hapter 100

THE BREEZE of their entry into the dining room stirred the flames of the candles and the warmers. Starling had only seen the dining room in passage and it was wonderful to see the room transformed. Bright, inviting. Tall crystal repeating the candle flames above the creamy napery at their places and the space reduced to intimate size with a screen of flowers shutting off the rest of the table.

Dr Lecter had brought his flat silver from the warmer at the last minute and when Starling explored her place setting, she felt in the handle of her knife an almost feverish heat.

Dr Lecter poured wine and gave her only a tiny arrcuse-gueule to eat for starters, a single Belon oyster and a morsel of sausage, as he had to sit over half a glass of wine and admire her in the context of his table.

The height of his candlesticks was exactly right. The flames lit the deeps of her decollete and he did not have to be vigilant about her sleeves.

"What are we having?"

He raised his finger to his lips. "You never ask, it spoils the surprise."

They talked about the trimming of crow quills and their effect on the voice of a harpsichord, and only for a moment did she recall a crow robbing her mother's service cart on a motel balcony long ago. From a distance she judged the memory irrelevant to this pleasant time and she deliberately set it aside.

"Hungry?"

"Yes!"

"Then we'll have our first course."

Dr Lecter moved a single tray from the sideboard to a space beside his place at the table and rolled a service cart to tableside. Here were his pans, his burners, and his condiments in little crystal bowls.

He fired up his burners and began with a goodly knob of Charante butter in his copper fait-tout saucepan, swirling the melting butter and browning the butterfat to make beurre-noisette. When it was the brown of a hazelnut, he set the butter aside on a trivet.

He smiled at Starling, his teeth very white.

"Clarice, do you recall what we said about pleasant and unpleasant remarks, and things being very funny in context?"

"That butter smells wonderful. Yes, I remember."

"And do you remember who you saw in the mirror, how splendid she was?"

"Dr Lecter, if you don't mind my saying so this is getting a little Dick and Jane. I remember perfectly."

"Good. Mr. Krendler is joining us for our first course.

Dr Letter moved the large flower arrangement from the table to the sideboard.

Deputy-Assistant Inspector General Paul Krendler, in the flesh, sat at the table in a stout oak armchair. Krendler opened his eyes wide and looked about. He wore his runner's headband and a very nice funeral tuxedo, with integral shirt and tie. The garment being split up the back, Dr Letter had been able to sort of tuck it around him, covering the yards of duct tape that held him to the chair.

Starling's eyelids might have lowered a fraction and her lips slightly pursed as they sometimes did on the firing range.

Now Dr Letter took a pair of silver tongs from the sideboard and peeled off the tape covering Krendler's mouth.

"Good evening, again, Mr. Krendler."

"Good evening."

Krendler did not seem to be quite himself. His place was set with a small tureen.

"Would you like to say good evening to Ms Starling?"

"Hello, Starling."

He seemed to brighten. "I always wanted to watch you eat."

Starling took him in from a distance, as though she were the wise old pier glass watching. "Hello, Mr. Krendler."

She raised her face to Dr Letter, busy with his pans. "How did you ever catch him?"

"Mr. Krendler is on his way to an important conference about his future in politics," Dr Letter said. "Margot Verger invited him as a favor to me. Sort of a quid pro quo. Mr. Krendler jogged up to the pad in Rock Creek Park to meet the Verger helicopter. But he caught a ride with me instead. Would you like to say grace before our meal, Mr. Krendler. Mr. Krendler?"

"Grace? Yes."

Krendler closed his eyes. "Father, we thank thee for the blessings we are about to receive and we dedicate them to Thy, service. Starling is a big girl to be fucking her daddy even if she is southern. Please forgive her for that and bring her to my service. In Jesus' name, amen."

Starling noted that Dr Letter kept his eyes piously closed throughout the prayer.

She felt quick and calm. "Paul, I have to tell you, the Apostle Paul, couldn't have done better. He hated women too. He should have been named Appall."

"You really blew it this time, Starling. You'll never be reinstated."

"Was that a job offer you worked into the blessing? I never saw such tact."

"I'm going to Congress."

Krendler smiled unpleasantly. "Come around the campaign headquarters, I might find something for you to do. You could be an office girl. Can you type and file?"

"Certainly."

"Can you take dictation?"

"I use voice-recognition software," Starling said. She continued in a judicious tone. "If you'll excuse me for talking shop at the table, you aren't fast enough to steal in Congress. You can't make up for a second-rate intelligence just by playing dirty. You'd last longer as a big crook's gofer."

