فصل چهاردهم

14

A SHOWER OF RAIN settled the dust as they covered the last miles to the chateau, wet gravel pinging underneath the muddy Delahaye, and the smell of herbs and turned earth blew through the car. Then the rain stopped and the evening light had an orange cast.

The chateau was more graceful than grand in this strange orange light. The mullions in its many windows were curved like spiderwebs weighted with dew. To Hannibal, casting for omens, the curving loggia of the chateau unwound from the entrance like Huyghens’ volute.

Four draft horses, steaming after the rain, were hitched to a defunct German tank protruding from the foyer. Big horses like Cesar. Hannibal was glad to see them, hoped they were his totem. The tank was jacked up on rollers. Little by little the horses pulled it out of the entryway as though they were extracting a tooth, the driver leading the horses, their ears moving when he spoke to them.

“The Germans blew out the doorway with their cannon and backed the tank inside to get away from the airplanes,” the count told Hannibal as the car came to a stop. He had become accustomed to speaking to the boy without a reply. “They left it here in the retreat. We couldn’t move it, so we decorated the damned thing with window boxes and walked around it for five years. Now I can sell my ‘subversive’ pictures again and we can pay to get it hauled away. Come, Hannibal.” A houseman had watched for the car and he and the housekeeper came to meet the count with umbrellas if they should need them. A mastiff came with them.

Hannibal liked his uncle for making the introductions in the driveway, courteously facing the staff, instead of rushing toward the house and talking over his shoulder.

“This is my nephew, Hannibal. He’s ours now and we’re glad to have him. Madame Brigitte, my housekeeper. And Pascal, who’s in charge of making things work.” Madame Brigitte was once a good-looking upstairs maid. She was a quick study and she read Hannibal by his bearing.

The mastiff greeted the count with enthusiasm and reserved judgment on Hannibal. The dog blew some air out of her cheeks. Hannibal opened his hand to her and, sniffing, she looked up at him from under her brows.

“We’ll need to find him some clothes,” the count told Madame Brigitte. “Look in my old school trunks in the attic to start and we’ll improve him as we go along.” “And the little girl, sir?”

“Not yet, Brigitte,” he said, and closed the subject with a shake of his head.

Images as Hannibal approached the house: gleam of the wet cobblestones in the courtyard, the gloss of the horses’ coats after the shower, gloss of a handsome crow drinking from the rainspout at the corner of the roof; the movement of a curtain in a high window: the gloss of Lady Murasaki’s hair, then her silhouette.

Lady Murasaki opened the casement. The evening light touched her face and Hannibal, out of the wastes of nightmare, took his first step on the bridge of dreams … To move from barracks into a private home is sweet relief. The furniture throughout the chateau was odd and welcoming, a mix of periods retrieved from the attic by Count Lecter and Lady Murasaki after the looting Nazis were driven out. During the occupation, all the major furniture left France for Germany on a train.

Hermann Goering and the Führer himself had long coveted the work of Robert Lecter and other major artists in France. After the Nazi takeover, one of Goering’s first acts was to arrest Robert Lecter as a “subversive Slavic artist,” and seize as many of the “decadent” paintings as he could find in order to “protect the public” from them. The paintings were sequestered in Goering’s and Hitler’s private collections.

When the count was freed from prison by the advancing Allies, he and Lady Murasaki put things back as well as they could and the staff worked for subsistence until Count Lecter was back at his easel.

Robert Lecter saw his nephew settled in his room. Generous in size and light, the bedroom had been prepared for Hannibal with hangings and posters to enliven the stone. A kendo mask and crossed bamboo swords were mounted high on the wall. Had he been speaking, Hannibal would have asked after Madame.