فصل 62

Chapter 62

DR LECTER held a bottle of Chateau Petrus up to the light. He had raised it to the upright position and set it on its bottom a day ago, in case it might have sediment; he looked at his watch and decided it was time to open the wine.

This was what Dr Lecter considered a serious risk, more of a chance than he liked to take. He did not want to be rash. He wanted to enjoy the wine’s color in a crystal decanter. What if, after drawing the cork too early, he decided there was none of its holy breath to be lost in decanting? The light revealed a bit of sediment.

He removed the cork as carefully as he might trepan a skull, and placed the wine in his pouring device, which was driven by a crank and screw to tilt the bottle by minute increments. Let the salt air do a bit of work and then he would decide.

He lit a fire of shaggy chunk charcoal and made himself a drink, Lillet and a slice of orange over ice, while he considered the fond he had been working on for days. Dr Lecter followed the inspired lead of Alexandre Dumas in fashioning his stock. Only three days ago, upon his return from the deer-lease woods, he had added to the stockpot a fat crow which had been stuffing itself with juniper berries. Small black feathers swam on the calm waters of the bay. The primary feathers he saved to make plectra for his harpsichord.

Now Dr Lecter crushed juniper berries of his own and began to sweat shallots in a copper saucepan. With a neat surgical knot, he tied a piece of cotton string around a fresh bouquet garni and ladled stock over it in the saucepan.

The tenderloin Dr Lecter lifted from his ceramic crock was dark from the marinade, dripping. He patted it dry and turned the pointed end back on itself and tied it to make the diameter constant for the length of the meat.

In time the fire was right, banked with one very hot area and a step in the coals.

The tenderloin hissed on the iron and blue smoke whirled across the garden, moving as though to the music on Dr Lecter’s speakers. He was playing Henry VIII’s moving composition “If True Love Reigned.”

Late in the night, his lips stained by the red Chateau Petrus, a small crystal glass of honey-colored Chateau d’Yquem on his candle stand, Dr Lecter plays Bach. In his mind Starling runs through the leaves. The deer start ahead of her, and run up the slope past Dr Lecter, sitting still on the hillside. Running, running, he is into “Variation Two” of the Goldberg Variations, the candlelight playing on his moving hands-a stitch in the music, a flash of bloody snow and dirty teeth, this time no more than a flash that disappears with a distinct sound, a solid thock, a crossbow bolt driving through a skull - and we have the pleasant woods again, and flowing music and Starling, limned in polleny light runs out of sight, her ponytail bobbing like the flag of a deer, and without further interruption, he plays the movement through to the end and the sweet silence after was as rich as Chateau d’Yquem.

Dr Lecter held his glass up to the candle. The candle flared behind it as the sun flared on water, and the wine itself was the color of the winter sun on Clarice Starling’s skin. Her birthday was coming soon, the doctor reflected. He wondered if there was extant a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem from her birth year. Perhaps a present was in order for Clarice Starling, who in three weeks would have lived as long as Christ.