Thursday, October 23, 2008

Doctor Wu

Starling rolled the blue section through on the tray. She sat still while Lecter flipped through it.

He dropped it back in the carrier. "Oh, Officer Starling, do you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?"

"No. I think you can provide some insight and advance this study."

"And what possible reason could I have to do that?"

"Curiosity."

"About what?"

"About why you're here. About what happened to you."

"Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You've got everybody in moral dignity pants -- nothing is ever anybody's fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I'm evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?"

"I think you've been destructive. For me it's the same thing."

"Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire, and then there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.'"

"Deliberate - "

"I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sity-five grandmothers at a special Mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If He's up there, He just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans -- it all comes from the same place."

"I can't explain you, Doctor, but I know who can."

He stopped her with his upraised hand. The hand was shapely, she noted, and the middle finger perfectly replicated. It is the rarest form of polydactyly...

"A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling."

The Silence Of The Lambs - Thomas Harris



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