I’m alive. But does my life really matter at all?
What the hell am I doing here?
All day he idled on a disused roof: Cannes lay in disordered profusion all round, palm trees in the squares, café tables invading the pavements, cars parked profusely along the narrow lanes. From the rooftop he also had an excellent view of the Transit, smeared with starling droppings, skulking in the shade of a palm tree. Police technicians had been at the scene since mid-morning, putting up a screen and cordoning off the entire area. They removed all of its contents in black plastic bin liners. A flatbed truck came and picked up the whole damned thing with a pneumatic arm, then drove away.
Later that afternoon, Michael went to find the woman Günter had tipped him off about.
Janine’s apartment lay right above a busy restaurant with outside tables in a little flowery square with an ugly, squat war memorial and trickling fountain. As he approached he saw her on the first-floor balcony, basking in the sun like a daubed tropical bird on its nest — wearing an unbuttoned camouflage-pattern boiler suit and a turquoise bikini top encrusted with rhinestones. She peered down at him over the balcony railing, a tall glass of what looked like a Campari soda in her hand. Most of her face was hidden behind a pair of outsized, mirrored sunglasses. “Who are you and what do you want?” she called out before he’d even got close to the doorbell.
He looked up. “I got your details from Günter. He’s a four-footed guy from Rome. Excommunicated.”
She looked frightened and dropped her voice. “Oh, come on! I don’t know you, I don’t know him. Just because I live above a restaurant people think they can hit on me.”
“I only want to come inside for a few minutes. If I’d come to arrest you I would have brought a friend.” He opened his jacket to indicate he was not wearing a holster.
Her shades glittered down at him for a full minute. He waited for her decision. A police siren edged closer. Stepping into the recessed doorway, he pressed himself against the wall. The door buzzed and he quickly pushed it open and moved into the cool gloom, standing there waiting for his imaginary pulse to slow down.
The door squeezed itself shut behind him and he walked up the single flight.
Janine was waiting for him in the doorway, then, without a word, showed him into an apartment almost entirely devoid of furniture. She was clearly a big believer in blowup cushions and paper lanterns. The only thing of substance in there was a leather briefcase, large and fat and black. Everything else was inflatable.
He stepped into the living room, steeped in the sort of silence that follows a hastily evacuated party. Palls of smoke rose erectly from cigarettes left in scattered ashtrays, and six blue Siamese kittens sitting in line fixed him with their blue eyes until one of them made a rash attack on a cushion, which deflated with a hissing sound.
Janine turned to Michael. “This won’t take a minute.” Then, calling out towards the back of the adjoining room: “Take him!” Two men charged out, sending the kittens scurrying in all directions. One of them pinned him down, the other used a pair of box-cutters to slice into his stomach. Michael kept his mouth shut, fearing that they might shoot him if he resisted. Peering down, what he saw would have made him retch if he had guts to retch with. His abdomen was open like a bowl of fruit: white warm maggots were squirming, wild to get out of the light.
Janine breathed out. “He’s maggot. Close him up.”
They folded the skin back and it quickly sealed itself. Janine gave them a nod and they withdrew without a word into the back room. Once they were out of sight there were two metallic clicks — not of guns, but beer cans.
Janine sat down with a sharp squeak on one of her cushions. “Okay, so you’re maggot. Doesn’t mean very much, I have to say. Anyone could be maggot.”
She took off her sunglasses and with a fluid movement removed what proved to be a wig. Beneath, she was clean-shaven with pale eyes like jeans washed too many times. “Sit down.” She nodded at a plastic cube and he eased himself into it. “So why are you here? I can’t possibly trust you. You could be anyone…”
“I’m not. I was locked up in the hospital but I got out. I did what Ariel said. She got me out. That’s all. She didn’t believe it either at first. We drove towards Chamonix to see Purissima, but Ariel died.” His voice grew tremulous. “I think her poison got to her. She picked a very hard one for herself.”
“No one picks their poison,” said Janine. “The poison picks you and then we blame it on the maggot. The waste remains and kills you in the end.” She stared bleakly at him. “I knew Ariel. I didn’t know she’d crossed over, though. And of course Günter with his dirty ass. He used to be a monk, except he was always causing a stink. In the end he pissed off a few bigwigs. They decided to have some fun with him, so they had his brain transplanted into a maggot-dog.”
Michael shrugged. “Okay, that explains it.”
“And you?”
“I told you. I came here to find you. I wouldn’t mind a drink if you’ve got one.”
“I think we’ll go out and have one. I’d rather not be a sitting duck in this apartment.” She stood up and went to a plastic bag, from which she dug out another wig for him and a change of shirt and trousers. “Put these on.”
While he was kitting himself out, she took a syringe and injected herself. Twenty minutes later they were sitting on the wall of the promenade staring out over the darkening sea whilst smoking cigarettes and swigging from a bottle of red wine. He watched her profile for a little longer than he had to. She didn’t turn her head, just sat quietly and consented to being scrutinized.
“Those guys in your apartment? Are they working for you?”
She swung round and said, with ferocity, “Are you interrogating me?” There was a lull, just long enough for Janine to glance up and down the promenade and then discreetly inject herself again before refocusing on Michael, with a raised eyebrow.
“In case you think I’m a drug addict, I should make it clear I’m not. And I’m not into sex either.”
“No drugs and no love. What do you live for, then?”
She looked straight at him for the first time. “I live for nothing,” she said. “And it works just fine for me.”
“In the long run we’re all dead. Who said that?”
“Fuck Keynes and whatever he said. Fuck Hitler, fuck Mussolini in his pressed uniforms, fuck Stalin and his vodka and moustache, fuck the paranoid Zionists and their hatred for the Arab, fuck fucking Milton Friedman, fuck postmodernism, fuck the Nobel Prize. Fuck Mahatma Gandhi and fuck the Chinese, fucking yellow-bellied naifs with their love of dollars, fuck the bandana warmongers with their AK-47s, fuck Tony Blair and his entourage of middle-class masturbators, fuck Sarkozy and his tight-assed out-of-tune wife…” She stopped. “I’m a student, that’s what people don’t get about me. And a sister.”
“A sister?”
“Of God, my friend. Of God. Ever heard of Mary Magdalene?” Janine cut herself short and smiled at him. “What’s your poison?” she asked. “You seem to think it’s alcohol, but that’s too brutal for you, Michael. I have a feeling your poison is religion.”
“I’m not religious.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’d put money on it. That’s your poison.”
“You’ve had too much heroin.”
“Probably.” She looked at him, weighing it all up, then took the plunge. “Ever been to Sardinia, brother?”
“Now you’re asking me questions.”