Henning Koch - The Maggot People

Another time he commented on some lyrics by Bob Dylan:

“But he just smoked my eyelids

And punched my cigarette…”

“This Bob is correct in his thinking,” said Jesus, smiling with recognition as if he had come across a kindred spirit. “Sometimes the thing that is can only be described by saying exactly what it is not.”

“Actually, that’s just the Chicago School of Disembodied Poetics. There’s nothing very profound about it,” said Ariel. Jesus told her she was mistaken. Most so-called profundity was about as illuminating as a cowpat in the grass. And yet, he added, when one actually considered a cowpat in the grass it was not as simple as it seemed. Who would have thought that, in some obscure corner of the universe, a large hairy four-legged beast would lift its tail and deposit a lump of digested organic material on the ground?

Frequently his words were obscure or there seemed to be very little method in his ramblings. “Well, what did you expect?” Ariel whispered to Michael one night after the Master had gone to sleep. “I mean nobody actually knows what he was like. The people who told his story were basically poets or mystics — may-be they just liked a decent yarn and they jazzed it up a bit? Whatever happened in Palestine two thousand years ago has been mythologized.”

The days passed and still Jesus did not reveal his intentions, thus prompting the question: was this just an extended sightseeing trip?

One day in the south of France, Jesus spent the afternoon walking, singing, and watching clouds while Ariel and Michael sat in the camper bus playing cards. When Michael articulated his disquiet, Jesus looked at him sternly and for the first time Michael felt directly challenged by his words:

“How can I give you purpose, a thing you will not give yourself nor even ask for?”

“I’m sorry,” said Michael. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous. I just want to know if there’s a plan.”

“Plans are for fools.”

Later that night, when Michael and Ariel lay in their double-bunk, Michael wondered about his purpose in life. He tried to explain his hopes and dreams to Ariel, but he found to his own surprise that he had none — although he didn’t admit so much to her. Ariel listened with interest although it was abundantly clear to her that Michael was a typical twenty-first century man with an ethos of materialism as the oxygen of his blood.

Besides, the very notion of “a dream” had something plasti-cized about it. Dreams were mostly actions involving a purchase: an airline ticket, a house, a horse, some land. Michael’s generation did not say, “I am a player of the drums; hear me.” Michael’s generation said, “I want to buy a drum kit.” Having acquired the physical, defining object, there was the whole problem of turning oneself into someone else, a rock star, film director, deep-sea diver, astrophysicist, martial arts expert, poker player, tycoon.

In practice, ideas were far more interesting and accessible as nuggets of speculation than the grind of their attainment.

After listening to Ariel’s arguments, Michael told her he wanted to live on a farm, grow vegetables, keep animals, and learn some carpentry. She found herself slightly disheartened.

“What you’re describing is nothing. It’s not a dream.”

He sat up on his elbow and stared at her. “What is it, then?”

“A description.”

“Well, in that case I don’t have any dreams.”

“Good. Be honest. Spit it out. Life is bloody meaningless. The only things people actually like, and I agree with them, is dancing and making love. That only works while you’re young. Everything else is a bore from beginning to end.” She sighed deeply, glancing towards Jesus’s cabin, where the lights were still on.

Since that luminous day outside the Master’s tomb in the catacombs, their sexual intimacy had once again died a slow death. A feeling of ennui had begun to permeate their hurried lovemaking whenever Jesus left the camper bus for one of his meandering walks.

That night, Michael had nightmares about Ariel dying all over again.

In the morning when they woke up, Jesus was standing over them, squinting down at them with a slightly bemused expression on his face. “You’re only here for the struggle to live,” he said. “Not to mystify or complicate.”

He put his hands on Ariel’s temples and looked into her eyes. “Busy yourself,” he said. “Accept my gift.”

And to Michael he said “Rise into the light, my umbrageous son. Go forth.”

That same evening they crossed the frontier and made their way down tiny roads into the Pyrenean massif, until they found a remote valley with a crumbling, semi-abandoned village at one end. The road climbed to the top of a steep hill covered in scree.

“Park it here,” said Jesus. “Park it straight and well, for it shall never move again.”

Michael was puzzled, but he did as he was told.

Over the next few days he followed with growing interest the news bulletins on their radio and television, brought to them courtesy of the satellite dish on the roof of their vehicle. The world had started picking itself apart while they had been loafing about in Europe. Stock exchanges everywhere were in meltdown because of malfunctioning computers. Scientists were being hired to solve the problem, but the problem was not in the programming or the hardware. The problem, in the words of one fascinated Nobel laureate, was that “the logos has changed; the laws of the universe have scrambled themselves so that we have to reinvent mathematics, physics, and chemistry using a new set of rules.” It seemed beyond their capacities and they admitted as much.

Banks were having problems establishing what monies were held in their deposits. Customers didn’t know from one day to another whether they were millionaires or paupers.

Cars wouldn’t start.

Aircraft had turned into dinosaur-proportioned lumps of metal no more likely to fly than stones.

Even power stations refused to generate electricity. In effect they had become very large, wasteful log fires pumping heat into the night, and there seemed little point in turning them on at all.

Everywhere there was a run on candles and paraffin. Junk shops were raided for brass lamps and candlesticks.

Gardens were ploughed up and turned into vegetable patches.

A crisis meeting of the G8 was convened. The gold standard was reintroduced about one hundred years after it had been phased out. The banking system was reformed. Letters of conveyance would henceforth be used rather than electronic transfer, which no longer worked. Hundreds of thousands of clerks were employed to write out balance sheets, copy documents, and manually post all correspondence.

The whole notion of trading in shares had to be abandoned.

In spite of enormous efforts to underpin the system, money lost its value. In the newspapers there was a lot of clever talk about “the new Weimar Republic.” People would rather have a bag of potatoes than a pile of money.

Meanwhile, in silos all over the world, missile systems lay moldering, and tanks, aircraft and rifles were mothballed.

The “travel industry,” as it had once politely been named, was disbanded overnight. No one was willing to take the risk of going on holiday, in case they were unable to come home again. The available modes of transportation were also so limited that from then on, a “holiday” was usually something one undertook with a tent on one’s back and a pair of walking boots on one’s feet.

“Out of service” became a commonplace sign, posted here, there, and everywhere.

Armies, called out on the streets to maintain order, found themselves impotent to stop looting and fighting — although such tendencies were almost nonexistent. Before long, even elite regiments had been disbanded. There was nothing to pay them with anyway. And besides, their guns and missiles were so cranky that it was pointless pretending that they had a use on the battlefield. Even that word, “battlefield,” became quaint and archaic.