Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [90]
At fortytwo he did not remember that. Nor did he ever think about the people in his mother's house - his mother, stepsisters, or stepbrother.
Sometimes he saw them in his sleep, in the brilliant fragments of a fever dream; altered and tall, faces and bodies in bright parrot colors, they poised over him in a mantis stance.
When he chose to reflect, which was seldom, he had many satisfactory memories. They were of his military service.
Caught at seventeen entering the window of a woman's house for a purpose never established, he was given the choice of enlisting in the Army or facing criminal charges. He took the Army.
After basic training he was sent to specialist school in darkroom operation and shipped to San Antonio, where he worked on medicalcorps training films at Brooke Army Hospital.
Surgeons at Brooke took an interest in him and decided to improve his face.
They performed a Zplasty on his nose, using ear cartilage to lengthen the columella, and repaired his lip with an interesting Abbé flap procedure that drew an audience of doctors to the operating theater.
The surgeons were proud of the result. Dolarhyde declined the mirror and looked out the window.
Records at the film library show Dolarhyde checked out many films, mainly on trauma, and kept them overnight.
He reenlisted in 1958 and in his second hitch he found Hong Kong. Stationed at Seoul, Korea, developing film from the tiny spotter planes the Army floated over the thirtyeighth parallel in the late 1950's, he was able to go to Hong Kong twice on leave. Hong Kong and Kowloon could satisfy any appetite in 1959.
Grandmother was released from the sanatorium in 1961 in a vague Thorazine peace. Dolarhyde asked for and received a hardship discharge two months before his scheduled separation date and went home to take care of her.
It was a curiously peaceful time for him as well. With his new job at Gateway, Dolarhyde could hire a woman to stay with Grandmother in the daytime. At night they sat in the parlor together, not speaking. The tick of the old clock and its chimes were all that broke the silence.
He saw his mother once, at Grandmother's funeral in 1970. He looked through her, past her, with his yellow eyes so startlingly like her own. She might have been a stranger.
His appearance surprised his mother. He was deepchested and sleek, with her fine coloring and a neat mustache which she suspected was hair transplanted from his head.
She called him once in the next week and heard the receiver slowly replaced.
# # #
For nine years after Grandmother's death Dolarhyde was untroubled and he troubled no one. His forehead was as smooth as a seed. He knew that he was waiting. For what, he didn't know.
One small event, which occurs to everyone, told the seed in his skull it was Time: standing by a north window, examining some film, he noticed aging in his hands. It was as though his hands, holding the film, had suddenly appeared before him and he saw in that good north light that the skin had slackened over the bones and tendons and his hands were creased in diamonds as small as lizard scales.
As he turned them in the light, an intense odor of cabbage and stewed tomatoes washed over him. He shivered though the room was warm. That evening he worked out harder than usual.
A fulllength mirror was mounted on the wall of Dolarhyde's attic gym beside his barbells and weight bench. It was the only mirror hanging in his house, and he could admire his body in it comfortably because he always worked out in a mask.
He examined himself carefully while his muscles were pumped up.
At forty, he could have competed successfully in regional bodybuilding competition. He was not satisfied.
Within the week he came upon the Blake painting. It seized him instantly.
He saw it in a large, fullcolor photograph in Time magazine illustrating a report on the Blake retrospective at the Tate Museum in London. The Brooklyn Museum had sent The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun to London for the show.
Time's critic said: