"Sir, you can't open this alcoholic
beverage on the aircraft," the steardess said. "I'll hold it for you.
You can calim it at the gate."
"Of course. Thank you so much." Dr. Hannibal said.
Dr.
Lecter could overcome his surroundings. He could make it all go away. The beeping of the computer game, the snores and farts, were
nothing compared to the hellish screaming he'd known in the violent wards. The
seat was no tighter than restraints. As he had done in his cell so many
times, Dr. Lecter put his head back, closed his eyes and retired for relief
into the quiet of his memory palace, a place that is quite beautiful for the
most part.
For
this little time, the metal cylinder howling westward against the wind contains
a palace of a thousand rooms.
As
once we visited Dr. Lecter in the Palazzo of the Capponi, so we will go with
him now into the palace of his mind dotdotdot
The
foyer is the Norman Chapel in Palermo, severe and beautiful and timeless, with
a single reminder of mortality in the skull graven in the floor. Unless he is
in a great hurry to retrieve information from the palace, Dr. Lecter often
pauses here as he does now, to admire the chapel. Beyond it, far and complex,
light and dark, is the vast structure of Dr. Lecter's making.
The
memory palace was a Mnemonic system well known to ancient scholars and much
information was preserved in them through Dark Ages when vandals burned the
books. Like scholars before him, Dr. Lecter stores an enormous amount of
information keyed to objects in his thousand rooms, but unlike the ancients,
Dr. Lecter has a second purpose for his palace; sometimes he lives there. He
passed years among its exquisite collections, while his body lay bound on a
violent ward with screams buzzing the steel bars like hell's own harp.
Hannibal Lecter's palace is vast, even by medieval standard. Translated
to the tangible world, it would rival the Topkakai palace in Istanbul for size
and complexity.
We
catch up to him as the swift slippers of his mind pass from the foyer into the
Great Hall of Seasons. The palace is built according to the rules discovered by
Simonides of Ceos and elaborated by Cicero four hundred years later;
[oversimplified History, as usual with Fictionwriters] it is airy,
high-ceilinged, furnished with objects and tableaux that are vivid, striking,
sometimes shocking and absurd, and often beautiful. The displays are
well-spaced and well-lighted like those of a great museum. But the walls are
not the neutral colors of museum walls. Like Giotto, Dr. Lecter has frescoed
the walls of his mind.
He
has decided to pick up Clarice Starling's home address while he is in the
palace, but he is in no hurry for it, so he stops at the foot of a great
staircase where the Piace bronzes stand. These great bronze warriors attributed
to Phidias, raised from the seafloor in our own time, are the centerpiece of
frescoed space that could unspool all of Homer and Sophocles.
Dr.
Lecter could have the bronze faces speak Meleanger if he wished, but today he
only wants to look at them.
A
thousand rooms, miles of corridors, hundreds of facts attached to each object
furnishing each room, a pleasant respite awaiting Dr. Lecter whenever he
chooses to retire there.
But
this we share with Dr. Lecter: In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger
waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the
floor of mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor. The stinking oubliettes,
named for forgetting, bottled shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in
the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal
by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases, things trapped
for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drives us to dangerous
behaviour dotdotdot
Fearfully and wonderfully made, we follow as he moves with a swift light
stride along the corridor of his own making. Through a scent of gardeniads, the
prescence of great sculpture pressing on us, and the light of picture.
His
way leads around to the right past a burst of Pliny and up the staircase to the
Hall of Addresses, a room lined with statuary and paintings in a fixed order,
spaced wide apart and well lit, as Cicero recommends.
Ah
dotdotdot The third alcove from the door on the right is dominated by a painting
of St. Francis feeding a moth to a starling. On the floor before the painting
is this tableau, life-sized in painted marble:
A parade in Arlington, National Cemetery led
by Jesus, thirty-three, driving a 1927 Model-T Ford. Truck, a "tin
lizzie" with J. Edgar Hoover standing in the trunk bed wearing a tutu and
waving to an unseen crowd. Marching behind him is Clarice Starling carrying a
.308 Enfield rifle at shoulder arms.
Dr.
Lecter appears pleased to see Starling. Long ago, he obtained Starling's home
address from the University of Virginia alumni association. He stores the
address in this tableau, and now, for his own pleasure, he summons the numbers
and the name of the street where Starling lives.
3327 Tindal
Arlington, VA 22308
Dr.
Lecter can move down the vast halls of his memory palace with unnatural speed.
With his reflexes and strength, apprehension and speed of mind, Dr. Lecter is
well armed against the physical world. But there are places within himself that
he may not safely go where Cicero's rules of logic, of ordered space and do not
apply dotdotdot
He
has decided to visit his collection of ancient textiles. For a letter he is
writing to Mason Verger, he watns to review a text of Ovid on the subject of
flavored facial oils which is attached to the weavings.
He
proceeds down an interesting flat-weave kilim runner toward the hall of looms
and textiles.
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