Hannibal Rising (11 page)

This specific wavelength he had not heard before, but he recognized it as Other. It had been some time
since he felt the thrill of the hunt, the prehensile quality of the opposing brain. He felt it in his scalp and forearms. He lived for it.

Part of him wished the burglar outside had killed the butcher. Part of him considered how lonely and in need of company Lady Murasaki might be with the boy in an institution.

“The butcher was fishing. He had blood and scales on his knife, but he had no fish. The chef tells me you brought in a splendid fish for dinner. Where did you get the fish?”

“By fishing, Inspector. We keep a baited line in the water behind the boathouse. I’ll show you if you like. Inspector, did you choose war crimes?”

“Yes.”

“Because you lost family in the war?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask how?”

“Some in combat. Some were shipped east.”

“Did you catch who did it?”

“No.”

“But they were Vichy—men like the butcher.”

“Yes.”

“Can we be perfectly honest with each other?”

“Absolutely.”

“Are you sorry to see Paul Momund dead?”

On the far side of the square the village barber, M. Rubin, came off a leafy side street for his nightly round of the square with his small terrier. M. Rubin,
after talking with his customers all day, continued talking to his dog in the evening. He pulled the dog away from the grassy strip in front of the post office.

“You should have performed your duty on the lawn of Felipe, where no one was looking,” M. Rubin said. “Here you might incur a fine. You have no money. It would fall to me to pay.”

In front of the post office was a post box on a pole. The dog strained toward it against the leash and raised his leg.

Seeing a face above the mailbox, Rubin said, “Good evening, Monsieur,” and to the dog, “Attend you do not befoul Monsieur!” The dog whined and Rubin noticed there were no legs beneath the mailbox on the other side.

The motorbike sped along the one-lane paved road, nearly overrunning the cast of its dim headlight. Once when a car approached from the other way, the rider ducked into the roadside trees until the car’s taillights were out of sight.

In the dark storage shed of the chateau, the headlight of the bike faded out, the motor ticking as it cooled. Lady Murasaki pulled off the black balaclava and by touch she put up her hair.

The beams of police flashlights converged on Paul Momund’s head on top of the mailbox.
Boche
was printed across his forehead just below the hairline.
Late drinkers and night workers were gathering to see.

Inspector Popil brought Hannibal up close and looked at him by the light glowing off the dead man’s face. He could detect no change in the boy’s expression.

“The Resistance killed Momund at last,” the barber said, and explained to everyone how he had found him, carefully leaving out the transgressions of the dog.

Some in the crowd thought Hannibal shouldn’t have to look at it. An older woman, a night nurse going home, said so aloud.

Popil sent him home in a police car. Hannibal arrived at the chateau in the rosy dawn and cut some flowers before he went into the house, arranging them for height in his fist. The poem to accompany them came to him as he was cutting the stems off even. He found Lady Murasaki’s brush in the studio still wet and used it to write:

Hannibal slept easily later in the day. He dreamed of Mischa in the summer before the war, Nanny had her bathtub in the garden at the lodge, letting the sun warm the water, and the cabbage butterflies
flew around Mischa in the water. He cut the eggplant for her and she hugged the purple eggplant, warm from the sun.

When he woke there was a note beneath his door along with a wisteria blossom. The note said:
One would choose the heron, if beset by frogs
.

CHIYOH PREPARED for her departure to Japan by drilling Hannibal in elementary Japanese, in the hope that he could provide some conversation for Lady Murasaki and relieve her of the tedium of speaking English.

She found him an apt pupil in the Heian tradition of communication by poem and engaged him in practice poem exchanges, confiding that this was a major deficiency in her prospective groom. She made Hannibal swear to look out for Lady Murasaki, using a variety of oaths sworn on objects she thought Westerners might hold sacred. She required pledges as well at the altar in the attic, and a blood oath that involved pricking their fingers with a pin.

They could not hold off the time with wishing. When Lady Murasaki and Hannibal packed for
Paris, Chiyoh packed for Japan. Serge and Hannibal heaved Chiyoh’s trunk onto the boat train at the Gare de Lyon while Lady Murasaki sat beside her in the train, holding her hand until the last minute. An outsider watching them part might have thought them emotionless as they exchanged a final bow.

