Hannibal Rising (Hannibal Lecter 4)

“Then why should anything after his life bother him? It is untroubled sleep. The difference is he will not wake to this.”

37

THE ORIGINAL WOOD BLOCK engravings for Vesalius’ great atlas of anatomy, De Fabrica, were destroyed in Munich in World War II. For Dr. Dumas the engravings were holy relics and in his grief and anger he became inspired to compile a new atlas of anatomy. It would be the best to date in the line of atlases that succeeded Vesalius’ in the four hundred years since De Fabrica.

Dumas found that drawings were superior to photography in illustrating the anatomy and essential in elucidating cloudy X-rays. Dr. Dumas was a superior anatomist, but he was not an artist. To his great good fortune, he saw Hannibal Lecter’s schoolboy drawing of a frog, followed his progress and secured for him a medical scholarship.

Early evening in the laboratory. During the day Professor Dumas had dissected the inner ear in his daily lecture, and left it to Hannibal, who now drew the cochlear bones on chalkboard at 5x enlargement.

The night bell rang. Hannibal was expecting a delivery from the Fresnes firing squad. He collected a gurney and pushed it down the long corridor to the night entrance. One wheel of the gurney clicked on the stone floor and he made a mental note to fix it.

Standing beside the body was Inspector Popil. Two ambulance attendants transferred the limp and leaking burden from their litter to the gurney and drove away.

Lady Murasaki had once remarked, to Hannibal’s annoyance, that Popil looked like the handsome actor Louis Jourdan.

“Good evening, Inspector.”

“I’ll have a word with you,” Inspector Popil said, looking nothing whatever like Louis Jourdan.

“Do you mind if I work while we talk?”

“No.”

“Come, then.” Hannibal rolled the gurney down the corridor, clicking louder now. A wheel bearing probably.

Popil held open the swinging doors of the laboratory.

As Hannibal had expected, the massive chest wounds occasioned by the Fresnes rifles had drained the body very well. It was ready for the cadaver tank. That procedure could have waited, but Hannibal was curious to see if Popil in the cadaver tank room might look even less like Louis Jourdan, and if the surroundings might affect his peachy complexion.

It was a raw concrete space adjacent to the laboratory, reached through double doors with rubber seals. A round tank of formalin twelve feet in diameter was set into the floor and covered with a zinc lid. The lid had a series of doors in it on piano hinges. In one corner of the room an incinerator burned the waste of the day an assortment of ears on this occasion.

A chain hoist stood above the tank. The cadavers, tagged and numbered, each in a chain harness, were tethered to a bar around the circumference of the tank. A large fan with dusty blades was set into the wall. Hannibal started the fan and opened the heavy metal doors of the tank. He tagged the body and put it into a harness and with the hoist swung the body over the tank and lowered it into the formalin.

“Did you come from Fresnes with him?” Hannibal said as the bubbles came up.

“Yes.”

“You attended the execution?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Inspector?”

“I arrested him. If I brought him to that place, I attend.”

“A matter of conscience, Inspector?”

“The death is a consequence of what I do. I believe in consequences. Did you promise Louis Ferrat laudanum?”

“Laudanum legally obtained.”

“But not legally prescribed.”

“It’s a common practice with the condemned, in exchange for permission, I’m sure you know that.”

“Yes. Don’t give it to him.”

“Ferrat is one of yours? You prefer him sober?”