Ritual. Part 22

'Your finger,' Xavier repeated; and at last it registered in Charlie's shocked brain what he was supposed to do. He picked up his severed finger and held it up. It felt hard and strange and very dead. Xavier indicated with an encouraging nod that he was supposed to drop it into the pan, and so he did. There was a brittle sizzling noise, and Xavier quickly rolled the finger from one side of the pan to the other so that the outside of it was sealed by the heat of the oil. To Charlie's disgust, even the red flesh where he had cut the finger off turned the colour of cooked pork, a light whitish brown.

'Human flesh is rich, and it should be thoroughly cooked,' said M. Fontenot. 'However, one must be careful not to overdo it, otherwise it quickly becomes tough.'

Charlie sat where he was, silent, unable to take his eyes away from the finger which was frying in front of his face. The skin was turning crisp, especially around the edges of the fingernail, and because the fat was now dissolving, the finger slowly bent of its own accord, as if it were beckoning to him from the frying pan.

Charlie had antic.i.p.ated all the horror of this ritual for days.

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In some ways, he was prepared for it. It was almost a relief that he had found out what the Celestines did and how they did it. But what he could never have prepared himself for was the smell. It was similar to frying pork only it was quite unmistakably not pork. It was strong and meaty and (in a nauseating way) almost appetizing.

Xavier added a little fennel to the pan, and stirred the finger around to make sure that it was properly cooked. M. Fontenot watched Charlie with dark eyes that never once deviated as one of the white plates was set in front of him and the finger, still steaming, was placed on it like a small morsel with which to begin a very much grander dinner.

'Your contribution to the holy covenant,' said M. Fontenot. 'Your sacrifice, your very first; and let us hope you will give many more.'

Xavier took the b.l.o.o.d.y gauze away from Charlie's left hand, and replaced it with a clean pad. Already the wound was beginning to clot, and Charlie had to admit that M. Fontenot was right: the human body did have extraordinary powers of recovery.

'Do I ... share it?' asked Charlie, trying not to look down at the crisply fried finger.

M. Fontenot shook his head. 'This one is all for you. Later, perhaps, when you wish to have your legs removed . .. then you can share your flesh with your brothers in Christ. For this evening, however, your meat is your own. For what you are about to receive, may the Lord make you truly thankful.'

It was a long time before Charlie could pick up his fork and prod at the finger on his plate, but M. Fontenot and the rest of the Guides remained silent, watching, giving him as much time as he needed. Charlie had the feeling that they had watched such reluctant ceremonies before. The room was filled with such expectancy that it almost seemed to exert a gravitational pull, as if the rest of the world would be irresistibly drawn towards it like nuts and bolts to a powerful magnet.

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Charlie stuck his fork into the fleshy underside of the finger. The crisp skin made a slight popping noise as it was penetrated by the tines of the fork. Then Charlie lifted up the finger and somehow managed to guide it towards his mouth. His stomach made an audible groaning noise, and he could feel the back of his throat tighten up.

'Xavier, bring brother David some wine,' said M. Fontenot. 'I know how it is! Very difficult to bite, very difficult to swallow. But just remember, my friend, the human body is the greatest of all foods, because the human body is the vessel of the human spirit; and no other creature on earth has a spirit. This meat that you are about to eat is the food not of the G.o.ds but of the One True G.o.d. Think how much you will be offending Him if you refuse it. Think how much you will be offending all of us."

Again, the implicit warning. Charlie knew that he was going to have to eat his finger if there was going to be any chance at all of him rescuing Martin.

He bit. The flesh came away from the bone quite easily. His mouth was filled with the taste of meat and fat; and the terrible part about it was that it was meat that needed to be steadily chewed. With rising nausea, Charlie swallowed a half-masticated piece - a piece that would have seemed tiny if he had been eating chicken or beef, but which felt as if it were the size and texture of a small hessian-covered sofa.

Xavier held a gla.s.s of red Californian wine in front of him. He swallowed, and nodded in appreciation.

The Guides of the Church of the Angels sat and watched Charlie for almost twenty minutes as he slowly ate the flesh of his own ring finger. At the end of that time he was sweating, and very close to vomiting; although the bone that now lay on his plate was bitten quite clean, even around the fingernail. It didn't look like Charlie's finger any more: it looked like a broken piece from a biology lecturer's skeleton.

