complete bed rest for a month. The month will pass by and another statement will come that he has been slow to recover, and this unfortunate situation has required him to graciously offer his resignation from the office of Governor of Louisiana.’
‘You are a dark-minded cynic, Bill Woodroffe,’ Schaeffer said.
‘No, I am a realist,’ Woodroffe said. ‘Even in the face of something like this these people will protect their own. Indirectly, of course, they will in fact be protecting themselves.’
‘These people, as you so diplomatically put it,’ Schaeffer said, ‘are the same people that sign your paycheck.’
Woodroffe shook his head and sighed. ‘I’ve had enough for one week,’ he said quietly. ‘I wanna go home and see my wife, eat a proper meal, watch a game on the tube, drink three cans of beer and sleep in my own bed.’
Schaeffer smiled. He turned and looked at Hartmann. ‘You call me in a couple of weeks,’ he said. ‘Call me at my office and I’ll tell you what I can about what happens with Perez, okay?’
‘Appreciated,’ Hartmann said.
‘And here we go,’ Schaeffer said, as a commotion of voices and noise was heard from the corridor.
Hartmann rose slowly from the chair. It seemed that every muscle, every bone, every sinew and nerve in his body was screaming at him to lie down. He fought the urge. He put one foot ahead of the other. He made it as far as the doorway, walked down the hallway and turned left.
He paused for a moment, closed his eyes for just a fraction of a second, and then he stepped into the room.
‘Mr Hartmann,’ Ernesto Perez said quietly.
‘Mr Perez,’ Hartmann replied.
‘I believe this will be the very last time that we speak face to face.’
‘I believe so.’
‘It has been a fascinating week, has it not?’
‘Not my choice of words, but I understand the sentiment.’
Perez smiled and reached for a cigarette. He lit it, inhaled, and then allowed the tendrils of smoke to escape from his nostrils. ‘And you… you will be returning to New York?’
Hartmann nodded. ‘Yes. I plan to leave for home as soon as we are done.’
‘Home?’ Perez asked, almost a rhetorical question. ‘I asked you whether you had managed to convince yourself that New York was your home, didn’t I?’
‘You did. Home is where the heart is, Mr Perez… and my heart is in New York.’
Perez looked down, and then turned slowly to the left. He spoke without looking directly at Hartmann, almost as if he was speaking to someone only he could see. ‘Age is a judge,’ he said quietly. ‘It is a judge and a court and a jury, and you stand before yourself and view your own life as if it was all evidence for a trial. You cross-examine yourself, you ask questions and wait for answers, and when you are done you deliver your own verdict.’
Hartmann was silent. He waited for Perez to continue. He watched him almost without breathing, for he did not wish to disturb the man. It was as if Perez had slipped into a reverie, viewing all that he had done, all he had spoken of, and was now allowing matters to reach their own natural conclusion.
‘I cannot say I have been right, and I cannot say I have been wrong,’ Perez said at last. ‘I find myself somewhere in between, and from this standpoint I can see how everything might have been different. Hindsight also is a judge, but he is biased and slanted towards a perspective that cannot be achieved without the luxury of hindsight. It is a paradox, Mr Hartmann, indeed it is.’
He turned back to face Hartmann. ‘We see everything so clearly once it has passed, do we not? I am sure there must be a hundred decisions you have made, and if given the time again you would have decided very differently. I am right?’
Hartmann nodded.
‘So we live our lives for the moment, it seems, and we base our decisions on the information we have, but it seems that at least fifty percent of the time the information we are given is incorrect or false, or based on someone’s opinion, someone with an ulterior motive or a vested interest. Life is not fair, Mr Hartmann. Life is neither just nor equitable, and unfortunately we are not provided with a guidebook or a manual of rules regarding how it should be lived. It seems a shame, does it not, that in fifty thousand years of history we have yet failed to understand even the simplest aspect of ourselves?’
Hartmann looked away himself then. Perez was right, and despite the horrors that Hartmann had listened to, despite the violence and bloodshed that Perez had both instigated and condoned, there was something about the man that seemed to command an element of respect. Abhorrence and repulsion had in some small way become supplanted by a degree of acceptance. For all that had been done, Perez had never pretended to be anything other than himself. Unlike Ducane, unlike even Feraud, Perez had worn his heart on his sleeve; he had shown his colors; he had cheated and deceived and murdered, but never failed to recognize that that was what he was doing. Even his wife had been aware of the man he was, and though they had never spoken openly of his life he had never directly lied to her.
Perez looked across the table at Hartmann. Hartmann looked back. There was silence between them for some seconds, but that silence was neither awkward nor tense. It seemed, after all these things, that each had accepted the other. This thought did not disturb Hartmann. He did not question his allegiances nor his feelings. It was what it was. Perez had spoken the truth, and for this, perhaps this alone, he had earned Hartmann’s respect.
‘So,’ Perez eventually said, his voice clear and precise. ‘Let me tell you what happened when
TWENTY-SEVEN
And so at last I had come full circle.
Ouroboros: the snake that devours its own tail, finally to disappear.
Here was everything I was, everything I became, everything I would ultimately be. Here was the beginning of every thought and deed, every action, every dream that soured and died some quiet and lonely death in the darkened shadows of my mind.
I arrived in New Orleans 6 April, 2000. The Mardi Gras was bursting the streets at their seams. The Vieux Carre was alive and throbbing with the sound of music and voices, the fireworks of color along rues d’Orleans, de Toulouse, de Chartres, de Sainte-Anne, de Sainte-Philippe, de Bourbon and de Bourgogne, the Halls of Preservation and Dixieland: the rolling syncopations of jazz blended with deep Southern gospel blues, and amidst all of this, my memories…
St James the Greater, Ougou Feray, the African spirit of war and iron. Serpent and cross in the same cemetery on All Saints’ Day, the spirited festival of Vyej Mirak, the Virgin of Miracles, and her voodoo counterpart Ezili, the goddess of love. They drank to feed the spirit. Sacrificing white pigeons to the Petro loa. All Souls’ Day, Baron Samedi, loa of the dead…
Carryl Chevron, gold and diamonds in his teeth, a car filled with wisdom – Aardvark through Aix-La-Chapelle to Canteloupe – and somewhere, perhaps even now, a brassy act in high heels with too much rouge and too little class, who waited hours in a dusty roadhouse asking herself whatever might have happened to the trick that never showed…
The smell of the swamps and everglades, the canal intersections, the wisteria and hickory and water oak; Chalmette District, the edge of the territories, the edge of the world perhaps…
The Havana Hurricane, his red-raw face imbued with alcohol and rage and the madness of sex alight in his eyes.
And she whose name I could even now barely utter without feeling the tension of grief in my throat…
And somewhere out there, in a world I had left believing I would never return, was my own son.
There – in a hotel on Lafayette Street, standing on the first floor veranda, behind me on the bed Victor’s clothes scattered as if he had rushed to dress, to leave, to fill himself with the sights and sounds of this place – I stood quietly, my thoughts there for noone but myself, and I wondered how this would end. Seemed to me I had