"Don't wait on us, Mr. Krendler," Dr Letter urged. "Have some of your broth while it's hot."

He raised, the covered potager and straw to Krendler's lips.

Krendler made a face. "That soup's not very good."

"Actually, it's more of a parsley and thyme infusion," the doctor said, "and more for our sake than yours. Have another few swallows, and let it circulate."

Starling apparently was weighing an issue, using her palms like the Scales of Justice. "You know, Mr. Krendler, every time you ever leered at me, I had the nagging feeling I had done something to deserve it."

She moved her palms up and down judiciously, a motion similar to passing a Slinky back and forth. "I didn't deserve it. Every time you wrote something negative in my personnel folder, I resented it, but still I searched myself. I doubted myself for a moment, and tried to scratch this tiny itch that said Daddy knows best.

"You don't know best, Mr. Krendler. In fact, you don't know anything."

Starling had a sip of her splendid white Burgundy and said to Dr Lecter, "I love this. But I think we should take it off the ice."

She turned again, attentive hostess, to her guest. "You are forever an . . . an oaf, and beneath notice," she said in a pleasant tone. "And that's enough about you at this lovely table. Since you are Dr Lecter's guest, I hope you enjoy the meal."

"Who are you anyway?" Krendler said. "You're not Starling. You've got the spot on your face, but you're not Starling."

Dr Lecter added shallots to his hot browned butter and at the instant their perfume rose, he put in minced caper berries. He set the saucepan off the fire, and set his saut?pan on the heat. From the sideboard he took a large crystal bowl of ice cold water and a silver salver and put them beside Paul Krendler.

"I had some plans for that smart mouth," Krendler said, "but I'd never hire you now. Who gave you an appointment anyway?"

"I don't expect you to change your attitude entirely as the other Paul did, Mr. Krendler," Dr Lecter said. "You are not on the road to Damascus, or even on the road to the Verger helicopter."

Dr Lecter took off Krendler's runner's headband as you would remove the rubber band from a tin of caviar.

"All we ask is that you keep an open mind."

Carefully, using both hands, Dr Lecter lifted off the top of Krendler's head, put it on the salver and removed it to the sideboard. Hardly a drop of blood fell from the clean incision, the major blood vessels having been tied and the others neatly sealed under a local anesthetic, and the skull sawn around in the kitchen a half-hour before the meal.

Dr Lecter's method in removing the top of Krendler's skull was as old as Egyptian medicine, except that he had the advantage of an autopsy saw with cranial blade, a skull key and better anesthetics. The brain itself feels no pain.

The pinky-gray dome of Krendler's brain was visible above his truncated skull.

Standing over Krendler with an instrument resembling a tonsil spoon, Dr Lecter removed a slice of Krendler's prefrontal lobe, then another, until he had four. Krendler's eyes looked up as though he were following what was going on. Dr Lecter placed the slices in the bowl of ice water, the water acidulated with the juice of a lemon, in order to firm them.

"Would you like to swing on a star," Krendler sang abruptly. "Carry moonbeams home in a jar."

In classic cuisine, brains are soaked and then pressed and chilled overnight to firm them. In dealing with the item absolutely fresh, the challenge is to prevent the material from simply disintegrating into a handful of lumpy gelatin.

With splendid dexterity, the doctor brought the firmed slices to a plate, dredged them lightly in seasoned flour, and then in fresh brioche crumbs.

He grated a fresh black truffle into his sauce and finished it with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Quickly he saut褤 the slices until they were just brown on each side.

"Smells great!" Krendler said.

Dr Lector placed the browned brains on broad croutons on the warmed plates, and dressed them with the sauce and truffle slices. A garnish of parsley and whole caper berries with their stems, and a single nasturtium blossom on watercress to achieve a little height, completed his presentation.

"How is it?" Krendler asked, once again behind the flowers and speaking immoderately loud, as persons with lobotomies are prone to do.

"Really excellent," Starling said. "I've never had caper berries before."

Dr Lector found the shine of butter sauce on her lip intensely moving.

Krendler sang behind the greens, mostly day-care songs, and he invited requests.

Oblivious to him, Dr Lector and Starling discussed Mischa. Starling knew of the doctor's sister's fate from their conversations about loss, but now the doctor spoke in a hopeful way about her possible return. It did not seem unreasonable to Starling on this evening that Mischa might return She expressed the hope that she might meet Mischa.

