Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris

Goering’s and Hitler’s private collections.
    When the count was freed from prison by the advancing Allies, he and Lady Murasaki put things back as well as they could and the staff worked for subsistence until Count Lecter was back at his easel.
    Robert Lecter saw his nephew settled in his room. Generous in size and light, the bedroom had been prepared for Hannibal with hangings and posters to enliven the stone. A kendo mask and crossed bamboo swords were mounted high on the wall. Had he been speaking, Hannibal would have asked after Madame.

15
    HANNIBAL WAS LEFT alone for less than a minute before he heard a knock at the door.
    Lady Murasaki’s attendant, Chiyoh, stood there, a Japanese girl of about Hannibal’s age, with hair bobbed at her ears. Chiyoh appraised him for an instant, then a veil slid across her eyes like the nictitating goggles of a hawk.
    “Lady Murasaki sends greetings and welcome,” she said. “If you will come with me …” Dutiful and severe, Chiyoh led him to the bathhouse in the former wine-pressing room in a dependency of the chateau.
    To please his wife, Count Lecter had converted the winepress into a Japanese bath, the pressing vat now filled with water heated by a Rube Goldberg water heater fashioned from a copper cognac distillery. The room smelled of wood smoke and rosemary.Silver candelabra, buried in the garden during the war, were set about the vat. Chiyoh did not light the candles. An electric bulb would do for Hannibal until his position was clarified.
    Chiyoh handed him towels and a robe and pointed to a shower in the corner. “Bathe there first, scrub vigorously before submerging yourself,” she said. “Chef will have an omelet for you after your bath, and then you must rest.” She gave him a grimace that might have been a smile, threw an orange into the bathwater and waited outside the bathhouse for his clothing. When he handed it out the door, she took the items gingerly between two fingers, draped them over a stick in her other hand and disappeared with them.
    It was evening when Hannibal came awake all at once, the way he woke in barracks. Only his eyes moved until he saw where he was. He felt clean in his clean bed. Through the casement glowed the last of the long French twilight. A cotton kimono was on the chair beside him. He put it on. The stone floor of the corridor was pleasantly cool underfoot, the stone stairs worn hollow like those of Lecter Castle. Outside, under the violet sky, he could hear noises from the kitchen, preparations for dinner.
    The mastiff saw him and thumped her tail twice without getting up.
    From the bathhouse came the sound of a Japaneselute. Hannibal went to the music. A dusty window glowed with candlelight from within. Hannibal looked in. Chiyoh sat beside the bath plucking the strings of a long and elegant koto. She had lit the candles this time. The water heater chuckled. The fire beneath it crackled and the sparks flew upward. Lady Murasaki was in the water. In the water was Lady Murasaki, like the water flowers on the moat where the swans swam and did not sing. Hannibal watched, silent as the swans, and spread his arms like wings.
    He backed from the window and returned through the gloaming to his room, a curious heaviness on him, and found his bed again.
    Enough coals remain in the master bedroom to glow on the ceiling. Count Lecter, in the semi-darkness, quickens to Lady Murasaki’s touch and to her voice.
    “Missing you, I felt as I did when you were in prison,” she said. “I remembered the poem of an ancestor, Ono no Komachi, from a thousand years ago.” “Ummm.”
    “She was very passionate.” “I’m anxious to know what she said.” “A poem:
Hito ni awan tsuki no naki yo wa/omoiokite/mune hashiribi ni/kokoro yaki ori
. Can you hear the music in it?”
    Robert Lecter’s Western ear could not hear themusic in it but, knowing where the music lay, he was enthusiastic: “Oh my, yes. Tell me the meaning.”
    “No way to