Ritual.

"Les haricots sont pas sale," the woman sang, as they walked across to the elevator.

Charlie was opening the decorative sliding elevator gate. He turned when he heard the women singing and said, "What was that?"

"Just a song, monsieur."

"Charlie?" Robyn frowned.

"I don"t know," said Charlie. "Not only am I suffering from deja vu, I"m suffering from deja etoute."

Robyn kissed him as the elevator rose up to the fourth floor. "It"s all this Cajun French. It"s having an effect on your brain."

Charlie checked his watch. It was almost four o"clock. Robyn saw what he was doing and covered the face of his watch with her hand. "Don"t think about it," she said, with great gentleness. "Don"t think about it until you have to."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The rain had cleared by nine o"clock but the streets were still steamy and wet, so that the lights of Bourbon Street glistened and gleamed on the sidewalks and on the rooftops of pa.s.sing cars and brightly in the eyes of those who had come to listen to jazz, or those who had come to eat at Begue"s or Mike Anderson"s, or those who had come simply to gawp, or to score.

Against his will, Robyn had made Charlie sleep for two hours during the afternoon, and then join her downstairs in the St Victoir"s restaurant for a meal of blackened redfish and rice, with ice-cold beer. There were two musicians playing under the single large palm that dominated the St Victoir"s old-fashioned dining rooms: a toothless old black man of about eighty playing a fiddle and a pale, pimply boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen sitting on a stool and playing a piano accordion. They played several Cajun complaintes, with the boy singing in a high, weird voice. Then they played "Les Haricots Sont Pas Sale" which was the song that had given Zydeco music its name - les haricots repeated over and over until it was slurred. Charlie had the feeling that he had woken up in the wrong century, on the wrong continent.

He had checked his watch at a quarter to nine, and given Robyn a tight, anxious smile. "Time I was going," he told her. She had reached across the table and taken hold of his hand and said, "Take care. Just remember that whatever happens, you"ve got somebody to come back to."

They walked together to the corner of Royal Street. Then Charlie kissed her and made his way along the crowded side- 219.

walks to Elegance Street. The little courtyard was lit by a single 19205 lamp standard, and from the main street it was impossible to see the gates of the Church of the Angels. Charlie hesitated for a moment, listening to the noise of traffic and laughter and music, and then walked through the shadows until he reached the gates. He pulled the bell and waited. He wore only a lightweight grey tweed jacket, a short-sleeved shirt, and a pair of pale grey slacks, but he still felt sweaty and hot. He heard a clock strike nine; he heard a jet scratch the sky. They were like his last reminders of the real world.

The man with the black hood and the hair like j.a.panese rice noodles appeared so suddenly and so close to the gate that he made Charlie jump. "You are very punctual, Mr Fielding," he remarked. "You"d better come on in."

Charlie thought: This is it. This is the moment of decision. I can back out noa> if I want to. But then he thought of Martin. He thought not only of the Martin he had come to know in the past few days, before the Celestines got hold of him, but the Martin he had known on his rare visits back home, when he was small. Suddenly, a dozen images of Martin that he had long forgotten came crowding back to him, and by the time the man in the black hood had shot back the bolts and unlocked the locks, he was ready to go, carried on a floodtide of emotional memories.

The man made a noisy performance of relocking all the locks and rebolting all the bolts. Then he said to Charlie, "Come this way," and led him across a courtyard that was so dark that Charlie could see where he was going only by the faint gleam of wetness on the paving stones. Soon, however, they reached the back of a large old house, which Charlie guessed must have fronted on to Royal Street, although where and how he couldn"t quite work out. It was three storeys high, with black-painted cast-iron balconies, and black shuttered windows from which no light penetrated whatsoever. The man in the black hood led Charlie up a flight of stone steps to the front door.

"This house has quite a history," he remarked, as he produced a key and turned it in the lock. "It was originally built by Micaela Almonester de Pontalba, who also built the Pontalba buildings on Jackson Square. It was said that she had a secret admirer, and this was the house she built for their romantic trysts."

"Interesting location for a church," said Charlie.

The hooded man said nothing, but admitted Charlie to the hallway. Charlie was immediately struck by the smell, which reminded him strongly of Le Reposoir. It was a curious blend of herbs, and cooking, and dead flowers, and something else besides which was unidentifiable but slightly unsettling. The smell not of death but of pain.

