by Henning Koch
“It’s the ceremony, girls; it’s sharpened your appetites. You’ve asked for fertility and now you’re going to hit the town. Your young human bodies are alive to the joys of temptation.”
“The old bugger’s jealous.”
“Poor old sod, he could probably do with a length of butifarra himself.”
Giacomo smiled. “Bless you,” he said. “Been there, done that and bought the cassock.”
Decked out in jeans, stiletto heels, and clutch handbags, the girls peered with interest at Michael:
“What about this one?”
“Are you hungry, sweetie? You don’t want to spend the night with this old stiff, do you? Come out with us.”
Michael twisted uneasily. “Sorry, I don’t have time.”
Everyone, Giacomo included, seemed to find his answer hilarious. The girls fell about the place laughing, then carefully mopped their tears to avoid smudging their makeup.
Once again Michael felt Giacomo’s proprietary hand clutching the back of his neck. “Good Lord. Is that the time? We can’t stay here all night.” They moved off through peals of renewed laughter, this time down a long corridor with fewer people in it, just a lot of security personnel.
“What was all that about?” said Michael. “I don’t get you people. I don’t get your jokes.”
“That’s because you’re never been reincarnated.”
“And you have?”
“Many, many times, young fellow. Ah, where to begin? I’ve passed through the ages like a stick in a river.”
Michael sighed despondently. “I’m tired. I wish I could just go home.”
“And where would that be? Whether you like it or not, Michael, we are your home now. I am your home.”
“The fact remains that I don’t have a clue what this place is.”
“When the top brass decided to commercialize public religion, they thought it would be smart to abolish reincarnation. That was at the Whitby Synod about twelve hundred years ago. We argued all night but there was no stopping them.”
“You sound as if you were there.”
“In fact I was there, Michael.”
“Twelve hundred years ago?”
“Indeed.”
“You must have tough maggots to hang around that long. I suppose you have them changed once a month?”
“Oh, certainly. But the human mind gets tired of life; it needs rest. And for this reason we put ourselves into storage from time to time.”
He showed an identity card to some guards, who scanned it in an electronic card reader then nodded them through. Heavy steel doors rolled open on thick wheels set into runners in the stone floor. Inside, the air was cool and they seemed to be in a warehouse of sorts. A couple of forklift trucks stood neatly parked along a wall. Shelving units loaded with coffins rose ten meters into the air. At the base of each stack was a list of occupants. “So,” said Giacomo, checking a clipboard hanging by a string from a metal strut, “here we have the remains of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, a sweet soul filled with pity for the unfortunates of this world. And here lies St. Benedict, one of our Great Ones. Really he should not be here; he belongs further down.”
“Further down?”
“Yes. These depositories go very deep. Even I don’t know how many levels there are. You, of course, do not understand why all these dead people are here. You don’t comprehend that they’re actually alive. Right now they are nothing but shriveled heads with their empty bodies rolled up beneath them and a small film of regularly replenished maggots supplying them with just enough oxygen and nurture to keep the brain alive. Dormant but alive, ready to be brought back at a moment’s notice.”
He looked at Michael and let this sink in. “Historically speaking, maggothood was conferred on holy people as a reward. Reincarnation was no myth; it was a reality. But somehow the Holy Grail slipped out of our hands. The maggot found a way of escaping the clutches of the Vatican. Slowly, maggot people started popping up all over the place. In 1917, at a closed session of the Vatican Council, they set up an extermination unit. But even today after it’s been beefed up a good deal, it rarely manages more than three thousand kills per year. The maggot was our holiest device, our timekeeper and guardian. Even Jesus lies below, in a sacred vault, with His Apostles all round him. But He sleeps very deeply. At various times there have been attempts to resuscitate Him, all unsuccessful.” He frowned, peering at Michael as if unsure whether to go on. “There’s a war up here between us, Michael, as you have seen. The Pope will not risk a Second Coming of Jesus; he fears it would fail. And the women who enter His chamber to anoint Our Lord and sing for Him inform us that He is far, far away. They say He wouldn’t wake even if we found a way of refilling Him. O’Hara, as you have guessed, is a hardliner. He claims that we disrupt spiritual reality. Many times he has refused to take the maggot and join us. He insists he’ll meet his Maker in the Kingdom to come. He insists on a real death; he’s set on Styx, the fool. Even worse, he’s put together a powerful group with some influence in Vatican circles. In my humble opinion, heaven as a concept is a risky strategy. I am not the first to make this assertion, of course; I have been in this flawed world of ours for a long, long time. I am not about to leave it permanently for the sake of a misguided whim.”
