The Lecters and Mr. Jakov the tutor, along with some of their servants, make it to the hunting lodge to shelter in place in anticipation of the advancing Nazis. Berndt, the stablemaster, is sent back with the wagon and Cesar to get the rest of the supplies left at the castle, where Cook is packing them up. The loyal servants will spend the night at the castle one last time and then head back to the lodge.
The narrative scoops us up and tosses us awkwardly into the lap of our primary antagonist (I'm guessing), a Lithuanian named Vladis Grutas, who approaches the castle, calling out to see if anyone's inside. When nobody answers, he sneaks in and creeps up on the cook, who is packing things up to load in the wagon. He sees Cook open the secret room in the wine cellar. Noting this stash, he waits until it's closed up again before revealing himself. The cook either knows him or clocks him for a scavenger immediately and chases him out of the castle... right into the arms of Nazi soldiers. Berndt returns with the cart and the horse and is intercepted by Nazis as well.
Grutas is accompanied by six other local men who are all colluding with the Nazis. He recognizes Berndt -- apparently, they knew each other as children, and Grutas mocks him for being a goody-two-shoes. However, Grutas points out that they need someone to take care of Cesar, and Berndt is spared, though taken captive.
Vocabulary Words:
flak -- (noun) Flak is derived from the German word "Flak," short for Fliegerabwehrkanone, meaning "aircraft defense cannon". It refers to the shells fired by anti-aircraft guns and the intense barrage of fire from those guns. The term was popularized during WWII, especially referring to the powerful German 88mm Flak guns.
I've only ever heard it in the context of giving somebody flak, which is to express copious negative feedback towards something they've done, ie. "Franklyn got a lot of flak from the folk music community after abandoning his bandmate and dissolving the hit duo Cheese Folk."
(HOW COULD HE????)
I'd also heard it in the context of a flak jacket, which is a piece of body armor that protects against shrapnel and smaller projectiles such as scatter from a shotgun blast.
Vietnam era soldier in a flak jacket. God, he looks like a baby nerd, and I love him. I hope he survived.
Here are some pictures of flak exploding. Basically, these shells would explode at a certain altitude, scattering these massive loads of shrapnel that would then bring planes down. They leave these ominous black clouds in the sky that Hannibal sees as musical notes, and the contrails of the planes make the staff for the composition, a dirge of war. It's a pretty cool image.
"[Hannibal] watched the German bombers pass over high. Their vapor trails made a musical staff and Hannibal hummed the notes the black puffs of flak made in the sky. It was not a satisfying tune" (Harris 12).
warps -- In the sentence, Harris uses it as a noun instead of a verb or adjective. "Violating another creature's den is the oldest taboo. To certain warps, slipping in offers the freezing feeling of arousal, as it did now" (Harris 14). This section describes Grutas sneaking into the castle, so he is the "warp." When warp is used as a noun, it can mean:
The series of yarns extended lengthwise on a loom. The tool with the thread that is woven between them is called the weft.
A foundation or the base of something (probably comes from the weaving term, because the warp threads provide the foundation for the threads used by the weft to create patterns and such. It's the sturdy, boring part of the weaving process).
A rope for mooring a ship or a boat, which an also be used to move the ship along like up a river or something. Again we're getting fiber arts connections.
a twist or curve in something that was once straight, ie. a warp in the doorframe.
a mental aberration.
In this context, I'm guessing Harris called Grutas "a warp" as in a person with mental aberrations -- as in having a brain that deviates from the moral standard or the normal state. So after all that, it's basically him saying, "It gave Grutas a psycho little thrill to sneak into someone else's house like a sick weirdo."
Notes:
"Berndt walked ahead of the wagon on the forest path, careful of the horse's face, hacking back the overgrown branches with a Swiss half-pike" (Harris 12)
No machetes around Lithuania, apparently! We gotta be badass like this is a D&D party making their way to the Dungeon of the Mad Mage.
A pike is basically a super long spear. I wasn't planning to do a deep dive on fucking spears (except for Britney Spears, of course -- she's my birthday sister and I must know everything about her) but here we are. A full on pike was somewhere between 14 and 18 feet long, so a half-pike would have had a six-foot handle. Berndt must have been a muscular dude because chopping branches with a long pole with a spear tip does not sound easy.
Here's the Swiss army with their famous pikes. If you want to read a hilarious and informational article about Swiss pikes and the Swiss Army in general (more than just pocketknives!), then click the link. I chuckled. It describes a pike attack as a "medieval clusterfuck" LOL.
Das Mannlein:
This appears to be Mischa's favorite song, and she asks Hannibal to sing it instead of his flak music. I guess the title is actually "Ein Männlein steht im Walde" or "A Little Man Stands in the Forest"
English Translation of the Lyrics:
A little man stands in the forest completely still and quiet.
He wears a little, pure purple cloak.
Say! Who can that little man be
Who stands there alone in the forest
With the little crimson cloak?
The little man stands in the forest on one leg
And has on his head a little black cap.
Say! Who can that little man be
Who stands there alone in the forest
With the little black cap?
Spoken:
The little man out there on one leg,
With his little, red cloak
And his little black cap
Can only be the rose hip.
