فصل سی و سوم

Book two

When I said that Mercy stood Within the borders of the wood, I meant the lenient beast with claws And bloody swift-dispatching jaws.

—LAWRENCE SPINGARN

33

ON CENTER STAGE in the Paris Opera, Dr. Faust’s time was running out in his deal with the Devil. Hannibal Lecter and Lady Murasaki watched from an intimate box at stage left as Faust’s pleas to avoid the flames soared to the fireproof ceiling of Garnier’s great theater.

Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki, in full fig for the opera. Winks of light came from the opposite boxes as gentlemen turned their opera glasses away from the stage to look at her as well.

Against the stage lights she was in silhouette, just as Hannibal first saw her at the chateau when he was a boy. The images came to him in order: gloss of a handsome crow drinking from the rainspout, gloss of Lady Murasaki’s hair. First her silhouette, then she opened a casement and the light touched her face.

Hannibal had come a long way on the bridge of dreams. He had grown to fill the late count’s evening clothes, while in appearance Lady Murasaki remained exactly the same.

Her hand closed on the material of her skirt and he heard the rustle of the cloth above the music. Knowing she could feel his gaze, he looked away from her, looked around the box.

The box had character. Behind the seats, screened from the opposing boxes, was a wicked little goat-footed chaise where lovers might retire while the orchestra provided cadence from down below—in the previous season, an older gentleman had succumbed to heart failure on the chaise during the final measures of “Flight of the Bumblebee,” as Hannibal had occasion to know from ambulance service.

Hannibal and Lady Murasaki were not alone in the box.

In the front pair of seats sat the Commissioner of Police for the Prefecture of Paris and his wife, leaving little doubt as to where Lady Murasaki got the tickets. From Inspector Popil, of course. How pleasant that Popil himself could not attend—probably detained by a murder investigation, hopefully a time-consuming and dangerous one, out-of-doors in bad weather perhaps, with the threat of fatal lightning.

The lights came up and tenor Beniamino Gigli got the standing ovation he deserved, and from a tough house. The police commissioner and his wife turned in the box and shook hands all around, everyone’s palms still numb from applauding.

The commissioner’s wife had a bright and curious eye. She took in Hannibal, fitted to perfection in the count’s dinner clothes, and she could not resist a question. “Young man, my husband tells me you were the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France.” “The records are not complete, Madame. Probably there were surgeon’s apprentices …”

“Is it true that you read through your textbooks once and then return them to the bookstore within the week to get all your money back?” Hannibal smiled. “Oh no, Madame. That is not entirely accurate,” he said. Wonder where that information came from? The same place as the tickets. Hannibal leaned close to the lady. Trying for an exit line, he rolled his eyes at the commissioner and bent over the lady’s hand, to whisper loudly, “That sounds like a crime to me.” The commissioner was in a good humor, having seen Faust suffer for his sins. “I’ll turn a blind eye, young man, if you confess to my wife at once.” “The truth is, Madame, I don’t get all my money back. The bookstore holds out a two-hundred-franc restocking fee for their trouble.” Away then and down the great staircase of the opera, beneath the torchieres, Hannibal and Lady Murasaki descending faster than Faust to get away from the crowd, Pils’ painted ceilings moving over them, wings everywhere in paint and stone. There were taxis now in the Place de l’Opera. A vendor’s charcoal brazier laced the air with a whiff of Faust’s nightmare. Hannibal flagged a taxi.

“I’m surprised you told Inspector Popil about my books,” he said inside the car.

“He found it out himself,” Lady Murasaki said. “He told the commissioner, the commissioner told his wife. She needs to flirt. You are not naturally obtuse, Hannibal.” She is uneasy in closed places with me now; she expresses it as irritation.

“Sorry.”

She looked at him quickly as the taxi passed a streetlight. “Your animosity clouds your judgment. Inspector Popil keeps up with you because you intrigue him.” “No, my lady, you intrigue him. I expect he pesters you with his verse …”

Lady Murasaki did not satisfy Hannibal’s curiosity. “He knows you are first in the class,” she said. “He’s proud of that. His interest is largely benign.” “Largely benign is not a happy diagnosis.”

The trees were budding in the Place des Vosges, fragrant in the spring night. Hannibal dismissed the cab, feeling Lady Murasaki’s quick glance even in the darkness of the loggia. Hannibal was not a child, he did not stay over anymore.

“I have an hour and I want to walk,” he said.