Starling looked back over her right shoulder. Sammie sat vacant-faced against the wall of his cell, his head leaning against the bars.
“Would you read it aloud? He won’t hear you.”
Starling began. “‘I want to go to Jesus, I want to go with Christ, I can go with Jesus if I act real nice.’”
“No, no. Get a more assertive ‘Pease porridge hot’ quality into it. The meter varies but the intensity is the same.” Lecter clapped time softly, “Pease porridge in the pot nine days old. Intensely, you see. Fervently. ‘I wan to go to Jesa, I wan to go wiv Criez.’”
“I see,” Starling said, putting the paper back in the carrier.
“No, you don’t see anything at all.” Dr. Lecter bounded to his feet, his lithe body suddenly grotesque, bent in a gnomish squat and he was bouncing, clapping time, his voice ringing like sonar, “I wan to go to Jesa—”
Sammie’s voice boomed behind her sudden as a leopard’s cough, louder than a howler monkey, Sammy up and mashing his face into the bars, livid and straining, the cords standing out in his neck:
“I WAN TOO GO TO JESA
I WAN TOO GO WIV CRIEZ
I CAN GO WIV JESA EF I AC RELL NIIIZE.”
Silence. Starling found that she was standing and her folding chair was over backwards. Her papers had spilled from her lap.
“Please,” Dr. Lecter said, erect and graceful as a dancer once again, inviting her to sit. He dropped easily into his seat and rested his chin on his hand. “You don’t see at all,” he said again. “Sammie is intensely religious. He’s simply disappointed because Jesus is so late. May I tell Clarice why you’re here, Sammie?”
Sammie grabbed the lower part of his face and halted its movement.
“Please?” Dr. Lecter said.
“Eaaah,” Sammie said between his fingers.
“Sammie put his mother’s head in the collection plate at the Highway Baptist Church in Trune. They were singing ‘Give of Your Best to the Master’ and it was the nicest thing he had.” Lecter spoke over her shoulder. “Thank you, Sammie. It’s perfectly all right. Watch television.”
The tall man subsided to the floor with his head against the bars, just as before, the images from the television worming on his pupils, three streaks of silver on his face now, spit and tears.
“Now. See if you can apply yourself to his problem and perhaps I’ll apply myself to yours. Quid pro quo. He’s not listening.”
Starling had to bear down hard. “The verse changes from ‘go to Jesus’ to ‘go with Christ,’” she said. “That’s a reasoned sequence: going to, arriving at, going with.”
“Yes. It’s a linear progression. I’m particularly pleased that he knows ‘Jesa’ and ‘Criez’ are the same. That’s progress. The idea of a single Godhead also being a Trinity is hard to reconcile, particularly for Sammie, who’s not positive how many people he is himself. Eldridge Cleaver gives us the parable of the 3-in-One Oil, and we find that useful.”
“He sees a causal relationship between his behavior and his aims, that’s structured thinking,” Starling said. “So is the management of a rhyme. He’s not blunted—he’s crying. You believe he’s a catatonic schizoid?”
“Yes. Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it’s the smell of schizophrenia.”
“And you believe he’s treatable?”
“Particularly now, when he’s coming out of a stuporous phase. How his cheeks shine!”
“Dr. Lecter, why do you say Buffalo Bill’s not a sadist?”
“Because the newspapers have reported the bodies had ligature marks on the wrists, but not the ankles. Did you see any on the person’s ankles in West Virginia?”
“No.”
“Clarice, recreational flayings are always conducted with the victim inverted, so that blood pressure is maintained longer in the head and chest and the subject remains conscious. Didn’t you know that?”
“No.”
“When you’re back in Washington, go to the National Gallery and look at Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas before they send it back to Czechoslovakia. Wonderful for details, Titian—look at helpful Pan, bringing the bucket of water.”