For the first time Michael realized that there had always been something melancholic about Giacomo’s forced hilarity. He patted the older man on the shoulder.
“Maybe there’s also something good about the human race? Some tiny aspect?”
Giacomo peered at him with a dubious, pouting mouth. He leaned forward, his face furrowing with intensity. “Dream on, little brother, but do listen to me; I have more experience than you will ever have. Love is a temporary action, and you will learn this if you endure over time as I have. The emotion, however, lasts forever.”
“So what this means is that Ariel is still alive? Lying in a box somewhere, because you decided it had to be that way?”
“All things that have been alive are still alive and will always be alive,” Giacomo muttered, failing to hide his irritation. “Must you always speak of this wearisome little woman who would have plotted a false trail for you? I on the other hand have mapped out a spiritual path for you. Bear that in mind.” His black eyes grew resentful. “Or perhaps my interest in your well-being means little to you?”
Michael staunchly kept to his course. “But when is she coming back?”
“I couldn’t possibly answer, my dear fellow. Not without speaking to one of the clerks, and they’re not obliged to answer personal enquiries of that kind. She’ll be due for reactivation, but not for another couple of hundred years. What difference does it make, anyway? You’ll run into her sooner or later. And by the time you do, you won’t be the same as you are today.”
“I’d rather not wait.”
“Who cares what you want?” cried Giacomo. “Who are you? Do you understand how privileged you are to be with me at all?”
“You’re only keeping me here to taunt O’Hara and show him you outsmarted him,” said Michael, stubborn as ever.
“In fact that is not quite right. I would actually like you to…” He stopped. “I think you know what I’d like you to do.”
“Shoot him?”
“Return the favor, let’s say.”
“I didn’t want to be O’Hara’s instrument and not yours, either. I want to be my own person.”
Giacomo chuckled. “Goodness me, you’ve been saturated in twenty-first century Western political mythology. You are a pile of organic tissue animated by a life force that comes from God. Humans will always be parasitic on God, Michael, and they will tell you an awful lot of lies as they set about demolishing this planet of ours, for the sake of their mimetic creation of filth.”
“Wow,” said Michael. “You don’t think much of us, do you?”
Giacomo took a deep breath, trying to cool himself; then changed the subject. “I am entrusted with all this, everything you see here. But even I can’t
just throw sleepers into the tank at the drop of a hat. Everything has to be done with proper regard for ceremony and the blessing of the Council.” Then his voice dropped, and with a gentle movement he gripped Michael’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, my son. Time slips by very quickly once you’re oblivious.”
Michael closed his eyes. Patience, he told himself. Patience is the only way here. Slowly I will burrow my way into them and begin to understand them. In the mean time I will appeal to them, I will reflect their desires and motivations.
“Let’s eat, Giacomo.”
The abbot brightened. “That’s better, young Michael. Your cleverness is most appealing; your reflective, adaptive personality. You don’t fool me for a moment, but ambition has always struck me as a good thing, as long as it does not only tend towards self-importance. I have no self-importance, you see. If I could choose freely, I should like to be alone, far away, in some small, inconsequential town where I had no friends and no duties, and I’d sit on the balcony in the mornings, reading books and minding my own business and never going to church.” He smiled fondly. “Although obviously I’d bring Paolo to cook my breakfast and provide a convenient target for irritability. Really, I think that man has been a better companion than any wife could ever have managed; pity he’s so inordinately fat or I might have married him.”