"You could never answer the phone in my office.

You sound like a cornbread country cunt," Krendler yelled through the flowers.

"See if I sound like Oliver Twist when I ask for MORE," Starling replied, releasing in Dr Lector glee he could scarcely contain.

A second helping consumed most of the frontal lobe, back nearly to the premotor cortex. Krendler was reduced to irrelevant observations about things in his immediate vision and the tuneless recitation behind the flowers of a lengthy lewd verse called "Shine."

Absorbed in their talk, Starling and Lector were no more disturbed than they would have been by the singing of happy birthday at another table in a restaurant, but when Krendler's volume became intrusive, Dr Lector retrieved his crossbow from a corner.

"I want you to listen to the sound of this stringed instrument, Clarice."

He waited for a moment of silence from Krendler and shot a bolt across the table through the tall flowers.

"That particular frequency of the crossbow string, should you hear it again in any context, means only your complete freedom and peace and self-sufficiency," Dr Lector said.

The feathers and part of the shaft remained on the visible side of the flower arrangement and moved at more or less the pace of a baton directing a heart.

And if, as you say, there's room in me for my father, why is there not room in you for Mischa?"

Dr Lecter seemed pleased, whether with the idea, or with Starling's resource is impossible to say. Perhaps he felt a vague concern that he had built better than he knew.

When she replaced her glass on the table beside her, she pushed off her coffee cup and it shattered on the hearth. She did not look down at it.

Dr Lecter watched the shards, and they were still.

"I don't think you have to make up your mind right this minute," Starling said. Her eyes and the cabochons shone in the firelight. A sigh from the fire, the warmth of the fire through her gown, and there came to Starling a passing memory - Dr Lecter, so long ago, asking Senator Martin if she breast fed her daughter. A jeweled movement turning in Starling's unnatural calm: For an instant many windows in her mind aligned and she saw far across her own experience. She said, "Hannibal Lecter, did your mother feed you at her breast?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever feel that you had to relinquish the breast to Mischa? Did you ever feel you were required to give it up for her?"

A beat. "I don't recall that, Clarice. If I gave it up, I did it gladly."

Clarice Starling reached her cupped hand into the deep neckline of her gown and freed her breast, quickly peaky in the open air. "You don't have to give up this one," she said. Looking always into his eyes, with her trigger finger she took warm Chateau d'Yquem from her mouth and a thick sweet drop suspended from her nipple like a golden cabochon and trembled with her breathing.

He came swiftly- from his chair to her, went on a knee before her chair, and bent to her coral and cream in the firelight his dark sleek head.

Chapter 102

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, three years later: Barney and Lillian Hersh walked near the Obelisk on the Avenida 9 de Julio in the early evening. Ms Hersh is a lecturer at London University, on sabbatical. She and Barney met in the anthropology museum in Mexico City. They like each other and have been traveling together two weeks, trying it a day at a time, and it is getting to be more and more fun. They are not getting tired of one another.

They had arrived in Buenos Aires too late in the afternoon to go to the Museo Nacional, where a Vermeer was on loan. Barney's mission to see every Vermeer in the world amused Lillian Hersh and it did not get in the way of a good time. He had seen a quarter of the Vermeers already, and there were plenty to go.

They were looking for a pleasant cafe where they could eat outside.

Limousines were backed up at the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires' spectacular opera house. They stopped to watch the opera lovers go in.

Tamerlane was playing with an excellent cast, and a Buenos Aires opening night crowd is worth seeing.

"Barney, you up for the opera? I think you'd like it. I'll spring."

It amused him when she used American slang. "If you'll walk me through it, I'll spring," Barney said. "You think they'll let us in?"

At that moment a Mercedes Maybach, deep blue and silver, whispered up to the curb. A doorman hurried to open the car.

A man, slender and elegant in white tie, got out and handed out a woman. The sight of her raised an admiring murmur in the crowd around the entrance. Her hair was a shapely platinum helmet and she wore a soft sheath of coral frosted with an overlayer of tulle. Emeralds flashed green at her throat. Barney saw her only briefly, through the heads of the crowd, and she and her gentleman were swept inside.

Barney saw the man better. His head was sleek as an otter and his nose had an imperious arch like that of Peron. His carriage made him seem taller than he was.

