The Maggot People (3 page)

By now they'd reached the hinterland of the village. Walking up the main street towards the square, they seemed to be forcing their way through a tangle of staring eyes. A group of builders outside the wine cooperative elbowed each other and winked knowingly. Ever since Ariel's arrival they had been sharpening their knives, assessing and weighing up her thighs, buttocks, and breasts as if she were a Christmas sow. The two old madams in the ice cream shop stared at them with their usual bleak disapproval and horror.

Outside, Michael tried not to look as Ariel licked her ice cream.

“Michael. I'm nothing special, you know, so don't start fantasizing about me. I've had a hard life. I've got nothing to show for it except a rusty old van, a dysfunctional dog, and nowhere to go.”

“Will you come back? Have lunch with me?”

“Where do you live?”

“There.” Michael pointed to a big gray stone house across the square.

“Oh, God… looks like an old hornet's nest.”

“There's one only hornet left now, and he's lost his sting,” said Michael.

They crossed the emptying lunchtime square, bathed in strong, liquid light. Michael led her into his front yard, past the rusty car, through a stand of nettles growing in calcified manure. The house had a kind of infested charm. If you could ignore the years of neglect (but you couldn't) and if you could forget about the smell of depression (but you couldn't), it was really a quaint old charming house deep in Provence where nothing—not even time—would ever change anything.

He called out over his shoulder: “I've been here a few years, can't think where else to go.”

She strode ahead of him into the house. He directed her into the kitchen and decided not to take her upstairs to show her the sad warren of neglected bedrooms with sunken beds, soggy plaster, and water-stained prints of the Madonna.

Ariel stopped in front of the painting of the mountain. “This I like,” she said and seemed relieved that she had found one thing that pleased her. She pointed, finding the tiny smudge of the girl in the window, leaning out to fix something to the washing line. “I like the girl. I'd like to know her name.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise she's just a figment of your imagination. Do you mind if we eat on the porch? In case I need to leave in a hurry.”

He knocked up some
vichyssoise
, which they had cold with crisp white wine and fresh bread with a good strong goat's cheese. They sat on the stone steps and ate in silence. He was uncomfortable: even a monosyllabic exchange seemed beyond him.

Ariel put down her half-finished plate and stretched. “Delicious. And don't worry about not speaking. It's utterly overrated, this constant pitter-patter of words. Drives you nuts. Most of it doesn't even mean anything. It's fear.”

Michael thought about putting on some music, but once again she seemed to have an eerie ability to preempt him. “Listening to Leonard Cohen in a haunted house can drive a person to suicide. Especially
Avalanche.”

“I always listen to Leonard Cohen. I
love
that song.”

“That's what I mean.” She stood up. “I always find there's something sinister about other people's houses. Let's go to my place?”

“Your house is far more sinister than mine.”

“Subjectivity will be the death of us.”

4
.

They made their way through the narrow streets past the church immodestly covered in threadbare stucco and across the main highway with a sprinkling of traffic in the early afternoon sun. With relief they put civilization behind them and took the sandy track through the pine woods to the dunes and the ever-fresh sea.

By the time they stopped he had broken into a sweat.

Ariel was cool as porcelain in his hands but she wriggled out of his grip.

“You're fast; that's good. I mean I've known
faster
, but you're not bad,” she said, slightly flustered.

“You're quite fast yourself.”

“Waiting is pointless. Pursuit is also pointless.”

Below her bungalow, intrepid bathers had put up parasols on the blinding white beach. A few of them were standing in the water, partially submerged, mostly looking out to the horizon as if puzzled by this expanse that stood in their way.

Ariel ran into the sea, diving athletically into a wave. He followed her and caught up with her under the water. Her skin had a lubricated quality a little like a dolphin, he imagined. They kissed fleetingly as they surfaced, but again she pulled away.

“All right, then,” she said, slightly wearied by foregone conclusions. “Shall we go back to my place?

