Hannibal Rising (19 page)

Hannibal hitched his rope to the harness traces and walked Cesar forward until the big horse’s shoulders and chest felt the load. He clicked in Cesar’s ear, a sound from his boyhood. Cesar leaned into the load, his muscles bunched and he moved forward. A crash and thud from inside the lodge. Soot and ash puffed out the window and blew into the woods like fleeing darkness.

Hannibal patted the horse. Impatient for the dust to settle, he tied a handkerchief over his face and went inside, climbing over the collapsed pile of wreckage, coughing, tugging to free his lines and hitch them again. Two more pulls and the heaviest
debris was off the deep layer of rubble where the stairs had collapsed. He left Cesar hitched and with pry bar and shovel he dug into the wreckage, throwing broken pieces of furniture, half-burned cushions, a cork thermos chest. He lifted out of the pile a singed boar’s head on a plaque.

His mother’s voice: Pearls before swine
.

The boar’s head rattled when he shook it. Hannibal grasped the boar’s tongue and tugged. The tongue came out with its attached stopper. He tilted the head nose-down and his mother’s jewelry spilled out onto the stovetop. He did not stop to examine the jewelry but went back at once to digging.

When he saw Mischa’s bathtub, the end of the copper tub with its scrolled handle, he stopped and stood up. The room swam for a moment and he held on to the cold edge of the stove, put his forehead against the cold iron. He went outside and returned with yards of flowering vine. He did not look inside the tub, but coiled the line of flowers on top and set it on the stove, could not stand to see it there, and carried it outside to set it on the tank.

The noise of digging and prying made it easy for Dortlich to advance. He watched from the dark wood, exposing one eye and one barrel of his field glasses, peeping only when he heard the sound of shoveling and prying.

Hannibal’s shovel hit and scooped up a skeletal hand and then exposed the skull of the cook. Good tidings in the skeleton smile—its gold teeth showed looters had not reached this far—and then he found,
still clutched by arm bones in a sleeve, the cook’s leather dispatch case. Hannibal seized it from under the arm, and carried it to the stove. The contents rattled on the iron as he dumped them out: assorted military collar brass, Lithuanian police insignia, Nazi SS lightning brass, Nazi Waffen-SS skull-and-cross-bones cap device, Lithuanian aluminum police eagles, Salvation Army collar brass, and last, six stainless-steel dog tags.

The top one was Dortlich’s.

Cesar took notice of two classes of things in the hands of men: apples and feedbags were the first, and whips and sticks second. He could not be approached with a stick in hand, a consequence of being driven out of the vegetables by an infuriated cook when he was a colt. If Dortlich had not been carrying a leaded riot baton in his hand when he came out of the trees, Cesar might have ignored him. As it was, the horse snorted and clopped a few steps further away, trailing his rope down the steps of the lodge, and turned to face the man.

Dortlich backed into the trees and disappeared in the woods. He went a hundred meters further from the lodge, among the breast-high ferns wet with dew and out of the view of the empty windows. He took out his pistol and jacked a round into the chamber. A Victorian privy with gingerbread under the eaves was about forty meters behind the lodge, the thyme planted on its narrow path grown wild
and tall, and the hedges that screened it from the lodge were grown together across the path. Dortlich could barely squeeze through, branches and leaves in his collar, brushing his neck, but the hedge was supple and did not crackle. He held his baton before his face and pushed through quietly. Baton ready in one hand and pistol in the other, he advanced two steps toward a side window of the lodge when the edge of a shovel caught him across the spine and his legs went numb. He fired a shot into the ground as his legs crumpled under him and the flat of the shovel clanged against the back of his skull and he was conscious of grass against his face before the dark came down.

Birdsong, ortolans flocking and singing in the trees and the morning sunlight yellow on the tall grass, bent over where Hannibal and Cesar had passed.

Hannibal leaned against the burned-out tank with his eyes closed for about five minutes. He turned to the bathtub, and moved the vine with his finger enough to see Mischa’s remains. It was oddly comforting to him to see she had all her baby teeth—one awful vision dispelled. He plucked a bay leaf out of the tub and threw it away.

