Hannibal said.
The proprietor disappeared behind a curtain at the rear of the store and returned with a small cricket cage, a cucumber and a knife. He placed the cage on the counter, and under the avid gaze of the parrot, cut off a tiny slice of cucumber and pushed it into the cricket cage. In a moment came the clear sleigh-bell ring of the suzumushi. The proprietor listened with a beatific expression as the song came again.
The parrot imitated the cricket's song as well as it could-loudly and repeatedly. Receiving nothing, it became abusive and raved until Hannibal thought of Uncle Elgar. The proprietor put a cover over the cage.
"Merde," it said from beneath the cloth.
"Do you suppose I might hire the use of a suzumushi, lease one so to speak, on a weekly basis?"
"What sort of fee would you find appropriate?" the proprietor said.
"I had in mind an exchange," Hannibal said. He took from his portfolio a small drawing in pen and ink wash of a beetle on a bent stem.
The proprietor, holding the drawing carefully by the edges, turned it to the light. He propped it against the cash register. "I could inquire among my colleagues. Could you return after the lunch hour?"
Hannibal wandered, purchased a plum at the street market and ate it.
Here was a sporting-goods store with trophy heads in the window, a bighorn sheep, an ibex. Leaning in the corner of the window was an elegant Holland amp; Holland double rifle. It was wonderfully stocked; the wood looked as though it had grown around the metal and together wood and metal had the sinuous quality of a beautiful snake.
The gun was elegant and it was beautiful in one of the ways that Lady Murasaki was beautiful. The thought was not comfortable to him under the eyes of the trophy heads.
The proprietor was waiting for him with the cricket. "Will you return the cage after October?"
"Is there no chance it might survive the fall?"
"It might last into the winter if you keep it warm. You may bring me the cage at... an appropriate time." He gave Hannibal the cucumber. "Don't give it all to the suzumushi at once," he said.
Lady Murasaki came to the terrace from prayers, thoughts of autumn still in her expression.
Dinner at the low table on the terrace in a luminous twilight. They were well into the noodles when, primed with cucumber, the cricket surprised her with its crystal song, singing from concealment in the dark beneath the flowers. Lady Murasaki seemed to think she heard it in her dreams.
It sang again, the clear sleigh-bell song of the suzumushi.
Her eyes cleared and she was in the present. She smiled at Hannibal. "I see you and the cricket sings in concert with my heart."
"My heart hops at the sight of you, who taught my heart to sing."
The moon rose to the song of the suzumushi. The terrace seemed to rise with it, drawn into tangible moonlight, lifting them to a place above ghost-ridden earth, a place unhaunted, and being there together was enough.
In time he would say the cricket was borrowed, that he must take it back at the waning of the moon. Best not to keep it too long into the fall.
Chapter 28-29
28
LADY MURASAKI conducted her life with a certain elegance which she achieved by application and taste, and she did it with whatever funds were left to her after the chateau was sold and the death duties paid.
She would have given Hannibal anything he asked, but he did not ask.
Robert Lecter had provided for Hannibal 's minimal school expenses, but no extras.
The most important element in Hannibal 's budget was a letter of his own composition. The letter was signed Dr. Gamil Jolipoli, Allergist and it alerted the school that Hannibal had a serious reaction to chalk dust, and should be seated as far as possible from the blackboard.
Since his grades were exceptional, he knew the teachers did not really care what he was doing, as long as the other pupils did not see and follow his bad example.
Freed to sit alone in the very back of the classroom, he was able to manufacture ink and watercolor washes of birds in the style of Musashi Miyamoto, while listening to the lecture with half an ear.
There was a vogue in Paris for things Japanese. The drawings were small, and suited to the limited wall space of Paris apartments, and they could be packed easily in a tourist's suitcase. He signed them with