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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.
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.”
