Hannibal Rising (16 page)

“Monsieur Louis Ferrat, good afternoon,” Hannibal said.

“Monsieur Ferrat has stepped away from his cell,” Ferrat said. “I represent him. What do you want?”

Hannibal took in the clothing without moving his eyes. “I want to ask him to make a gift of his body to the medical school, for science. It will be treated with great respect.”

“You’ll take his body anyway. Drag it away.”

“I can’t and I wouldn’t take his body without his permission. Or ever drag it.”

“Ah, here is my client now,” Ferrat said. He turned away from Hannibal and conferred quietly with the clothing as though it had just walked into the cell and seated itself in the chair. Ferrat returned to the bars.

“He wants to know why should he give it to you?”

“Fifteen thousand francs for his relatives.”

Ferrat turned to the clothing and then back to
Hannibal. “Monsieur Ferrat says,
Fuck my relatives. They hold out their hand and I’ll shit in it.”
Ferrat dropped his voice. “Forgive the language—he is distraught, and the gravity of the matter requires me to quote him exactly.”

“I understand perfectly,” Hannibal said. “Do you think he’d like to contribute the fee to a cause his family despises, would that be a satisfaction to him, Monsieur
…?”

“You may call me Louis—Monsieur Ferrat and I share the same first name. No. I believe he is adamant. Monsieur Ferrat lives somewhat apart from himself. He says he has very little influence on himself.”

“I see. He is not alone in that.”

“I hardly see how you understand anything, you’re not much more than a chi—not much more than a schoolboy yourself.”

“You might help me then. Each student at the medical school writes a personal letter of appreciation to the donor with whom he is involved. Knowing Monsieur Ferrat as you do, could you help me compose a letter of appreciation? Just in case he should decide favorably?”

Ferrat rubbed his face. His fingers appeared to have an extra set of knuckles where they had been broken and badly set years ago.

“Who would ever read it, other than Monsieur Ferrat himself?”

“It would be posted at the school, if he wishes. All the faculty would see it, prominent and influential
people. He could submit it to
Le Canard Enchaîné
for publication.”

“What sort of thing would you want to say?”

“I’d describe him as selfless, cite his contribution to science, to the French people, to medical advances that will help the oncoming generation of children.”

“Never mind children. Leave children out.”

Hannibal quickly wrote a salutation on his notepad. “Do you think this is sufficiently honorific?” He held it up high enough for Louis Ferrat to have to look up at it, the better to gauge the length of his neck.

Not a very long neck. Unless Monsieur Paris got a good grip on his hair, there wouldn’t be much left below the hyoid bone, useless for a frontal cervical triangle display
.

“We mustn’t neglect his patriotism,” Ferrat said. “When Le Grand Charles broadcast from London, who responded? It was Ferrat at the barricades! Vive la France!”

Hannibal watched as patriotic fervor swelled the artery in the traitor Ferrat’s forehead and caused the jugular and carotid to stand out in his neck—
an eminently injectable head
.

“Yes, vive la France!” Hannibal said, redoubling his efforts: “Our letter should emphasize that, though they call him Vichy, he was actually a hero of the Resistance, then?”

“Certainly.”

“He saved downed airmen, I would imagine?”

“On a number of occasions.”

“Performed the customary acts of sabotage?”

“Often, and without regard for his own safety.”

“Tried to protect the Jews?”

Quarter-second hitch. “Heedless of risk to himself.”

“Was tortured perhaps, he suffered broken fingers for the sake of France?”

“He could still use them to salute proudly when Le Grand Charles returned,” Ferrat said.

Hannibal finished scribbling. “I’ve just listed the highlights here, do you think you could show it to him?”

Ferrat looked over the sheet of notebook paper, touching each point with his forefinger, nodding, murmuring to himself. “You might put in a few testimonials from his friends in the Resistance, I could supply those. A moment please.” Ferrat turned his back to Hannibal and leaned close to his clothing. He turned back with a decision.

“My client’s response is:
Merde. Tell the young fucker I’ll see the dope and rub it on my gums first before I sign
. Pardon, but that is verbatim literatim.” Ferrat became confidential, leaning close to the bars. “Others on the tier told him he could get enough laudanum—enough laudanum to be indifferent to the knife. ‘To dream and not to scream’ is how I’d couch it in a courtroom setting. The St. Pierre medical school is giving laudanum in exchange for … permission. Do you give laudanum?”