Without waiting for his answer, she waded back.

Inside the beach house it was dark as pitch. Ariel fumbled for a dusty floor-lamp and turned it on.

“Wouldn't it be easier to pull up a shutter?”

“They're nailed down.”

Michael scanned the place, but there wasn't much to see. Cheap composite furniture. A bookcase empty but for a dusty Bible, a conch shell inscribed with the name “Santiago” in red ink, and a mangy, stuffed bee-eater with a plastic maggot in its beak.

Ariel followed his eyes. “I like that bird a lot; he's got style,” she said.

She filled the espresso maker and they went outside to sit at the rusty metal table under the fruit trees. Dusk was setting in.

She disappeared briefly round the corner, returning with a hammock dragging along the ground behind her like a huge dead octopus. After hooking it onto two ready-made fastenings round the trees, she fetched the coffee spluttering angrily from inside the house and lay down in the hammock whilst balancing her cup in her hand. Michael climbed in beside her.

“I feel bad about this,” said Ariel. “I ought to make you a sandwich and send you home. Not because I don't like you; I do like you. But it might be better for you if you just stay clear of me.”

He frowned: “Why, what's wrong with you?”

“I'm bad news. At least I'm honest about it. Some people pretend they're good but they're just waiting for the opportunity to bury a knife in your spine!”

They kissed for a while, until they heard the gruff, depressive voice of the Alsatian, still slumped under the metal table: “Ariel, just get this over with, will you? So we can go to Rome and get back to normal.”

Ariel lifted her head: “You're such a conformist; I suppose it's your Austrian nature coming out. Let me ask you something, Günter. You think I've got nothing better to do than spend my time sleeping in a box?”

“Who's asking for your opinion?” said the dog.

Michael came close to a nervous attack but he controlled himself.

Ariel got up abruptly and went inside.

He lay there for a while after she had gone, staring at the dark entrance, an angular slit cut into the white façade. He had to take a deep breath before crossing the threshold.

She was in the bedroom by the window where the blind was slightly raised, allowing a smidgeon of light to come through.

“We don't have much time,” she said. “I never stay anywhere longer than a month. People are trying to find me and I don't want them to.”

He looked at her, uneasy again. “Who?”

“Oh, a lot of thugs with a horrible attitude.”

“Criminals?”

“No,
brutes
. My life is a nightmare, Michael. Either it's brutes hunting me down or pedants boring me to death.”

Struggling with his confusion, he lunged forward. In an instant they'd fallen back into the bed, Ariel with her back to him, and he pushing into her with slow, circling movements. She pressed her strangely cool body against his. He could not have pulled away even if he'd wanted to, so intense was her gravitation. Yet he also had a weird notion that Ariel was releasing her essence into him—a sort of reversion. Where this thought came from he did not know; it disturbed him greatly.

“Thank you,” he groaned into her ear, flooding with huge relief as he felt himself being released.

“For what?” she said, lying on her stomach and resting her head on his chest. “You fool; you rabbit fool. Why don't you put your feet on the ground? Breathe.”

Again he noted her coolness. He touched her skin, amazed at her prodigious energy.

“You're right,” he said. “I have to get out of here. I have to stop playing the fool.”

“Don't. I like them,” she said, adding a sleepy afterthought: “I don't like rabbits much, though.” She paused. “You can come with us if you like. We're leaving for Switzerland. We know someone up there, she'll take care of us.”

Possibly he slept for a while. He was unsure what the time was; his watch had no luminous dials and the room was so dark that only by closing his eyes could he ward off a sense of panic. Even the air was a dusty maelstrom reluctantly drawn into one's lungs.

