Ritual (31 page)

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
prickling 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 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 God 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 glasspaper and his heart was beating in huge, irregular
bumps.

‘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 glass bottle of what looked like olive oil, a small china 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-ingestion. 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 than you can take. And just remember that it’s two days now since
you last seen 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.

‘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 God 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 assembled 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 that the rituals of the Celestine church were tightly
intertwined with the rituals of religious and sexual masochism; that the
ecstasy of self-mutilation was orgasmic 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 passed 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.

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 bloody 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
assembled 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?’

‘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.

‘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
anticipated all the horror of this ritual for days.

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.