by Henning Koch
Meanwhile, his entire body was on the march. Millions of maggots pulled his empty skin along—like an army of ants tugging at a butterfly—then carefully maneuvered it through the dusty, jagged hole. Getting the brain through was tricky, particularly as the eyeballs were still attached to their optical nerves. The maggots took infinite care not to damage the delicate tissue. Occasionally they reassembled around the brain, feeding it oxygen and preventing it from dehydrating. And on the other side they gently pullulated around it as they slowly slid down a drainpipe into the grass.
A few hours before dawn, Michael began to take shape again and his vision and hearing returned. Also his physical sense of self—his use of arms and legs. He stood up and dusted himself down, relieved to be back in charge of his faculties and somewhat surprised to find himself in the garden outside the hospital. It seemed to him now (and ever afterwards) that the physical world was a sort of illusion facilitated by his body, a construct of his physical senses.
He climbed the perimeter fence and walked into a tinder-dry forest. His mind was distracted. A part of him was still in that parallel universe he’d temporarily entered.
He walked through the world as if he were experiencing it for the first time. Moonlight had magically transformed the olive groves into billowing seas of silver. Crickets were grinding deafeningly—a host of sewing machines secreted in the trees. The air teemed with insects. Overhead, he heard and saw a bat crunch its microscopic teeth into a moth. From an adjacent field beyond a stone wall came the slightly absurd and almost mythical braying of an ass, exactly like a creaking water-pump. There was a sacred language to all this, a language humans no longer understood.
He followed a dry watercourse to the bottom of the hill, where he rejoined the road and waited for Ariel, whose arrival seemed imminent. He had a sense of her setting off at this very moment from the decrepit bungalow by the sea where the rollers were still breaking with repeating thunder. He saw her pale face through the windscreen. He saw Günter’s lolloping gait as he leapt into the back through the sliding door. Probably the engine started on the third try, after some cursing. And their wheels spun in the deep sand as they climbed the rutted track, leaving wheel marks that the wind would quickly rub out after they had gone.
9.
After they had picked him up, they travelled for hour after hour down the motorway, with the parched hills stretching out on either side. Everything was dry, everything was dreaming of water, but water there was none.
Ariel was more at ease than he had seen her before, no longer nerve-racked. She concentrated on her driving and seemed to have a notion of being on their way and nominally at least going somewhere.
Michael felt strange in their company, like a refugee among an unknown people. All the emotional intensity he had first felt about Ariel seemed utterly ludicrous now. Hindsight is a terrible companion, filled with the “could-have-done” or “should-be.” Sitting in the van, looking out glumly at the passing hills, he felt he was being overrun by conditionals.
Günter was lying on an old rug in the back, peering intently into a copy of Houellebecq’s Platform and awkwardly turning and creasing the pages with his humid nose. From time to time their eyes met in the mirror. Finally, stung by Michael’s glances, the Alsatian looked up and said to him: “In case you’re wondering… my name is Günter. I’m a person; I was even born somewhere, admittedly somewhere not very spectacular. I consider myself an Austrian but I don’t expect the Austrians would agree.”
“I never said you weren’t a person.”
“Sometimes people don’t need to say very much; you can tell what they’re thinking.”
“Well I wish I knew what to think and I wish I knew where we were going.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” said Günter with a glimmer of a smile and a nod at Ariel: “She may be keeping very quiet but she’s feeling very decisive. Those long weeks in that god-awful cabin with nothing but the sun and that brutal sea. It grilled the truth out of her; she’s begun to understand there’s no choice but to come in. Right, Ariel?”
“Come in where?” said Michael.
Ariel turned her head and looked at him. “We’re going to a place where maggot people go for collection… to be processed, basically.”
Again, Michael felt the churning of hindsight in his stomach, the fierceness of his regret. “You make it sound like a meatpacking plant.”
