Hannibal - Thomas Harris [158]
She would have slapped the face of anybody else saying that.
The monster settled back a micron in his chair. Ahh, at last we've come to it. These schoolgirl recollections were becoming tedious.
Starling tried to swing her legs beneath the chair like a child, but her legs were too long. “See, he had that job, he went and did what they told him, went around with that damned watchman's clock and then he was dead. And Mama was washing the blood out of his hat to bury it with him. Who came home to us? Nobody. Damn few SNO BALLS after that, I can tell you. Mama and me, cleaning up motel rooms. People leaving wet Trojans on the nightstand. He got killed and left us because he was too goddamned stupid. He should have told those town jackasses to stuff the job.”
Things she would never have said, things banned from her higher brain.
From the beginning of their acquaintance, Dr Lecter had needled her about her father, calling him a night watchman. Now he became Lecter the Protector of her father's memory.
“Clarice, he never wished for anything but your happiness and wellbeing.”
“Wish in one hand and shit in the other one and see which one gets full the first,” said Starling. This adage of the orphans' home should have been particularly distasteful coming from that attractive face, but Dr Lecter seemed pleased, even encouraged.
“Clarice, I'm going to ask you to come with me to another room,” Dr Lecter said. “Your father visited you, as best you could manage. You saw that, despite your intense wish to keep him with you, he couldn't stay. He visited you. Now it's time for you to visit him.”.Down a hall to a guest bedroom. The door was closed.
“Wait a moment, Clarice.”
He went inside.
She stood in the hall with her hand on the knob and heard a match struck.
Dr Lecter opened the door.
“Clarice, you know your father is dead. You know that better than anyone.”
“Yes.”
“Come in and see him.”
Her father's bones were composed on a twin bed, the long bones and rib cage covered by a sheet. The remains were in low relief beneath the white cover, like a child's snow angel.
Her father's skull, cleaned by the tiny ocean scavengers off Dr Lecter's beach, dried and bleached, rested on the pillow.
“Where was his star, Clarice?”
“The village took it back. They said it cost seven dollars.”
“This is what he is, this is all of him now. This is what time has reduced him to.”
Starling looked at the bones. She turned and quickly left the room. It was not a retreat and Lecter did not follow her. He waited in the semidark. He was not afraid, but he heard her coming back with ears as keen as those of a stakedout goat. Something bright metal in her hand. A badge, John Brigham's shield. She put it on the sheet.
“What could a badge mean to you, Clarice? You shot a hole through one in the barn.”
“It meant everything to him. That's how much he knewww.”
The last word distorted and her mouth turned down. She picked up her father's skull and sat on the other bed, hot tears springing in her eyes and pouring down her cheeks.
Like a toddler she caught up the tail of her pullover and held it to her cheek and sobbed, bitter tears falling with a hollow tap tap on the dome of her father's skull resting in her lap, its capped tooth gleaming. “I love my Daddy, he was as good to me as he knew how to be. It was the best time I ever had.”
And it was true, and no less true than before she let the anger out.
When Dr Lecter gave her a tissue she simply gripped it in her fist and he cleaned her face himself. “Clarice, I'm going to leave you here with these remains. Remains, Clarice. Scream your plight into his eyeholes and no reply will come.”
He put his hands on the sides of her head. “What you need of your father is here, in your head, and subject to your judgment, not his. I'll leave you now..Do you want the candles?”
“Yes, please.”
“When you come out,