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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "It was bad enough to see you in Russian uniform." "The Twenty-seventh Rifles," Dortlich said. "Worse to see you in Nazi uniform; that killed your mother." "There were a lot of us. Not just me. I have a life. You have a bed to die in instead of a ditch. You have coal. That's all I have to give you. The trains for Siberia are jammed. The people trample each other and shit in their hats. Enjoy your clean sheets." "Grutas was worse than you, and you knew it." He had to pause to wheeze. "Why did you follow him? You looted with criminals and hooligans, you robbed houses and you stripped the dead." Dortlich replied as though he had not heard his father. "When I was little and I got burned you sat beside the bed and carved the top for me. You gave it to me and when I could hold the whip you showed me how to spin it. It is a beautiful top, with all the animals on it. I still have it. Thank you for the top." He put the chocolates near the foot of the bed where the old man could not shove them off on the floor. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "Go back to your police station, pull out my file and mark it No Known Family," Dortlich's father said. Dortlich took a piece of paper from his pocket. "If you want me to send you home when you die, sign this and leave it for me. Bergid will help you and witness your signature." In the car, Dortlich rode in silence until they were moving with the traffic on the Radvilaites. Sergeant Svenka at the wheel offered Dortlich a cigarette and said, "Hard to see him?" "Glad it's not me," Dortlich said. "His fucking maid I should go there when Bergid's at church. Church she's risking jail to go. She thinks I don't know. My father will be dead in a month. I will ship him to his birth town in Sweden. We should have maybe three cubic meters of space underneath the body, good space three meters long." Lieutenant Dortlich did not have a private office yet, but he had a desk in the common room of the police station, where prestige meant proximity to the stove. Now, in spring, the stove was cold and papers were piled on it. The paperwork that covered Dortlich's desk was fifty percent bureaucratic nonsense, and half of that could be safely thrown away. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 There was very little communication laterally with police departments and MVD in neighboring Latvia and Poland. Police in the Soviet satellite countries were organized around the Central Soviet in Moscow like a wheel with spokes and no rim. Here was the stuff he had to look at: by official telegraph the list of foreigners holding a visa for Lithuania. Dortlich compared it to the lengthy wanted list and list of the politically suspect. The eighth visa holder from the top was Hannibal Lecter, brand-new member of the youth league of the French Communist Party. Dortlich drove his own two-cycle Wartburg to the State Telephone Office, where he did business about once a month. He waited outside until he saw Svenka enter to begin his shift. Soon, with Svenka in control of the switchboard, Dortlich was alone in a telephone cabin with a crackling and spitting trunk line to France. He put a signal-strength meter on the telephone and watched the needle in case of an eavesdropper. In the basement of a restaurant near Fontainebleau, France, a telephone rang in the dark. It rang for five minutes before it was answered. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "Speak." "Somebody needs to answer faster, me sitting here with my ass hanging out. We need an arrangement in Sweden, for friends to receive a body," Dortlich said. "And the Lecter child is coming back. On a student visa through the Youth for the Rebirth of Communism." "Who?" "Think about it. We discussed it the last time we had dinner together," Dortlich said. He glanced at his list. "Purpose of his visit: to catalog for the people the library at Lecter Castle. That's a joke-the Russians wiped their ass with the books. We may need to do something on your end. You know who to tell." NORTHWEST OF VILNIUS near the Neris River are the ruins of an old power plant, the first in the region. In happier times it supplied a modest amount of electricity to the city, and to several lumber mills and a machine shop along the river. It ran in all weathers, as it could be supplied with Polish coal by a narrow-gauge rail spur or by river barge. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 The Luftwaffe bombed it flat in the first five days of the German invasion. With the advent of the new Soviet transmission lines, it had never been rebuilt. The road to the power plant was blocked by a chain padlocked to concrete posts. The lock was rusty on the outside, but well-greased within. A sign in Russian, Lithuanian and Polish said: UNEX-PLODED ORDNANCE, ENTRY FORBIDDEN. Dortlich got out of the truck and dropped the chain to the ground. Sergeant Svenka drove across it. The gravel was covered in patches by spreading weeds that brushed beneath the truck with a gasping sound. Svenka said, "This is where all the crew-" "Yes," Dortlich said, cutting him off. