the beach house it was dark as pitch. Ariel fumbled for a dusty floor-lamp and turned it on.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to pull up a shutter?”

“They’re nailed down.”

Michael scanned the place, but there wasn’t much to see. Cheap composite furniture. A bookcase empty but for a dusty Bible, a conch shell inscribed with the name “Santiago” in red ink, and a mangy, stuffed bee-eater with a plastic maggot in its beak.

Ariel followed his eyes. “I like that bird a lot; he’s got style,” she said.

She filled the espresso maker and they went outside to sit at the rusty metal table under the fruit trees. Dusk was setting in.

She disappeared briefly round the corner, returning with a hammock dragging along the ground behind her like a huge dead octopus. After hooking it onto two ready-made fastenings round the trees, she fetched the coffee spluttering angrily from inside the house and lay down in the hammock whilst balancing her cup in her hand. Michael climbed in beside her.

“I feel bad about this,” said Ariel. “I ought to make you a sandwich and send you home. Not because I don’t like you; I do like you. But it might be better for you if you just stay clear of me.”

He frowned: “Why, what’s wrong with you?”

“I’m bad news. At least I’m honest about it. Some people pretend they’re good but they’re just waiting for the opportunity to bury a knife in your spine!”

They kissed for a while, until they heard the gruff, depressive voice of the Alsatian, still slumped under the metal table: “Ariel, just get this over with, will you? So we can go to Rome and get back to normal.”

Ariel lifted her head: “You’re such a conformist; I suppose it’s your Austrian nature coming out. Let me ask you something, Günter. You think I’ve got nothing better to do than spend my time sleeping in a box?”

“Who’s asking for your opinion?” said the dog.

Michael came close to a nervous attack but he controlled himself.

Ariel got up abruptly and went inside.

He lay there for a while after she had gone, staring at the dark entrance, an angular slit cut into the white façade. He had to take a deep breath before crossing the threshold.

She was in the bedroom by the window where the blind was slightly raised, allowing a smidgeon of light to come through.

“We don’t have much time,” she said. “I never stay anywhere longer than a month. People are trying to find me and I don’t want them to.”

He looked at her, uneasy again. “Who?”

“Oh, a lot of thugs with a horrible attitude.”

“Criminals?”

“No, brutes . My life is a nightmare, Michael. Either it’s brutes hunting me down or pedants boring me to death.”

Struggling with his confusion, he lunged forward. In an instant they’d fallen back into the bed, Ariel with her back to him, and he pushing into her with slow, circling movements. She pressed her strangely cool body against his. He could not have pulled away even if he’d wanted to, so intense was her gravitation. Yet he also had a weird notion that Ariel was releasing her essence into him — a sort of reversion. Where this thought came from he did not know; it disturbed him greatly.

“Thank you,” he groaned into her ear, flooding with huge relief as he felt himself being released.

“For what?” she said, lying on her stomach and resting her head on his chest. “You fool; you rabbit fool. Why don’t you put your feet on the ground? Breathe.”

Again he noted her coolness. He touched her skin, amazed at her prodigious energy.

“You’re right,” he said. “I have to get out of here. I have to stop playing the fool.”

“Don’t. I like them,” she said, adding a sleepy afterthought: “I don’t like rabbits much, though.” She paused. “You can come with us if you like. We’re leaving for Switzerland. We know someone up there, she’ll take care of us.”