The hallway was decorated with a mustard-coloured dado and wallpaper that looked as if it had been chosen from the Sears catalogue of 1908. A chandelier of black cast iron had a dozen bulbs but gave out very little light. There was a heavy bow-fronted bureau, with a black bronze statue of Pope Cel-estine on it, lifting his hand in benediction. The man in the black hood led Charlie up to a pair of double doors, and said, "You are about to meet the chief Guide and his council of Guides. The chief Guide here is Neil Fontenot. Some of the council you may recognize. But the etiquette among the Celestines is for members not to acknowledge each other"s existence outside of the church. Your friend probably told you that."

Charlie gave him a quick-dissolving smile.

"Very well, then," said the man, and opened up the doors.

Inside, there was a large plain room in which a dozen middle-aged men sat at a long mahogany dining table. The dining table had been polished so deeply for so many years that the men sitting on the opposite side of it were reflected upside down from the waist, so that they looked like kings and knaves on playing cards. The men were dressed in long black robes, with hoods cast back. As Charlie and his escort entered, 220.

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they were all looking attentively towards the far end of the room, where a tall man with a cadaverous face was reading the Bible from a lectern.

In a rich, resonant voice, he was reading the Parable of the Dinner, in which a man invited his friends to eat with him, only to be met with repeated excuses and refusals. "And the master said to his slave, "Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame. Compel them to come in, that my house be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.""

The chief Guide raised his head, and said, "What do we learn from that? That Jesus believed in our divine mission. That Jesus taught us to fulfill our hunger. And what is our hunger? The real hunger, to which most men dare not confess. The hunger for the body; the hunger for blood. The hunger for the only food of which man is worthy. Were we ever supposed to eat pigs? The Jews say no! Were we ever supposed to eat cattle? The Hindus say no! My friends, when you read the New Testament today and consider the words of Jesus, you know in your hearts that there is only one true way.

"For what did he say at the Last Supper? He said, "this is My body, given for you; do this for a commemoration of Me," and he said, "This cup is the new testament in My blood.""

At last, the chief Guide turned to Charlie. He smiled, and came over, extending a long-fingered right hand. "My friend. Welcome to the Church of the Angels. Xavier told me that you were coming."

"I feel like I"m interrupting," said Charlie.

"Interrupting? Of course not! We are always pleased to greet new members. I understand from what Xavier told me that you used to have a friend who was a Celestine?"

Charlie gave an equivocal shrug. "I never really knew what they were. All I know is, Michael was happy. Well - we called him Michael. I think his real name was Michel."

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M. Fontenot draped his arm around Charlie"s shoulders, and led him down to the head of the table. There was a large mole on M. Fontenot"s right cheek, and his nose was peppered with blackheads. He said affably, "Your friend Michael was a Devotee, was he?"

"Charlie said, That"s right, a Devotee."

"And are you fully aware what happened to him?"

Charlie glanced around. "Can I say it here?"

"Of course you can," smiled M. Fontenot. "Openly." He looked around at the other Guides a.s.sembled at his table and beamed in the way that a father beams at other fathers when his son has said something cute.

Charlie said, "The fact is, Michel told me everything that he was going to do. He said he was going to eat his own body, as much as he could, and that was the way to find Jesus."

"And now you want to find Jesus in the same way?" M. Fontenot asked. The Guides at the table broke out into spontaneous but ragged applause.

Charlie nodded his head in what he hoped looked like idiotic acknowledgement. "Michel said it was the only way. Michel said that if you wanted to follow Jesus, you had to do whatever Jesus did. What was the very last thing that Jesus did, before He was arrested and tried and crucified? He ate His own body and His own blood. And that was His secret! The secret that gave Him eternal life, the secret that n.o.body else understands. That"s what Michel told me, anyway."

M. Fontenot took hold of Charlie"s hand, and said, intently, "Yes! Yes! And that is why they call us the Celestines, the Heavenly Ones. Those who are chosen by G.o.d. Because only the Celestines understand what you have to do to sit at the right hand of Jesus. You have to devour the flesh of your own creation. That is the secret of winning G.o.d"s approval. And that is the secret of everlasting contentment and perfect peace. "I am the bread of life," that"s what Jesus said. "Eat me," that"s what Jesus said. And Jesus ate the bread and drank the 223.

wine, too. Jesus devoured his own body and his own blood, and that was his way to heaven; just as ours is."