Ariel was humorless about it. “When people die, Michael, what happens to them? Shall I tell you? They’re cleaned and prepared and wrapped in winding-sheets, then they’re laid out in a box and either buried or incinerated.”
“So what?”
“And we’re no different. The only difference is we don’t take it so seriously.”
There was a silence while Michael tried to work up the courage to say the obvious thing. He was reluctant to do so in case it led to derision. “Why do you keep talking about being dead, Ariel? You’re not dead. Why don’t you think about something more cheerful?”
Günter cracked up in the back. “You hear that, girl? Think about something more cheerful.”
Ariel didn’t bother replying to that one. She kept her hands steadily on the wheel and seemed to enjoy pushing the old van to its maximum speed as they clattered down the motorway, occasionally managing to squeeze past a smoky old lorry.
After those few moments of peace and quiet, Ariel punched the steering wheel and broke into long-winded cursing. “Would you believe it?” she cried, shaking her head at Günter. “They’re starting.”
“Starting what?” said Michael, finding that Ariel was staring at him with a vaguely infuriated expression on her face.
“You waited too long, that’s why,” said Günter. “You waited for Mr. Ferdinand here and now the countdown’s started.”
“I can feel it. They’re starting. What I mean is I can’t feel it. I can’t feel my feet, I can’t feel my legs! They’re sleeping; they’re dying.”
“Is that my fault?” Michael threw in.
For the first time there was something raw about her face, meaning that her emotions were simmering to the surface like volcanic bubbles as she turned to him and with an almost amused expression on her face, as if she were entering the world of absurdity, asked in a very matter-of-fact voice: “Where will you go without me?”
“Why would I go anywhere without you?”
“Poor you, you don’t know anything,” said Ariel. “About your situation. There’s a whole maggot world out there you know nothing about. Meeting me was bad luck for you. I told you from the start… I won’t do as I’m told; that’s my problem. I don’t want to be one of them.”
“Who, for God’s sake?”
She winced again with the effort of explaining. “The maggot survivors, I call them. A bunch of fuck-ups who spend their time in purple robes, prolonging their meaningless lives and inventing a lot of useless shit.”
She grew silent, and Michael decided not to probe her, even though he was thoroughly mystified. Purple robes? Who wore purple robes? Priests? He opened his mouth to speak, but when he looked at Ariel he stopped himself. Her blanched face was wrinkled up like a concertina. She let go of the steering wheel and clutched her forehead with a moan: “They’re eating me, the little bastards.”
From the back of the van he heard Günter’s voice: “Michael, if I were you, I’d grab that wheel.”
He took the Alsatian’s advice. Stunned, Ariel slid to the floor with her fingertips pressed to her temples. He clambered over into the driver’s seat while she dragged herself into the back. The kilometers slid by like slow contractions.
The petrol gauge was almost on zero. Ariel spoke from the floor: “Take the next exit; get off the motorway.”
No sooner had she spoken than he saw a sign, then a slip-road running down a long incline bordered by tall yellow mustard flowers and wild poppies.
“Turn right at the top. Follow the signs to Vegnier-du-Lac.”
Again, he foll
owed her instructions. They drove for another twenty minutes.
She remained on the floor, concentrating on the grisly thing taking place inside her head: tiny, mulching maggot mouths pressing against her cerebral cortex, gobbling at her nerve endings, muzzling their tiny lips against her emotions.
The warning light was flashing on the fuel gauge. They had no money left—they’d spent the last of it that morning on a cheese baguette.
Michael wondered how he would break it to Ariel that very soon they’d be marooned in the middle of a flat, barren landscape bisected by a long straight road studded on both sides with rows of white-painted poplars.
“Almost there,” said Ariel. “When you see a large field on the left full of deep blue lavender, hang a left. The road runs straight through it.” She winced and continued, although she was racked with pain: “There it is; take the next left, a gravel track with a string of grass and boulders in the middle. Just keep going…”
Michael saw the track and turned off. They drove through a fragrant landscape, banks of lavender on either side. Ariel wound her window down and breathed deep.
