Ritual (29 page)

He lay on the
bed and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. His mind was still crowded with
thoughts of Martin, and M. Musette, and that grotesque living gargoyle they
called David. He closed his eyes and heard the thunder booming over the delta,
and the rain whispering through the leaves, and somebody playing the piano
through an open window.

For a moment,
he didn’t know whether he was wakening or dreaming; but then he heard a door
slam and footsteps in the corridor outside, and someone saying, ‘Take those
drapes down with you,
don’t
forget.’ He sat up, and
looked at Robyn, She was still sleeping. He opened up his brown leather
travelling bag and found himself a clean blue shirt and a pair of fawn
non-crease slacks. He dressed, and then he wrote a quick note for Robyn on a
damp sheet of Saint Victoir notepaper: Gone to locate Elegance St, back soon,
don’t worry. He signed the note, Affctly, Charlie.

By the time he
reached the street, the worst of the rain had passed over, although the
sidewalks still reflected the white-painted lacework balconies and the red and
yellow horse-drawn carriages taking tourists around the Vieux Carre, and the
sky was the colour of dynamite smoke. He approached a wizened-faced black man on
the corner of Royal Street and asked him the way to Elegance Street. The man
said, ‘Elegance aint so much of a street as an alleh. But you don’t want to go
theuh. It’s all churches and cat-houses.’

All the same,
he directed Charlie westward on Royal, telling him to pass nine alleyways and
courtyards on the left before he took the tenth, and that would be Elegance
Street. Charlie thanked him and offered him a dollar. The black man took the
money, but told him, ‘Druthah a cigarette,’ his eyes elderly, bloodshot, either
drugged or drunk or too old to care about either.

Charlie walked
along Royal Street, smelling rain and damp and gasoline and cooking, and jazz
was playing on the wet morning wind, that pompous, stilted highly traditional
jazz that the tourists come to hear but never really like, ‘Didn’t He Ramble’
and ‘St James’ Infirmary’ and

‘Mahogany Hall
Blues Stomp’, musical relics of a day long past. He came at last to the narrow
courtyard called Elegance Street, a shaded alleyway of old-fashioned brick that
was overlaid with dripping palm leaves and overlooked by green-painted
cast-iron balconies. Charlie passed the Crescent City Antiques Gallery and the
Beau-monde Tearoom featuring clairvoyant readings by Madame Prudhomme. There,
at the very end of the alleyway, stood a pair of black iron gates, with a
plaque announcing
L’figlise des Anges
.
Charlie approached it with trepidation, and stood for a long time staring
through the railings into the inner courtyard. There was a stone fountain, and
a stone bench, and some wrought-iron garden chairs that somebody had knocked
over sideways. But there was no sign of life,
pas ame qui vive
as the French would say. Not a soul alive.

Charlie dragged
at the wet cast-iron bell pull. He didn’t hear the bell ring, but after a very
long time, a stocky man in a black monk’s habit appeared. His hair was white as
transparent noodles and his eyes were as blank as two mirrors. He approached
the gates and stood staring at Charlie with the expression of a man of very
little patience. Charlie said, ‘Is this the church of the Celestines?’

‘This is the
Church of the Angels. Some call us Celestines.’

‘A friend of
mine used to belong. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s my turn.’

‘Did your
friend attend this church?’

‘No. He went to
the church in Acadia,
L’Eglise des
Pauv-res
.’

‘That is our
sister church,’ said the man. ‘Can you tell me what your friend’s name was?’

There was a
faraway protestation of thunder. Charlie said, ‘I only knew him as Michel or
maybe Michael.’

The man said, ‘You
can’t do better that that?’

‘He never told
me his surname.’

‘What did he
tell you about his beliefs?’

Charlie glanced
around, pretending to be furtive. Then he leaned closer to the gates, and said,

‘He told me all
about the self-sacrificial communion. He told me all about the body and blood.’

‘I see,’ said
the man, his expression unchanging. ‘And what was your response to that?’

‘My response
was that it sounded pretty extreme. You know, the idea of actually -’ Charlie
leaned closer forward and whispered, ‘eatingyour own body.’