“I will be back to see you, with an answer for him.”

“I wouldn’t wait too long,” Ferrat said. “St. Pierre will be coming round.” He raised his voice and gripped the neck of his combination underwear as he might clutch his waistcoat during an oration. “I’m empowered to negotiate on his behalf with St. Pierre as well.” Close to the bars and quiet now: “Three days and poor Ferrat will be dead, and I’ll be in mourning and out a client. You are a medical person. Do you think it’s going to hurt? Hurt Monsieur Ferrat when they …”

“Absolutely not. The uncomfortable part is now. Beforehand. As for the thing itself, no. Not even for an instant.” Hannibal had started away when Ferrat called to him and he went back to the bars.

“The students wouldn’t laugh at him, at his parts.”

“Certainly not. A subject is always draped, except for the exact field of study.”

“Even if he were … somewhat unique?”

“In what way?”

“Even if he had, well, infantile parts?”

“A common circumstance, and never, ever, an occasion for humor,” Hannibal said.
There’s a candidate for the anatomy museum, where donors are not credited
.

The pounding of the executioner’s mallet registered as a twitch in the corner of Louis Ferrat’s eye as he sat on his bunk, his hand on the sleeve of his companion, the clothes. Hannibal saw him imagining the assembly in his mind, the uprights lifted into
place, the blade with its edge protected by a slit piece of garden hose, beneath it the receptacle.

With a start, seeing it in his mind, Hannibal realized what the receptacle was. It was a
baby’s bathtub
. Like a falling blade Hannibal’s mind cut off the thought and, in the silence after, Louis’ anguish was as familiar to him as the veins in the man’s face, as the arteries in his own.

“I’ll get him the laudanum,” Hannibal said. Failing laudanum, he could buy a ball of opium in a doorway.

“Give me the consent form. Collect it when you bring the dope.”

Hannibal looked at Louis Ferrat, reading his face as intently as he had studied his neck, smelling the fear on him, and said, “Louis, something for your client to consider. All the wars, all the suffering and pain that happened in the centuries before his birth, before his life, how much did all that bother him?”

“Not at all.”

“Then why should anything after his life bother him? It is untroubled sleep. The difference is he will not wake to this.”

THE ORIGINAL WOOD BLOCK engravings for Vesalius’ great atlas of anatomy,
De Fabrica
, were destroyed in Munich in World War II. For Dr. Dumas the engravings were holy relics and in his grief and anger he became inspired to compile a new atlas of anatomy. It would be the best to date in the line of atlases that succeeded Vesalius’ in the four hundred years since
De Fabrica
.

Dumas found that drawings were superior to photography in illustrating the anatomy and essential in elucidating cloudy X-rays. Dr. Dumas was a superior anatomist, but he was not an artist. To his great good fortune, he saw Hannibal Lecter’s schoolboy drawing of a frog, followed his progress and secured for him a medical scholarship.

Early evening in the laboratory. During the day Professor Dumas had dissected the inner ear in his
daily lecture, and left it to Hannibal, who now drew the cochlear bones on chalkboard at 5x enlargement.

The night bell rang. Hannibal was expecting a delivery from the Fresnes firing squad. He collected a gurney and pushed it down the long corridor to the night entrance. One wheel of the gurney clicked on the stone floor and he made a mental note to fix it.

Standing beside the body was Inspector Popil. Two ambulance attendants transferred the limp and leaking burden from their litter to the gurney and drove away.

Lady Murasaki had once remarked, to Hannibal’s annoyance, that Popil looked like the handsome actor Louis Jourdan.

“Good evening, Inspector.”

“I’ll have a word with you,” Inspector Popil said, looking nothing whatever like Louis Jourdan.

“Do you mind if I work while we talk?”

“No.”

“Come, then.” Hannibal rolled the gurney down the corridor, clicking louder now. A wheel bearing probably.

Popil held open the swinging doors of the laboratory.