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "Do you think there are really mines?" "No. And if I'm wrong keep it to yourself," Dortlich said. It was not his nature to confide, and his need for Svenka's help made him irritable. A Lend-Lease Nissen hut, scorched on one side, stood near the cracked and blackened foundation of the power plant. "Pull up over there by the mound of brush. Get the chain out of the back," Dortlich said. Dortlich tied the chain to the tow bar on the truck, shaking the knot to settle the links. He rooted in the brush to find the end of a timber pallet and fastening the chain to it, he waved the truck forward until the pallet piled with brush moved enough to reveal the metal doors of a bomb shelter. "After the last air raid, the Germans dropped paratroopers to control the crossings of the Neris," Dortlich said. "The power-station crew had taken shelter in here. A paratrooper knocked on the door and when they opened it he threw in a phosphorus grenade. It was difficult to clean. Takes a minute to get used to it." As Dortlich talked he took off three padlocks securing the door. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 He swung it open and the puff of stale air that hit Svenka's face had a scorched smell. Dortlich turned on his electric lantern and went down the steep metal steps. Svenka took a deep breath and followed him. The inside was whitewashed and there were rows of rough wooden shelves. On them were art. Icons wrapped in rags, and row after row of numbered aluminum-tube map cases, their threaded caps sealed with wax. In the back of the shelter were stacked empty picture frames, some with the tacks pulled out, some with the frayed edges of paintings that had been cut hastily out of the frames. "Bring everything on that shelf, and the ones standing on end there," Dortlich said. He gathered several bundles in oilcloth and led Svenka to the Nissen hut. Inside on sawhorses was a fine oak coffin carved with the symbol of the Klaipeda Ocean and River Workers Association. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 The coffin had a decorative rub rail around it and the bottom half was a darker color like the waterline and hull of a boat, a handsome piece of design. "My father's soul ship," Dortlich said. "Bring me that box of cotton waste. The important thing is for it not to rattle." "If it rattles they'll think it's his bones," Svenka said. Dortlich slapped Svenka across the mouth. "Show some respect. Get me the screwdriver." HANNIBAL LECTER LOWERED the dirty window of the train, watching, watching as the train wound through tall second growths of linden and pine on both sides of the tracks and then, as he passed at a distance of less than a mile, he saw the towers of Lecter Castle. Two miles further, the train came to a screeching and wheezing halt at the Dubrunst watering station. Some soldiers and a few laborers climbed off to urinate on the roadbed. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 A sharp word from the conductor made them turn their backs to the passenger cars. Hannibal climbed off with them, his pack on his back. When the conductor went back into the train, Hannibal stepped into the woods. He tore a page of newspaper as he went, in case the second trainman saw him from the top of the tank. He waited in the woods through the chuff, chuff of the steam locomotive laboring away. Now he was alone in the quiet woods. He was tired and gritty. When Hannibal was six Berndt had carried him up the winding stairs beside the water tank and let him peer over the mossy edge into water that reflected a circle of the sky. There was a ladder down the inside too. Berndt used to swim in the tank with a girl from the village at every opportunity. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 Berndt was dead, back there, deep in the forest. The girl was probably dead too. Hannibal took a quick bath in the tank and did his laundry. He thought about Lady Murasaki in the water, thought about swimming with her in the tank. He hiked back along the railroad, stepping off into the woods once when he heard a handcart coming down the tracks. Two brawny Magyars pumped the handles with their shirts tied around their waists. A mile from the castle a new Soviet power line crossed the rails. Bulldozers had cleared its path through the woods. Hannibal could feel the static as he passed under the heavy electrical lines and the hair stood up on his arms. He walked far enough from the lines and the rails for the compass on his father's binoculars to settle down. |