“You want to come?”
“What for?”
“I know some nice people in Marseilles; they cut me open with a razor blade, put about five kilos of heroin inside me. They pay well. And they give you false papers.” She stared hard at him, as if to impress on him the importance of such things.
“Did you know, Michael, there are hundreds of people in France like you and me?”
“I didn’t.”
“Our life expectancy is around two years. Most go to the doctor and get killed off. The rest try to stick it out, spread the seed around, pander to the little black-heads… then they die anyway. A very small elite end up doing what I do.”
He noticed her use of the word “elite”—there was an element of pride in it, and self-inflation.
“What do you do?”
“You’re very lucky, I think I’m going to show you. Because of Ariel and Günter.”
That night they slept like brother and sister in her bed, in her blowup room — their dawdling hosts pacified by their high intake of heroin. In the morning they shared a cup of tea and a banana, then sat quietly thinking for a few moments, smoking a pack of cigarettes between them.
Midmorning a man in a dirty tracksuit came to photograph Michael. He announced he’d be back later with a passport.
They spent the rest of the morning shooting up.
At midday the new passport arrived by motorcycle courier. Janine slit Michael’s belly open. The courier, a hollow-chested asthmatic with a smoldering joint in his mouth, did not recoil at the sight of the churning sea of maggots. He placed a heavy-duty foil bag on top of the seething mass and unceremoniously slapped the skin back in place. Within minutes, Michael was sealed up again with no scars and no lumps. Just a perfectly flat stomach.
They got on a train to Marseilles, then took a cab to the towering ferry in the harbor. Michael stood with Janine on deck, watching the tiered city basking in the late evening glow. Everything seemed perfect and dead as the great humming ship slipped its moorings and glided out.
16
Janine had booked a super-luxury cabin with a bedroom and separate sitting room. Ensconced in a comfortable if slightly plasticized sofa, they had a fine view of the sea through a big, salt-stained window.
To ease their passage, they had bought two bottles of Black Label, two of Courvoisier, two hundred cigarettes each, and more bananas. (Maggots have a liking for bananas — they’re basic starch.)
After a calm night, the ship docked sedately the following morning, and they wasted no time in hiring a car and driving into Cagliari, where they made their delivery and walked away with more cash than Michael had ever seen. Apparently cash would no longer be of primary importance to him. It was nothing but printed paper to be stuffed into his wallet and carelessly flung about when he needed something.
Janine seemed in excellent spirits as they emerged from the slightly down-at-heel apartment block (having just transferred their contraband into the grasping hands of a small-time villain).
“Come on, mister,” she purred at Michael. “I’ve already saved your life and made you a pile of money; now I’m also going to make you immortal. Which means a short trip to St. Helena to meet the Mama.”
“The Mama? Who the hell is that?”
“Oh, just the greatest stoner this planet has ever known. Once you’re with her you’ll never have to ask yourself again who you are or what your life’s about. She’ll tell you.”
“I should probably think about it,” he said, remembering Günter’s words about never trusting anyone.
“The man who thinks, deceives his own desires. Mama told me that.”
Janine drove inland from the rocky coast by Olbia, skirting inactive volcanoes, threading through hilltop villages. They saw a great number of ruined stone towers, and Michael reflected that there must have been a great civilization here once, though its people had failed, somehow, for they were all dead.
Slowly the landscape flattened out as they reached the western shore not far from Oristano. Towards midday they arrived at a covered black gate, with surveillance cameras on both sides peering down at them.
They sat waiting until the gates swung open.
Three or four hundred meters down a winding drive there was a slight incline towards an expansive terra-cotta roof partially hidden behind juniper trees. On the other side, the sea’s horizon lay stretched like a massive, slightly curved rim. The courtyard was neatly swept but the banks on either side of the drive were overgrown with knotty, climbing geraniums that were more like small trees.
The door opened ahead of them, revealing a statuesque black maid in a pinafore dress — an emanation of the old Dixie South, practically singing a cotton-picking song as she stepped aside and let them through: “Just in time. She’s getting impatient.”
Janine lengthened her strides. “And what’s happening?”
“Not much. Elvira brought some fresh people up, she found them in Olbia; they’re all hopelessly in love already. Engorged. They don’t know what’s going on, but they’re up for an orgy.” The maid turned round and gave Michael a pointed look. “Don’t mind my getup,” she said. “It’s Mama’s idea of fun. She likes to put people down.”
As they followed the maid’s hips down a long, padded corridor, Michael poked Janine in the side. “What is this place?”
“A convent.”
“It doesn’t seem like a convent to me.”
“That’s the thing…” she said, with a wink.
They walked into a circular room with a bamboo-covered ceiling. At the center of it, encircled by a large group of white-robed chanting followers, sat a woman, a hawk-nosed late-fifties apparition, thin as a wishbone with hair so tightly pinned back that it looked more like a swimming cap. Her protruding eyes revolved back into place in her skull as soon as she grew aware of them, and seemed to linger on him especially. Michael had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being summarized or reduced in some way, and when she spoke he was slightly nauseated by the fastidiousness of her presence:
“Ah good. Janine. I was waiting for you. I don’t like to wait.”
“I’m so sorry, Mama,” said Janine with exaggerated politeness and flopped down on a cushion, motioning for Michael to do the same. “I found this stray in Marseilles, hounded by the police. We weren’t followed.”
Mama seemed to find this amusing. “Really, Janine. Someone is always following us, don’t you know?”
“Well, yes, if you put it like that, Mama,” said Janine, clearing her throat. “We delivered two kilos to a Russian client in Cagliari.” She got out her bundles of money neatly held together by rubber bands and passed them across to Mama. Michael did the same. Mama casually weighed the dough in her hands, then threw it in a bag and called for the pinafore-wearing maid, who came across the cushions in her high heels and took it away.
When it seemed they could no longer bear the silence, Mama opened her mouth wide and began to chant once again in a plaintive voice:
Oh cruel world, for too long have we waited here, for too long have we felt the lack of you, the hollow of you.
No love for us and no making of love. Lord, how can we survive in this shadow?
The congregation joined in:
Lord, hear our prayer, feed our despairing hearts. Give us peace now and tomorrow… Amen.
Once the ceremony was over, the cant and ritual was immediately discarded. Mama Maggot stood up and clapped her hands. “We break for tea!” she announced.
Twenty or thirty individuals — all waiting for this signal — bounced to their feet and hurried off like pupils released by the bell, flinging their white robes untidily into a small anteroom. Michael and Janine followed suit.