“Good. See the white house, that’s where we’re going.”
Up ahead he saw a cottage embedded within flowering shrubs, fruit trees, and a mountainous rose espalier, the scent of which hit him with a druglike heaviness. Ariel groaned. “Stop by the gate, I can’t walk… and then go knock on the door. Be quick, please.”
Michael’s eyes narrowed as he saw a slight figure, a woman in a long flowing dress standing by the wicker gate. She was holding a double-barreled shotgun that seemed almost longer and heavier than she was.
“She’s got a gun.”
“It’s only Purissima,” Günter commented in the back. “She’s a terrible shot.”
Along the last few bumpy yards of the boulder-strewn track, the engine choked with a last-ditch lurch. The woman tapped the barrel of her rifle against the glass.
“Get out, Günter. I’m not putting this thing down until I’ve searched the car.” She nodded towards Michael. “Who’s that man with you?”
“Don’t worry about him,” said Günter. “He’s harmless.”
10.
Only when Purissima drew closer did Michael see how tiny she was: jet black hair and a birdlike body made of sticks and wire and peppercorn eyes that knew everything in an instant. She reached barely to his chest. When she spoke she had an unsettling habit of moving in closer and closer, opening her mouth as she did so, like a spacecraft docking. The listener usually found himself retreating: there is something unpleasant about an open mouth. Lips are nature’s clever disguise, a decorative rim to the digestive tract.
Günter jumped out of the van and shook himself, apologetic and somewhat ill-at-ease. “Hello, Purissima. We’re back.”
“Of course you’re back; you were always coming back. Ariel looks ready for the cemetery, I can practically smell the corpse already.” Her voice smattered like shiny rivets flung angrily at a tiled floor: rapid-firing pidgin English with strong Spanish, possibly Mexican, roots.
Günter yawned. “Maybe. She has pain… and numbness.”
“Pain and numbness… pain and numbness…” Purissima shook her head, filled with a pleasurable regret. “Those twins I’ve lived with for so long I don’t even notice them no more. They don’t kill you, that’s the only good thing to be said of them.” Purissima spun round and led them down the garden path, after throwing Michael a skew-whiff gaze and murmuring into his ear: “You’re her latest lamb, I suppose?” Before Michael could respond, Purissima clapped her hands: “Quick, quick. Bring her round. I will make a bed for her, I will fetch herbs.”
She disappeared with a swish of her skirts.
“Fucking herbs!” said Günter. “Mumbo jumbo. It’s medievalism, it’s the jester’s fucking cap and bells round the ankle… know what I mean?” His hairy loins and swinging scrotum trotted off as he sought out some shade at the bottom of the garden under overhanging trees.
Ariel climbed out of the Transit with infinite care, as if she had a razor blade lodged in her innards. “Give me your hand.”
They stumbled round the white wooden house, along burgeoning flowerbeds. At the back, a tourist bed had already been placed in the middle of a large rose garden. Purissima returned with a basket of ointments and immediately began helping Ariel out of her sweat-soaked clothes, rubbing rose oil into her scalp and neck. Michael stood indecisively at her side, wanting to help but not quite knowing what to do. He sat down in the grass, watching, not speaking. An hour passed, then Purissima took his arm and whispered, more slowly now:
“Come inside with me. She must sleep.” As they made their way back to the house, she continued: “They’ve retreated slightly. Confused. Rose oil has a restorative effect on the system. The massage has to be repeated every four hours. But you have to stay away from her. Do not touch her, do you understand? Keep your filthiness away from my precious love.”
“Will she die?”
“One day we all die; even you. We leave our precious skins on the floor, we step out of the cage and we’re free.”
“When… will she die?” he persevered.
“Oh, when her time comes.” She raised her sharp little fist and shook it in front of Michael’s chin, then stalked off with a muttered curse.
