Chapter 36 Chapter Thirty-Five

Two lines of angry tears had dried and coagulated on the cheeks of Clarice Starling as she hurried through the dangerous traffic of Memphis.At this moment, she feels very strange, floating, unencumbered.What she saw was surprisingly clear, reminding her that she came to fight on purpose, so she was very cautious with herself. She had passed the old courthouse earlier on her way from the airport, so she had no trouble finding it again. Tennessee authorities did not risk Hannibal Lecter.They were determined to keep him behind bars and not risk him by sending him to the city jail. Their solution was this former courthouse-cum-prison.This is a huge Gothic building made of granite, built in the old days when labor was cheap, and it is now an office building in the city, in this prosperous town with a strong sense of history. , went a little too far with its fix.

Today, it looks like a medieval fortress surrounded by police. The parking lot was filled with a motley crew of law enforcement patrol cars—highway patrol cars, Shelby County Sheriff's Department patrol cars, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation patrol cars, correctional patrol cars.Starling even had to pass a police post to pull her rental car in and stop. Dr. Lecter created an additional security problem from the outside.Threatening phone calls have continued since his whereabouts were reported on the news around ten o'clock in the morning: his victims had many friends and relatives who wanted his life.

Starling wished that Copley, the resident FBI agent, wasn't here, she didn't want to get him into trouble. There was a group of reporters on the lawn next to the main entrance steps, in which she saw the back of Chilton's head.There are two tiny TV cameras in the crowd.Starling wished she had something covering her head.She turned her face away as she approached the entrance to the steeple building. A state trooper guarding the door double-checked her ID before she was allowed into the foyer.The foyer of the steeple now looked like a guardhouse.A city policeman guarded the only elevator in the building, and another policeman at the stairs.State troopers, who were set to replace the patrol squad stationed around the building, sat on couches watching "Business Appeal," out of view of the public.

A police squad leader stood guard at the table opposite the elevator.His name tag reads "C.L, Tate". "No interviews!" Captain Tate said after seeing Starling. "I'm not interviewing," she said. "You were with someone from the Attorney General?" he said after reviewing her papers. "With Krendler, Assistant Representative to the Attorney General," she said. "I just left him." He nodded. "We West Tennessee cops want to go in here and see this Dr. Lecter. Thank God, it doesn't happen that often. You need to speak to Dr. Chilton before you can go up."

"I saw him outside," Starling said. "We were working on this in Baltimore earlier today. Am I checking in here, Captain Tate?" The squad leader quickly licked one of Tian's molars with his tongue. "That's right," he said. "The rules of the detention house, ma'am. Whether you're a policeman or not, anyone who comes has a weapon." Starling nodded.She poured the cartridges out of her revolver, and the captain was pleased to see her hands moving over the gun.She handed him the gun, butt forward.He locked the gun in the drawer. "Vernon, take her up." He dialed a number and said her name into the phone.

The elevator was installed separately, and it was a product of the 1920s. It creaked and went up to the top floor. When it opened, there was a landing and a short corridor in front of it. "It's right across the street, ma'am," said the state trooper. "Shelby County Historical Society" is painted on the frosted glass of the door. The top floor of the steeple was almost entirely an octagonal room painted white, with floors and moldings of polished oak that smelled of wax and library paste.The rooms are sparsely furnished and have an austere, Congregationalist feel to them.It looks better today than it did when it was used as a Marshal's office.

Two men in the uniform of the Tennessee Correctional Facility were on duty.The little man stood up from the table as Starling entered.The older one sat in a folding chair at the far end of the room, facing the cell door.He is in charge of monitoring suicides. "Are you allowed to talk to the prisoner, miss?" said the sergeant at the table.His name plate reads "TW Pembry".The set on his desk included a telephone, two riot batons and a Mace sprayer.In the corner behind him stood a pair of long torture instruments that bound the prisoner's arms. "Yes, approved," Starling said. "I've asked him questions before."

