فصل بیست و پنجم

25

THE EMBALMING ROOM was dark, and silent except for a slow drip in the sink. The inspector stood in the doorway with Hannibal, raindrops on their shoulders and their shoes.

Momund was in there. Hannibal could smell him. He waited for Popil to turn on the light, interested to see what the policeman would consider a dramatic interval.

“Do you think you would recognize Paul Momund if you saw him again?” “I’ll do my best, Inspector.”

Popil switched on the light. The mortician had removed Momund’s clothing and put it in paper bags as instructed. He had closed the abdomen with coarse stitching over a piece of rubber raincoat, and placed a towel over the severed neck.

“Do you remember the butcher’s tattoo?” Hannibal walked around the body. “Yes. I hadn’t read it.” The boy looked at Inspector Popil across the body. He saw in the inspector’s eyes the smudged look of intelligence.

“What does it say?” the inspector asked.

“Here’s mine, where’s yours?”

“Perhaps it should say Here’s yours, where’s mine? Here is your first kill, where is my head? What do you think?” “I think that’s probably unworthy of you. I would hope so. Do you expect his wounds to bleed in my presence?” “What did this butcher say to the lady that drove you crazy?” “It did not drive me crazy Inspector. His mouth offended everyone who heard it, including me. He was rude.” “What did he say Hannibal?”

“He asked if it were true that Japanese pussy runs sideways, Inspector. His address was ‘Hey Japonnaise!’ ” “Sideways.” Inspector Popil traced the line of stitches across Paul Momund’s abdomen, nearly touching the skin. “Sideways like this?” The inspector scanned Hannibal’s face for something. He did not find it. He did not find anything, so he asked another question.

“How do you feel, seeing him dead?”

Hannibal looked under the towel covering the neck. “Detached,” he said.

The polygraph set up in the police station was the first the village policemen had seen, and there was considerable curiosity about it. The operator, who had come from Paris with Inspector Popil, made a number of adjustments, some purely theatrical, as the tubes warmed up and the insulation added a hot-cotton smell to the atmosphere of sweat and cigarettes. Then the inspector, watching Hannibal watching the machine, cleared the room of everyone but the boy, himself and the operator. The polygrapher attached the instrument to Hannibal.

“State your name,” the operator said.

“Hannibal Lecter.” The boy’s voice was rusty.

“What is your age?”

“Thirteen years.”

The ink styluses ran smoothly over the polygraph paper.

“How long have you been a resident of France?” “Six months.”

“Were you acquainted with the butcher Paul Momund?” “We were never introduced.”

The styluses did not quiver.

“But you knew who he was.”

“Yes.”

“Did you have an altercation, that is a fight, with Paul Momund at the market on Thursday?” “Yes.”

“Do you attend school?”

“Yes.”

“Does your school require uniforms?”

“No.”

“Do you have any guilty knowledge of the death of Paul Momund?” “Guilty knowledge?”

“Limit your responses to yes or no.”

“No.”

The peaks and valleys in the ink lines are constant. No increase in blood pressure, no increase in heartbeat, respiration constant and calm.

“You know that the butcher is dead.”

“Yes.”

The polygrapher appeared to make several adjustments to the knobs of the machine.

“Have you studied mathematics?”

“Yes.”

“Have you studied geography?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the dead body of Paul Momund?” “Yes.”

“Did you kill Paul Momund?”

“No.”

No distinctive spikes in the inked lines. The operator took off his glasses, a signal to Inspector Popil that ended the examination.

A known burglar from Orléans with a lengthy police record replaced Hannibal in the chair. The burglar waited while Inspector Popil and the polygrapher conferred in the hall outside.

Popil unspooled the paper tape.

“Vanilla.”

“The boy responds to nothing,” the polygrapher said. “He’s a blunted war orphan or he has a monstrous amount of self-control.” “Monstrous,” Popil said.

“Do you want to question the burglar first?” “He does not interest me, but I want you to run him. And I may whack him a few times in front of the boy. Do you follow me?” On the downslope of the road leading into the village, a motorbike coasted with its lights out, its engine off. The rider wore black coveralls and a black balaclava. Silently the bike rounded a corner at the far side of the deserted square, disappeared briefly behind a postal van parked in front of the post office and moved on, the rider pedaling hard, not starting the engine before the upslope out of the village.

Inspector Popil and Hannibal sat in the commandant’s office. Inspector Popil read the label on the commandant’s bottle of Clanzoflat and considered taking a dose.

Then he put the roll of polygraph tape on the desk and pushed it with his finger. The tape unrolled its line of many small peaks. The peaks looked to him like the foothills of a mountain obscured by cloud. “Did you kill the butcher, Hannibal?” “May I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a long way to come from Paris. Do you specialize in the deaths of butchers?” “My specialty is war crimes, and Paul Momund was suspected in several. War crimes do not end with the war, Hannibal.” Popil paused to read the advertising on each facet of the ashtray. “Perhaps I understand your situation better than you think.” “What is my situation, Inspector?”

“You were orphaned in the war. You lived in an institution, living inside yourself, your family dead. And at last, at last your beautiful stepmother made up for all of it.” Working for the bond, Popil put his hand on Hannibal’s shoulder. “The very scent of her takes away the smell of the camp. And then the butcher spews filth at her. If you killed him, I could understand. Tell me. Together we could explain to a magistrate …” Hannibal moved back in his chair, away from Popil’s touch.

“The very scent of her takes away the smell of the camp? May I ask if you compose verse, Inspector?” “Did you kill the butcher?”

“Paul Momund killed himself. He died of stupidity and rudeness.” Inspector Popil had considerable experience and knowledge of the awful, and this was the voice Popil had been listening for; it had a faintly different timbre and was surprising coming from the body of a boy.

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: Night heron revealed

By the rising harvest moon—

Which is lovelier?

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.