Those Terrible Twins ; Hannibal at Nemi

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face : now I know in part ; but then I shall know even as I also am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Corinthians, 13:12)

The back windows were one-way mirror, appropriately tarnished. Starling could watch the big black SWAT vans following. (Hannibal, Thomas Harris, p. 4)

She felt quick and calm. "Paul, I have to tell you, the Apostle Paul, couldn't have done it better. He hated women too. He should have been named Appall."

"You really blew it this time, Starling" (Hannibal, Thomas Harris, p. 547).

(Page numbers throughout refer to the Arrow paperback edition).

Thomas Harris is a clever fellow. He writes books that have as many layers as an onion and makes a lot of money selling Blake, Dante and Eliot to a public hungry for blood and gore ; one reviewer, disappointed in his most recent offering, blamed publishers and public for forcing the author into compromises with his art, but Harris is no Grub Street hack, scrabbling for pennies at his editors' feet. Indeed, one rather wonders whether he did not write 'Hannibal' with the perverse project of making it unfilmable. (Unfilmable as planned, that is. At times it seems that the part of Clarice is written in such a way as to make it at one and the same time perfect for Jodie Foster the actress, and impossible for Jodie Foster the person).

Is there any point in peeling away the layers? Can one be sure that one has got right down to the centre of the thing? Probably not, for there is no guarantee that there is such a centre. "The Silence of the Lambs" is, at one and the same time, a straightforward thriller, sprinkled with the nasty little details that apparently make Patricia Cornwall's voyeuristic fantasies so popular, a re-telling of 'Beauty and the Beast', and a modern version of 'Faust'. It is also chock-a-block full of references to some of the books that a hopeful professor of literature might recommend to his students, along with a whirlwind Grand Tour of the Art treasures of the Western World ; "Look at me", you can hear the narrating voice simper, "I'm sooo cultivated".

But while slapping on the varnish, Harris will occasionally turn to wink at the more careful reader ; a quick nod in the direction of Don Quixote piques his interest in the loose killer of 'Red Dragon', and, as has been noted, the sly reference to Baudelaire in the name of the three-time villain/hero, Hannibal Lecter, keeps his nose open for more. The author would have us know that he is himself of rather richer stuff than are his characters.

In 'Hannibal', the most recent of his novels, the usual references are all there ; Dante, Blake and Eliot each makes his appearance - indeed, Dr. Lecter even gives a little talk on the Italian poet to a gathering of scholars (although I must doubt whether a group so elite would be as happily enthusiastic with the fare that is set before them as Harris makes them be). There are also references for gun-buffs, for car-enthusiasts and for all lovers of pig-flesh ; Harris has taken his time to research technical matters, as do most modern American novelists, and he lets the reader know it.

However, there are other matters, other themes, that are rather more slyly hidden ; doubtless, each reader may find his or her own set of sub-texts - see what Dorothy Maguire has discovered of the Zodiac, for example - and I wish to make no claim that what follows is an exhaustive reading of Harris's book. But it does seem to me that in this novel, the author makes some play with mythical and mystical configurations that we may associate with the names of James Frazer, Robert Graves and Mircea Eliade ; the sacrificial deity, the triple goddess and shamanic initiation are constant references throughout the text. (It is also likely, given that Harris lived in Italy for some time, that he has been reading Carlo Ginzburg - in paticular, 'Ecstasies').

In 'The Golden Bough' - a book which will have been discussed in Harris's school when he was studying for a degree in literature - Frazer opens with a mirror ; this is the 'mirror of Diana', or the lake at Aricia. Around the lake grow trees, one of which carries the Golden Bough, the wooden limb which the king must guard with his life. Frazer argues that the tree is an oak, sacred to Zeus and associated in this place with Diana. Starling, as she tells us, is herself associated with an 'oak', although in her case, the name is that of one of the American poisonous shrubs - Poison Oak (a variant on poison ivy). Starling is also associated with mirrors - mirrors within which, until Lecter has carried out a most particular service for her - which I shall return to later - she is unable to see herself. (Mirrors abound throughout the book ; a device often used in the Gothic novel, particularly when, as is the case in 'Hannibal', there is much play with twins and double identities).