From the jewelry on the stove he chose a brooch he remembered seeing on his mother’s breast, a line of diamonds turned into a Möbius tape. He took a ribbon from a cameo and fastened the brooch where Mischa had worn a ribbon in her hair.

On a pleasant east-facing slope above the lodge he dug a grave and lined it with all the wildflowers he could find. He put the tub into the grave and covered it with roof tiles.

He stood at the head of the grave. At the sound of Hannibal’s voice, Cesar raised his head from cropping.

“Mischa, we take comfort in knowing there is no God. That you are not enslaved in a Heaven, made to kiss God’s ass forever. What you have is better than Paradise. You have blessed oblivion. I miss you every day.”

Hannibal filled in the grave and patted down the dirt with his hands. He covered the grave with pine needles, leaves and twigs until it looked like the rest of the forest floor.

In a small clearing at some distance from the grave, Dortlich sat gagged and bound to a tree. Hannibal and Cesar joined him.

Settling himself on the ground, Hannibal examined the contents of Dortlich’s pack. A map and car keys, an army can opener, a sandwich in an oilskin pouch, an apple, a change of socks, and a wallet. From the wallet he took an ID card and compared it to the dog tags from the lodge.

“Herr … Dortlich. On behalf of myself and my late family, I want to thank you for coming today. It means a great deal to us, and to me personally, having you here. I’m glad to have this chance to talk seriously with you about eating my sister.”

He pulled out the gag and Dortlich was talking at once.

“I am a policeman from the town, the horse was reported stolen,” Dortlich said. “That’s all I want here, just say you’ll return the horse and we’ll forget it.”

Hannibal shook his head. “I remember your face. I have seen it many times. And your hand on us with the webs between your fingers, feeling who was fattest. Do you remember that bathtub bubbling on the stove?”

“No. From the war I only remember being cold.”

“Did you plan to eat
me
today Herr Dortlich? You have your lunch right here.” Hannibal examined the contents of the sandwich. “So much mayonnaise, Herr Dortlich!”

“They’ll come looking for me very soon,” Dortlich said.

“You felt our arms.” Hannibal felt Dortlich’s arm. “You felt our cheeks, Herr Dortlich,” he said, tweaking Dortlich’s cheek. “I call you ‘Herr’ but you aren’t German, are you, or Lithuanian, or Russian or anything, are you? You are your own citizen—a citizen of Dortlich. Do you know where the others are? Do you keep in touch?”

“All dead, all dead in the war.”

Hannibal smiled at him and untied the bundle of his own handkerchief. It was full of mushrooms. “Morels are one hundred francs a centigram in Paris, and these were growing on a stump!” He got up and went to the horse.

Dortlich writhed in his bonds for the moment when Hannibal’s attention was elsewhere.

There was a coil of rope on Cesar’s broad back. Hannibal attached the free end to the traces of the harness. The other end was tied in a hangman’s noose. Hannibal paid out rope and brought the noose back to Dortlich. He opened Dortlich’s sandwich and greased the rope with mayonnaise, and applied a liberal coating of mayonnaise to Dortlich’s neck.

Flinching away from his hands, Dortlich said, “One remains alive! In Canada—Grentz—look there for his ID. I would have to testify.”

“To what, Herr Dortlich?”

“To what you said. I didn’t do it, but I will say I saw it.”

Hannibal fixed the noose about Dortlich’s neck and looked into his face. “Do I seem upset with you?” He returned to the horse.

“That’s the only one, Grentz—he got out on a refugee boat from Bremerhaven—I could give a sworn statement—”

“Good, then you are willing to sing?”

“Yes, I will sing.”

“Then let us sing for Mischa, Herr Dortlich. You know this song. Mischa loved it.” He turned Cesar’s rump to Dortlich. “I don’t want you to see this,” he said into the horse’s ear, and broke into song:

“Ein Mannlein steht im Walde ganz still und stumm …”
He clicked in Cesar’s ear and walked him
forward.
“Sing for slack, Herr Dortlich. Es hat von lauter Purpur ein Mantlein um.”

Dortlich turned his neck from side to side in the greasy noose, watching the rope uncoil in the grass.

“You’re not singing, Herr Dortlich.”