"You know the rules? Don't cross the line." "That's for sure." The only color in the room was the police traffic barricade, a bright orange-painted strip-shaped barricade with a round yellow flashing sign, which was off at the moment.Barricades stood on the polished floor, five feet from the cell door.On a coat rack nearby hung the doctor's belongings—the hockey mask and something Starling had never seen before, a Kansas vest shaped like a gallows.The vest is made of thick leather, with two U-shaped wrist locks at the waist and a buckle on the back. It is perhaps the safest and most reliable restraint garment in the world.The mask and the black vest hung by the collar on the coat rack; against the white walls, the arrangement creates an uneasy feeling.

As Starling approaches the cell, she sees Dr. Lecter.He was reading at a small table chained to the floor.He has his back to the door.He had some books, and that Buffalo Bill present file she had given him in Altimore.A small cassette player was chained to the leg of the table.How strange to see him outside of a psychiatric hospital! Starling had seen cells like this before as a child.They were prefabricated by a company in St. Louis around the turn of the century, and no one had ever built them better—a cage made of tempered steel that could transform any room into a prison cell.The floor is sheet steel, laid on steel rods; walls and flat ceilings of cold-forged steel rods completely line the room.There are no windows.The cell was white, spotless, and well lit.In front of the toilet stands a light and thin paper screen.

These white steel strips protrude from the wall.Dr. Lecter's head was black and shiny. He was a marten in the cemetery.He lives deep in his chest, and his heart is full of dead leaves. She blinked and quickly put the thought aside. "Good morning, Clarice," he said without turning.He finished the page he was reading, marked it, and then turned the chair to face her again, resting his forearm on the back of the chair and resting his chin on the forearm again. "Duma Dumas told us that if you add a crow to stew clear soup in autumn, the color and taste of the original juice will be greatly improved, because crows at that time grow fat by eating juniper berries. Do you think that if you put a crow in the soup How is it, Clarice?"

