فصل چهل و نهم

49

ON LADY MURASAKI’S terrace a weeping cherry in a planter overhung the table, its lowest tendrils brushing Hannibal’s hair as he sat across from her. Above her shoulder floodlit Sacré Coeur hung in the night sky like a drop of the moon.

She was playing Miyagi Michio’s “The Sea in Spring” on the long and elegant koto. Her hair was down, the lamplight warm on her skin. She looked steadily at Hannibal as she played.

She was difficult to read, a quality Hannibal found refreshing much of the time. Over the years he had learned to proceed, not with caution, but with care.

The music slowed progressively. The last note rang still. A suzumushi cricket in a cage answered the koto. She put a sliver of cucumber between the bars and the cricket pulled it inside. She seemed to look through Hannibal, beyond him, at a distant mountain, and then he felt her attention envelop him as she spoke the familiar words. “I see you and the cricket sings in concert with my heart.” “My heart hops at the sight of you, who taught my heart to sing,” he said.

“Give them to Inspector Popil. Kolnas and the rest of them.”

Hannibal finished his sake and put down the cup. “It’s Kolnas’ children, isn’t it? You fold cranes for the children.” “I fold cranes for your soul, Hannibal. You are drawn into the dark.”

“Not drawn. When I couldn’t speak I was not drawn into silence, silence captured me.” “Out of the silence you came to me, and you spoke to me. I know you, Hannibal, and it is not easy knowledge. You are drawn toward the darkness, but you are also drawn to me.” “On the bridge of dreams.”

The lute made a little noise as she put it down. She extended her hand to him. He got to his feet, the cherry trailing across his cheek, and she led him toward the bath. The water was steaming. Candles burned beside the water. She invited him to sit on a tatami. They were facing knee to knee, their faces a foot apart.

“Hannibal, come home with me to Japan. You could practice at a clinic in my father’s country house. There is much to do. We would be there together.” She leaned close to him. She kissed his forehead. “In Hiroshima green plants push up through ashes to the light.” She touched his face. “If you are scorched earth, I will be warm rain.” Lady Murasaki took an orange from a bowl beside the bath. She cut into it with her fingernails and pressed her fragrant hand to Hannibal’s lips.

“One real touch is better than the bridge of dreams.” She snuffed the candle beside them with a sake cup, leaving the cup inverted on the candle, her hand on the candle longer than it had to be.

She pushed the orange with her finger and it rolled along the tiles into the bath. She put her hand behind Hannibal’s head and kissed him on the mouth, a blossoming bud of a kiss, fast opening.

Her forehead pressed against his mouth, she unbuttoned his shirt. He held her at arm’s length and looked into her lovely face, her shining. They were close and they were far, like a lamp between two mirrors.

Her robe fell away. Eyes, breasts, points of light at her hips, symmetry on symmetry, his breath growing short.

“Hannibal, promise me.”

He pulled her to him very tight, his eyes squeezed tight shut. Her lips, her breath on his neck, the hollow of his throat, his collarbone. His clavicle. St. Michael’s scales.

He could see the orange bobbing in the bath. For an instant it was the skull of the little deer in the boiling tub, butting, butting in the knocking of his heart, as though in death it were still desperate to get out. The damned in chains beneath his chest marched off across his diaphragm to hell beneath the scales. Sternohyoid omohyoid thyrohyoid/juuuguular, ahhhhhmen.

Now was the time and she knew it. “Hannibal, promise me.”

A beat, and he said, “I already promised Mischa.” She sat still beside the bath until she heard the front door close. She put on her robe and carefully tied the belt. She took the candles from the bath and put them before the photographs on her altar. They glowed on the faces of the present dead, and on the watching armor, and in the mask of Date Masamune she saw the dead to come.