The Maggot People

by Henning Koch

  “You’re lonely,” she said. “Did your mother give you enough hugs when you was a kid?”

  “I told you, my mother’s dead.”

  “Yeah, but she wasn’t dead when you was a child, was she?”

  “No.”

  “Well then! Did she or didn’t she?”

  “I can’t remember,” he said. “Probably she did. But that’s not important now. What’s important is that you stay here; you mustn’t go back to Sergio.”

  “Why not? He’s a good enough bloke,” said Honey. “Could be worse, anyway. He’s not a mass murderer.”

  “Not yet. What about the spitting thing?”

  “It’s only spit. I’ve had worse.” Her sharp features softened. “I know why you want me here with you. Shall I tell you?”

  He nodded. After the mind-reading capabilities of all the maggots he had met, it was comforting to lie there next to Honey, whose deviousness seemed innocent as gamboling lambs.

  “It’s because you’re surrounded by wankers. You’ve had ‘em milling around you for a while. It took you a while to get it straight in your own mind, but now you’re sure. They’re wanky, no doubt about it, only you can’t think of nothing to do about it because they’ve got loads of dough and they’ll squash you just like that!” She clicked her fingers, then blinked at him eagerly.

  “Am I right?”

  “Close.”

  “So we’re the same. You and me are the same.” Honey sat up and started wriggling into her panties. “I really have to get back to the bar. I got all my stuff there, Michael; I can’t just leave, can I?”

  “What fucking stuff? A pile of scuffed-up magazines? Broken ashtray? Couple of tubes of squashed lipstick? Some torn nylon miniskirts? Or what?”

  “Yeah! It’s my fucking stuff and I want it!”

  “Wait! We haven’t finished yet. And anyway I’m going to make you an offer. I’ll personally take you out and buy you whatever you like.” He stopped and let his words sink in.

  “How much money you got, padre? What did you do, raid the collection box?”

  He showed her his wallet, stuffed with O’Hara’s hundred-euro bills. “I’ve got enough,” he said. “You have to listen. You won’t survive if you go back. Things are going to change for you very soon; you won’t recognize yourself. What we did last night was a one-off. I’ll never touch you again.”

  Honey had experienced this sort of thing before: life-weary, sometimes impotent men with money (or without) who wanted companionship.

  “You’re not getting me, mate. Sergio won’t be happy about yesterday; you made him look a right idiot. I’d get out of here if I was you; he’ll find you. We’re not far and it won’t take him long to track down a shambles like you, a fucking priest who don’t even shave, sitting about with a pack of fags and a bottle of vodka. I’m telling you, the Barrio Xino aint big enough… and if he finds you he’ll beat the crap out of me as well.”

  “I’ll shoot him if he gets anywhere near us,” said Michael, stretching out on the bed and lighting another cigarette. “I have a gun, you know.”

  “I’ve met a lot of crazy fuckers in my time, padre, but you really take the biscuit.” She snuggled into the sheets and scrunched up her face. “It’s weird but I do feel safe with you. If you keep me in drugs I’ll stick around for a while. But I need clothes, man, I can’t wear this fucking miniskirt any longer.” She wagged her finger in the air. “Just don’t get hurt, okay? That’s a deal-breaker. And don’t ask me to come down the fucking hospital if you get knocked about. I can’t stand wasting time in those places. Medics checking you and telling you a load of shit and taking your blood. They don’t know their face from their ass.”

  “What about you?” he said. “Did you get hugged enough?”

  “To be honest,” said Honey, “I never even knew what a hug was. To me it was just some bloke wanting to stick his cock in.”

  “And your mother, what happened to her?”

  “I reckon that was where the rot started. If she’d been around I wouldn’t have gone on the game. I met Sergio in Benidorm. I was down there for a holiday, sunning myself on the beach and enjoying a couple of pints with the girls. We had a good time back then.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I was only sixteen when mum died and then we lost the house. Mum didn’t have any family ’cause no one liked her and they chucked her out. ’Cause she was on the game as well, you see.”

