Starling's housekeeping is efficient, but not subtle.Although her half of the shared house is very clean and you can find everything, things tend to pile up higher and higher—clean clothes are not cleaned up.There are too many magazines to fit.Her knack for not ironing clothes until the last minute is also world-class and requires no grooming.That's how she lived.
When she needed order, she ducked across the boarding house—to Adelia's room over the communal kitchen.She could have counseled with Adélia if she was there, and Adélia's opinions were always on point, though sometimes more explicit than Starling would have liked.They had a tacit understanding that if Adeleia was not around, Starling could sit in Adeleia's tidy room and think, as long as she didn't throw things there.She just sat there today.It was the kind of house where you felt like you were there, whether you were there or not.
Starling sat looking at Grandma Mapp's insurance policy.The policy was in a handmade frame and hung on the wall just as it had hung in the tenant house on her grandma's farm, just as it had hung in the playroom when Adélia was a child.Adelia's grandmother sold vegetables and flowers for a living, and she saved up a small amount of money to pay insurance premiums.She was already able to take out the insurance policy loan that she had paid, and it was this that allowed Adele to survive the final difficulties of college.There was another photograph of the little old woman herself, with her unsmiling face in her starched white collar, her black eyes shining with ancient wisdom under the brim of her straw hat.
Ardelia senses her background and draws strength from it every day.Now Starling is also looking for her own strength, trying to pull herself together.The Lutheran Orphanage in Bozeman gave her food, clothing, and a code of proper behavior.However, as far as her current needs are concerned, she can only rely on her own blood to find strength.
What do you expect from being born into a poor white family?Not to mention living in an area where reconstruction work was not completed until the end of the 1950s.Since he was born in a family of Appalachian mountain people who are often called "mountain people" and "hillies" by college students, and are often condescendingly called "blue-collar" by others; Working people also call your family members "woodpeckers" - what other traditional family traditions can you find as your model?Say we're beating the crap out of them?Say old Grant is doing a fine job?Is the said corner forever done?
It would be an honor to be able to make something out of what you inherited, to make something out of that hapless forty acres and a muddy mule, but you gotta have a vision first!And that assumption no one else will tell you.
Starling succeeded while training with the FBI because she had no way back.She spent most of her life in a social institution relying on respect for the institution, hard work, and discipline.She's always improving, she's always getting scholarships, she's always working with people.When she got to the FBI, she was successful, but she was not promoted. This experience made her feel strange and terrible.She is like a bee in a bottle, always hitting the glass wall.
She mourned for 4 days for John Brigham, who was killed in front of her.Brigham had made a request of her long ago, and she declined.He asked her again if they could be friends, real friends, and she agreed, with all her heart.
She accepted the fact that she had killed five people at the Feliciana fish market.A figure flashed repeatedly in her mind: the Cripp man whose chest was crushed between two cars, the man's hands scratching at the roof of the car, and the gun dropped.
In order to relieve the burden in her heart, she once went to the hospital to see Evelda's baby.Evelda's mother was there picking up her little grandson to go home.She recognized Starling from the photograph in the newspaper and handed the baby to the nurse. Before Starling knew what she was going to do, the old woman had slapped her hard, on the bandaged side.
Starling didn't fight back, just grabbed the old woman's wrist and pushed her against the window of the maternity ward until she gave up struggling.The old woman's face was contorted against the spit-spattered windowpane.Blood ran down Starling's face, making her dizzy with pain.She went to the emergency room to have her ears re-sewed and did not file a claim for medical compensation.An emergency room aide tipped off to the Tattler and got $300.
She also had to go out twice—once to give John Brigham the finishing touches and once to attend his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.Brigham's relatives were few and far between, and his last written request was for Starling to care for him.
His facial injuries required the use of a faceless coffin, but she managed to do his best to dress him in a perfectly embellished navy uniform with ribbons and other decorations.After the funeral, Brigham's superiors gave Starling a box containing John Brigham's personal guns, armbands, and items from his perpetually cluttered desk, including— Silly hyacinth chicken.
Starling faces a hearing in five days that could destroy her.Her work phone never rang, except for one call from Jack Crawford, and Brigham, whom she could talk to, was dead.
She had called her agent in the FBI Secret Service, and his advice had been no more than dangling earrings and open-toed shoes for hearings.
Television and newspapers clung to Evelda's death like a dead rat every day.
Here, in Mapp's remarkably tidy room, Starling was thinking hard.
The worm that can destroy you is agreeing with your critics and pleasing them.
A noise disturbed her.
Starling struggled to remember what she had actually said in the disguised van.Did she say unnecessary things?The noise continued to interfere.
Was she hostile when Brigham asked her to brief others about Evelda?She said something ambiguous...
The noise continued to interfere.
She woke up and realized that what she heard was her own doorbell next door.A reporter, maybe, and she was expecting a civil subpoena.She drew back the curtains on the front of Mapp's house and saw a postman going back to the mail car.She opened Mapp's gate and caught up with him.She turned her back as she signed for the express delivery, dodging the telephoto cameras of the news van across the street.
The envelope was fuchsia, with silky stripes on fine linen paper.Distraught, she remembered something.She entered the house, avoiding the glare of the sun, and looked at the envelope, the beautiful print.
The horrifying tone in Starling's heart had been humming continuously, and now it sounded a warning.She felt the skin of her abdomen vibrate, as if something cold was flowing from her body.
Holding the corners of the envelope, Starling entered the kitchen and took out the white evidence gloves from her leather wallet—she always carried them with her.She pressed the envelope on the hard table in the kitchen, and carefully molded it all over.Although the paper is very hard, the battery of the time bomb can always be molded.She knew she should look into it, and if she opened the envelope, she might get into trouble.Trouble, huh, trouble!
She picked up a kitchen knife and cut open the envelope, took out the silky letter paper, she already knew who wrote it without looking at the signature.
couturier
Reading the letter, Starling heard a voice she had heard in the most secure ward of a mental hospital... a voice that taunted her, read her, probed her life, and inspired her.At that time, she had to exchange the most delicate feelings in her life for the important information Hannibal Lecter had.The scraping of metal in his seldom-used voice still vibrated in her dreams.
There was a new cobweb in one corner of the kitchen ceiling, and Starling stared at it with emotion.She was happy and sad, sad and happy.Glad to be saved, to see a way to heal the injury; sad because Dr. Lecter's relay agency in Los Angeles must have hired cheap assistants, this time using a postage machine.Jack Crawford would be pleased with the letter, as would the postal authorities and the laboratory.
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Notes: .