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Thomas Harris
Ha
The fourth book in the Ha
PROLOGUE
THE DOOR TO DR. HANNIBAL LECTER'S memory palace is in the darkness at the center of his mind and it has a latch that can be found by touch alone. This curious portal opens on immense and well-lit spaces, early baroque, and corridors and chambers rivaling in number those of the Topkapi Museum.
Everywhere there are exhibits, well-spaced and lighted, each keyed to memories that lead to other memories in geometric progression.
Spaces devoted to Ha
The palace is a construction begun early in Ha
Here in the hot darkness of his mind, let us feel together for the latch. Finding it, let us elect for music in the corridors and, looking neither left nor right, go to the Hall of the Begi
We will add to them what we have learned elsewhere, in war records and police records, from interviews and forensics and the mute postures of the dead. Robert Lecter's letters, recently unearthed, may help us establish the vital statistics of Ha
I
This is the first thing I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.
– -Philip Larkin
1
HANNIBAL THE GRIM (1365-1428) built Lecter Castle in five years, using for labor the soldiers he had captured at the Battle of Zalgiris. On the first day his pe
Five hundred years later Ha
Now the Alpha swan came out of the water, stumping toward the children on his short legs, hissing his challenge.
The swan had known Ha
"Ohh, A
Ha
"We go through this every day," Ha
Mischa in her excitement dropped her bread on the damp ground. When Ha
The children felt three hard thumps in the ground and the water shivered, blurring their faces. The sound of distant explosions rolled across the fields. Ha
The hunting wagon was in the courtyard, hitched to the great draft horse Cesar. Berndt in his hostler's apron and the houseman, Lothar, loaded three small trunks into the wagon box. Cook brought out a lunch.
"Master Lecter, Madame wants you in her room," Cook said.
Ha
Ha
She was excited now and her bright maroon eyes reflected the light redly in sparks. Ha
Ha
Clouds painted on the ceiling. As a baby nursing he used to open his eyes and see his mother's bosom blended with the clouds. The feel of the edges of her blouse against his face. The wet nurse too her gold cross gleamed like sunlight between prodigious clouds and pressed against his cheek when she held him, she rubbing the mark of the cross on his skin to make it go away before Madame might see it.
But his father was in the doorway now, carrying the ledgers.
"Simonetta, we need to go."
The baby linens were packed in Mischa's copper bathtub and Madame put the casket among them. She looked around the room, and took a small painting of Venice from its tripod on the sideboard, considered a moment, and gave it to Ha
"Take this to Cook. Take it by the frame." She smiled at him. "Don't smudge the back."
Lothar carried the bathtub out to the wagon in the courtyard, where Mischa fretted, uneasy at the stir around her.
Ha
The pigeons flocked to it, making an "M" in living birds on the ground.
Ha
Cook, a big man in kitchen whites, came out carrying a lunch. The horse rolled an eye at Cook and followed his progress with a rotating ear-when Cesar was a colt, Cook had run him out of the vegetable garden on a number of occasions, yelling oaths and swatting his rump with a broom.
"I'll stay and help you load the kitchen," Mr. Jakov said to Cook.
"Go with the boy," Cook said.
Count Lecter lifted Mischa into the wagon and Ha
"Three planes bombed the rail yards. Colonel Timka says we have at least a week, if they reach here at all, and then the fighting will be along the main roads. We'll be fine at the lodge."
It was the second day of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's lightning sweep across Eastern Europe into Russia.