Charlie said, "I understand you"re close to some kind of big occasion."

M. Fontenot didn"t seem particularly pleased to have been interrupted. "Occasion? I"m sorry?"

"The sacred number. You"ve almost reached the sacred number. Isn"t that right?"

"Who told you that?" asked M. Fontenot, narrowing his eyes. He stared at Charlie for a moment, and then turned to the man in the black hood called Xavier. "Did you tell him that?"

Xavier shook his head. "Not me, M. Fontenot. But his friend was a Celestine, M. Fontenot. He knows what we do, and he"s sympathetic. Believe me - I think we can trust him. He"s not an FBI agent. We checked it this afternoon with FBI records. Quite apart from that, just look at him. He"s not exactly FBI material, is he?"

Charlie put in, "You can trust me, I promise. You want me to cut my throat and hope to die? Here, look - here"s my wallet. You can check me out as much as you like. Driver"s licence, credit cards. Here." He prayed that they wouldn"t actually look. "My friend was a Celestine; and I want to be one, too. Tell me - what else is there, in a world full of bombs and guns and ultimate weapons? To see G.o.d! To sacrifice yourself, and to see G.o.d! Don"t you think that"s the greatest trip of all?"

M. Fontenot seemed a little pained by the word "trip", but Charlie was fairly sure that he had already won him over. His evangelical enthusiasm had helped; but it was obviously far more important to the Celestines that he was a chef, and an experienced butcher. (Not that he was, of course; but he believed that he could keep on bluffing for long enough to rescue Martin.) M. Fontenot turned to Xavier and between them they had a 224.

short, whispered conversation. At length, Xavier said, "M. Fontenot is prepared to accept you as a Devotee, monsieur. However -" (and here he smiled as innocently as a small boy) "- he is anxious that you should be able to press your talents as a butcher into the service of the church; and for that reason he is asking you not to embark on your self-ingestion straight away. There will be need of many men with talents like yours when the Great Day comes, men who can quickly cut and prepare good meat, and he begs you not to start mutilating yourself until this Great Day is over."

Charlie tried to look as if this were a disappointment. He lifted his fingers in front of his face, and wiggled them, and said, "Oh, well, whatever you want. If you can tell me how I can serve the Lord some other way, some different way, then I"ll be listening."

M. Fontenot said, "You will be allowed one finger."

Charlie"s face tightened. "What did you say?"

"You will be allowed one finger. You can cut it off and cook it and eat it as soon as you wish."

In a brittle voice, Charlie said, "That seems kind of a small offering, don"t you think, for my initiation as a Devotee? Maybe I should wait until the Great Day is over. Then I can make a proper job of it and eat my whole arm."

M. Fontenot smiled at the other Guides, and some of them laughed. "If only all of our new Devotees had the same spirit!" he proclaimed.

But straight away he turned to Charlie, and said, "Now. You say you can butcher; you say you can cook. You say you are one of us. Xavier, bring me the knife. Bring me the pan, and the spirit-lamp. You like your flesh with herbs, monsieur? Xavier will bring you some fennel."

Charlie felt a p.r.i.c.kling surge of fright. "You want me to do it now?

M. Fontenot laid his arm encouragingly around Charlie"s shoulders. "We do what we can do to check the credentials of 225.

those who wish to join us. As you may have gathered, we have friends who give us access to the records of the FBI. But there is no simpler test of your faith and your good intentions than to have you take part in the sacred communion, the holy ingestion of your own flesh."

He lifted up his left hand and Charlie saw for the first time that two of his fingers were missing. His smile was like a deep crack in a dried-out cheese.

"People are either for us, Mr Fielding, or else they"re against us. There"s never two ways about it. So despite the fact that we"re a registered church, and despite the fact that we enjoy the patronage of some of the most influential men in the country, we still take care to protect ourselves against saboteurs and extremists and other ill-advised folk."

As he said this, Xavier came back into the room wheeling a small trolley draped with a white cloth, on which was embroidered in purple the Lamb of G.o.d and a crucifix made from two crossed keys. M. Fontenot beckoned to Xavier to wheel the trolley right up close, and then he nodded and said, "Thank you, Xavier." Charlie"s throat was as dry as gla.s.spaper and his heart was beating in huge, irregular b.u.mps.

