Henning Koch: The Maggot People

Giacomo sat for a long while listening to the tinkle of the stream, the meandering wind in the treetops stirring the leaves, and the crows caw-cawing as they had always done, frustrated at their lack of vocabulary.

“Do you know this?” he said.

“Everyone knows it.”

Giacomo smiled bitterly. From somewhere in the depths of a dream, he seemed to hear the unmistakable sound of masonry collapsing.

He took a pocket knife and scored a deep cut in his thumb. At first there was nothing apart from a sharp pain. Then a slow trickle of blood, like water rising in a once-dry well.

Giacomo had not seen his own blood for more than a thousand years.

Not many weeks after, Michael and Ariel were sitting by a hearth watching Jesus expertly tossing flatbread onto the embers of the fire. His hands moved swiftly, turning the bread without scorching himself and then passing it to those sitting beside him.

His wife was breastfeeding their child.

“Now you eat,” she said.

“I am not hungry,” said Jesus, who had spent all day cutting brushwood. His face looked drawn and preoccupied.

Ariel drenched the bread in oil and topped it with fresh white cheese, honey and parsley. She was ravenous; she had grown heavy and was accustomed to the sensation of little feet drumming inside her womb.

A somber feeling hung over their little group. Jesus turned his amber eyes on them:

“We are leaving. You know this,” he said. “You all have journeys you must make. We also have our journey.”

“But why? And where will you go?” said Ariel.

“You shouldn’t be so concerned with where,” said Jesus. “It is a great irrelevance, of interest only to those caught in the comings and goings, the hither and thither of things. We will go where we must go. What more could anyone do?”

“We will do the same,” said Michael. “But we don’t know where?”

“Good,” said Jesus. He turned to his wife and for a moment, his eyes filled with something like human warmth. She threw a few sprigs of dried sage on the fire and wafted the fragrant smoke towards them.

The moment was only slightly marred by the sound of metallic hammering, chisels against stone, from the bottom of the valley. Just about visible over the tree tops below was a substantial roof and a number of tall brick chimneys, growing taller by the day.

Their thoughts turned to this emanation of stone — Giaco-mo’s house.

“What can be done about the visitor who comes uninvited and will not leave?” asked Michael.

“One must share equally with him,” said Jesus. “Soon there will also be soldiers and priests and bishops arriving. They will all say they’re here for our benefit.” He smiled. “But they will find my name much more useful once I’m no longer here. Many witnesses will come forward. They will quote from the book, although there is no book.”

The din from down below had first begun with the arrival of a rabble of laborers from the Vatican, laborers who had cleared a large area of trees, then set about laying down foundations, including large vaulted cellars and staircases. Carts drawn by oxen had brought fine cut stone, now slowly and artfully being turned into a palatial dwelling. Ducts and cisterns for water and sewerage had already been sunk into the ground, leading into underground chambers and shafts. A deep, stone-lined well had also been dug, and an eel released to live out its solitary life inside the stone drum, as was customary.

At the edge of the construction site were large tents which, in addition to the laborers, housed a group of Vatican soldiers, whose horses now also cropped the outlying fields.

At night, one smelled lamb roasting on their fires. Shepherds had been engaged, shepherds whose flocks littered the upper slopes by day.

Vatican officials had also had a substantial gate built at the base of the hill, with a low-lying but solid granite wall. Meanwhile at the far end of the valley, teams of workers were building a road in the Roman style, digging ditches and laying down beds of gravel topped by good-quality dressed granite from Norway. One day soon a horse-drawn carriage would be able to make good speed between the Vatican and the City of God, entering through the massive carved gate patrolled at night by sentinels.

The pope himself would be able to come and sleep on linen sheets in airy rooms. In the mornings he would feast on dove eggs and smoked trout, while in the outhouses vats of beer farted gently as the yeast and hops bubbled, or wine rested in oaken barrels in the cellars below.

Plans were under way for a new cathedral. Donations were flooding in from rich merchants. Bands of architects and builders had already formed themselves into mystical guilds. Without computers and hydraulics, they had returned to pencil and rule and algebra. Their craft was once again steeped in Masonic obscurity.

Giacomo had still not moved from his chair. His beard had now reached his waist, and his clothes were practically falling off his body. Seamstresses sewed patches on his tunic to keep him modest, and sometimes at night he was undressed and washed, and his linen cleaned. The bandy-legged old man — for since his return to flesh and blood he’d aged rapidly — was kept alive on a diet of fish and fruit. All the weight had fallen off him; his face looked suitably emaciated, and those eyes of his, once so lively and malicious, now stared tetchily at anyone who spoke to him.

Deep down, Giacomo knew that his pride kept him where he was. He had not seen Jesus since that encounter on the mountain. The mere mention of his name brought his hands out in livid stigmata.

The humiliation of seeing how worthless his life had been, in spite of his thousand-year spell, gnawed at him.

He asked himself: What do I still have before me in this life?

And the answer was nothing .

But to everyone else who saw him, Giacomo seemed the very essence of holiness and as soon as the palace was ready they carried him into the grandest, most beautiful room, where he spent the rest of his life in silence.

A century later, when the cathedral was completed, his chair was placed in a glass case. And his miraculously reconstituted bones were smoothed by the doting hands of throngs of pilgrims who came to pray by St. Giacomo’s Shrine.