Listen here:
(The song became more popular when it was included in the Hansel and Gretel opera by Engelbert Humperdinck. Let's not forget that Hansel and Gretel is the story of a brother and sister left alone in the woods, captured by a cannibal witch, and fattened up to be eaten -- the parallels to Mischa and Hannibal are pretty damn glaring)
The song's lyrics were written by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben in 1843. Fallersleben was a professor and early proponent of German studies, or the study of German language and culture. He wrote the lyrics to what became the German national anthem (which is probably why Mr. Jakov, a Jew, doesn't want to sing along when Mischa and Hannibal perform the song on the wagon). Fallersleben planned to study theology and classics at university, but he met Jacob Grimm (yes, one of those Grimms) and decided to focus more on the study of his homeland. His nationalism got him in trouble a few times, and he also wrote "funny songs" about Jews that, as you can probably guess, aren't funny at all. He was friends with Franz Liszt and wrote several songs and poems for kids or with a political bend. "Ein Männlein steht im Walde" follows a popular form of the "riddle song" that invites the singer or listener to try and figure out what is being described. The spoken part at the end was only added after Fallersleben's death, which gives the answer to the riddle.
"In fact, the rose hip does not grow alone in the forest, but at least at the edge of the forest, 'am Rain', and its fruits grow in large numbers. Hoffmann points the adviser down the wrong path in the first verse; everyone thinks first of the fly agaric. Only when the 'black cap' is revealed as a further clue in the second verse does it become clear that it is the rose hip. The contradiction between the two verses suggests that the poet was trying to unite incompatible models."
Because of the incorrect solution to the riddle, which was a fly agaric, the text by R. Gordon Wasson was considered evidence of a childish Soma cult in Germany with the intoxicating effects of fly agaric poison (Soma is an intoxicating drink consumed for religious reasons).
Fly Agaric is a mushroom. It's, like... THE mushroom. It's the most recognizable fungi in the world, and there's a reason it was featured in Alice in Wonderland. Ingesting it gets you high in a number of ways, including hallucinations, lucid dreaming, hypnosis, stimulation, synesthesia, as well as altering one's perspective (making you seem smaller than your surroundings, or larger... go ask Alice... when she's ten feet taaaaallll).
R. Gordon Wasson, along with his wife, pretty much invented the study of ethnomycology, or how mushrooms are used in cultural practices such as religious rites. He spent his career traveling the world and was even an unwitting recipient of CIA funding through MKUltra to study psychedelic mushrooms.
During his studies, another researcher named Marija Gimbutas reported to R. Gordon Wasson that in remote areas of Lithuania, A. muscaria -- or Fly Agaric -- was consumed at wedding feasts, in which mushrooms were mixed with vodka. She also reported that the Lithuanians used to export A. muscaria to the Sámi in the Far North for use in shamanic rituals. The Lithuanian festivities are the only report that Wasson received of ingestion of fly agaric for religious use in Eastern Europe.
Yes.
You read that right.
In some parts of Lithuania, at least one researcher reported a folk tradition of people drinking Fly Agaric mixed with vodka at weddings. And here we have Hannibal Lecter in the TV series making mushroom tea for Abigail! You can't make this stuff up, people. I am FLOORED.
Time to write a wedding AU where Hanni and Will drink mushroom vodka and have a super trippy wedding night!!!
Now, this whole fly agaric vs rosehips in "Ein Männlein steht im Walde" was refuted in 1985 by R.E. Emmerick (1937-2001), a distinguished Australian scholar of the ancient civilizations and languages of Iran, India, and Tibet, and you can read his clap back here, but I MEAN COME ON!!! These connections are WILD and I'M NOT EVEN DONE. This is from Wikipedia:
In 2015, the Mycological Society of America (MSA) created a new award named for both Gordon and Valentina in order to recognize non-professionals and people with non-traditional academic backgrounds who have made outstanding contributions to mycology.[29] The first "Gordon and Tina Wasson Award" was presented to Paul Stamets on July 29, 2015, by the organization's former president, D. Jean Lodge, during the MSA meeting in Edmonton, Canada.
Paul is an American mycologist and entrepreneur who sells various mushroom products through his company. He is an author and advocate of medicinal fungi and mycoremediation, which is the use of fungi to decontaminate the air and water.
PAUL STAMETS? HMMMMMMMMM....
Eldon Stammets much?!?! Yes, it turns out that this character was named after Paul Stamets. And there's a character on Star Trek Discovery named after him, too! This character is an astromycologist and engineer aboard the USS Discovery, and is credited with discovering how to navigate a mycelial network in space using a "spore drive." I haven't seen this show, but I know Bryan Fuller was involved in the initial conceptual development of the show, though he didn't stick around. Maybe he stuck around just long enough to leave us this easter egg???
Okay, I've been writing this for like three hours and I'm still not done. Guess we'll have to have a part 2 of chapter 2 as well.
Thanks so much for reading this! If you made it to the end, you're my hero! If you want me to keep going with this ridiculousness, please rt or leave me a comments!
Cheese folk... I'm sure we've all felt like Franklyn at one point in our life or another, chasing after a friendship that simply isn't going to happen.
