Chapter Text
Hannibal’s Garden
Part VI: Violet
By MadhouseMuse
Prologue
The night air in the garden of Hannibal Lecter’s memory palace is perfumed with the bouquet of many flowers. In the velvet blackness of the night sky, a waxing crescent moon throws down slivers of white light, like flat, silver blades of illumination.
The colorful blossoms of the garden beds waver in the lilting breeze of the temperate evening and are visited by a variety of insects – bees, moths, nocturnal butterflies.
The plants in Hannibal’s Garden do not feel the sun’s absence as punishment; they feed hungrily on moonlight, vampiric and adoring.
The garden, enclosed by vine-covered stone walls, is an enchanting sanctuary. Dr. Lecter visits it often, as he does this particular evening. Once, and for many years, Hannibal tended to his floral creatures alone – only accompanied by the flashing images and the caroling music in his head. Now, he is always in the company of his beloved, Will Graham.
It is a rare thing that another person has come to occupy the rooms of his mind palace. He constructed it decades ago at the prompting of his tutor, Mr. Jakov. Hannibal had been curious as to why his tutor, an older gentleman, seemed to have a diamond-sharp memory, despite the complex nature of the many subjects in which he instructed Hannibal.
Jakov had asked him:
“Would you like to remember everything?”
“Yes,” Hannibal had replied.
Jakov’s face grew hard and earnest as he said, “To remember is not always a blessing.”
Hannibal closed his eyes and thought. In the six years he had been alive before Jakov’s arrival, he had seen so many things. Had so many thoughts, so many feelings. Hannibal liked the thoughts, but he was bewitched by the feelings. Both physical and emotional, the feelings of a single day of life at Lecter Castle were a banquet to him – the sweetness of his mother’s kisses, the hearty warmth of his father’s pride – and Mischa, the salty earthiness of Mischa’s tears when she cried, she a newborn, just rocking in her cradle. Hannibal did not want to lose a moment of it, not a drop of life washed away in the rains of time.
He opened his eyes and answered Jakov.
“I would like to remember everything.”
“Then you will need a mind palace, to store things in. A palace in your mind.”
Jakov had prompted him to choose a place, the most beautiful place he could think of to be the room of foundation – the Hall of the Beginning – from which Hannibal would build outward. He had chosen his mother’s room at Lecter Castle – a room filled with many scents – his mother’s perfume, bergamot and gardenia in a symphony of notes, his father’s musky aftershave, the green smells of cut flowers, the rancid sweetness of breast milk spilled over onto a sheet from Mischa’s mouth; the smell never washed away. Hannibal could still remember the taste of it on his own tongue. His mother had commissioned an artist to paint the ceiling sky blue and to fill it with fluffy white clouds. He remembered gazing up at them as a baby, as he had suckled at his mother’s breast. Even as a young boy, he still crept into his mother’s room in the long, quiet hours when his father was at work in his study and his mother was at work in the castle’s kitchen garden. He would sneak inside this chamber of aroma, throw himself down on the bear rug, and stare up at the painted heavens over his head and tried to imagine God, tried to imagine what God looked like, and tried to understand if God could see what was in his heart – if God knew about the dark desires that resided there – the things Hannibal felt and loved feeling but could not reconcile with what the outside world said about right and wrong.
His mother’s room was the most beautiful place he knew – he placed it at the center of his mind palace and built. In the decades since that time, the center of the palace had shifted. It was now the foyer of the Norman Chapel in Palermo, in the vaulted room of windows and music, with a pleading skeleton etched into a medallion on the floor, and sunlight pouring in like sound. Still, his mother’s room was the oldest part of the palace – the most familiar, like the tone of a loved one’s voice. Hannibal only retreated there in extreme circumstances. Only in moments of severe pain did he run for the doors of his mother’s chamber – and then only a handful of times since he had taken his first victim – the pig butcher who murdered his Uncle Robert so many years ago.
More often now, Hannibal spent his time in the sunny chapel foyer or here in the moonlit garden, amongst the flowers and the leaves and the buzzing sounds of night.
And Will was always with him here. Hannibal had not granted Will access to all the rooms and halls in his mind just yet. In truth, it was more like a process of merging – of their two palaces shifting over each other, like tectonic plates in the earth. It was a sliding of Will’s blueprint over Hannibal’s and a comparison and contrast – the rooms of similarity – the rooms of difference.
They shared the chapel; they shared Hannibal’s office and the dining room of Hannibal’s Baltimore home. But just as Hannibal had his own independent chambers, so did Will. His classroom at Quantico, the cabin of his father’s boat, and the original room from which Will had built outward – the living room of his home in Wolf Trap – where his dogs still lived – and where he housed fly fishing rods over the windows and an out of tune piano, moldering with age.
Perhaps the center was shifting again.
For both of them.
Perhaps Hannibal’s locus was moving away from skulls and candles and Will’s was moving away from lures and motors and both of them were homing onto a new base. A new center around which to spin.
The garden.
