Chapter Three: The Fall of Innocence

Dr. Lecter reached into his jacket. He heard the click of the .45. He looked back at Clarice and saw her pointing it at him. She wore a smirk on that once beautiful face.

"I am only getting a cigar and light. I am not armed," he said.

"I don't know that."

"Have I ever lied to you?"

He heard her release the gun and set the safety. He pulled out a cuban with his lighter and lit it. He inhaled deeply, enjoying the smooth and bold taste of it.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all. Quit wasting my time, Doctor. I believe you have a story to tell that is going to be long indeed."

He nodded to her, still puffing on his cigar. His eyes became distant and slightly darker. He took a deep breath and began.

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I was born on January 20th, 1938, a harsh winter day. I had overheard one of our servants say one time that the sun had stopped shining as if God had known an atrocity was brought into the world. I later found out that she was not referring to my nature but rather to my father's. He had raped my mother at a social engagement in Vilnius. When she became pregnant, her family forced him to marry her or else they would press charges. When I was born, they knew immediately that I was my father's son. We had the same eyes. My mother was six years younger than my father. She had a gentle constitution, stern when she needed to be, but was deathly afraid of my father. She never stood up to him. Her family quickly disowned her like it had been her fault. I will never understand the backward logic of the aristocracy. I was brought up with, as the expressions goes, "a silver spoon in my mouth." From an early age I exhibited the unnatural ability of comprehension and literacy. I first learned my father's tongue of Lithuanian and then my mother's of Italian.

My father. Never was there more a cruel and calculating man to set foot on this earth. Tall and handsome, he had his pick of any woman in the country. But he had chosen my mother. He was a count by birth and closely involved in the government. No one crossed his path and lived. I learned that early on. My sister, Mischa, was born on March 15, 1940. I loved her the moment I saw her. I knew my mother favored her more than me. Mischa was a beautiful infant with curly black hair and ice blue eyes like my mother's. She was an innocent unlike myself. Even the servants loved her. She was like the beginning of spring, the bringing of new life. My father was proud of both us. He had his heir in me and a beautiful daughter to be married off in some alliance he could profit from. He was always thinking of the future. I felt it was my duty to look after Mischa. Sometimes when the servants left the nursery early, I would slip in and stand watch over her the whole night. I didn't know why I did. I still don't. I only knew that I loved her. When she was old enough to walk, she became my only playmate. I would show her the best hiding places incase she ever crossed my father on a bad day. She hardly left my side. For all people knew, she was my twin.

We both heard talk of a distant war, but it did not concern us. Who were we to worry about adult affairs? Mischa and I learned to speak at a very early age though she was not cursed with intelligence beyond her years. I was. The servants were both frightened and amazed at my talents. Once I listened to my mother play the grand piano we owned. After she walked out of the room to get a glass of water, I snuck in and started to play the same song. I heard a distant crash of glass against the floor and my mother's distant footsteps hurry to the room. She gasped when she saw me at the bench. Shock was written all over her face. She came and sat next to me and waited till I finished. She played a new song and I played it back to her. She smoothed back my hair from my forehead and kissed my forehead. That is the only memory I have of my mother being affectionate with me.

For months Mischa would wake in the middle of the night and come into my room. Now we could hear the distant whine of bombs as they fell from the air. During the day we could see dark ominous clouds in the east. One day I was able to smell gun powder and something else. I never knew what that smell was until a couple of weeks later... The village that we lived in quickly became deserted. We were the one of the only ones to stubbornly stay in the manor. My mother had tried begging my father to at least let her take us away from the bloodshed. He refused saying it was a cowardly thing to do. He said that as a Lecter he was bound to the land and he would rather die than see it go to barbarians like the Germans. We heard my mother cry out in pain and then my father's voice telling her it was her family's fault also. We could hear him rant on how Mussolini was just a madman and that the Italians were desperate idiots for listening to him. Mischa and I fell asleep to the sobbing of our mother.