“Oh good, you're back,” Ariel whispered. “I had a dream: you and me were standing on a mountain looking down on a huge city. It filled the whole valley; there were roads and lights and buildings climbing almost the whole way up to the summit. Then a wave washed in from the sea. At first I thought, oh look, what a big wave. But it kept growing. It picked things up and carried them away. Boats, cars, buildings. People as well; they linked arms in the water and they were singing as the waters carried them along. The water kept rising, one couldn't see anything except the water rising. It was sliding by at an incredible speed. I remember there were clouds overhead also passing quite swiftly across the sky, but in the opposite direction. It was a frightening illusion; I mean it wasn't really an illusion, it was actually happening. All the earth and sky were just water and air rushing by while we stood there on a tiny piece of rock. I kept wanting to climb higher, but you kept touching my arm and telling me there was nowhere higher than this, there was nowhere else to climb to. The water was tugging at our ankles. I was terrified. Then it started receding; there was nothing left beneath. As it sank away I only saw black earth, bare wet earth with nothing alive on it, not so much as an earthworm wriggling or a fish left in a hollow; there weren't even any hollows or rocks. Everything was swept clean.”

“Then what happened?”

5
.

When he woke, a limpid sea breeze had cooled the land. A big crustaceous moon was cranking itself up from behind the dunes, appearing momentarily in the gap of the broken blind. He raised himself onto his elbow to look at Ariel, who was sleeping deeply. Her body seemed to be churning from inside, as if having an epileptic seizure. Muscles under her skin were tensing, rippling across her face and body in tight spasms.

He watched for a while, wondering what he should do.

Without warning, the seizure stopped and she opened her eyes and said, very brightly: “Oh, what a lovely sleep.”

“What was that? Are you epileptic or something?”

“Don't worry; it's normal. It only happens at night.”

“It looked painful.” He paused, then added: “It never happened to me, that's for sure.”

“How can you know?” she said, with a smile. “I mean… if you're asleep?” She lit a candle and sat there in silence, scrutinizing him again. “Can I tell you something? Your health isn't as good as you think. You have a small tumor growing on your liver.”

“Any other defects?”

“I'm quite serious. You should listen to me.”

“All women say that.”

“I'm not really a woman in the proper sense of the word.”

“I don't know how you can say that.”

“No. You don't.”

A few big breakers came in; he heard them churning against the sandbar. The sound was ominous—the distant music of a dream where anything could happen.

“Yesterday,” said Ariel, “when I asked you to take me for an ice cream, I thought I'd give you the chance of deciding what you really thought of me.”

“I knew that before we even spoke.”

“I wouldn't have minded if you didn't like me. I'm not petty like that. If people don't like me, that's up to them.”

He shrugged, slightly puzzled, then put his arm round her as if to reassure her. She snuggled close and they slept until sunrise. But as soon as he opened his eyes, the conversation continued where it had left off. Ariel was already there, waiting for him.

“You're one of us now. You do realize that?” she whispered.

“One of who?”

“Last night when I said your world would change, I really meant it. Literally. It's changed already. As I was saying, there's a tumor on your liver. You probably wouldn't have noticed it for another eight or nine months. By then it would have been too late, cancers are very aggressive nowadays. Humans are poisoning their world and they don't realize they are also poisoning themselves. Anyway. By this time next week the tumor will be gone. In fact, you won't have a liver at all.”

Michael felt himself grow heavy as he looked at Ariel, her soft intimate eyes, her tumbling hair spilling over her shoulders.

“Oh, dear God,” he said, sitting up abruptly. “I've been such an idiot.”

“Why?”

He looked at her. “I'm going to tell you the story of my family. Okay? It's a very sad story so I'll keep it short. Dwelling on it won't improve things, I mean. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Suicide. Arsenic. Disinheritance. Obsession with money. Financial ruin. Broken hearts. Mad people spreading unhappiness all round them.”

“Sounds like any other family to me,” said Ariel chirpily. “And? What's your point?”

“And I want to finish with the whole thing. That's all.”

Smooth as a snake, she sat up, slowly uncoiling her limbs and eyeing him with an expanding smile as if she meant to swallow him whole. He thought: you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, but you're mad, mad, mad. And I should have seen it; I should have avoided it!