  “And Sergio treated you well?”

  “Sergio put me to work and for the first time in my life I had some money. He’s a fucking bastard but at least he survives. If some cunt comes along and gives him shit he beats the hell out of them.”

  “And you like that?”

  “He’s not a coward, anyway. I tell you Michael, if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a coward.”

  “What was your mother like?”

  “She was a sweetheart. I’ll take her with me when I go. Oh fuck, now you’re making me fucking cry! Anyway, it’s all over now, nothing you can do. She was a poor thing, now she’s a poor dead thing. Done is done. You only get one shot, Michael. After that you’re done. One shot.”

  “That depends,” said Michael. “My people reckon you get more than one shot.”

  “Your people are wankers, we already agreed about that,” said Honey. “And even if they’re right, even if you come back, you’ll only end up doing the same bloody thing all over again. It’s fucking karma; you don’t get past it. How many times have I told myself I’ll never pull some stunt again? I think I’ve learnt my lesson, but I never have learnt it. I keep fucking up. It just repeats itself and now I don’t care anymore. I’m a loser but at least I can hold my head up. Because I can say I’m not a wanker.”

  24.

  The new clothes Michael had bought for Honey made her feel like Grace Kelly. She tottered out of the Hostal Paradiso in a pair of mauve silk trousers, a leopard-print silk scarf, flouncy pink blouse, wide-rimmed hat, oversized sunglasses and so much rouge that you could have written your name on her cheek with the tip of your finger.

  She crossed the street as if expecting all the traffic to stop for her, then collapsed into the waiting taxi where Michael sat nervously glancing at his watch. “God, this is not my idea of fun,” she whined as she settled into the vinyl seats, crossing her bony kneecaps and plugging her glossy mouth with a cigarette. She lit it with a gasp, ignoring the protesting cab driver who finally gave up and lit his own. “I’d rather just stay in bed with a magazine.”

  Michael leaned forward to give their destination to the driver. “St. Joan de les Abadesses, Ripoll.” He felt a searing pain hounding through him. For a moment he feared his maggots were dying until he saw that they had actually reflected back at him the wave of bleak emotion they had just sensed.

  The clever little swine were learning empathy now as well.

  Or were they just warning him, telling him to concentrate?

  The taxi drove through the late evening rush hour, up the Via Laietana past the old Roman fortifications, then headed north out of the city through bleak industrial hinterlands, past stinking chimneys and cemeteries shaded by yew trees. Cities were like people—surrounded by inhospitable boundaries and densely compressed into small, trampled areas. In the end, he reflected, even the human personality became a sort of tourist destination.

  Honey whispered softly into his ear that she could do with another hit. She had the soft insistence of a child. If she were careful about it, did he think she could shoot up without the cab driver noticing? Michael ignored her and tried to prepare himself for what lay ahead.

  His feeling of disquiet did not leave him as the taxi exited the highway outside Ripoll and dropped them off in the town square. The balmy evening, the strolling people, the slumberous cafés: all seemed sinister to him. Michael looked at Honey, flouncing along with her ricotta limbs, making a spectacle of herself. Potentially, she was a bit of a liability, but there had been no alternative but to
bring her. He had to do his duty by her—he could not abandon her to a short, painful, and miserable existence as a rogue maggot. He left her in a hostel, gave her a syringe, a foil parcel of heroin, a bottle of water, and a copy of Vogue and told her he’d be back soon.

  After checking that his gun was clean and loaded as he’d been taught at St. Helena’s, he made his way down a sunken lane towards the monastery. The intermittent sound of sprinklers on the front lawns was all that could be heard from the other side of the wall.

  There was a small group of men by the gatehouse—tough-looking T-shirted fellows with short-cropped hair and tattoos on their stocky arms. Mainly out-of-work neo-Nazis by the looks of it, stuffed dolls held together by nails, rope, and empty rhetoric.

  Michael showed his letter of introduction and explained that he had an appointment.

  On their way to the main building Michael saw more security people secreted in the bushes. A glint of the dying sun caught the barrel of a gun. He was struck by a thought: O’Hara had never explained to him how he was supposed to get out in one piece.

  By the front doors he found himself facing a large jovial monk who introduced himself as Brother Paolo.

  “Welcome, Brother Michael.” A stout, hairy arm reached out and shook his hand warmly. “We’re all most pleased you got here in one piece…”

  Michael frowned, remembering something Günter had said about a fat monk from Rome who used to give him sweetmeats. “Paolo? You don’t know a man called Günter, do you?”

  “Let me see? A man called Günter; no, I don’t know a man called Günter, no, decidedly not.”

  An understanding passed between them. Michael could not quite understand how Paolo, a flesh-head, should be a good friend of Günter. It made no sense.

  “Who are all these men in the grounds?”

  “Oh, they were offered to us. Apparently we have a security scare on our hands. Some lunatic on the loose or something.” Paolo led him into the bowels of the building as he spoke. “The trouble with guard dogs is you never know who they’ll bite next.”

  “Who are they guarding?”

  Paolo sniggered and turned round. “They said you’d be a joker.”

  “Who said?”

  “Well. I imagine Cardinal O’Hara might agree. You saw him recently, did you not? In Sardinia?”

  Michael felt himself suck air into his chest cavity, a mental reflex. Truth seemed the most sensible option, and he deployed it. “Yes. I did.”

  “Good. Thanks for being honest about it; that speaks volumes. Now follow me and I’ll take you to Giacomo.”

  Outside the abbot’s main suite there were more security men, frazzled unshaven brutes with cigarettes behind their ears and chunky rings on their fingers. The place smelt of cheap hamburgers or intestinal gas—that indistinguishable global perfume of the underclass. The brutes glared at him as he passed. He caught the unmistakable whiff of hostility.

  The highly polished mahogany doors opened. Paolo waved him into the enormous, air-conditioned chamber beyond. Michael ventured in like a nervous ice skater gliding onto a glittering rink.

  Paolo vanished and the doors closed behind him with a heavy clunk, followed by a sonorous click as the key was turned on the other side. He heard voices raised, a discussion on the other side: the sound of Paolo’s booming affability and the growling opposition of the security men, who seemed to prefer to keep the doors unlocked.

  For a while he stood there, unsure of himself. There was no sign of the abbot. To his right, a table with carved griffin legs looked ready to spring at him.

  There was a crackling sound as if a microphone had been switched on and some muffled fidgeting. Then a fluid, confident voice with a clear agenda.

  “Good evening, Michael. Do you know who Ignatius Loyola was?”

  Michael looked round. The voice came from speakers all around, a sort of unnerving quadraphonic effect, an omnipotent intelligence coming at him from every direction. “Yes, I think I do,” he replied at last. “Does it matter?”

  “Does it matter?” There was a long-drawn chuckle. “Very good. So hear this. St. Ignatius Loyola, when asked how he would feel if the Pope suppressed the Order of Jesus, answered: ‘A quarter of an hour of prayer and I should think no more of it.’”

  There was a silence. Michael sank into a heavy, ornate chair. “I’m sorry, why are you telling me this? I don’t even know who you are?”

  “I am telling you this to explain the pitfalls of holding on to things. The satchel on your shoulder, my friend, is full of all the excrement you have squeezed out of your bottom from the day you were born; still saying goodbye to your bobbing little friends, are you not? Am I right?”

  Michael clutched his head. “Do you know, the only person who tells me the truth is a heroin-using prostitute I met on the streets of Barcelona.”

  “Of course. The desperate have no agenda except to eat. Look, can I be frank with you? I can’t stand another day of these Vatican-financed apes clogging up the place and oiling their blessed guns.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Not within range of your fire stick, you can be sure of that. Do you think it’s possible that Judas Iscariot did have God on his side? If so there might be hope for you.”

  Michael looked round the palatial room—the thick, four-meter-high curtains in the windows, the wainscoting, the rough gray floors without a speck of dust.