Hannibal felt it charmingly apropos. In the Christian world, it was in a garden that human life began. And in his and Will’s world, the only world that mattered, the garden was the place where ideas began – ideas they could share – for projects and for conversations and for murder. They had come to share that pleasure as well – as surely as they shared the pleasures of the tranquil moonlight and the evening breezes of the garden courtyard.
Tonight, Hannibal is on his knees in front of one of the raised stone beds, one near the western wall of the yard. The sleeves of his cerulean blue shirt are rolled up to his elbows and his hands are gloved. On the cobblestones at his feet is a silver bowl – the moonlight flashes into it like a burning glass, igniting a cold fire that gathers in the bottom of the bowl like pearlescent water.
Hannibal is harvesting violets. His questing fingers plunge down into the soil, smoothing down the delicate hairs on the stalks of each flower, until he finds the root. Then, he deftly wrenches the rosy-leaved bud up from its loamy bed, twists the root ball away from the stalk with a pinch of his fingers, tosses the root back into the fluffy sod, and deposits the flower into the shining bowl.
These violets are the viola odorata, the most fragrant of the species. Not only used in perfumes and lotions, the French applied their fragrance to food as well, and Hannibal intends to recreate such a recipe. Violettes de Toulouse – candied violets. A candied violet dropped into a glass of bubbly champagne is a delightful pleasure and one he intends to provide for his beloved at their first meal back on their yacht, the Heart, on their leisurely trek through the layering waves of the Atlantic back to Havana.
As Hannibal plucks up the purple blossoms, Will is standing on the basin wall of the stone fountain that sits at the center of the garden, the focal point around which Hannibal planned the garden’s architecture.
The fountain itself is dry – it has not seen water in decades. The bronze angel atop the fountain, bespeckled with blue-green patina, seems unconcerned with the drought. It gazes down to the basin, where Hannibal’s cochlear garden flourishes; here, his pet snails, shells flashing like amber and horn in the moonlight, feed on sweet fruits and aromatic herbs to fatten them up for eating.
Will has a glass jar in one hand and the jar’s lid in the other. He is smiling into the moonlit sky as he attempts to catch some of the fireflies that bounce damsel-like about the head of the angel. There is no distinct reason for this pastime of Will’s other than the fact that he loves insects, and he thinks a jar with a few inside would be a charming lantern for the nighttime picnic he and Hannibal have planned for later that evening.
Hannibal muses on Will’s motives as his hands dig in the dirt.
He and Will do these things for each other, these small things.
Candied violets and a lantern of fireflies. Once you know how to love, the expressions of it are endless.
Hannibal is finally satisfied with the number of violets he has excised from the earth, an odd two dozen. He rises to his feet, strips off his soil-covered gloves, and stores them in a wooden box of garden tools next to the silver bowl.
He will prepare the violets tomorrow morning. Washed in egg whites, sifted over with confectioner’s sugar, and refrigerated for twenty-four hours, and they would be ready for glasses of bubbly or to top any number of desserts. Hannibal begins contemplating what dessert he should make for their first dinner back on the boat – perhaps a fraisier. Will was fond of strawberries and the violets would pair beautifully with the crème mousseline.
Hannibal unrolls his shirt sleeves and glances over to the fountain, taking in the sight of Will, balanced on tiptoe on the fountain wall, waving his empty jar in the fragrant air, laughing good-naturedly at his fruitless attempts to catch the buzzing insects.
Tonight, Will wears a jade green shirt and slim black pants – the color of the fabric calls the green out of Will’s eyes like siren song. Will’s beautiful eyes could never be properly described – no named shade or hue could do them justice. They are blue and they are green and they are both at the same time and sometimes, they are one or the other. But they are always filled with light and now, when Will turns them to Hannibal’s face, they are filled with love.
Will’s curling hair is raven black in the stark moonlight; his strong jaw is dusted with black stubble. His lips are red and soft and thoroughly kissable, as Hannibal knows only too well.
Hannibal buttons his sleeves at the cuffs and sighs lovingly – his heart swims in a sea of emotion in his chest. It struggles against a tide of rich, thick blood that pumps furiously through the chambers at the sight of Will’s face. All parts of Hannibal are set into motion by his beloved; all his senses are awakened and heightened. To be with Will is exactly like lying on his back in his mother’s room staring up at the cloudy blue sky – it is like talking to God, this time in thanks for bringing Will into his life – truly a gift Hannibal perhaps did not deserve but he took full possession of nonetheless.
God did not dispense justice.
He was merely the croupier at a roulette wheel.
When Hannibal met Will, it was the result of a lucky spin. But Hannibal could allow God this much – he had dropped the ball into play.
At last, Will manages to capture some flies. Two in one catch, in fact. He slaps the lid onto the glass container quickly and in his enthusiasm loses his balance and slips backward off the fountain wall.
Hannibal rushes up behind Will to catch him and eases him down to the cobblestones under his feet.
Will turns to Hannibal, smiling triumphantly and brandishes his now lighted jar. Hannibal tucks a dark curl away from Will’s forehead and kisses the whitened scar there, his lips leaving behind a moist blessing.