“I am not ambitious,” said Michael. “But I do have desires for my life… which is quite different.”
“You’re a bit of a spin doctor,” said Giacomo. “Even this is a good thing, it is very much the spirit of the age to be a relativist and not have any firm views on anything. I really do think I’ll keep hold of you. But first you have to help me clear up this O’Hara nonsense. You’re the perfect choice; you’re the boomerang.”
“The boomerang that hits its target does not come back. If you want to keep hold of me, I know a better way to deal with O’Hara,” said Michael with a sinking feeling, which he later identified as guilt. “We can use Honey. It’ll be like bread and butter to her.”
28.
An hour later, having picked up Paolo and Honey from the empty chapel, they were sitting in Giacomo’s ample kitchen in the Vatican City, where Paolo had again stripped down to his underwear to keep his robes from staining, and was frying half a bucketful of small green crabs in oil, tomato, and garlic while a great vat of pasta steamed beside him.
Honey was in a bad mood, confessing to a sudden horniness greater than anything she had ever known. “I can’t sleep,” she complained, “without visualizing a bulging cock coming towards me. I used to hate cocks, you know. I was sick of the sight of them, ugly things with little leery mouths looking at you and always standing to attention like fucking troopers. But now all this has happened to me I almost feel like going back to Barcelona. Except I reckon you’re going to tell me I can’t do it now I’m a maggot?”
“Stay here a while,” said Michael, with a meaningful look at Giacomo. “There are things you could do here for us. You could make a lot of money for yourself, too, enough to buy yourself a little flat.”
Paolo slammed the pasta saucepan down on the table. “First she eats,” he said irritably, turning to Honey. “And remember, if you do go out to find yourself a man, he must be brought back here for safekeeping in the cellar until he flowers. And then we have to take proper care of him. We’re not animals!” He brought out a large pasta fork and started ladling out gargantuan portions, while at the same time gently shaking Honey by the arm. “And then you have to be chaste after that, fill yourself with drugs and drink, or just eat enormous quantities of food as we do. Of course you must also spend a great deal of time in prayer. I will teach you the prayers.”
“Save it, father; sounds like a bore to me,” said Honey, her mouth full of oil-soaked bread. “The only priest I ever liked was Father Tuck, you know him? I hate these goddamn maggots, and I hate you, Michael, for infecting me in the first place.”
“Infecting, that’s a big word!” said Michael. “You were like a skeleton when I saw you; frankly, you were already diseased—that’s one of the reasons I chose you. A good maggot always selects his targets, you know. Now you have hundreds of years of life ahead of you; is that so bad?”
“Or a few weeks, depending on how you behave yourself,” Giacomo added laconically.
“So what? At least I was enjoying myself.” She pointed a bony finger at Michael. “You took everything from me; I can’t even take a decent shit any more. I just sit there while a couple of pellets come out of my ass. Who wants to knock around for hundreds of fucking years, anyway? What you supposed to do with yourself, play poker all day or take up knitting?”
“Why all this negativity?” Giacomo threw in. “I have known maggots who get interested in gambling or horse racing and find that it keeps them busy and satisfied for centuries. Or money-making, that’s a very good one. If you take out a really good investment plan and bribe one of the people downstairs to book you in for rebirthing in fifty years, you’ll be awake before you know it and then you cash in your bonds and go on holiday. How’s that?”
“I’d rather be a corpse, and so would you lot if you weren’t such pussies.”
There was some truth in what she said.
Awkwardly they changed the subject.
Giacomo stuck his finger into the sugo and tasted it, then gulped a mouthful of his beloved Piedmonte wine before Paolo jostled him away from his stove. “In fact, my dear girl, this gives me an excellent idea. You are very fresh and your host is feeling very boisterous right now. You need to cleave to its requirements.”
“Put that in plain fucking English, will you!”
“I’d be glad to. You have to do what they want or they’ll eat you alive. Right now they want to swarm. You can either choose to go and find yourself a sad rover and bag him; or, if you’re more enterprising, track down a fallen cleric who shouldn’t be screwing in the first place.”