Xavier took the plate away, and wheeled the trolley out of 233.

the room. M. Fontenot drew up a chair next to Charlie and sat smiling at him with his legs crossed and his fingers laced together. 'Well,' he said, 'you have done exceptionally well. You have crossed the threshold into the Church of the Cel-estines. How do you feel now about the so-called horror of horrors - the eating of human flesh? Have you changed your opinion?'

Charlie wiped his mouth with his napkin. The wound on his left hand where he had severed his finger was throbbing so painfully that he found it difficult to think straight.

'I guess it was a shock,' he told M. Fontenot.

'But a good shock, wouldn't you agree?' M. Fontenot pressed him. 'Good for the spirit, and - dare I say it - good for the palate, too?'

'I've never experienced anything like it,' said Charlie, quite truthfully.

M. Fontenot paused for a moment, and then he said, 'Not even at the Napoleon House, or Le Tour Eiffel, or Pascal's Ma.n.a.le?'

'I'm sorry?' Charlie asked him. He really didn't understand what M. Fontenot was talking about. Not unless he meant - 'They're all restaurants, aren't they?' M. Fontenot asked him.

'That's right,' Charlie acknowledged.

'And that's what you do, isn't it? You travel around the country, under various a.s.sumed names and aliases, testing restaurants?'

Charlie's eyes were half closed with pain. He was gripping his left wrist with his right hand as tight as a tourniquet, in an effort to deaden the throbbing. 'You must have me mixed up with somebody else,' he told M. Fontenot. 'I'm a chef, not a restaurant inspector.'

M. Fontenot shook his head. 'You were never a chef, my friend. Nor were you ever a butcher. Both a chef and a butcher would have cut through that finger joint in two quick coups.

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You didn't even know where the joint was, not properly. Look how badly you have injured yourself.'

He turned to the Guide sitting closest to him, and leaned forward and whispered something. The Guide said, 'Certaine-ment, M. Fontenot,' and got up from the table, leaving the room by the same door through which Xavier had wheeled the trolley. M. Fontenot then leaned back towards Charlie, and said, 'You should have known that we suspected you from the ease with which we admitted you to this a.s.sembly. As a rule, no lesser church officials are permitted to intrude on these meetings, and no Devotees are allowed anywhere near. This is what that old radio programme used to call the inner sanctum.'

Charlie held up his left hand, swathed in b.l.o.o.d.y gauze. 'If you suspected me right from the beginning, then why -?'

'Why did we let you amputate your own finger? My dear Daniel - or perhaps I should call you my dear Charles - if you thrust your head into the lion's mouth, you should occasionally expect a nip or two around the neck. If not complete decapitation.'

The door opened again, and back came the guide whom M. Fontenot had sent out of the room. Beside him, waddling on his stumps, came the hooded dwarf who had murdered Mrs Kemp. He made his way around the table and heaved himself up on to a chair. Charlie watched him in dread and fascination. So he hadn't been mistaken. He had seen the dwarf at the back of the St Victoir hotel, and at Pirates Alley.

'We found it quite astonis.h.i.+ng that you thought you could get away from us,' said M. Fontenot. 'Also, that we would dream of letting you go. You made one attempt to break into Le Reposoir to take your son away from his chosen destiny. You would surely make another. This, one supposes, is it. A clumsy effort to infiltrate the church of the Celestines, in the hope that you might be able to s.n.a.t.c.h your son away at a moment when our guard was relaxed. And where were you 235.

going to go then? To Canada, perhaps? Some of them go to Canada. But most try Mexico. It's a pity for them that we have such a close arrangement with the Mexican police. La mordita, that's what they call it. The bite. They will do anything for money.'

Charlie stood up, unsteadily. 'I think you'd better let me leave.'

'I'm sorry,' said M. Fontenot, 'That is absolutely out of the question.'

'You can't keep me here against my will.'

'You came here voluntarily.'

'Sure I did. But now I want to leave, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.'

M. Fontenot turned around in his seat and gave the dwarf a quick summoning wave. The dwarf rolled himself off his chair and came swinging up towards him. He stayed close to M. Fontenot's knee, his eyes gleaming malevolently out of the shadows of his hood.

'You have seen what David can do with a machete,' said M. Fontenot blandly.

Charlie said nothing, but stared back at the dwarf with equal enmity.

'As I say,' said M. Fontenot, 'You came here voluntarily. During the course of the evening's proceedings, you suffered an unfortunate accident to your finger, and since I have all the necessary medical facilities right here at L'figlise des Anges for the treatment of such a wound, I suggested that you stay. An offer, of course, which you readily accepted.'

