Ritual (34 page)

‘I insist that
you release my son,’ said Charlie.

‘How can we
release him, if he has never been captive? He came to join us of his own free
will; he remains here of his own free will. Yesterday, he was flown down to
Acadia with my husband, M. Musette, and the remaining Devotees from
Connecticut. The moment of ultimate fulfilment is fast approaching! We want you
to share in it, Charlie. We want you to participate! We want you to understand
at last what belonging can mean, and the joy of joining with others in the name
of Jesus Christ!’

Charlie said,
‘You have to let him go. I’m his father. You can do what you like with me, but
you have to let Martin go. I mean it, Mme Musette. He has his whole life in
front of him. I’m not going to allow him to waste it on some oddball sect like
the Celestines.’

‘So you do
believe in self-sacrifice,’ said Mme Musette triumphantly.

‘What do you
mean?’ Charlie demanded.

‘You would give
up your life to save your son.’

‘If there were no alternative, yes.’

‘But your son is
offering to give up his life for the Son of Man. Is that any different? How can
you approve of one kind of sacrifice and deny the validity of another?’

Charlie rubbed
his eyes. ‘If you think you’re going to be able to persuade me with that kind
of argument, you’re wrong.’

Mme Musette
said nothing for a very long time. Charlie, for his part, volunteered no
further questions and no further comments. He had nothing to say to Mme Musette
except that he wanted Martin to be released, not only from his physical bondage
but from his mental bondage, too.

At last, Mme
Musette said, ‘Do you wish to leave?’

Charlie looked
up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You can leave
here if you want to, and take your chances in the world outside.’

‘You’d let me?’
asked Charlie suspiciously.

‘If you really
feel that there is nothing for you here, yes,’ Mme Musette looked incomparably
beautiful in the late afternoon light that fell though the window. Her dark
hair shone like the wing of some rare desirable bird of paradise.

‘All I want is
my son.’

‘You cannot
have your son. Your son is not a possession. He does not belong to you, any
more than he belongs to us.’

‘Then there
isn’t any point in my leaving, is there? I might as well stay here.’

‘The choice is
yours, Charlie. I don’t want anyone to say that we held you here against your
will.

How does your
finger feel?’

‘It still
hurts. Maybe not as badly as it did before.’

Mme Musette
kissed him again. This time, he did not recoil. Her kisses were strangely
alluring, and consoling, too. Her lips were very cool, and somehow he didn’t
mind being held by those hands which had only one finger and a thumb. Mme
Musette left the room, closing and locking the door, but for a long time her
perfume lingered in the air, like a memory that refused to die.

Charlie eased
himself off the bed and went to the window. If he stood on tiptoe, he could see
the edge of an adjacent rooftop, and the back of a brick facade. The clouds
rolled by, curdled and lazy and trailing skirts of misty rain.

He seemed to
have reached an impasse – a point in his life at which he was equally unable to
go forward or to go back. Ahead lay the horrors which – even though they had
been graphically described to him – were still unimaginable. Behind him lay
indecision, confusion, and a lack of fulfilment so complete that it yawned in
his life like a chasm. He stood naked looking out of the window of the cell
from which he had been invited to escape, and tears ran down his cheeks and on
to his chest.

When it was
dark, they brought him a supper of grilled white fish and wholemeal bread. He
asked if he could take a bath or a shower, but the girl who brought him the
food didn’t reply.

Close on
midnight, he lay on his bed and fell asleep, his finger still throbbing with
every pulse as a reminder of his own folly.

I
t was scarcely dawn when he became aware of somebody moving around
in his room, and the rustling of fabric. He opened his eyes just as the door
closed, but he was sure that he glimpsed the swirl of a long black cloak, like a
shadow disappearing under a bridge. He sat up in bed and saw that his clothes
had been neatly laid out on the footboard of his bed, his shirt and his pants
and his sports coat, although there was no underwear or socks.

He climbed out
of bed, and went directly across to the door. He tried the handle and it was
unlocked. He opened it as quietly as he could, and peered out into the
corridor. He could smell flowers, and flesh, and floor polish, but the house
seemed silent and the corridors appeared to be deserted. He closed the door,
and quickly went back to his room to dress. A few hours of sleep had done
wonders for his optimism. If Mme Musette was offering him a chance to get out
of here, then he was prepared to take it – even if it was just another ambush.
He pulled on his pants and his shirt, slung his sports coat around his
shoulders, and stepped out of the room barefooted.