Hannibal and Lady Murasaki felt Chiyoh’s absence sharply on the way home. Now there were only the two of them.

The Paris apartment vacated before the war by Lady Murasaki’s father was very Japanese in its subtle interplay of shadows and lacquer. If the furniture, un-draped piece by piece, brought Lady Murasaki memories of her father, she did not reveal them.

She and Hannibal tied back the heavy draperies, letting in the sun. Hannibal looked down upon the Place des Vosges, all light and space and warm red brick, one of the most beautiful squares in Paris despite a garden still scruffy from the war.

There, on the field below, King Henri II jousted under the colors of Diane de Poitiers and fell with fatal splinters in his eye, and even Vesalius at his bedside could not save him.

Hannibal closed one eye and speculated precisely where Henri fell—probably right over there where Inspector Popil now stood, holding a potted plant and looking up at the windows. Hannibal did not wave.

“I think you have a caller, my lady,” he said over his shoulder.

Lady Murasaki did not ask who. When the knocking came, she let it go on for a moment before she answered the door.

Popil came in with his plant and a bag of sweets from Fauchon. There was a mild confusion as he attempted to remove his hat while holding parcels in both hands. Lady Murasaki took the hat from him.

“Welcome to Paris, Lady Murasaki. The florist swears to me this plant will do well on your terrace.”

“Terrace? I suspect you are investigating me, Inspector—already you have found out I have a terrace.”

“Not only that—I have confirmed the presence of a foyer, and I strongly suspect you have a kitchen.”

“So you work from room to room?”

“Yes, that is my method, I proceed from room to room.”

“Until you arrive where?” She saw some color in his face and let him off. “Shall we put this in the light?”

Hannibal was unpacking the armor when they came upon him. He stood beside the crate, holding the samurai mask. He did not turn his body toward Inspector Popil, but turned his head like an owl to look at the policeman. Seeing Popil’s hat in Lady
Murasaki’s hands, Hannibal estimated the size and weight of his head at 19.5 centimeters and six kilos.

“Do you ever put it on, the mask?” Inspector Popil said.

“I haven’t earned it.”

“I wonder.”

“Do you ever wear your many decorations, Inspector?”

“When ceremonies require them.”

“Chocolates from Fauchon. Very thoughtful, Inspector Popil. They will take away the smell of the camp.”

“But not the scent of oil of cloves. Lady Murasaki, I need to discuss the matter of your residency.”

Popil and Lady Murasaki talked on the terrace. Hannibal watched them through the window, revising his estimate of Popil’s hat size to twenty centimeters. In the course of conversation Popil and Lady Murasaki moved the plant a number of times to vary its exposure to the light. They seemed to need something to do.

Hannibal did not continue unpacking the armor, but knelt beside the crate and rested his hand on the rayskin grip of the short sword. He looked out at the policeman through the eyes of the mask.

He could see Lady Murasaki laughing. Inspector Popil must be making some lame attempt at levity and she was laughing out of kindness, Hannibal surmised. When they came back inside, Lady Murasaki left them alone together.

“Hannibal, at the time of his death your uncle
was trying to find out what happened to your sister in Lithuania. I can try too. It’s hard in the Baltic now—sometimes the Soviets cooperate, more times they don’t. But I keep after them.”

“Thank you.”

“What do you remember?”

“We were living at the lodge. There was an explosion. I can remember being picked up by soldiers and riding on a tank to the village. In between I don’t know. I try to remember. I cannot.”

“I talked with Dr. Rufin.”

No visible reaction to that.

“He would not discuss any specifics of his talks with you.”

Nothing to that either.

“But he said you are very concerned about your sister, naturally. He said with time your memory might return. If you remember anything, ever, please tell me.”

Hannibal looked at the inspector steadily. “Why would I not?” He wished he could hear a clock. It would be good to hear a clock.

“When we talked after … the incident of Paul Momund, I told you I lost relatives in the war. It is very much of an effort for me to think about that. Do you know why?”