The man eyed
him coldly. ‘Much of what we teach is metaphorical, you know. Not to be taken
too literally.’

‘But the whole
core of your religion is this communion, right?
The Last
Supper, with real body and real blood.’

‘You’d better
give me your name,’ the man told him. Rain began to sprinkle the courtyard
again, and whisper through the leaves.

‘Dan Fielding.
I’m a chef.’

The man
suddenly looked interested.
‘A chef?
Of what description?’

‘I used to work
for the South Western Hotel chain, mainly in their prestige restaurants. I
could cook anything.’

‘Did you ever
cook.... meat?’

‘Are you
pulling my leg? I was taught high-grade butchery as well as cooking. I can cut
and trim a prime beef carcass in less than twenty minutes. And when I cook it,
let me tell you this, nobody holds a candle to Daniel DuBois Fielding, believe
me.’

The man said,
‘You’re not an Acadian.’

Charlie managed
a smile. ‘Of course not, I’m a Hoosier. Does it make any difference where I
come from?’

‘Strictly, no,’
said the man.
‘Although we do have a church near Lafayette,
Indiana.’

‘Really?
I have cousins in Lafayette. I have cousins in
Kokomo, too.’ Charlie was deliberately acting naif. The man listened to him
patiently and the rain began to patter down heavier, until there were droplets
shining on his soft black hood.

‘Listen,’ he
said, ‘why don’t you come back here this evening? Maybe you’d like to talk to
our chief Guide. Do you know about Guides? Did your friend from
L’Eglise des Pauv-res
tell you anything
about them?’

‘I know about
Guides,’ Charlie said. He paused, and then added, ‘I know about Devotees, too.’

‘Well, you
could be useful to us,’ the man told him. ‘Come back at nine. Where are you
staying?’

‘With friends, on Philip Street.
Have you heard of the Courvilles?’

‘There must be
five thousand Courvilles in New Orleans. But you come back at nine. Come
alone,
mind, just like you are now.’

‘I understand.
So long for now.’

‘Au revoir,
monsieur
.’

Charlie walked out
of Elegance Street not at all sure if he had deceived the black-hooded man into
believing that he was a genuine recruit for the Celestines or not. He had
learned from his encounters with the Musettes that the Celestines were
remarkably open and unafraid. This was not only because what they were doing
was technically legal, or at least not technically (‘/legal – but because like
those who dealt in narcotics and heavy duty pornography and extortion, they had
many influential friends.

He returned to
the St Victoir Hotel to find that Robyn was still asleep. He was
,beginning
to have swimmy sensations, like jet-lag, but he
was too agitated to sleep. He sat by the window in an upright chair looking out
over the misty courtyard and listening to the sounds of New Orleans. Robyn
murmured something, and turned over, but still didn’t wake up.

Charlie’s eyes
began to close or maybe he was only dreaming that they were closing. His head
nodded, and jerked. He could hear the rain trickling along the gutters. That
piano was playing again, some high-stepping piece of music that sounded like
Mussorgsky if Mussorgsky had ever written jazz. Some feeling made Charlie open
his eyes again, a scarf of fear being laid gently over his shoulders. He looked
down into the courtyard and he was sure that he glimpsed a small hooded figure
disappearing amongst the palm fronds.

He was suddenly
awake. Involuntarily, he said, ‘Unnhh!’ out loud, and Robyn lifted her head off
the bed and stared at him.

‘Charlie?
What’s the matter?’

‘I was dozing.
I frightened myself, that’s all. It was only a dream.’

Robyn looked
around the room with the glazed eyes of someone who has fallen deeply asleep in
unfamiliar surroundings. ‘I’ve been dreaming, too. I thought we were still
driving.
All those cotton fields.
All
those girder bridges.
I thought I saw you standing in a field by the
side of the road, calling me. But when you turned round, it wasn’t you at all.
It had a face like the Devil.’

Charlie eased
himself up from the chair and walked over to the bed. The light in the room was
the colour of pewter. ‘It’s so dark,’ said Robyn. ‘What time is it?’

‘A little after twelve.
It’s been raining most of the
morning.’

‘Did you go
out?’

‘I found the
Church of the Angels on Elegance Street. It’s only three or four blocks from
here.