The next morning the sound of gunfire was just a mile away. My father owned a rifle and patrolled the land with it. My mother stared out of the window the whole time. Mischa was the fearful one. She held onto to me whenever she could. I was vigilant. I knew something was coming though what I didn't know. My mother jumped suddenly from her window seat and ran outside without a word to us. I replaced my mother at the seat. I saw my father with a couple of male servants standing in front of the barn. My mother was running to meet them. I also saw men in dark gray uniforms holding machine guns and other automatic weapons. It was snowing lightly. I could see the foot prints they left behind. I saw that they all wore swastikas on their arms. I remember my father had stepped forward and raised the rifle. Machine gun fire roared through the silence and deafened me momentarily. I saw a splash of red spray the snow. I then saw my parents fall to the ground. My father on his back, my mother on her front. The servants were laid over each other. I knew now that the unidentified scent that I had detected earlier was blood. It soaked the snow. The men wasted no time in sacking the house. I had stood there numb and let them drag me into the barn. Mischa was by my side, weeping silently. Some of the servants' children were also locked in the barn with us. The women who served us were left to the mercy of the soldiers. You can scarcely imagine what they went through. We heard their screams and plies of mercy at night. We could hear the drunken laughter of beings so low I cannot call them men. The winter air penetrated through the closed barn doors. I held Mischa as we slept to keep her warm. Her frail body shivered against mine. A week passed by with us trapped in the barn. We were dehydrated and starving. One of the smallest boys among was able to slip through a whole in the barn and promised to bring us supplies. We heard a single gun shot and knew we weren't getting any. A lone soldier fed us after 18 days of being locked up. I vomited most of the food I ate from eating too fast. Mischa seeing my folly ate hers slowly.

I woke up the next morning to the yells of the brutes. I looked through a crack in the barn and saw a most disturbing sight. They had surrounded a deer with an arrow through its neck. The defenseless creature staggered around and out of their reach, bucking every now and then if one of them got too close. I saw that six men were there. Two more appeared with their bayonets and makeshift clubs. I watched as they clubbed and stabbed it to death. One of the men was yelling to the others to get a bowl so as not to waste the blood. They butchered the creature beyond recognition. Most of the meat became useless to them. They left the carcass to rot where they killed it. I had tears of anger in my eyes. These brutes were philistines come to torment us. The smell in the barn suffocated me. It was the smell of grief, hopelessness, decaying animal waste, rotting hay, and a dozen filthy children. That imagery has never left my mind.

I became wary of them when they started feeding us periodically. There was something very wrong with that. Then one day they came in a grabbed the plumpest of us and dragged him out of the barn. The sight was pitiful. The boy fought but was no match for the men. The winter months had three more weeks until they were over. Every four days they came in a grabbed another child. Each time I held Mischa against me and tried to hide her under the hay. Finally it was only the two of us. We had thought they would move on any day. Then they opened the barn door. I can remember this with such frightening clarity. Three of them stood at the entrance. I squared off my thin and bony shoulders to them. Mischa was huddled into the corner I pushed her in. I watched as they surrounded me and grabbed me from behind. I tried to fight them off as best as I could, but being only a small six year old, I stood no chance. One of them broke my arm when I swung at him. They felt my thin arms and legs and dropped me to the ground. The pain in my arm blinded me for a couple of minutes. When I had regained my sight I saw Mischa slung over the shoulder of one of them. She looked back at me until they closed the barn doors. I never saw my sister alive again.

A couple of days passed with me wailing in pain and agony in the barn. The manor was unusually quite. One day though I smelt smoke and feared that the barn was catching fire with myself inside of it. I heard the sound of gunfire. I screamed my throat raw to let somebody, any body, know I was still in there. A figure opened the door and I became unconscious.

I awoke up in a hospital in the center of Vilnius. My arm had been set with a cast and I was strapped down onto the bed. All I could think of was how I was going to get out of there. And where I was going to go. I had no other family. Or rather no other family that would welcome me. I was orphaned. It was about three weeks later when the hospital threw me out. They didn't have room for me since all the wounded soldiers were coming in. They had cut off my cast and then told me to find my relatives. I wondered the streets of Vilnius, thinking of my parents, of our home burnt to the ground, of Mischa. With a new resolve, I ran almost ten miles to the manor. I stopped when I saw thin wisps of dark smoke raising into the air. I walked silently so as not to alert any stragglers of my presence. No one was there. The manor was completely destroyed. The foundation was the only part of the house to survive. The barn was still intact though, and the outhouse next to the manor. I searched through the barn with a child's hope that my sister had somehow survived, that she was there, hiding, waiting for my return. Of course I searched in vain. I went into the outhouse as a last resort. I did not find Mischa in there. Only her teeth. Amidst the foul excrements of the savages were her baby teeth. I ran out of that awful place as fast as I could. I didn't stop running. Later on in life I finally found the best word to describe those deserters. Cannibals.