after dark
As children we are led to believe, with unwavering uncertainty, that there will always be a rainbow at the end of every storm. Whether the storm is one of nature's design, or one that we weather in our personal lives, there will be a rainbow. As the Sunday school teacher cheerfully intones, even as she doubts it herself, a rainbow is a smile from god. It his assurance to us all that things can and will get better. Rainbows and olive branches go hand in hand in Sunday school. Whatever is bad in our lives and the world, it can only get better.
Sometime during the process of growing up we lose that blind acceptance. We begin to doubt the unwavering existence of rainbows as bad things happen, and then get worse. To further abandon the innocence we had, we lean towards something that can bear the burden of proof. Science tells us that there have to be precise conditions present for rainbows. The sun at a certain angle to the water droplets, which have to be of a certain size, all combining factors to create that spray of color that washes across the sky. Yet, we yearn for that age of wonderment and complete unquestioning acceptance and we find it as we water our flowers and hedges, and turn, just right, to catch the rainbows of our lost youths in that garden spray. If for but a moment we can return, and not question the believability of it all.
There is no rainbow in the battleship grey interior of the office here. Nothing to remind one of the lost childhood. Not that this childhood was a happy one to remember, but it was a childhood, nonetheless. But there is that unwavering acceptance there, permeating the office. Permeating her as she sits, hunched at the desk, fingertips pressing against the copier paper no longer warm from the Xerox machine down the hall. It is the fourth or fifth generation copy, and the words and precise script are reflective of that. Blurring here, jumping there, no longer the beauteous thing it was when it first came into her possession. Blind acceptance as she reads what she has already committed to memory, which she could recite if prompted. But she cannot get the same feeling from the lifeless recitation as she does from reading the words that she knew were his.
It could have been written in fire or blood for all she cared. It was not the implement used that held her attention so raptly, but the man who wielded that pen. And the blind faith that he spoke nothing more than the truth here. In that childish moment, Clarice Starling truly believes that he never would call on her. That the world was more interesting with her in it, contrary to her own personal beliefs.
Peers and others would call her foolish for this blind faith. Faith is not to be put into a man who has killed fourteen people, that they knew of. A slight crack in the foundation of faith, a tremor that causes it to shift momentarily. That they knew of, there could be possibly more to be found, and more yet to come. A shiver as she tries to reclaim the solid footing in the assurance that he will not call on her. No, perhaps there will be more, but she will not be one of them. He has made a promise to her.
A second tremor, this one more powerful, causing larger breaks in her acceptance. How much trust could be put into the words or actions of a madman? He willingly lied to them to get his way. The means to an end. The means costing five people their lives, for having the unfortunate chance of being in what could be called the wrong place at the wrong time. The end: his freedom. What if she had been there to stop him? Would she be currently laying in a casket, being laid in the cold hands of the earth like her father before her? Her father had had faith in that shotgun until something had actually happened. Faith was a temporary thing.
What was it that he had said? She pauses in her reading, tilting her head back to the ceiling and looking up, remembering. Typhoid and swans. Sure. The blind acceptance led one to believe the good of it all, and to forget and forego the bad. A questioning of faith such as this nearly crumbles the foundation, and the façade trembles around her. He was a sociopath, he felt nothing for no one. There was no compassion here, no assurances. If he wanted to come after her, he would, promises or no. It was as simple as that.
But, there always seemed to be a but these days. Some argument from herself not wanting to give up the unwavering assurances, no matter how patently false they may turn out to be. It serves to prop up the walls of the façade, presenting something sturdy on the outside, but tremulous on the inside. He could stand true to his promise, he wouldn't call on her. But where did that leave her?
There was a taste of Hannibal Lecter that she could not rinse from her mouth. Something not quite pleasant, but not quite horrible. For all that she saw, he saw more. She saw something beyond the killer in him, saw beyond the brutally intelligent and cunning man. There was something else, and that is what left the taste in her mouth. Something that she didn't want to see there, but in the same turn, desperately wanted him to voice to her.