"You may be feeling a number of things," said M. Fontenot. "You may be feeling elation. You may be feeling trepidation. But let me tell you this, if you"re afraid, you have no need to be. The human body is a miracle in itself. It has wonderful powers of self-healing. Why, I was reading just the other day that a man had his leg knocked off by a locomotive, and dragged himself two miles to look for help. And that was his leg we"re talking about. All you"re surrendering here this evening is your finger."

With a small flourish, M. Fontenot drew the white embroidered cloth away from the top of the trolley. Neatly laid out on the trolley"s stainless-steel top was a spirit-burner, of the kind used in restaurants to flambe steaks, two plain white plates, a gla.s.s bottle of what looked like olive oil, a small china 226.

r jar of fresh fennel leaves, a knife and a fork, a scalpel, and a small stainless-steel hacksaw. Neatly folded on the lower shelf of the trolley were three white towels, some gauze bandages, and some surgical adhesive tape.

Charlie tried to swallow. He wanted to say something but he was almost completely incapable of getting the words out. M. Fontenot said, "It"s the simplest act in the whole world, my friend. If your heart is in it, if your spirit is in it, your pain will be part of your joy. Believe me, we have brothers and sisters here who have to be restrained from cutting more from themselves that their nervous systems could tolerate; such is the holy joy they derive from self-amputation and self-inges-tion. Now - we will say a prayer for you, to welcome you into our church, while Xavier lights the burner."

Charlie thought: They"re going to kill your son, McLean. They"re going to kill Martin. One of your fingers is a pretty small price to pay for the whole of his life. But another voice inside of him said: This is going to be agony. This is going to be more thanyou can take. And just remember that it"s two days note since you last saa> Martin alive. They could have killed and eaten him already.

Xavier came forward and lit the burner - rather irreligiously, Charlie thought, with a flickering Zippo lighter. Xavier lifted the small copper chafing pan from the top of the burner, and adjusted the flame until it was hot and blue. Then he laid a folded white napkin on the table in front of Charlie, and beside it set the scalpel and the saw.

"Amputation is a simple matter," he murmured. "Feel where the lower joint of your chosen finger is, then cut through the skin with the scalpel until the bone is bared. Then use the saw. It will take you no more than a matter of moments."

"Please - sit," said M. Fontenot, and drew out a chair so that Charlie could sit down. All around the table, the Guides were smiling at him like old friends at a testimonial dinner. Charlie found their calmness and their good nature to be the most alarming part of the whole ritual.

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"I think we should remember the words of St Paul in his letter to the Romans," said M. Fontenot. "And, as we do so, we can join with our brother Daniel DuBois Fielding as he enters the order of the holiest of Popes, St Celestine."

Xavier took hold of Charlie"s left wrist and gently guided his left hand until it was lying on top of the white folded napkin. Then he took hold of his right wrist, and laid his right hand beside it. Into the open palm of Charlie"s right hand he pressed the scalpel. The ridged metal handle felt intensely cold. The triangular blade winked in the light from the chandelier.

""One man has faith that he may eat all things,"" M. Fontenot intoned. ""But he who is weak eats vegetables only. Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat, and let him who does not eat judge him who eats, for G.o.d has accepted him.""

Charlie spread the fingers of his left hand wide on the napkin. Which one do I choose? Not the index finger, that would cripple me. I"d never be able to use a typewriter again. What about my middle finger? That would be even more disfiguring.

"Are you prepared?" asked M. Fontenot. "Have faith, brother David. Do not hesitate. Hesitation may reveal you as one who does not truly believe."

Charlie glanced up at him. There was an expression on M. Fontenot"s face which may have seemed benign to everyone else in the room, but which Charlie read as an unmistakable warning. He looked down at his hand again, and made an instantaneous choice. The ring finger. The finger which still showed that he had been married to Marjorie. He slowly tugged off the plain gold wedding band, and set it down on the shiny mahogany table. There was a murmur of approval from the a.s.sembled Guides, and Charlie could see some of them staring at his hand with expectancy that approached lasciviousness. In Charlie"s mind, there was no doubt at all 228.

that the rituals of the Celestine church were tightly intertwined with the rituals of religious and s.e.xual masochism; that the ecstasy of self-mutilation was o.r.g.a.s.mic as well as spiritual.

