فصل چهل و هشتم

48

HANNIBAL LECTER’S motorcycle was a BMW boxer twin left behind by the retreating German army. It was resprayed flat black and had low handlebars and a pillion seat. Lady Murasaki rode behind him, her headband and boots giving her a touch of Paris Apache. She held on to Hannibal, her hands lightly on his ribs.

Rain had fallen in the night and the pavement now was clean and dry in the sunny morning, grippy when they leaned into the curves on the road through the forest of Fontainebleau, flashing through the stripes of tree shadow and sunlight across the road, the air hanging cool in the dips, then warm in their faces as they crossed the open glades.

The angle of a lean on a motorcycle feels exaggerated on the pillion, and Hannibal felt her behind him trying to correct it for the first few miles, but then she got the feel of it, the last five degrees being on faith, and her weight became one with his as they sped through the forest. They passed a hedge full of honeysuckle and the air was sweet enough to taste on her lips. Hot tar and honeysuckle.

The Café de L’Este is on the west bank of the Seine about a half-mile from the village of Fontainebleau, with a pleasant prospect of woods across the river. The motorcycle went silent, and began to tick as it cooled. Near the entrance to the café terrace is an aviary and the birds in it are ortolans, a sub-rosa specialty of the café. Ordinances against the serving of ortolans came and went. They were listed on the menu as larks. The ortolan is a good singer, and these were enjoying the sunshine.

Hannibal and Lady Murasaki paused to look at them.

“So small, so beautiful,” she said, her blood still up from the ride.

Hannibal rested his forehead against the cage. The little birds turned their heads to look at him using one eye at a time. Their songs were the Baltic dialect he heard in the woods at home. “They’re just like us,” he said. “They can smell the others cooking, and still they try to sing. Come.” Three quarters of the terrace tables were taken, a mixture of country and town in Sunday clothes, eating an early lunch. The waiter found a place for them.

A table of men next to them had ordered ortolans all around. When the little roasted birds arrived, they bent low over their plates and tented their napkins over their heads to keep all the aroma in.

Hannibal sniffed their wine from the next table and determined it was corked. He watched without expression as, oblivious, they drank it anyway.

“Would you like an ice cream sundae?”

“Perfect.”

Hannibal went inside the restaurant. He paused before the specials chalked on the blackboard while he read the restaurant license posted near the cash register.

In the corridor was a door marked Privé. The corridor was empty. The door was not locked. Hannibal opened it and went down the basement steps. In a partly opened crate was an American dishwasher. He bent to read the shipping label.

Hercule, the restaurant helper, came down the stairs carrying a basket of soiled napkins. “What are you doing down here, this is private.” Hannibal turned and spoke English. “Well, where is it then? The door says privy, doesn’t it? I come down here and there’s only the basement. The loo, man, the pissoir, the toilet, where is it? Speak English. Do you understand loo? Tell me quickly, I’m caught rather short.” “Privé, privé!” Hercule gestured up the stairs. “Toilette!” and at the top waved Hannibal in the right direction.

He arrived back at the table as the sundaes arrived. “Kolnas is using the name ‘Kleber.’ It’s on the license. Monsieur Kleber residing on the Rue Juliana. Ahhh, regard.” Petras Kolnas came onto the terrace with his family, dressed for church.

The conversations around Hannibal took on a swoony sound as he looked at Kolnas, and dark motes swarmed in his vision.

Kolnas’ suit was of inky new broadcloth, a Rotary pin in the lapel. His wife and two children were handsome, Germanic-looking. In the sun, the short red hairs and whiskers on Kolnas’ face gleamed like hog bristles. Kolnas went to the cash register. He lifted his son onto a barstool.

“Kolnas the Prosperous,” Hannibal said. “The Restaurateur. The Gourmand. He’s come by to check the till on his way to church. How neat he is.” The headwaiter took the reservation book from beside the telephone and opened it for Kolnas’ inspection.

“Remember us in your prayers, Monsieur,” the headwaiter said.

Kolnas nodded. Shielding his movement from the diners with his thick body, he took a Webley .455 revolver from his waistband, put it on a curtained shelf beneath the cash register and smoothed down his waistcoat. He selected some shiny coins from the till and wiped them with his handkerchief. He gave one to the boy on the barstool. “This is your offering for church, put it in your pocket.” He bent and gave the other to his little daughter.

“Here is your offering, liebchen. Don’t put it in your mouth. Put it safe in the pocket!” Some drinkers at the bar engaged Kolnas and there were customers to greet. He showed his son how to give a firm handshake. His daughter let go of his pants leg and toddled between the tables, adorable in ruffles and a lacy bonnet and baby jewelry customers smiling at her.

Hannibal took the cherry from the top of his sundae and held it at the edge of the table. The child came to get it, her hand extended, her thumb and forefinger ready to pluck. Hannibal’s eyes were bright. His tongue appeared briefly, and then he sang to the child.

“Ein Mannlein steht im Walde ganz still und stumm— do you know that song?”

While she ate the cherry, Hannibal slipped something into her pocket. “Es hat von lauter Purpur ein Mantlein um.” Suddenly Kolnas was beside the table. He picked his daughter up. “She doesn’t know that song.” “You must know it, you don’t sound French to me.”

“Neither do you, Monsieur,” Kolnas said. “I would not guess that you and your wife are French. We’re all French now.” Hannibal and Lady Murasaki watched Kolnas bundle his family into a Traction Avant.

“Lovely children,” she said. “A beautiful little girl.”

“Yes,” Hannibal said. “She’s wearing Mischa’s bracelet.”

High above the altar at the Church of the Redeemer is a particularly bloody representation of Christ on the cross, a seventeenth-century spoil from Sicily. Beneath the hanging Christ, the priest raised the communion cup.

“Drink,” he said. “This is my blood, shed for the remission of your sins.” He held up the wafer. “This is my body broken for you, sacrificed that you might not perish, but have everlasting life. Take, eat, and as oft as ye do this, do it in remembrance of me.” Kolnas, carrying his children in his arms, took the wafer in his mouth, and returned to the pew beside his wife. The line shuffled around and then the collection plate was passed. Kolnas whispered to his son. The child took a coin from his pocket and put it in the plate. Kolnas whispered to his daughter, who sometimes was reluctant to give up her offering.

“Katerina …”

The little girl felt in her pocket and put into the plate a scorched dog tag with the name Petras Kolnas. Kolnas did not see it until the steward took the dog tag from the plate and returned it, waiting with a patient smile for Kolnas to replace the dog tag with a coin.