  He touched the long, warmed barrel of the gun against his leg.

  The voice kept talking: “See the mirror at the other end of the room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Walk towards it unless you’d rather be gunned down like a wild hog by O’Hara’s people.”

  “I thought all these men were your security people?”

  “Oh dear Lord, no. They’re Vatican personnel sent by O’Hara to finish you off, or both of us. It’s a classic technique. Think of Lee Harvey Oswald—first kill the target. Use a simple guy; dupe him or threaten him in some way, then once the job’s done get some deranged footman to bump him off.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You believe the one who tells the truth,” came the answer. “‘Multi multa sciunt et seipsos nesciunt.’ It’s Pseudo-Bernard: ‘Many know many things yet know not themselves.’ Very true, particularly of you, Michael.”

  “Now what?”

  “Turn round, go back towards the doors. Stop by the first window. Good. Now look to your right. See that little painting of Joseph and Mary? Go there. Move yourself! Press the frame on the top left side.”

  Michael hurried over, pressed the frame and heard a click as the outline of a door revealed itself.

  “Go through and close it behind you. They’re coming through now.”

  At the other end of the room, a key was turned in the lock and the double doors started swinging open.

  Michael slipped inside and pushed the secret door into place behind him as quietly as he could.

  25.

  “I should introduce myself. My name is Wizard. That’s the short version. My full name is Wizard of Oz.”

  Abbot Giacomo leaned back in an ergonomic office chair and seemed to be enjoying his own joke. He was a portly man dressed in a beige, rough-spun alb girded with a cincture, the whole thing spectacularly stained with specks of oil and tomato sauce. His delivery was rapid and witty, like a forties movie star.

  “Let’s see, first things first and last things last. You’ve brought a weapon, I assume? Otherwise what the hell are you doing here?”

  Awkwardly Michael got out his gun and put it on the table. He felt ashamed of himself.

  Giacomo’s eyelids fluttered disapprovingly. “You poor little dumb shit running round the world doing the bidding of disgusting flesh-heads.” Using a small paper knife, Giacomo slit his skin enough to show a seething mass of maggot underneath, then said: “I am maggot. O’Hara isn’t maggot. Do you understand?”

  “Why would he do that? Come to St. Helena and go to such extreme le
ngths to fool people?”

  “He didn’t fool anyone. They all knew. There’s a quota. The only one who was fooled was you.”

  “What quota?”

  Giacomo sighed. “Where do you think St. Helena gets its money from? How much money do you imagine it takes running a place like that?”

  “They sell drugs.”

  “Most of their money comes from the Vatican and in return they provide a certain number of specialists to Rome every year. Mainly assassins to deal with the odd difficult banker or heads of small African states or uncooperative tribal chiefs who resist progress. O’Hara recruits for Rome. It’s generally acknowledged that maggot people make better killers. O’Hara must have liked you an awful lot, only he’s not supposed to kill off people like me. He knows that. I’ll give him a good deal of trouble for this.”

  “He’ll deny it.”

  “Of course he will. But he’s not the only clever bastard in the world.”

  “And I hope I’m not the only stupid one.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You weren’t to know.”

  “He said you’d be tricky. He said you’d try to fool me.”

  “Now you really are being a fool. He hates us maggots; it’s a well-known fact.” He paused. “Luckily for you, we were tipped off.”

  “Who by?”

  “Günter. He made contact a few days ago from Rome to tell us he’d packed you off to Janine, one of the worst ‘procurement cunts’ in Christendom. That’s in his own words, I stress. She pretends to be a drug dealer.” Giacomo looked up. “So let me ask you something; what did you think of O’Hara?”

  It was the first time in a long time that Michael had been asked anything at all as if his opinion mattered.

  “I thought he was an unbearable shit. I suppose I just assumed anyone who’s climbed to the top of the greasy pole has to be a bit of a bruiser.”

  “Or a very devout person, has that occurred to you?” Giacomo shrugged. “Let me ask you something else. Try testing your intuition. Do you like me?”