The Goddess and her consort at the Arician grove are linked to the tale of Orestes. This hero was first buried at Aricia, according to local legend, and then his bones were dug up and taken to Rome, where they were buried in front of the temple of Saturn. Readers of Harris's book will be able to make the link between this tale and what happens to the bones of Starling's father for themselves. Frazer finds another, richer, version of this myth in the story of Osiris, which is perhaps worth setting out in full as Frazer himself told it. (The version that you will find from the link above - which is provided by the Egyptian Tourist Board - is rather different, but is equally useful in reading 'Hannibal'. For the full tale, you will want to read 'The Book of the Dead')

Conceived through a union of heaven and earth (Nut and Keb), Osiris was one of five children born one day apart - Horus, Set, Isis and Nephthys being the others. Set married his sister, Nephthys, and Osiris was wed to Isis. (Isis, in turn, is linked to Astarte, Goddess of love and fertility, who is related to both Aphrodite and Artemis. Astarte's name is echoed in Starling, who is quite clearly, both in 'Hannibal' and in 'The Silence of the Lambs', an avatar of Artemis). Osiris taught the Egyptians how to grow and eat corn, and so give up cannibalism. He was well-loved, but aroused the enmity of his brother, Set. Set measured his brother out while he was asleep, and purchased a coffin of just the right size ; then, when they were making merry one day, had the coffin brought in and jokingly offered to give it to whichever of the companions would fit in it exactly. When Osiris climbed in, Set and his fellow conspirators slammed the lid down, nailed it and soldered it, and flung it in the Nile.

Isis cut off a lock of her hair, in sign of mourning, and began to journey about the country looking for the body of her husband. She finally found it, still in the coffin, come to shore at Byblus. She conceived the child, Horus, from her dead husband's body. She left, taking the coffin with her, after having brought about - either accidentally, or through her anger - the deaths of several of the local king's children. Once she returned to Egypt, she left the coffin in hiding, but Set found it (while hunting a boar) and rent the body into fourteen pieces, which he then scattered far afield. Isis journeyed up and down the river, burying the different pieces of the body wherever she found them - although she never found the genitals, which had been eaten by fishes (Mason Verger's phallic eel eats fish - the biter bit). Whenever she buried one of the pieces, she embedded it in a waxen image of Osiris, and informed the local priest that on his land, and on his land alone, she was burying the whole body of the God.

Ra, the sun-god, took pity on her, and sent Anubis - the jackal-headed God - down from heaven, and he gathered all the pieces of the body together. Isis fanned the body with her wings - for in one of her mutations she is a bird - and so revived the God, who then reigned over the dead in the underworld, presiding over the judgement of the souls of the departed.

'Hannibal' is not, of course, a simple re-telling of the myth of Osiris. One cannot firmly identify each of the characters with one or another of the various Gods of the Egyptian pantheon ; through a variety of twin pairings, of mirror images, gender reversals and such-like tricks, the basic elements - mythemes? - of the story are slipped into the text in such a way that the structure of the whole is preserved without providing a schematic set of one-to-one correspondences. But then this is, to some extent, already true of the original, where sister/brother, man/wife or father/daughter (Isis is both the daughter of Ra's wife and his wife, so that she may be thought of as her own mother) shadow and reflect one another. In Harris's novel, then, the traces of Osiris are found sometimes with Starling, sometimes with her father, or with her father's double, John Brigham, sometimes with Hannibal Lecter, with Mason Verger (Verger, as we shall see, is perhaps the main anchor for the attributes of Osiris) or with the various victims of an anonymous Italian serial killer, and Isis may inhabit Clarice Starling at one moment, and Lecter at another.

But let us look, nevertheless, at the characters with which Harris peoples 'Hannibal'. We have several sets of legitimate siblings ; the gang which sets out to capture Lecter is made up of two sets of brothers, Lecter and Misha make up a sister/brother pairing, and Mason Verger is coupled with his sister, Margot. Then there are the shadow siblings ; Lecter identifies Starling with his dead sister, while Lecter and Mason Verger are twins, with a relationship based upon that of Osiris and Set - although which is which is a vexed question. Paul Krendler (who, jackal-like, can be identified with the Egyptian god Anubis) and John Brigham are the twin avatars of Starling's father.