"Now," whispered M. Fontenot.

Charlie said his own silent prayer. Then he adjusted his grip on the scalpel and scratched a hesitant line around the base of his ring finger. He scarcely drew any blood; but it stung, badly. Everybody in the room was watching him in silence.

He clenched his teeth together, and cut more deeply into the top of his finger. Surprisingly, he felt almost no pain at all, but the sensation of sharp steel touching his bare bone made him shiver in his seat.

" "Ifyour enemy is hungry, feed him,"" M. Fontenot quoted, as the bright red blood suddenly welled up out of the gaping slit in Charlie"s finger." "If he is thirsty, give him a drink.""

Charlie"s hand was trembling wildly, but he knew now that he had pa.s.sed the point of no return. He cut into the side of his finger until once again he could feel the blade up against the bone. Then he lifted his hand and cut around the far side, and the underneath, while the blood pumped out of the wound like water out of a badly fitting plumbing joint. He laid the gory scalpel back down on the table, and took hold of his ring finger, tugging the flesh a little way upward to make sure that it was cut through to the bone all the way around. He could actually see the bone, and he was surprised how white it was, just like bone of a real skeleton.

The pain was extraordinary. His finger hurt so much it seemed to roar out loud. Added to that, he could feel that he was close to going into shock; stunned by the gruesomeness of what he was doing to himself. But one part of his mind remained completely detached. One part of his mind concentrated on finishing this amputation as quickly and as cleanly as possible. One part of his mind was already thinking of what the wound would look like when it was healed. He didn"t want any splintered or mutilated flesh.

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M. Fontenot said, in a voice that now seemed to Charlie to be echoing all around him," "Nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. For if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died."" Charlie pressed his b.l.o.o.d.y left hand flat on the folded white napkin, staining it instantly and heavily. His mouth was tightly closed, and the breath jerked in and out of his nostrils like the breath of somebody sobbing. But there were no tears in Charlie"s eyes. His agony was too total for him to be able to cry.

He picked up the small saw. Wincing, he nudged the blade into the open wound on his finger. When he felt the sawblade against the bone, he hesitated, and looked up at M. Fontenot once again. "Go on," said M. Fontenot, encouragingly.

Charlie drew back the saw, and then rasped it forward over his finger bone. He didn"t know whether he screamed out loud or not. When he opened his eyes and looked at the a.s.sembled Guides, who were all watching him in fascination, he could tell that he probably hadn"t. But he had bitten the inside of his mouth: he could taste the blood.

"Go on," M. Fontenot urged him. "Only a few more strokes, and it will all be over."

Mechanically, Charlie sawed at his fingerbone again, and then again. The pain was extreme, but the vibration of the saw teeth all the way through the nerves of his hand and up the lower part of his left arm was even worse. He sawed and sawed and then suddenly he felt Xavier"s hand on his shoulder. "You should stop now. Your finger is off. We don"t want you to damage the table. It"s antique, you know."

Charlie stared at his left hand. His ring finger was completely severed, and lying in between his middle finger and his little finger at a peculiar angle, as if it were a joke finger that you could buy in a Mardi Gras carnival store. Slowly, stiffly, Charlie set down the saw. Then he raised his hand, and said to Xavier, "Do you have ... something to stop the bleeding?"

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"Of course, brother," said Xavier, and reached down to the lower shelf of the trolley to find a large gauze pad. Charlie held the pad over his pumping wound while M. Fontenot walked around the table, nodding to his Guides and smiling to himself. "It is always an occasion, the very first cut," he said. But then he came back around the table to stand over Charlie so close that Charlie could only see the ebony crucifix that hung low on M. Fontenot"s chest. He laid an unwelcome hand on top of Charlie"s head. "But very much more of an occasion, of course, is the very first taste of one"s own flesh."

Xavier had now returned the small copper pan to the top of the spirit burner. He poured a little olive oil into it, and deftly tilted it so that the whole of the pan was evenly coated. As the oil began to bubble, Xavier leaned forward to Charlie and said, "Your finger, please?"

Charlie stared at him, uncomprehending.