Will’s eyes drop to the wall of the fountain from which he fell, to a clean spot in the lichen-covered stone that was cleared off by the scraping of his shoe. An image is now perfectly visible on the stone.
A red handprint. The paint outline of the chubby fingers of a child – the pressing is only slightly degraded after ages of weathering; the scarlet of the outline opens like a wound in the white flesh of the moonlight.
Hannibal’s eyes fall to the same spot. A memory arises. It drifts into Hannibal’s consciousness from the pages of a book in the palace library; a story he placed there in one of the books, in one of the volumes of books about Mischa. The many tomes his mind has penned to help him remember everything about his little sister, now long dead almost forty years.
It was a sunny afternoon in the castle courtyard. Hannibal was just nine years old, which means Mischa was four. He had asked Jakov to teach him more about art. Hannibal’s mother knew a great deal about art – she was a Sforza on one side and a Visconti on the other – and so she had inherited a wealth of knowledge about the major Italian artists.
There were two paintings in Lecter Castle that his mother loved the most, two cityscapes that resided on the walls of his mother’s room. A pair of paintings on the same subject – The Bridge of Sighs in Venice – one by Bellotto and the other by Canaletto. Based on his mother’s love for these renderings, Hannibal wanted to try to paint the bridge as well – except he wanted to paint his cityscape of the bridge at sunset, with the red sun just peeking under the arch over the Grand Canal.
Jakov had taught him about other artists – French, German, American – and had instructed Hannibal in pigment mixing, palette arrangement, canvas priming, and such. For the first time, Hannibal was working with oils. He had decided to paint that day out in the courtyard in the bright yellow beauty of the early winter sun. There was still water in the fountain then and the bronze angel had not yet turned green. Mischa had begged to come with Hannibal and Jakov – she was bored in the kitchen with Cook, who tried to amuse her with various fruits and vegetables but was mostly busy preparing the afternoon meal for a large noble household. Hannibal had scooped Mischa up into his arms and carried her and their art supplies out into the shining midday light.
Hannibal set up his chair and easel right in front of the fountain. He set up a smaller easel and chair for Mischa, the ones he had used when he was Mischa’s age. To her easel, Hannibal clipped a large sheet of manila paper. On a child-sized palette, he squeezed large puddles of paint in all the primary colors for Mischa to use for finger paints. Before turning to his own canvas, Hannibal took a brush and carefully mixed together globs of blue and red to make purple.
Purple was Mischa’s favorite color. The sight of it made her laugh.
Jakov sat down on the wall of the fountain and began reading poetry aloud to them. That day he was reading from Robert Herrick’s Hesperides, lovely little poems about beautiful ladies and flowers and the passing of time.
It had been a couple of hours when Hannibal finished the outlines of all the objects in his painting and was now going in with the dark reds and greys he would use on the water of the canal when he was startled to consciousness by Jakov calling Mischa’s name, telling her to stop, admonishing her she was being naughty.
Hannibal looked to his sister’s place at his side and saw she had climbed down from her chair and was making large red handprints on the wall of the stone fountain, huge drips of red paint falling from her fingers to the cobblestones below.
The more Jakov scolded her, the more Mischa giggled until finally Jakov walked huffily over to her and squatted down beside her to take her color palette away.
She raised her reddened hands from the stone and placed both wet palms on each of Jakov’s cheeks and giggled away furiously. Jakov, a kind old man, could not bear to be so disagreeable in the face of such joy. He gathered Mischa to him and laughed and Hannibal laughed with them both.
The red paint had washed off Mischa’s hands and the stones of the courtyard under their feet, but the scarlet prints had never come off the stone of the fountain, even with repeated scrubbings.
That is why the fountain of Hannibal’s mind palace still bore the blood red mark of Mischa’s hands. The mark of Mischa’s hands was still blood red upon Hannibal’s heart.
Hannibal drops his head. Tears roll down his cheeks. Even now, forty years gone, the pain of Mischa’s absence is still cutting – it still whirls inside him like a spindle of blades.
Will sets his jar down on the fountain wall and draws Hannibal into his arms. Hannibal tucks his face into the soft nook between Will’s neck and his shoulder and breathes in the comforting scent of his beloved’s skin – open air, musk, and electricity – the aroma Hannibal imagines a falling star would burn free.
Will’s hands curl across Hannibal’s back; his fingers weave into the soft blond-grey hair on the back of Hannibal’s head. Will’s lips hover just inches away from Hannibal’s ear as he whispers to him – whispers all the kind and sweet and heartfelt things a man whispers to his beloved when his broken heart gapes open to the world.
Hannibal takes in Will’s words and nods against Will’s chest, his tears ceasing, the open wound closing again.
Will is telling Hannibal he loves him over and over.
And over and over, Hannibal knows it is true.
Will is faithful and Will belongs to Hannibal body and soul.
The fireflies in Will’s glass jar bounce confusedly against the transparent walls.
An owl hoots in a distant tree.
In the blue-silver pool of moonlight that has flowed into the courtyard, Will is drawing Hannibal’s mouth to meet his, to prove his love as best he knows how.
***