“Tell me why, Inspector.”

“Because I think I should have saved them, I have a horror of finding something I didn’t do, that I could have done. If you have the fear the same way I
do, don’t let it push away some memory that might be helpful to Mischa. You can tell me anything in the world.”

Lady Murasaki came into the room. Popil stood up and changed the subject. “The Lycée is a good school and you earned your way in. If I can help you, I will. I’ll drop by the school to see about you from time to time.”

“But you would prefer to call here,” Hannibal said.

“Where you will be welcome,” Lady Murasaki said.

“Good afternoon, Inspector,” Hannibal said.

Lady Murasaki let Popil out and she returned angry.

“Inspector Popil likes you, I can see it in his face,” Hannibal said.

“What can he see in yours? It is dangerous to bait him.”

“You will find him tedious.”

“I find you rude. It is quite unlike you. If you wish to be rude to a guest, do it in your own house,” Lady Murasaki said.

“Lady Murasaki, I want to stay here with you.”

The anger went out of her. “No. We will spend our holidays together, and weekends, but you must board at the school as the rules require. You know my hand is always on your heart.” And she put it there.

On his heart. The hand that held Popil’s hat was on
his heart. The hand that held the knife to Momund’s brother’s throat. The hand that gripped the butcher’s hair and dropped his head into a bag and set it on the mailbox. His heart beat against her palm. Fathomless her face
.

THE FROGS HAD BEEN preserved in formaldehyde from before the war, and what differentiating color their organs ever had was long ago leached away. There was one for each six students in the malodorous school laboratory. A circle of schoolboys crowded around each plate where the little cadaver rested, the chaff of grubby erasures dusting the table as they sketched. The schoolroom was cold, coal still being in short supply and some of the boys wore gloves with the fingertips cut out.

Hannibal came and looked at the frog and returned to his desk to work. He made two trips. Professor Bienville had a teacher’s suspicion of anyone who chose to sit in the back of the room. He approached Hannibal from the flank, his suspicions justified as he saw the boy sketching a face instead of a frog.

“Hannibal Lecter, why are you not drawing the specimen?”

“I finished it, sir.” Hannibal lifted the top sheet and there was the frog, exactly rendered, in the anatomical position and circumscribed like Leonardo’s drawing of man. The internals were hatched and shaded.

The professor looked carefully into Hannibal’s face. He adjusted his dentures with his tongue and said, “I will take that drawing. There is someone who should see it. You’ll have credit for it.” The professor turned down the top sheet of Hannibal’s tablet and looked at the face. “Who is that?”

“I’m not sure, sir. A face I saw somewhere.”

In fact, it was the face of Vladis Grutas, but Hannibal did not know his name. It was a face he had seen in the moon and on the midnight ceiling.

A year of grey light through classroom windows. At least the light was diffuse enough to draw by, and the classrooms changed as the instructors put him up a form, and then another and another.

A holiday from school at last.

In this first fall since the death of the count and the departure of Chiyoh, Lady Murasaki’s losses quickened in her. When her husband was alive she had arranged outdoor suppers in the fall in a meadow near the chateau with Count Lecter and Hannibal and Chiyoh, to view the harvest moon and to listen to the fall insects.

Now, on the terrace at her residence in Paris, she
read to Hannibal a letter from Chiyoh about her wedding arrangements, and they watched the moon wax toward full, but no crickets could be heard.

Hannibal folded his cot in the living room early in the morning and bicycled across the Seine to the Jardin des Plantes, where he made another of his frequent inquiries at the menagerie. News today a scribbled note with an address …

Ten minutes further south at Place Monge and the Rue Ortolan he found the shop:
Poissons Tropicaux, Petites Oiseaux, & Animaux Exotiques
.

Hannibal took a small portfolio from his saddlebag and went inside.

There were tiers of tanks and cages in the small storefront, twittering and chirping and the whir of hamster wheels. It smelled of grain and warm feathers and fish food.

From a cage beside the cash register, a large parrot addressed Hannibal in Japanese. An older Japanese man with a pleasant face came from the back of the store, where he was cooking.