فصل پانزدهم

15

HANNIBAL WAS LEFT alone for less than a minute before he heard a knock at the door.

Lady Murasaki’s attendant, Chiyoh, stood there, a Japanese girl of about Hannibal’s age, with hair bobbed at her ears. Chiyoh appraised him for an instant, then a veil slid across her eyes like the nictitating goggles of a hawk.

“Lady Murasaki sends greetings and welcome,” she said. “If you will come with me …” Dutiful and severe, Chiyoh led him to the bathhouse in the former wine-pressing room in a dependency of the chateau.

To please his wife, Count Lecter had converted the winepress into a Japanese bath, the pressing vat now filled with water heated by a Rube Goldberg water heater fashioned from a copper cognac distillery. The room smelled of wood smoke and rosemary. Silver candelabra, buried in the garden during the war, were set about the vat. Chiyoh did not light the candles. An electric bulb would do for Hannibal until his position was clarified.

Chiyoh handed him towels and a robe and pointed to a shower in the corner. “Bathe there first, scrub vigorously before submerging yourself,” she said. “Chef will have an omelet for you after your bath, and then you must rest.” She gave him a grimace that might have been a smile, threw an orange into the bathwater and waited outside the bathhouse for his clothing. When he handed it out the door, she took the items gingerly between two fingers, draped them over a stick in her other hand and disappeared with them.

It was evening when Hannibal came awake all at once, the way he woke in barracks. Only his eyes moved until he saw where he was. He felt clean in his clean bed. Through the casement glowed the last of the long French twilight. A cotton kimono was on the chair beside him. He put it on. The stone floor of the corridor was pleasantly cool underfoot, the stone stairs worn hollow like those of Lecter Castle. Outside, under the violet sky, he could hear noises from the kitchen, preparations for dinner.

The mastiff saw him and thumped her tail twice without getting up.

From the bathhouse came the sound of a Japanese lute. Hannibal went to the music. A dusty window glowed with candlelight from within. Hannibal looked in. Chiyoh sat beside the bath plucking the strings of a long and elegant koto. She had lit the candles this time. The water heater chuckled. The fire beneath it crackled and the sparks flew upward. Lady Murasaki was in the water. In the water was Lady Murasaki, like the water flowers on the moat where the swans swam and did not sing. Hannibal watched, silent as the swans, and spread his arms like wings.

He backed from the window and returned through the gloaming to his room, a curious heaviness on him, and found his bed again.

Enough coals remain in the master bedroom to glow on the ceiling. Count Lecter, in the semi-darkness, quickens to Lady Murasaki’s touch and to her voice.

“Missing you, I felt as I did when you were in prison,” she said. “I remembered the poem of an ancestor, Ono no Komachi, from a thousand years ago.” “Ummm.” “She was very passionate.” “I’m anxious to know what she said.” “A poem: Hito ni awan tsuki no naki yo wa/omoiokite/mune hashiribi ni/kokoro yaki ori. Can you hear the music in it?” Robert Lecter’s Western ear could not hear the music in it but, knowing where the music lay, he was enthusiastic: “Oh my, yes. Tell me the meaning.” “No way to see him/on this moonless night/I lie awake longing, burning/breasts racing fire, heart in flames.” “My God, Sheba.”

She took exquisite care to spare him exertion.

In the hall of the chateau, the tall clock tells the lateness of the hour, soft bongs down the stone corridors. The mastiff bitch in her kennel stirs, and with thirteen short howls she makes her answer to the clock. Hannibal in his own clean bed turns over in his sleep. And dreams.

In the barn, the air is cold, the children’s clothes are pulled down to their waists as Blue-Eyes and Web-Hand feel the flesh of their upper arms. The others behind them nicker and mill like hyenas who have to wait. Here is the one who always proffers his bowl. Mischa is coughing and hot, turning her face from their breath. Blue-Eyes grips the chains around their necks. Blood and feathers from a birdskin he gnawed are stuck to Blue-Eyes’ face.

Bowl-Man’s distorted voice: “Take her, she’s going to dieee anyway. He’ll stay freeeeeesh a little longer.” Blue-Eyes to Mischa, a ghastly cozening, “Come and play, come and play!”

Blue-Eyes starts to sing and Web-Hand joins in: Ein Mannlein steht im Walde ganz still und stumm, Es hat von lauter Purpur ein Mantlein um Bowl-Man brings his bowl. Web-Hand picks up the axe, Blue-Eyes seizing Mischa and Hannibal screaming flies at him, gets his teeth into Blue-Eyes’ cheek, Mischa suspended in the air by her arms, twisting to look back at him.

“Mischa, Mischa!”

The cries ringing down the stone corridors and Count Lecter and Lady Murasaki burst into Hannibal’s room. He has ripped the pillow with his teeth and feathers are flying, Hannibal growls and screams, thrashing, fighting, gritting his teeth. Count Lecter puts his weight on him and confines the boy’s arms in the blanket, gets his knees on the blanket. “Easy, easy.” Fearing for Hannibal’s tongue, Lady Murasaki whips off the belt of her robe, holds his nose until he has to gasp, and gets the belt between his teeth.

He shivers and is still, like a bird dies. Her robe has come open and she holds him against her, holds between her breasts his face wet with tears of rage, feathers stuck to his cheeks.

But it is the count she asks, “Are you all right?”