Dortlich opened his mouth and sang in a tuneless shout,
“Sagt, wer mag das Mannlein sein.”

And then they were singing together,
“Das da steht im Wald allein …”
The rope rose out of the grass, some belly in it, and Dortlich screamed, “Porvik! His name was Porvik! We called him Pot Watcher. Killed in the lodge. You found him.”

Hannibal stopped the horse and walked back to Dortlich, bent over and looked into his face.

Dortlich said, “Tie him, tie the horse, a bee might sting him.”

“Yes, there are a lot of them in the grass.” Hannibal consulted the dog tags. “Milko?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I swear.”

“And now we come to Grutas.”

“I don’t know, I don’t. Let me go and I will testify against Grentz. We will find him in Canada.”

“A few more verses, Herr Dortlich.”

Hannibal led the horse forward, dew glistened on the rope, almost level now.

“Das da steht im Walde allein—”

Dortlich’s strangled scream, “It’s Kolnas! Kolnas deals with him.”

Hannibal patted the horse and came back to bend over Dortlich. “Where is Kolnas?”

“Fontainebleau, near the Place Fontainebleau in
France. He has a café. I leave messages. It’s the only way I can contact him.” Dortlich looked Hannibal in the eye. “I swear to God she was dead. She was dead anyway I swear it.”

Staring into Dortlich’s face, Hannibal clicked to the horse. The rope tightened and the dew flew off it as the little hairs on the rope stood up. A strangled scream from Dortlich cut off, as Hannibal howled the song into his face.

A wet crunch and a pulsing arterial spray. Dortlich’s head followed the noose for about six meters and lay looking up at the sky.

Hannibal whistled and the horse stopped, his ears turned backward.

“Dem purporroten Mantelein
, indeed.”

Hannibal dumped the contents of Dortlich’s pack on the ground and took his car keys and ID. He made a crude spit from green sticks and patted his pockets for matches.

While his fire was burning down to useful coals, Hannibal took Dortlich’s apple to Cesar. He took all the harness off the horse so he could not get tangled in the brush and walked him down the trail toward the castle. He hugged the horse’s neck and then slapped him on the rump. “Go home. Cesar, go home.”

Cesar knew the way.

GROUND FOG SETTLED in the bare ripped path of the power line and Sergeant Svenka told his driver to slow the truck for fear of hitting a stump. He looked at his map and checked the number on a pylon holding up the heavy transmission line.

“Here.”

The tracks of Dortlich’s car continued into the distance, but here it had sat and dripped oil on the ground.

The dogs and policemen came off the back of the truck, two big black Alsatians excited about going into the woods, and a serious hound. Sergeant Svenka gave them Dortlich’s flannel pajama top to sniff and they were off. Under the overcast sky the trees looked grey with soft-edged shadows and mist hung in the glades.

The dogs were milling about the hunting lodge,
the hound casting around the perimeter, dashing into the woods and back, when a trooper called out from back in the trees. When the others did not hear him at once, he blew his whistle.

Dortlich’s head stood on a stump and on his head stood a raven. As the troopers approached, the raven flew, taking with it what it could carry.

Sergeant Svenka took a deep breath and set an example for the men, walking up to Dortlich’s head. Dortlich’s cheeks were missing, excised cleanly, and his teeth were visible at the sides. His mouth was held open by his dog tag, wedged between his teeth.

They found the fire and the spit. Sergeant Svenka felt the ashes to the bottom of the little fire pit. Cold.

“A brochette, cheeks and morels,” he said.

INSPECTOR POPIL WALKED from police headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres to the Place des Vosges, carrying a slender portfolio. When he stopped at a bar on the way for a fast espresso, he smelled a calvados on the service bar and wished it were already evening.

Popil walked back and forth on the gravel, looking up at Lady Murasaki’s windows. Sheer draperies were closed. Now and then the thin cloth moved in a draft.

The daytime concierge, an older Greek woman, recognized him.

“Madame is expecting me,” Popil said. “Has the young man been by?”

The concierge felt a tremor in her concierge antennae and she said the safe thing. “I haven’t seen him, sir, but I’ve had days off.” She buzzed Popil in.