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Chiyoh applied an aloe leaf and Lady Murasaki bandaged his hand. When she returned his hand to him, Hannibal went to the tea table, picked up the peony and trimmed the stem. He added the peony to the vase, completing an elegant arrangement. He faced Lady Murasaki and Chiyoh.
Across his face a movement like the shiver of water and he tried to say “Thank you.” She rewarded the effort with the smallest and best of smiles, but she did not let him try for long.
“Would you come with me, Hannibal? And could you help me bring the flowers?”
Together they climbed the attic stairs.
The attic door had once served elsewhere in the house; a face was carved in it, a Greek comic mask. Lady Murasaki, carrying a candle lamp, led the way far down the vast attic, past a three-hundred-year collection of attic items, trunks, Christmas decorations, lawn ornaments, wicker furniture, Kabuki and Noh Theater costumes and a row of life-size marionettes for festivals hanging from a bar.
Faint light came around the blackout shade of a dormer window far from the door. Her candle lit a small altar, a God shelf opposite the window. On the altar were pictures of her ancestors and of Hannibal’s. About the photographs was a flight of origami paper cranes, many cranes. Here was a picture of Hannibal’s parents on their wedding day. Hannibal looked at his mother and father closely in the candlelight. His mother looked very happy. The only flame was on his candle—her clothes were not on fire.
Hannibal felt a presence looming beside him and above him and he peered into the dark. As Lady Murasaki raised the blind over the dormer window, the morning light rose over Hannibal, and over the dark presence beside him, rose over armored feet, a war fan held in gauntlets, a breastplate and at last the iron mask and horned helmet of a samurai commander. The armor was seated on the raised platform. The samurai’s weapons, the long and short swords, a tanto dagger and a war axe, were on a stand before the armor.
“Let’s put the flowers here, Hannibal,” Lady Murasaki said, clearing a place on the altar before the photos of his parents.
“This is where I pray for you, and I strongly recommend you pray for yourself, that you consult the spirits of your family for wisdom and strength.”
Out of courtesy he bowed his head at the altar for a moment, but the pull of the armor was swarming him, he felt it all up his side. He went to the rack to touch the weapons. Lady Murasaki stopped him with an upraised hand.
“This armor stood in the embassy in Paris when my father was ambassador to France before the war. We hid it from the Germans. I only touch it once a year. On my great-great-great-grandfather’s birthday I am honored to clean his armor and his weapons and oil them with camellia oil and oil of cloves, a lovely scent.”
She removed the stopper from a vial and offered him a sniff.
There was a scroll on the dais before the armor. It was unrolled only enough to show the first panel, the samurai wearing the armor at a levee of his retainers. As Lady Murasaki arranged the items on the God shelf, Hannibal unrolled the scroll to the next panel, where the figure in armor is presiding at a samurai head presentation, each of the enemy heads tagged with the name of the deceased, the tag attached to the hair, or in the case of baldness, tied to the ear.
Lady Murasaki took the scroll from him gently and rolled it up again to show only her ancestor in his armor.
“This is after the battle for Osaka Castle,” she said. “There are other, more suitable scrolls that will interest you. Hannibal, it would please your uncle and me very much if you became the kind of man your father was, that your uncle is.”
Hannibal looked at the armor, a questioning glance.
She read the question in his face. “Like him too? In some ways, but with more compassion”—she glanced at the armor as though it could hear and smiled at Hannibal—“but I wouldn’t say that in front of him in Japanese.”
She came closer, the candle lamp in her hand. “Hannibal, you can leave the land of nightmare. You can be anything that you can imagine. Come onto the bridge of dreams. Will you come with me?”
She was very different from his mother. She was not his mother, but he felt her in his chest. His intense regard may have unsettled her; she chose to break the mood.
“The bridge of dreams leads everywhere, but first it passes through the doctor’s office, and the schoolroom,” she said. “Will you come?”
Hannibal followed her, but first he took the bloodstained peony, lost among the flowers, and placed it on the dais before the armor.
17
DR. J. RUFIN PRACTICED in a townhouse with a tiny garden. The discreet sign beside the gate bore his name and his titles: DOCTEUR EN MÉDECINE, PH.D., PSYCHIATRE.
Count Lecter and Lady Murasaki sat in straight chairs in the waiting room amid Dr. Rufin’s patients, some of whom had difficulty sitting still.
The doctor’s inner office was heavy Victorian, with two armchairs on opposite sides of the fireplace, a chaise longue with a fringed throw and, nearer the windows, an examining table and stainless-steel sterilizer.
Dr. Rufin, bearded and middle aged, and Hannibal sat in the armchairs, the doctor speaking to him in a low and pleasant voice.
“Hannibal, as you watch the metronome swinging, swinging, and listen to the sound of my voice, you will enter a state we call wakeful sleep. I won’t ask you to speak, but I want you to try to make a vocal sound to indicate yes or no. You have a sense of peace, of drifting.”
Between them on a table, the pendulum of a ticking metronome wagged back and forth. A clock painted with zodiac signs and cherubs ticked on the mantle. As Dr. Rufin talked, Hannibal counted the beats of the metronome against those of the clock. They went in and out of phase. Hannibal wondered if, counting the intervals in and out of phase, and measuring the wagging pendulum of the metronome, he could calculate the length of the unseen pendulum inside the clock. He decided yes, Dr. Rufin talking all the while.
“A sound with your mouth, Hannibal, any sound will do.”
Hannibal, his eyes fixed dutifully on the metronome, made a low-pitched farting sound by flubbering air between his tongue and lower lip.
