فصل سی و چهارم

34

“YOU HAVE TIME for tea,” Lady Murasaki said.

She took him at once to the terrace, clearly preferring to be outdoors with him. He did not know how he felt about that. He had changed and she had not. A puff of breeze and the oil lamp flame stretched high. When she poured green tea he could see the pulse in her wrist, and the faint fragrance from her sleeve entered him like a thought of his own.

“A letter from Chiyoh,” she said. “She has ended her engagement. Diplomacy no longer suits her.” “Is she happy?”

“I think so. It was a good match in the old way of thinking. How can I disapprove—she writes that she is doing what I did—following her heart.” “Following it where?”

“A young man at Kyoto University the School of Engineering.”

“I would like to see her happy.”

“I would like to see you happy. Are you sleeping, Hannibal?”

“When there’s time. I take a nap on a gurney when I can’t sleep in my room.” “You know what I mean.”

“Do I dream? Yes. Do you not revisit Hiroshima in your dreams?”

“I don’t invite my dreams.”

“I need to remember, any way I can.”

At the door she gave him a bento box with a snack for overnight and packets of chamomile tea. “For sleep,” she said.

He kissed Lady Murasaki’s hand, not the little nod of French politesse, but kissed the back of her hand so that he could taste it.

He repeated the haiku he had written to her so long ago, on the night of the butcher.

“Night heron revealed

By the rising harvest moon—

Which is lovelier?”

“This is not the harvest,” she said, smiling, putting her hand on his heart as she had done since he was thirteen years old. And then she took her hand away, and the place on his chest felt cold.

“Do you really return your books?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can remember everything in the books.”

“Everything important.”

“Then you can remember it is important not to tease Inspector Popil. Unprovoked he is harmless to you. And to me.” She has put on irritation like a winter kimono. Seeing that, can I use it to keep from thinking about her in the bath at the chateau so long ago, herfaceand-breastslikewaterflowers? Like the pink and cream lilies on the moat? Can I? I can not.

He went out into the night, uncomfortable in his stride for the first block or two, and emerged from the narrow streets of the Marais to cross the Pont Louis Phillippe with the Seine sliding under the bridge and the bridge touched by the moon.

Seen from the east, Notre Dame was like a great spider with its flying-buttress legs and the many eyes of its round windows. Hannibal could see the stone spider-cathedral scuttling around town in the darkness, grabbing the odd train from the Gare d’Orsay like a worm for its delectation or, better, spotting a nutritious police inspector coming out of his headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres, an easy pounce away.

He crossed the footbridge to the Ile de la Cite and rounded the cathedral. Sounds of a choir practice came from Notre Dame.

Hannibal paused beneath the arches of the center entrance, looking at the Last Judgment in relief on the arches and lintels above the door. He was considering it for a display in his memory palace, to record a complex dissection of the throat: There on the upper lintel St. Michael held a pair of scales as though he himself were conducting an autopsy. St. Michael’s scales were not unlike the hyoid bone, and he was overarched by the Saints of the Mastoid Process. The lower lintel, where the damned were being marched away in chains, would be the clavicle, and the succession of arches would serve as the structural layers of the throat, to a catechism easy to remember, Sternohyoid omohyoid thyrohyoid/juuugular, Amen.

No, it wouldn’t do. The problem was the lighting. Displays in a memory palace must be well lit, with generous spaces between them. This dirty stone was too much of one color as well. Hannibal had missed a test question once because the answer was dark, and in his mind he had placed it against a dark background. The complex dissection of the cervical triangle scheduled for the coming week would require clear, well-spaced displays.

The last choristers trailed out of the cathedral, carrying their vestments over their arms. Hannibal went inside. Notre Dame was dark but for the votive candles. He went to St. Joan of Arc, in marble near a southside exit. Before her, tiers of candles flared in the draft from the door. Hannibal leaned against a pillar in the darkness and looked through the flames at her face. Fire on his mother’s clothes. The candle flames reflected redly in his eyes.

The candlelight played on St. Joan and gave random expressions to her face like chance tunes in a wind chime. Memory memory. Hannibal wondered if St. Joan, with her memories, might prefer a votive other than fire. He knew his mother would.

Footsteps of the sexton coming, his jangling keys echoed off the near walls first, then again from the high ceiling, his footsteps made a double-tap too as they sounded from the floor and echoed down from the vast upper dark.

The sexton saw Hannibal’s eyes first, shining red beyond the firelight, and a primal caution stirred in him. The back of the sexton’s neck prickled and he made a cross with his keys. Ah, it was only a man, and a young one at that. The sexton waved his keys before him like a censer. “It’s time,” he said and gestured with his chin.

“Yes, it’s time, and past time,” Hannibal replied and went out the side door into the night.