"Barney? Oh, Barney," Lillian was saying, "when you come back to yourself, if you ever do, tell me if you'd like to go to the opera. If they'll let us in in mufti. There, I said it, even if it's not precisely apt. I've always wanted to say I was in mufti."

When Barney did not ask what mufti was, she glanced at him sidelong. He always asked everything.

"Yes," Barney said absently. "I'll spring."

Barney had plenty of money. He was careful with it, but not cheap. Still, the only tickets available were in the rafters among the students.

Anticipating the altitude of his seats, he rented field glasses in the lobby.

The enormous theater is a mix of Italian Renaissance, Greek and French styles, lavish with brass and gilt and red plush. Jewels winked in the crowd like flashbulbs at a ball game.

Lillian explained the plot before the overture began, talking in his ear quietly.

Just before the houselights went down, sweeping the house from the cheap seats, Barney found them, the platinum blond lady and her escort. They had just come through the gold curtains into their ornate box beside the stage. The emeralds at her throat glittered in the brilliant houselights as she took her seat.

Barney had only glimpsed her right profile as she entered the opera. He could see the left one now.

The students around them, veterans of the high altitude seats, had brought all manner of viewing aids. One student had a powerful spotting scope so long that it disturbed the hair of the person in front of him. Barney traded glasses with him to look at the distant box. It was hard to find the box again in the long tube's limited field of vision, but when he found it, the couple was startlingly close.

The woman's cheek had a beauty spot on it, in the position the French call "Courage."

Her eyes swept over the house, swept over his section and moved on. She seemed animated and in expert control of her coral mouth. She leaned to her escort and said something, and they laughed together. She put her hand on his hand and held his thumb.

"Starling," Barney said under his breath.

"What?"

Lillian whispered.

Barney had a lot of trouble following the first act of the opera. As soon as the lights came up for the first intermission, he raised his glass to the box again. The gentleman took a champagne flute from a waiter's tray and handed it to the lady, and took a glass himself. Barney zoomed in on his profile, the shape of his ears.

He traced the length of the woman's exposed arms. They were bare and unmarked and had muscle tone, in his experienced eye.

As Barney watched, the gentleman's head turned as though to catch a distant sound, turned in Barney's direction. The gentleman raised opera glasses to his eyes. Barney could have sworn the glasses were aimed at him. He held his program in front of his face and hunkered down in his seat to try to be about average height.

"Lillian," he said. "I want you to do me a great big favor."

"Um," she said. "If it's like some of the others, I'd better hear it first."

"We're leaving when the lights go down. Fly with me to Rio tonight. No questions asked."

The Vermeer in Buenos Aires is the only one Barney never saw.

Chapter 103

FOLLOW this handsome couple from the opera? All right, but very carefully . . .

At the millennium, Buenos Aires is possessed by the tango and the night has a pulse. The Mercedes, windows down to let in the music from the dance clubs, purrs through the Recoleta district to the Avenida Alvear and disappears into the courtyard of an exquisite Beaux Arts building near the French Embassy.

The air is soft and a late supper is laid on the terrace of the top floor, but the servants are gone.

Morale is high among the servants in this house, but there is an iron discipline among them. They are forbidden to enter the top floor of the mansion before noon. Or after service of the first course at dinner.

Dr Lecter and Clarice Starling often talk at dinner in languages other than Starling's native English. She had college French and Spanish to build on, and she has found she has a good ear. They speak Italian a lot at mealtimes; she finds a curious freedom in the visual nuances of the language.

Sometimes our couple dances at dinnertime. Sometimes they do not finish dinner.

Their relationship has a great deal to do with the penetration of Clarice Starling, which she avidly welcomes and encourages. It has much to do with the envelopment of Hannibal Lecter, far beyond the bounds of his experience. It is possible that Clarice Starling could frighten him. Sex is a splendid structure they add to every day.

Clarice Starling's memory palace is building as well. It shares some rooms with Dr Lecter's own memory palace - he has discovered her in there several times but her own palace grows on its own. It is full of new things. She can visit her father there. Hannah is at pasture there. Jack Crawford is there, when she chooses to see him bent over his desk - after Crawford was home for a month from the hospital, the chest pains came again in the night. Instead of calling an ambulance and going through it all again, he chose simply to roll over to the solace of his late wife's side of the bed.

Starling learned of Crawford's death during one of Dr Lecter's regular visits to the FBI public Web site to admire his likeness among the Ten Most Wanted. The picture the Bureau is using of Dr Lecter remains a comfortable two faces behind.