"I think these pictures of yours, just before you got a window with a view, are the things you used to have in your cell, and you might still want them." "How thoughtful! You and Jack Crawford were thrown out of the case, and Dr. Chilton was in euphoria. Or did they send you again to sweeten me one last time?" The officer in charge of watching the suicides wandered back to speak to Sergeant Pembry at the table.Starling hoped they couldn't hear her. "They didn't send me here, I just came here by myself." "They're going to say we're in a relationship. Don't you want to ask about Billy Rubin, Clarice?" "Dr. Lecter, I have no doubts about what you told Senator Martin, but do you suggest that I proceed with your opinion?" "Doubt,—well said. I'm not going to advocate what you do at all. You're trying to fool me, Clarice. Do you think I'm playing with these people?" "I think you were telling me the truth." "It's a pity you're trying to fool me, aren't you?" Dr. Lecter's face sank behind his arms until only his eyes were visible. "It's a pity that Catherine Martin will never see the sun again. The sun is A fire in which her god is buried, Clarice." "It's a pity you're now obliged to pander to others, and eat a few tears if you can," Starling said. "It's a pity we didn't finish what we were talking about. Your thoughts about adults, the structure of adults." , there is a kind of...elegant beauty, it is hard for people to lose it. Now it looks like a collapsed building, only half of the arch is left standing there." "Half an arch won't stand. Speaking of arches, Clarice, do they still make you a lowly cop on foot patrol? Did they take your badge back?" "No." "What's that under your jacket? A watchman's attendance clock? Like your dad's?" "No, it's a quickloader." "So you're walking around with a weapon?" "yes." "Then your jacket should be enlarged. Do you make your own clothes?" "Do it too." "Did you make this costume?" "No. You can see everything, Dr. Lecter. You can't get intimate with this 'Billy Rubin' and end up knowing that little about him." "You think I haven't talked very intimately with him?" "If you'd met him, you'd know it all, but how do you happen to remember one detail today, that he had ivory anthrax? You should have seen them hopping when Atlanta said it was in the knifemakers. .They're very interested in the news, and you know full well they will, for which you should get a house in the Peabody. Dr. Lecter, if you've ever met him, you'd know about him. I don't think you've seen him, but Raspail told you about him. You can't sell Senator Martin for the same second-hand stuff, can you?" Starling looked back quickly.One of the two officers was showing the other something in Guns and Ammunition. "You had something to tell me in Baltimore, Dr. Lecter, and I believe there's something to it. Tell me the rest." "I've read the case file, Clarice, have you read it? As long as you pay attention, everything you need to know to find him is there. Even Inspector Crawford, who is emeritus, should be able to figure it out. .By the way, did you read that dizzying speech Crawford gave to the National Police Academy last year? He blah blah blah blah about Marcus Aurelius and about duty and honor and fortitude— —We'll see what kind of ascetic Crawford was after Bella died. I think he copied his philosophy from "Bartlett's Dictionary of Quick Quips." If he knew Mark -Aurelius, he may solve the case." "Tell me how to break." "When you happen to have a flash of wisdom that can make things out of context, I forget that your generation is illiterate, Clarice. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, argued that Simplicity is the first principle. For each specific thing, one should ask: In terms of its own structure, what is it? What is it itself? What is its normal state?" "I have no idea what that means." "The man you want to arrest, what did he do?" "He killed—" "Alas—" he said to him in a sharp tone, and he turned his face away for a moment because of her wrong judgment. "That was incidental. What was the first, fundamental thing he did? What need did he kill to satisfy?" "Anger, dissatisfaction with society, sexual difficulties—" "wrong." "what is that?" "He wants to satisfy his delusions. In fact, he wants to be like you. His nature is delusions. How do we get started when we have delusions, Clarice? Is delusions still picky? Use your brain to answer." "No, we're just—" "By the way, that's right. When we start to have delusions, we're trying to get what we see every day. Clarice, don't you feel eyes sweeping up and down your body among the people you meet by chance every day? Is it? If you can't feel it, I can hardly imagine it. And don't your eyes go over other things too?" "Okay, now tell me how—" "It's your turn to tell me, Clarice. You don't have anything else to offer me for vacations on the beach over there at the Foot and Mouth Research Station. From here to out, it's now strictly pay-as-you-go. And I've got to be careful with your deals. Tell me, Clarice." "tell you what?" "The same two things you owed me: What happened to you and the horse? How did you deal with your anger?" "Dr. Lecter, when I have time I'll—" "We don't think of time the same way, Clarice. It's all the time you can possibly have." "In the future, listen, I'll—" "I want to hear it now. Two years after your father died, your mother sent you to a ranch in Montana to live with her cousin and her husband when you were ten. You found out they were letting out horses for slaughter Grazing. There was a horse with poor eyesight, and you ran with her. And then?" "—it was summer, and we could sleep out of doors. We took a back road as far as Bosman." "Does this horse have a name?" "Maybe, but they