“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Michael told me all about O’Hara, I even saw him; he’s a seedy little swine.”
“I didn’t know you’d been briefed.” Giacomo’s eyes flickered in Michael’s general direction. “Thanks, dear boy.”
“Is it because I’m a hooker?” said Honey. “You think hookers don’t understand things? We’re quick as lightning, if you want to know. And we have a fucking state-of-the-art asshole alarm and right now it’s ringing in here, very loud.” She tapped the side of her head. “By the way this crab tastes like shit.”
Giacomo watched her mawkishly, but again chose to ignore her outburst. “Cardinal O’Hara says his murderous instincts aren’t his fault. He says it’s the Devil making him do it.”
“I’ve met types who talk like that and usually they just came out of the nuthouse.” Honey screwed up her face, processing the information. “So why does O’Hara hate you so much? And you know what? I don’t get why the Pope gives money to maggot people and lets ’em live under his church and at the same time has ’em killed by the score. I can’t get my fucking head round it.”
Giacomo nodded confidently. “I think I can answer that one. The Hydra is a dangerous monster because she suffers from a multiple personality. She’ll kiss you with one head, but with her other heads she’ll petrify, savage, poison, nibble, spit or mutter evil curses at you.”
“It’s not that,” said Paolo. “It’s because the Catholics fear us. It’s the fear of the Other.”
“The other fucking what?” said Honey.
Giacomo sighed. “Maggot people can’t have children. Which means there’ll be fewer people around, which means a lot of empty churches and less money and a heck of a lot of Catholic priests out of a job. The Church doesn’t like that, of course; it doesn’t like maggots getting too numerous.”
Honey nodded. “Well, people do have to work, you know. Or they starve. O’Hara’s making sense if that’s what he’s about.”
“Never mind about him making sense. He’s an old anaconda and we’d like you to seduce him,” said Gia
como. “Maggotize him for us, would you dear? So we can keep him lingering with us for hundreds of years and torment the heck out of him.”
“So that’s all I get? A dry old fucker like O’Hara who smells like he forgot to change his underwear for a month? You know what? If I could live without men like him I would, but it looks like I’m stuck with them. If I do it anyway, if I do it for your sake, what will you do for me?”
“Well, you won’t be needing any other men at all, that’s for sure,” Paolo cut in. “That’s what we’ll do for you; we’ll free you from their pernicious influence. Afterwards you could go to Mama Maggot in Sardinia; she might even take you on as a lay sister.”
Giacomo agreed. “Yes indeed. Then all you do is lie about and occasionally make a little excursion to the city to pick up maggot fodder. It’s an easy life; you stay on a cushion all day, eat piglets in the evening, take a few hits and watch the sunset over the sea.” He frowned at Paolo and spoke under his breath: “Or are we missing an opportunity? Should we give her a gun and ask her to kill the old bitch for us?”
Michael stepped in. “If you send Honey to St. Helena she’ll be the one who ends up dead. They’ll find out who she is and what she’s done and they won’t even have to kill her; they’ll just deny her when she’s due.”
“Keep your worries to yourself!” Giacomo shot him a poisonous glance. But when he refocused on Honey he was unctuous: “Whatever you want, my dear girl, we can make it happen for you. We have enormous reserves of money, we have a portfolio of quite beautiful properties all over the world, and we have an endless supply of drugs and fresh maggot. How about an island off the coast of Thailand? Or a penthouse in Tokyo? Just rid us of this Cardinal and it can all be yours. We’ll open the coffers for you; you can take what you want.”
“You don’t have to go for the hard sell. I’ll do it just because I’m bored stiff and I fancy a challenge,” she said.
“First we have to tell you how to snare him. We know all about his appetites,” said Paolo.
“Yeah, yeah! You’re going to teach me how to get some twisted old geezer’s rocks off. You rate yourselves, don’t you?” She shook her head in wonder. “Just give me his fucking address, I’ll stake out his place tonight. And if I don’t see him I’ll go back tomorrow.”