After Starling read Jack Crawford's obituary, she walked by herself for most of a day, and she was glad to come home at evening.

A year ago she had one of her own emeralds set in a ring. It is engraved inside with AM-CS. Ardelia Mapp received it in an untraceable wrapper with a note. Dear Ardelia, I'm fine and better than fine. Don't look for me. I love you. I'm sorry I scared you. Burn this. Starling.

Mapp took the ring to the Shenandoah River where Starling used to run. She walked a long way with it clutched in her hand, angry, hot-eyed, ready to throw the ring in the water, imagining it flashing in the air and the small plop. In the end she put it on her finger and shoved her fist in her pocket. Mapp doesn't cry much. She walked a long way, until she could be quiet. It was dark when she got back to her car.

It is hard to know what Starling remembers of the old life, what she chooses to keep. The drugs that held her in the first days have had no part in their lives for a long time. Nor the long talks with a single light source in the room.

Occasionally, on purpose, Dr Lecter drops a teacup to shatter on the floor. He is satisfied when it does not gather itself together. For many months now, he has not seen Mischa in his dreams.

Someday perhaps a cup will come together. Or somewhere Starling may hear a crossbow string and come to some unwilled awakening, if indeed she even sleeps.

We'll withdraw now, while they are dancing on the terrace the wise Barney has already left town and we must follow his example. For either of them to discover us would be fatal.

We can only learn so much and live.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In trying to understand the structure of Dr Lecter's memory palace, I was aided by Frances A. Yates's remarkable book The Art of Memory, as well as Jonathan D. Spence's The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci.

Robert Pinsky's translation of Dante's Inferno was a boon and a pleasure to use, as were the annotations of Nicole Pinsky. The term "festive skin" is Pinsky's translation of Dante.

"In the garden of the hurricane's eye" is John Ciardi's phrase and the title of one of his poems.

The first lines of poetry Clarice Starling recalls in the asylum are from T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets.

My thanks to Pace Barnes for her encouragement, support and wise counsel.

Carole Baron, my publisher, editor and friend, helped me make this a better book.

Athena Varounis and Bill Trible in the United States and Ruggero Perugini in Italy showed me the best and brightest in law enforcement. None of them is a character in this book, nor is any other living person. The wickedness herein I took from my own stock.

Niccolo Capponi shared with me his deep knowledge of Florence and its art and allowed Dr Lecter to use his family palazzo. My thanks also to Robert held for his scholarship and to Caroline Michahelles for much Florentine insight.

The staff of Carnegie Public Library in Coahoma County, Mississippi, looked up things for years. Thank you.

I owe a lot to Marguerite Schmitt: With one white truffle and the magic in her heart - and hands, she introduced us to the wonders of Florence. It is too late to thank Marguerite; in this moment of completion I want to say her name.

Scanning/Proofing Notes

1: There's a lot of Italian in this. Couldn't check other than against the book.

2: Using .txt format means you can't differentiate italics from other text. Harris uses this often to demonstrate a silent exclamation or sub-vocal statement - such as where Clarice says 'Give her a place to go' when about to challenge Evelda. Its also used for all of the letters from Hannibal to Clarice, with Clarice's thoughts in normal text in the middle. If you don't know this that's what can make the letters difficult to read in this version.

3: Either Harris or Random House's editors don't help either. There are some deliberately challenging uses of English in the book. (Enough to challenge any proof reader and I'm no expert) but in Chapter 62 is Starling really 'limned in polleny light'!

4: I've left in the e acute in saute, I know this may not be picked up on some older Word Processors. If that the case, now you know what to search and replace now anyway!

The next FatBastard release will be next Saturday 3rd March 2001. It will be a re-post of Steven King's 'The Green Mile', properly proofed and in .txt Format. I'm working on something special for the week after. Algernon.

A FatBastard production. Scanned with Omnipage Pro 10. Completed and Posted 24th Feb 2001. Proofed (in US English!) in Word 97. Some formatting may be altered slightly. If you find any other errors either let me know at algernon_fatbstard@hotmail.com or update the version no and repost. Not to be reposted without the FatBastard 'Logo' below.

FATBASTARD PRODUCTIONS 2001 - Quality as well as Quantity. Good Books, Properly Scanned, Carefully Proofed, Simply Formatted, Available to all!. For personal use only. Not to be sold or used for personal profit.