Later, Michael tracked down Günter, who was sitting with his back to them, looking out over the lavender fields. “Sorry if I don’t turn round,” said Günter. “The wind is right in my face. I’m in lavender heaven.”
“No, no… I only came to ask…”
“You want to know what’s happening. Okay. It’s really not much more than a grand tragedienne mystifying what any fool could see. Drop a lump of shit from a very great height and watch what happens next.”
“Who are you Günter? I’d like to know.”
“I can tell you but it will take a little time.”
“Could you annotate?”
“I like you when you’re sarcastic, Michael; it’s so much better than your shocked-little-boy act. You should really cultivate sarcasm.” His black dog-lips parted in what one might choose to see as a smile. “Very well, for you I will annotate,” he said.
11.
“I was a weak-spirited young man,” said Günter. “In myself I had nothing, I was born with a love of my mother’s breast and I did not move beyond this love of the breast. I grew up in East Germany. In those days it was a brutal place; there was every opportunity for weak persons to be decorated with medals and insignia as a way of labeling themselves, quickly and conveniently explaining their status and identity. Even when I was a boy, they put me in a uniform and taught me to shoot and march. A private has to salute more or less any scum in uniform, signifying that he respects the other person’s rank and defers to him. This is about as low as human life can get, Michael. We were all very keen on it in those days, everyone had to have a label on him, thank Christ they hadn’t invented bar codes yet… we would have spent our whole fucking lives going through scanners.”
“What period are you in?”
“After the war,” said Günter. “I am talking about myself and I am annotating.”
“You must be old, then?”
“Old. Yes, I am old. You can’t see my age in my face, but you wouldn’t have recognized me back then, either. I was very fond of marching about and saluting as soon as I saw some shit coming along with polished boots and vodka on his breath and his red nose stuck up in the air. People were big on sticking their noses in the air; they felt they were very important and had to tell everyone about it.” His eyes blinked intently. “You know, I think it’s the main reason why Marx came up with his socialist claptrap. The workers in their lumpy old clogs must have got pissed off in the end when the haughty ones came marching past in their shiny boots, waving their brand new guns. Jealousy, I think it’s the only human emotion.”
“You were going to tell me who you were, Günter.”
“One needs a bit of de
tail to do it properly. I could tell you about a section of wall I had to guard. People always think all the guards were posted around the fucking Brandenburg Gate, but most of us were stuck in some god-awful village full of stinking peasants. We lived on sauerkraut and sausage; we felt it was good enough for us, as long as it was meat we felt we were doing all right. The only good part was I had a decent girlfriend. She was a cook in a hospital canteen; she used to iron my clothes and make porridge in the evenings. I don’t know where she was from, she must have been Armenian or something, she squelched like mud in the bedroom but I couldn’t get her pregnant however hard I tried. Later I realised she was a maggot girl. Little bitch filled me with them too; then she died. I went over the fence after that, claimed political asylum and hitchhiked down to Rome. It didn’t take me long to hang up my uniform and join a religious order. I was a novice for a few years. The rest is history.”
“You know Günter, I’m starting to suspect you of being a bit of a liar.”
“Oh, I am. Lying is what one has to do if one wants to convince people of anything. Even history is a lie; it’s a massive constructed lie. Religion is the hugest lie of them all.”
“No wonder they turned you into a dog. I would have turned you into a something strange, like an anteater.”
“The only truth,” said Günter, “is that air comes in and out of your nostrils.”
Across the garden Ariel was once again being massaged by Purissima.
“Is her time up?” said Michael.
“Oh, she has time enough. Time we have. Life we don’t have,” said Günter. “Speed is not something I admire anyway. Speed is a rejection of everything I like; a love of speed may even be a disease of sorts. I’d like to dissect the brains of people who like motorbikes. For the good of the human race. I mean turn them into medical research.”
“Is this your idea of annotation?”
Günter looked at him with narrowing eyes. “There is something about you that surprises me, Michael. You seem quite small, but once you open your mouth, one begins to sense there’s more substance.”