I’m supposed to
be going back there at nine to meet the head honcho.’

‘You should
have woken me.’

Charlie sat
down on the bed beside her and took hold of her hand. ‘You needed your sleep.’

‘And what about you?
Aren’t you tired?’

‘In my job, fatigue
is a way of life.’

Robyn combed
through her hair with her fingers to loosen the sleep tangles ‘Didn’t you ever
think about doing anything else? I mean – you didn’t want to be a restaurant
inspector when you were a little boy, did you?’

Charlie smiled.
‘When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a zoo keeper.’

‘That’s a
pretty smelly job, zoo keeping.’

Charlie
laughed. Then he stopped laughing, and sat there silently with a smile on his
face thinking about wanting to be a zoo keeper. He could remember all of those
model animals, the tigers and the monkeys and the elephant with the broken ear.
Robyn touched his shoulder and looked closely into his eyes, and he thought,
you can always tell whether you’re going to fall for somebody or not by their
eyes. Love is retinal.

He kissed
Robyn’s forehead. It was still warm from sleeping. She closed her eyes and he
kissed her lips. It was a long lingering kiss that was more romantic than
passionate. Charlie hadn’t kissed a woman like that in years. Not since
Milwaukee.

In the midday
twilight of a thunderstorm, Charlie unbuttoned Robyn’s checkered shirt and
bared her breasts to the touch of his fingertips. They were soft and heavy, and
they fell to each side of her chest in full, pale curves. Her areolas were the
palest pink, and as wide as pink-frosted cookies. Charlie bent forward and
kissed her nipples and they stiffened between his lips. Robyn whispered
something that could have been words of love; or maybe the words of a song.

He unfastened
her jeans. That high-stepping piano music slowed down now, and Robyn’s
breathing was as soft as the rain. Underneath her jeans she wore French lace
panties, peach-coloured, transparent, so that the dark delta of her pubic hair
showed through. Charlie slipped his hand into the leg of her panties and felt a
thin slippery line of wetness that almost made him feel as if all his emotions
were going to self-destruct.

They made love
for over an hour. He kissed her neck, kissed her shoulders and watched as the
shining shaft of his erection slid in and out of that perfect dark delta.
Feelings washed over him like bayou water, muddy, warm, and blinding, but
always moving with a slow, strong current.

Robyn sang that
little song again, softly as a memory. At the very last she opened her thighs
as wide as she could and he touched and tasted her, and then put his fingers to
his lips and anointed her nipples so that they glistened for a moment like
diamonds.

Robyn showered,
then
they ventured out of the St Victoir to the
Cafe du Monde
on Decatur Street, where
they indulged themselves in a late lunch of beignets dusted with powdered sugar
and piping hot
cafe au lait
.

Charlie could
afford to relax, because he had done all that he could possibly do; and all
that was left was to wait until nine o’clock. He didn’t forget about Martin. He
couldn’t, because Martin was the reason he was here. But he allowed himself to
walk hand in hand with Robyn through the French Quarter, around Jackson Square,
where the twin Pontalba Buildings shone oddly orange in the afternoon light,
and along Pirates Alley, where they stopped to look at paintings of nudes and
bayous and old black men with wrinkled faces and straw hats, art for the
tourist trade.

They reached the
end of Pirates Alley, and emerged into an unexpected slice of sunshine, when
Charlie caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of something white and
small, fluttering like a flag. He stepped back to see what it was, and trod on
the foot of an old lady who had been walking close behind him.

‘You watch
where you’re treading!’ she squawked, and lifted her stick as if she were going
to strike out at him.

Charlie said,
‘Please – I’m sorry. I thought I saw somebody I knew.’

Robyn took hold
of Charlie’s hand. ‘What is it?’ she asked him. She could see that he was
upset.

‘I’m not sure.
I glimpsed it before, in the courtyard at the back of the hotel. At least, I
thought I glimpsed it. I thought I was dozing off that time, but maybe I
wasn’t.’

‘What?’ asked
Robyn.
‘What was it?’

‘The dwarf, the one who killed Mrs Kemp.
The
one who cut my leg.’

‘But nobody
could have followed us here. Nobody knew where we were going.’