don't—you put a slaughtered horse out to graze, and you don't know the name or the name. I call her Hannah, and it sounds like a good name." "Are you leading the horse or riding it?" "Let's lead the ride. Near a fence, I had to lead her to climb up." "You rode to Bosman." "There's a stable over there, on a holiday ranch, kind of like a riding school, just outside the city. I'd like to arrange to have them take the horses in. It's two weeks a week in a pen." Ten yuan, more than a stable. They could tell she was blind at a glance. I said okay, I will lead her around, and the children can sit on the horse and I will lead her around, while their parents , you know, can ride as normal. I can just stay here and tidy up the stables. One of them, the man, agreed with everything I said, and his wife called the sheriff." "The sheriff is a cop, like your father." "At first, that didn't stop me from being afraid of him. He was very red. The sheriff sorted things out, and then finally paid them a week's worth of meals. He said it wasn't good to do stable work in hot weather." The papers brought it up, and there was a stir. My mother's cousin agreed to let me go, and I took the crooked road to the Lutheran home in Bosman." "Is that an orphanage?" "yes." "Where's Hannah?" "She's gone too. A big laborer at the Lutheran ranch made a bed. They've got a barn in the orphanage. We'll take her with us to plow, but you'll have to watch where she goes." She walked under the bean trellis. If the things she planted were too short and did not grow taller, and she couldn’t feel her legs when she walked by, then she would step on everything. We also led her to pull the small car kids going around." "But she's dead anyway." "Oh, yes." "Tell me to listen." "That was last year, and they wrote to my school. They estimated she was about twenty-two years old. On the last day of her life, she was pulling a cart full of children, and then died in her sleep." Dr. Lecter looked disappointed. "It's touching! It's heart-warming." He said, "Did your adoptive father in Montana piss you off, Clarice?" " "No." "Has he tried?" "No." "What made you run with your horse?" "They're going to kill her." "Do you know what time it is?" "Not exactly. I worry about it all the time. She's getting fatter and fatter." "Then what prompted you to flee? What made you choose to leave on that particular day?" "I have no idea." "I think you know." "I've been worrying about that for a long time." "What prompted you to start, Clarice? What time did you start?" "It's very early, it's not yet dawn." "So what woke you up. What woke you up? Did you dream? What dreamed?" "I woke up and heard the lambs. I woke up in the dark and the lambs were screaming." "They're slaughtering early spring sheep?" "yes." "What did you do?" "I can't do anything for them, I'm just—" "What did you do with that horse?" "I didn't turn on the light to get dressed and went outside. She was terrified. All the" horses in the pen were terrified and spinning around.I blew into her nose, and she knew it was me, and finally pushed her nose into my hand.Lights were on in the barn and in the shed by the sheepfold.Bare light bulbs, big shadows.The refrigerated truck has arrived, and the motor is still roaring.I took her and left. " "Did you saddle her?" "No, I didn't take their saddles, only the reins." "When you leave in the dark, can you still hear the lamb screaming when the light is on?" "Not long to hear. Not many sheep, only twelve." "You still wake up sometimes now, don't you? Waking up in the dark to hear lambs screaming?" "Sometimes yes." "Do you think, if you catch Buffalo Bill with your own hands, if you can keep Catherine safe, you can keep those lambs from screaming: do you think they'll be safe from now on and you won't?" Waking up in the dark to hear them scream again, Clarice?" "Eh. I don't know. Maybe." "Thank you, Clarice." Dr. Lecter looked surprisingly calm. "Tell me his name, Dr. Lecter," Starling said. "Dr. Chilton is here," Lecter said. "I'm sure you know each other." Starling didn't realize for a moment that Chilton was behind her.He then came to pull her arm. She pulled her elbow back.With Chilton were Constable Pembry and his big partner. "Get in the elevator!" Chilton said.His face was flushed in patches. "Dr. Chilton doesn't have a medical degree, you don't know?" said Dr. Lecter. "Keep that in mind for the future." "Come on!" said Chilton. "It's none of your business here, Dr. Chilton," Starling said. Sergeant Pembry circled in front of Chilton. "Yes, ma'am, but it's my business. He called my boss and your boss. I'm sorry, but I've been ordered to send you out. Come with me, now." "Goodbye, Clarice. Will you tell me if the lamb stops screaming?" "OK." Pembry was tugging at her arm.She had to go or fight him. "Okay," she said, "I'll tell you!" "you promise?" "yes." "Then finish that half arch. Take your file away, Clarice, I don't need it anymore." He stretched his arm and pushed the file through the middle of the railing, his index finger running along the back of the file. touched it.She reached over the barrier to pick it up.In an instant, the tip of her index finger touched the tip of Dr. Lecter's index finger. The touch made his eyes twitch. "Thank you, Clarice." "Thank you, Dr. Lecter." This was the image of him in Starling's mind.For a moment, he didn't mock others, he just stopped at this moment: standing in his white cell, bent like a dancer, fingers clasped in front of his chest, head slightly turned to one side. Her car went over a bump in the road designed for the speed limit on the way to the airport, went too fast, swayed, and hit her head on the roof of the car.She had to run to catch the flight Krendler had ordered her to take.