As Hannibal had expected, the massive chest wounds occasioned by the Fresnes rifles had drained the body very well. It was ready for the cadaver tank. That procedure could have waited, but Hannibal was curious to see if Popil in the cadaver tank room might look even less like Louis Jourdan,
and if the surroundings might affect his peachy complexion.

It was a raw concrete space adjacent to the laboratory, reached through double doors with rubber seals. A round tank of formalin twelve feet in diameter was set into the floor and covered with a zinc lid. The lid had a series of doors in it on piano hinges. In one corner of the room an incinerator burned the waste of the day an assortment of ears on this occasion.

A chain hoist stood above the tank. The cadavers, tagged and numbered, each in a chain harness, were tethered to a bar around the circumference of the tank. A large fan with dusty blades was set into the wall. Hannibal started the fan and opened the heavy metal doors of the tank. He tagged the body and put it into a harness and with the hoist swung the body over the tank and lowered it into the formalin.

“Did you come from Fresnes with him?” Hannibal said as the bubbles came up.

“Yes.”

“You attended the execution?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Inspector?”

“I arrested him. If I brought him to that place, I attend.”

“A matter of conscience, Inspector?”

“The death is a consequence of what I do. I believe in consequences. Did you promise Louis Ferrat laudanum?”

“Laudanum legally obtained.”

“But not legally prescribed.”

“It’s a common practice with the condemned, in exchange for permission, I’m sure you know that.”

“Yes. Don’t give it to him.”

“Ferrat is one of yours? You prefer him sober?”

“Yes.”

“You want him to feel the full consequence, Inspector? Will you ask Monsieur Paris to take the cover off the guillotine so he can see the blade, sober, with his vision unclouded?”

“My reasons are my own. What you will not do is give him laudanum. If I find him under the influence of laudanum you will never hold a medical license in France: Look at that with your vision unclouded.”

Hannibal saw that the room didn’t bother Popil. He watched the inspector’s duty come up in him.

Popil turned away from him to speak. “It would be a shame, because you show promise. I congratulate you on your remarkable grades,” Popil said. “You have pleased … your family would be—and is— very proud. Good night.”

“Good night, Inspector. Thank you for the opera tickets.”

EVENING IN PARIS, soft rain and the cobbles shining. Shopkeepers, closing for the night, directed the flow of the rainwater in the gutters to suit them with rolled scraps of carpet.

The tiny windshield wiper on the medical school van was powered by manifold vacuum and Hannibal had to lift off the gas from time to time to clear the windshield on the short drive to La Santé Prison.

He backed through the gate into the courtyard, rain falling cold on the back of his neck as he stuck his head out the van window to see, the guard in the sentry box not coming out to direct him.

Inside the main corridor of La Santé, Monsieur Paris’ assistant beckoned him into the room with the machine. The man was wearing an oilskin apron and had an oilskin cover on his new derby for the
occasion. He had placed the splash shield before his station in front of the blade to better protect his shoes and cuffs.

A long wicker basket lined with zinc stood beside the guillotine, ready for the body to be tipped into it.

“No bagging in here, warden’s orders,” he said. “You’ll have to take the basket and bring it back. Will it go in the van?”

“Yes.”

“Had you better measure?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll take him all together. We’ll tuck it under his arm. They’re next door.”

In a whitewashed room with high barred windows Louis Ferrat lay bound on a gurney in the harsh light of overhead bulbs.

The plank tipping board, the
bascule
, from the guillotine was under him. An IV was in his arm.

Inspector Popil stood over Louis Ferrat, talking quietly to him, shading Ferrat’s eyes from the glare with his hand. The prison doctor inserted a hypodermic into the IV and injected a small amount of clear fluid.

When Hannibal came into the room Popil did not look up.

“Remember
, Louis,” Popil said. “I need for you to remember.”

Louis’ rolling eye caught Hannibal at once.

Popil saw Hannibal then and held up a hand for
him to keep back. Popil bent close to Louis Ferrat’s sweating face. “Tell me.”

“I put Cendrine’s body in two bags. I weighted them with plowshares, and the rhymes were coming—”

“Not Cendrine, Louis.
Remember
. Who told Klaus Barbie where the children were hidden, so he could ship them East? I want you to remember.”

“I asked Cendrine, I said, ‘Just touch it’—but she laughed at me and the rhymes started coming—”