Other pairings are peppered throughout the book ; for example, Mason Verger finds a double in Sammie, who was once imprisoned with Hannibal Lecter - both Verger and Sammie invoke Christ, and both have trouble with their pronunciation. Starling and Evelda, the woman she kills in the opening pages of the book, are several times mirrored. It is after informing her colleagues that Evelda is HIV positive that Starling tells them that she herself is named Poison Oak (Poison Ivy is a common euphemism for venereal disease - as in the Lieber/Stoller song recorded by the Coasters), and as she travels to her rendez-vous with the ex-model, she thinks of the 'nice stuff in her closet no she never got to wear' (p.7/8). After the shooting, Starling does, as Evelda wanted, swap body fluids with the dead woman, 'Starling's own blood falling on him (Evelda's baby), washing away with Evelda's blood in a common stream exactly salty as the sea' (p. 17).

Evelda is older than Eve ; that is to say, she can be identified as Lilith. (Evelda's married name, Drumgo - husband Dijon couldn't cut the mustard - came to national prominence when Fleeta Drumgo was charged, along with George Jackson and John Clutchette, with murdering a prison guard. The daughter of Isis, Hathor, was often depicted playing a drum, with which to make Evil go away). Harris, describing Evelda as having a 'Nefertiti neck', and having 'dark Egyptian eyes' places her in the Egyptian pantheon ; there is much to be said about this, but for the moment, we will note that Nefertiti is considered by some specialists to have gained almost as much prominence as her husband, and to have aided him in undermining the pantheism of Egypt, replacing them with a single God. However, she also appears to be identified with Isis - at least in some circles. Through her shadow, then, Clarice Starling reaches back to the goddess from whom Artemis may trace her descent. (Evelda is also - punningly - linked to Kali through her balisong knife. Kali was the goddess to whom the Hashishim (the followers of the Old Man of the Mountain) would sacrifice travellers. Evelda is a drug-dealer)

In 'Hannibal', Harris takes the reader beyond Greek mythology to the earlier stories of Pharoanic Egypt. Bearing this in mind, let us look a little more closely at the major characters of the book. First, let's take Mason Verger ; the name itself is of multiple signification. First, the mason, or master-builder, is a personage recognized as being of magical powers. He is also a kind of priest, expected to make sacrifice - originally human sacrifice - on the completion of a building. The character is, indeed, descended from a line of killer-priests - his father presided over a business in which sacrificial cannibalism was common - see p. 60, where we learn that 'several Verger employees had been rendered into lard inadvertently, canned and sold as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard, a favourite of bakers'.

Second, the name Verger carries two interesting significations ; it is both an orchard or pleasure-garden, and the official who carries the verge, or rod of office, insignia of a potentate of some kind. This rod is quite clearly phallic - in French, the word 'verge' refers directly to the male organ. Verger, we can surmise, associated with a God of fertility and of vegetation of some kind. This supposition is reinforced by the fact that his hair is uncut, long and thick, and by the final scene in which he appears, where his semen is forced from his body at the moment of his death. (The very house he lives in 'looked solid and fecund' ... and we note that 'It tugged at Starling' (p. 61)). The house itself is set in the centre of an eternal forest, 'and will remain there in perpetuity' - it is, that is to say, outside of mortal time. (In a typical joke, Harris ascribes the house to Stanford White. White was shot down in cold blood in one of his own buildings - Madison Square Gardens - victim of his taste for chorus girls and of a rich madman and drug addict named Harry Thaw).

At the time of the narrative, there are good reasons for believing that Mason Verger - like Osiris - is not in the land of the living. He recounts how he hung himself in front of Hannibal Lecter, and how the latter smashed a mirror. Unable to see himself, (the dead - like Clarice herself - cannot be seen in mirrors), he then fed his face to a pair of dogs - the hounds of hell, perhaps, and an echo of the large dogs which accompany Clarice at the end of 'Silence of the Lambs'. He now lives in a darkened chamber, which all who enter must cross water to attain. (There may be some connection to Odin, the One-Eyed God, who is also, in one of his aspects, the God of Death. Odin at one stage hung himself upon the World Tree).

Mason Verger has - or rather, had - an incestuous relationship with his sister, Margot. Being dead, he is no longer sexually active, but Margot wants his sperm. In the myth of Osiris, Isis also wishes to impregnate herself with her dead brother's seed, and does so by hovering above him in the shape of a hawk ; Margot, a modern miss, zaps Mason with an electric cattle prod. The results, it seems, are quite spectacular.

(TO BE CONTINUED - 21/02/01)