They’re
watching me, he thought, as he hurried along the corridor towards the stairs.
They know exactly what I’m doing but for some reason they want me to go. Well,
I won’t disappoint them. I want to go too. This place is making me mental.

He took the
softly carpeted stairs three at a time. The staircase led directly down to the
main hallway, which was panelled in Cuban mahogany and hung with impenetrably
dark oil paintings.

The huge front
doors were locked but only from the inside. Charlie slid the bolts one-handed,
and turned the latch. Quite abruptly, and without any difficulty at all, he was
out on the street.

It was Royal
Street, as he expected. The air was cold and damp and there was very little
traffic around, except for a garbage truck toiling from one restaurant to
another, collecting sackfuls of trash. Charlie closed the door of the Celestine
house behind him, and crossed the street. On the opposite sidewalk, he turned
around and looked back at the house. Its black balconies were empty; its black
shutters were closed tight over its windows. If anybody was watching him, they
were keeping themselves well out of sight. Charlie hesitated for just one
moment, then turned the corner and made his way back to the St Victoir Hotel.

He crossed the
lobby and went up in the elevator to the third floor. He tapped on the door of
his room, and waited. When there was no answer, he tapped again. ‘Robyn? It’s
me, Charlie!

Open up!’

Still there was
no reply. Charlie knocked again, very much louder, and said, ‘Robyn? Robyn? Are
you there?’

At that moment,
a voice behind him said, ‘If you’re looking for your wife, Mr McLean, you’re out
of luck.’ Charlie turned around to find the fat woman like Jabba the Hutt
standing behind him with her hands on her hips.

‘She was booked
to stay another day,’ said Charlie.

‘Sure she was.
But she said she had to check out, didn’t say why. She paid for the room on her
credit card and went. But she left you this letter. Said to make sure that
nobody else got to know about it.’

‘Well, thanks,’
said Charlie, and took the letter with a frown.

The fat woman
said, ‘You hurt your hand?’

Charlie said,
‘What?’ And then, ‘Yes, oh yes. I got it caught in the door of my car.’

‘Your wife took
your car. And your baggage, too, such as it was.’ The fat woman smiled as if
she expected to hear some rare scandal when Charlie opened his letter. Charlie
tore open the envelope with his teeth, and tugged out the enclosed sheets of
paper. In Robyn’s deft, sprawling handwriting, he read:

Dearest
Charlie, I have been followed ever since you left me and I am worried that they
might be Celestines. I have tried to shake them off several times but they
always pick up my trail again which suggests that they know that I am staying
here. I am moving to the Hotel Pontchartrain on Canal Street and will stay
there until I hear from you. I am registered under the name of Batger which was
my mother’s maiden name. If they are still following me I will move again but I
will leave you a forwarding letter.
Love, love, love, Robyn.

Charlie folded
up the letter and tucked it into his pocket.

‘Not bad news?’
the fat woman asked, with considerable relish.

‘No, no. My
wife had to go back to New York. Her father suffered a stroke.’

The fat woman
said, ‘You didn’t stay here the last two nights, did you?’

Charlie looked
at her, but didn’t answer.

‘I’m not being
nosy,’ the fat woman told him, ‘but there was some gentlemen asking after you.

Tall, polite.
Frenchmen, I’d say.’

Charlie took
out Robyn’s letter again and held it up. ‘You didn’t show them this?’

‘My dear sir, I
didn’t even tell them I had it. I may tattle now and again, but I don’t break
the confidences of my guests, believe you me,
that’s
more than my position is worth.’

Charlie said,
‘I’m sorry, I can’t tip you, I don’t have any money.’

The fat woman
wobbled her jowls. ‘Never
you mind
. Your wife paid me
good. And when you do get yourself some money, the first thing you’d better get
yourself is some shoes.’

Charlie looked
down at his bare feet. ‘I guess you’re right. One pair of Gucci
loafers,
urgently required.’

