Clarice Starling’s memory palace is building as well. It shares some rooms with Dr. Lecter’s own memory palace—he has discovered her in there several times—but her own palace grows on its own. It is full of new things. She can visit her father there. Hannah is at pasture there. Jack Crawford is there, when she chooses to see him bent over his desk—after Crawford was home for a month from the hospital, the chest pains came again in the night. Instead of calling an ambulance and going through it all again, he chose simply to roll over to the solace of his late wife’s side of the bed.
Starling learned of Crawford’s death during one of Dr. Lecter’s regular visits to the FBI public Web site to admire his likeness among the Ten Most Wanted. The picture the Bureau is using of Dr. Lecter remains a comfortable two faces behind.
After Starling read Jack Crawford’s obituary, she walked by herself for most of a day, and she was glad to come home at evening.
A year ago she had one of her own emeralds set in a ring. It is engraved inside with AM-CS. Ardelia Mapp received it in an untraceable wrapper with a note. Dear Ardelia, I’m fine and better than fine. Don’t look for me. I love you. I’m sorry I scared you. Burn this. Starling.
Mapp took the ring to the Shenandoah River where Starling used to run. She walked a long way with it clutched in her hand, angry, hot-eyed, ready to throw the ring into the water, imagining it flashing in the air and the small plop. In the end she put it on her finger and shoved her fist in her pocket. Mapp doesn’t cry much. She walked a long way, until she could be quiet. It was dark when she got back to her car.
It is hard to know what Starling remembers of the old life, what she chooses to keep. The drugs that held her in the first days have had no part in their lives for a long time. Nor the long talks with a single light source in the room.
Occasionally, on purpose, Dr. Lecter drops a teacup to shatter on the floor. He is satisfied when it does not gather itself together. For many months now, he has not seen Mischa in his dreams.
Someday perhaps a cup will come together. Or somewhere Starling may hear a crossbow string and come to some unwilled awakening, if indeed she even sleeps.
We’ll withdraw now, while they are dancing on the terrace—the wise Barney has already left town and we must follow his example. For either of them to discover us would be fatal.
We can only learn so much and live.
In trying to understand the structure of Dr. Lecter’s memory palace, I was aided by Frances A. Yates’s remarkable book The Art of Memory, as well as Jonathan D. Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci.
Robert Pinsky’s translation of Dante’s Inferno was a boon and a pleasure to use, as were the annotations of Nicole Pinsky The term “festive skin” is Pinsky’s translation of Dante.
Dr. Lecter’s lecture to the Studiolo owes much to Anthony K. Cassell’s distinguished work of scholarship, Dante’s Fearful Art of Justice.
“In the garden of the hurricane’s eye” is John Ciardi’s phrase and the title of one of his poems.
The first lines of poetry Clarice Starling recalls in the asylum are from T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets.
My thanks to Pace Barnes for her encouragement, support and wise counsel.
Carole Baron, my publisher, editor and friend, helped me make this a better book.
Athena Varounis and Bill Trible in the United States and Ruggero Perugini in Italy showed me the best and brightest in law enforcement. None of them is a character in this book, nor is any other living person. The wickedness herein I took from my own stock.
Vernon J. Geberth’s excellent textbook Practical Homicide Investigation contains the classic example of Mason Verger’s self-destructive behavior.
Niccolo Capponi shared with me his deep knowledge of Florence and its art and allowed Dr. Lecter to use his family palazzo. My thanks also to Robert Held for his scholarship and to Caroline Michahelles for much Florentine insight.
The staff of Carnegie Public Library in Coahoma County, Mississippi, looked up things for years. Thank you.
I owe a lot to Marguerite Schmitt: With one white truffle and the magic in her heart and hands, she introduced us to the wonders of Florence. It is too late to thank Marguerite; in this moment of completion I want to say her name.
MEET HANNIBAL LECTER
FOR THE FIRST TIME
RED
DRAGON
by
THOMAS HARRIS
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HANNIBAL
A Dell Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Delacorte Press hardcover published in June 199
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The lines from “Burnt Norton” are from. Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1943 by T S. Eliot, copyright © renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot.
The lines from Dante’s first sonnet are from La Vita Nuova: A New Translation by Mark Musa, page 6. Copyright © 1962 by Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis.
The lines from “Swinging on a Star” are from “Swinging on a Star” by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen Copyright © 1944 by Bourne Co. and Dorsey Bros. Music, Inc.; copyright renewed.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 by Yazoo Fabrications, Inc.
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33924-3
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