Charlie went suddenly white. He could feel the blood draining from his face just like a bucket being emptied. 'I have to throw up,' he told M. Fontenot. His stomach was churning and twisting and his mouth was flooded with bile and bits of chewed-up flesh.

Xavier took him to the bathroom along the hall and he was violently and painfully sick. He used his left hand to support 236.

himself as he leaned over the toilet and it left a wide smear of blood on the white paint. Strings of meat dropped from his stretched open mouth. He spent almost five minutes in there before the spasms in his stomach began to subside.

M. Fontenot was still waiting for him when he returned. 'You will stay here in this house until Friday. Then you will come with us to Acadia, to L'figlise des Pauvres. That was the mother church in the early days when the Celestines were still outlawed. It is there that we will be holding our Last Supper.'

Charlie lowered his head. His eyes were watering and the taste in his mouth was greasy and filthy and reeked of the aniseed flavour of fennel.

M. Fontenot reached forward and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Monsieur, I advise you not to try to escape from us, nor to make trouble.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

In the small hours of the night, when the pain became intolerable, a nurse appeared in a white winged wimple like the ghost of an albatross flying out of the darkness. Through half-closed eyes he saw the glint of a needle. Then she had injected him; and it was only a few minutes before the pain ebbed away, and dark waves of relaxation began to lift him buoyantly into the ocean of the night.

He dreamed about the strange high-ceilinged restaurant again, with the waiters who were hooded like monks, just like he had at Mrs Kemp's, and even though he was asleep he was conscious that the dream had been curiously prophetic. He saw the men in their starched s.h.i.+rt fronts and immaculate tail coats. He saw the mysterious and alluring women, some veiled, some wearing masks made of bird's feathers, most of them naked. One woman was standing by the doorway, her thighs and genitals tightly bound with thin leather straps, her large b.r.e.a.s.t.s completely covered with tattoos. She turned and looked at Charlie, and her face was the face of Mme Musette. In front of his eyes, she fell apart in great lumps of human clay.

A monk-waiter brought his meal, underneath a s.h.i.+ny dish cover.

'Your dinner, sir,' he whispered, and lifted the cover. Charlie knew what he was going to see there, and screamed.

He screamed, but he was drugged with morphine, and he didn't wake up. Instead, one dream closed and another dream opened. He found himself driving along West Good Hope Road in Milwaukee. It was snowing. Everything was white.

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The snow pattered against the winds.h.i.+eld and the wipers had trouble coping with it. The world crept around in silence.

He could see her on the front steps of the single-storey house as he approached. Her husband was with her. He knew what has happening even before he reached the end of their block. He could see her husband's arm rising and falling, rising and falling, like a man trying to chop down a tree. He watched her fall to the porch floor, then try to get up again.

And in his dream, he was condemned to do what he had done in real life. He drove past slowly because it was snowing, staring all the time at the one woman he had really loved being beaten by her husband. And as she had tried to struggle to her feet, she had turned, and looked towards him, and recognized him through the partially misted window of his car, driving past without stopping as if he were a helpless pa.s.senger on a pa.s.sing train. And their eyes had met and they had both known that was the very end of their love affair, and then he had turned the corner and when he managed to back up the car and turn and drive past the house again, they were gone. In his dream, he stopped his car and got out and went up to the front door and beat at the knocker, just as he had done in real life. In his dream, the knocker turned into the wolf-knocker on Mrs Kemp's front door, and he could feel its bristles in the palm of his hand. Then the door was hurtled open and there stood Velma from the Windsor Inn, her face hideously white, her eyes red-rimmed, both arms severed at the elbows and spraying blood like fire hydrants.

He screamed again, and this time he woke up. It was light.

There was a woman in black sitting beside his bed. She pushed back the hood that covered her face and he saw that it was Mme Musette. She was smiling at him.

'I had a nightmare,' he croaked.

She nodded. She took a gla.s.s of water from the small table beside his bed, and pa.s.sed it to him with a hand that was nothing more than a thumb and an index finger. He hesitated, 239.

and then accepted it, and drank. When he returned the empty gla.s.s, he looked down at his own hand. Sometime during the night it had been expertly bandaged, and although it still ached, the most severe pain seemed to have subsided.

'Where am I?' Charlie asked. He looked around the plain whitewashed room. There was a high window through which he could see the branches of a large live oak, and a crucifix carved out of ebony was hanging on the wall, but apart from that the room was completely bare. Charlie was naked, but he was covered by a single white sheet.

Mme Musette said, 'You're upstairs, at L'figlise des Anges. We have a nurse here. She's been taking care of you.'

'My finger,' said Charlie.

'A brave sacrifice,' said Mme Musette. 'You won't miss it.' j 'Is my son all right?' Charlie wanted to know.

'Martin? Of course. Martin is very well.'

'He hasn't-?'

Mme Musette shook her head. 'He hasn't yet begun the act of self-ingestion, if that's what you mean. He's being saved, you see, for the great Last Supper.'

'I don't understand you people at all,' Charlie snarled at her.

'We know that. That is why I am here. The Last Supper is to be held on Friday at L'Eglise des Pauvres in Acadia. We want you to be there, to partic.i.p.ate in our ceremonies. When you were trying to gain access to Le Reposoir, you talked to my husband of Saul on the road to Damascus. Well, we want you to play that part for real. We want you to be our Saul. We want you, our persecutor, to be our ultimate convert.'

Charlie said, 'You're going to try to convert me to cannibalism? That's the worst joke I've heard all year.'

'We're going to show you the truth and beauty in what we do,' Mme Musette replied.

Charlie fiercely held up his bandaged hand. 'Truth and beauty? Does that look like truth and beauty? That looks to me like deliberate mutilation of G.o.d's own creation.'Mme Musette smiled again. It unnerved Charlie, the way that Celestines kept on smiling, regardless of how insulting he was to them. It made him realize that they believed without question that their grisly re-enactment of the Last Supper had been ordained by Christ. They really believed it.

Mme Musette said, 'Do you remember the quotation from Paul's letter to the Romans that M. Fontenot read to you yesterday evening? "Nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean". When we come to our Last Supper, when a thousand thousand have devoured themselves and been devoured, then you will see the divine truth of what the church of the Celestines has been doing. Do you remember what the angels said to the Apostles? "This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go.'"

Charlie stared intently into Mme Musette's eyes for a moment, and then said, 'I want you to let my son go. Do you understand that? If you want to keep me, well, we can talk about that. But you have to let Martin go.'

'I'm sorry,' said Mme Musette, 'but that would be quite impossible. He has already been blessed. He has already been numbered. He - by great good fortune - is the thousandth thousandth Devotee. When he is devoured, my husband will become the fleshly temple of a million souls, the embodiment of a million self-sacrificial communions. My husband will become at last a worthy vessel on earth for the return of Christ the Saviour. On Friday, Mr McLean, you will witness the event for which the world has been waiting for almost two thousand years, the second coming of the Son of G.o.d, as it was foretold in the Acts of the Apostles.'

'For Christ's sake,' Charlie protested.

'Exactly,' replied Mme Musette, her beatific smile unwavering. 'For Christ's sake. He gave His body and blood in order that the human race might survive. In return, a million human 240.

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souls have willingly given their body and blood in order that He might return.'

'And this is why the government and the police and the press have left you alone? Because they believe it, too?'

Mme Musette nodded. 'The turning point came ten years ago when the then President's son became a Devotee. The President tried, as you have tried, to talk his son out of self-ingestion. But at last the President himself was persuaded. Not to join the Celestines himself, but to leave us unhara.s.sed by the law as we approached our ultimate Last I Supper. As he said himself, Jesus Christ may come to us, or He may not, but if there is even the remotest chance that the second coming takes place on American soil, then that chance must be nurtured. To us Celestines, of course, the joy will be purely spiritual. But the Administration were not so blind that they could not see the political advantages of the Son of G.o.d choosing the United States for his triumphal return. America would become the Holy Land, even above Israel.'

'I don't believe what I'm hearing.' said Charlie. i 'How can you not believe it? You have seen for yourself the people of Alien's Corners, Mr Haxalt and Sheriff Podmore and all the others. If the Celestines did not have government approval, would we be able to recruit so openly, would we be able to discuss our religion with such freedom? The government of the United States believes that Christ will come again, Mr McLean. Why don't you?'

Charlie lowered his eyes. He looked down at his left hand, and stiffly opened and closed his fingers. 'If Christ returns to earth because you kill my son, then let me tell you this: He's I not the kind of saviour that I want to know about.' 'Now you're being petulant,' said Mme Musette. 'Petulant! You've kidnapped my son, you've forced me to cut off and eat my own finger, and you have the gall to call me petulant!'

Charlie tugged away the sheet, and swung his legs off the bed. Mme Musette made no attempt to stop him.

'Where are my clothes?' Charlie demanded.

'Burned, I expect. That's what they usually do.'

'Then get me something to wear!'