‘There’s
some plastic sandals in the closet under the
stairs,’ the fat woman told him. ‘You can borrow them. The cleaning man uses
them when he’s sluicing the lobby.’

So it was that
Charlie set out west along Bourbon Street at six o’clock in the morning wearing
blue plastic flip-flop sandals. A cruising police car followed him slowly for a
couple of blocks, making him sweat, but after a while it turned south, and he
was alone again. An elderly black was wheeling a pushcart slowly along Royal
Street and calling out, ‘Ragaboon!
Ragaboon!’
It
reminded Charlie of that song. ‘Rags and old
iron ..
.
rags
and old iron . ..
all
that he wanted was rags and old iron.’

He reached the
intersection of Royal and Canal, opposite Shoppers World and the tall balconied
building of Leonard Krower & Son. He crossed over, and headed north towards
the Hotel Pontchartrain. He felt tired and thirsty and his finger joint was
beginning to hurt again. His plastic sandals flopped on the sidewalk, and once
he almost tripped over them because they were two sizes too small.

In spite of its
grandiose name, the Hotel Pontchartrain was a small modern hotel that had been
built on the site of the old Tessler building. Charlie pushed his way through
the bronze-tinted revolving doors and into the brown-carpeted lobby. It was
chilly inside; the air conditioning was down to fifty-five degrees. As he
waited at the reception desk for the smoothfaced black receptionist to finish
checking in a pair of British students who were determined to make sure that
they took advantage of everything that was included in the price of their
package vacation, Charlie began to shiver, like a man close to the end of his
endurance.

‘Ms Badger?’
the receptionist repeated. Til call her room number for you.’

‘Batger,’
Charlie corrected him.

‘Badger,’ the
receptionist dutifully agreed.

At last, Robyn answered
the phone. The receptionist nodded to Charlie, and said, ‘She says to go on up.
Room 501.’

Charlie leaned
against the side of the elevator with his eyes half closed, ignoring the stares
of the British students, for whom his dishevelled appearance had obviously
confirmed everything they had ever heard about violent America. Blood was
seeping into the gauze around his left hand, and his face in the elevator
mirror was ash-grey, like a zombie.

‘Do you think
we ought to ask him what’s wrong?’ the girl student asked, in a stage whisper.

‘I don’t think
so. This isn’t exactly
Dorking
, is it?’

He knocked at
501 and Robyn immediately opened the door. ‘Charlie, my God, I didn’t expect to
hear from you for days. What’s happened? You look terrible!’

Charlie limped
into the room and sat down heavily on the bed. It was only a single room,
decorated in ginger and mustard, with a bed, a television, a crowded bathroom,
and a view of Canal Street. Robyn closed the door and then came to kneel down
beside Charlie and take hold of his hand.

‘Charlie, what
happened?’

‘They were on
to me all the time. They’ve been keeping tabs on us all the way from
Connecticut.’

‘
Your
AW-’

‘Uh-uh. Don’t
touch. It’s still throbbing.’

‘But what
happened?’

Charlie took a
deep breath. For some inexplicable reason he was close to tears. It was
probably delayed shock. ‘They pretended that they were fooled. They made me go
through a little Celestine initiation ceremony. I had to cut my finger off.
Then they cooked it and made me eat it.’

‘Oh, my God,’
said Robyn. She ran her hand through Charlie’s tousled hair, and held him
close.

‘Oh, my God, Charlie.’

‘I could use a
drink,’ Charlie told her. ‘Do they have room service here?’

‘Sure they do.
It’s a little slow, but willing. What do you want? Don’t you think I ought to
take you to the hospital? You don’t want that finger to go septic.’

‘A Scotch
first, with a Michelob Lite. Then the hospital, okay?’

‘Okay,’ said
Robyn shakily, and kissed him, and went to the phone to call room service.

‘I don’t know why
they let me go,’ said Charlie. ‘They had me locked up in a room on the top
floor of that building. They even took away my clothes, and told me they were
burned. Mme Musette was there. She kept coming in and trying to persuade me
that my life had no meaning and that I ought to join the Celestines to save my
soul. Then for no reason at all, she came up this morning and gave me my
clothes
back,
and left the door unlocked.’