Hannibal Lecter Transcripts: Hannibal S3E1

Antony: Antony Dimmond.

Hannibal: Boris Jakov.

Antony: I'd offer a hand, but...

Hannibal: It's a double-fisted kind of bash.

Antony: Do you know Roman well? You were staring with the thinly-veiled disdain of a man who does. I was his TA at Cambridge. He was insufferable even then. Have you read his books? They're terrible. You know they're terrible, you're just too polite to say. Blink if you agree. See? Doesn't stop him squatting over his keyboard and depositing a fresh one every six to eight months. It takes me six to eight months to write one line.

Hannibal: Why?

Antony: Poetry is hard. Too hard for Roman. Well, it's easier for him to slide into academia and dissect the work of others than it is to stand by his own words.

Hannibal: One can appreciate another's words without dissecting them. Though, on occasion, dissection is the only thing that will do.

Hannibal: Bonsoir.

Roman: Bonsoir.

Roman: Bonsoir?

Hannibal: Bonsoir.

Hannibal: Bonsoir.

Gideon: You really are the Devil. Certainly seem to enjoy it. You have a click in your hoof.

Hannibal: The Devil has been a yoke on the neck of humanity since we first began to think and dream. I for a much shorter time.

Gideon: You admit the yoke. Smells of candy apples and thyme. You smoked me in thyme.

Hannibal: Smoked. Glazed. Served on a sugar cane quill. You will be falling off the bone.

Gideon: Well, of course. And with these rarified dishes you so carefully prepare, do we all taste different?

Hannibal: Everyone has their flavour.

Gideon: Cannibalism was standard behaviour among our ancestors. The missing link was only missing because we ate him.

Hannibal: This isn't cannibalism, Abel. It's only cannibalism if we're equals.

Gideon: This is only cannibalism if you eat me. But you just feel this is the natural order of things, everybody gets ate.

Hannibal: Be he fat or be he lean.

Gideon: With my last leg standing next to me, I should still wrestle with the urges to fight or flee.

Hannibal: It's called "terminal restlessness". The body fills with adrenaline and feels compelled to go-go-go.

Gideon: "Go-go-go"? I've already got up and gone. This is posthumous.

Hannibal: You're not dead yet, Abel. You still have to eat.

Gideon: No, I don't. At this point, there is absolutely nothing I have to do. But I shouldn't spoil the fairy tale, should I? You and your little gingerbread house.

Hannibal: Let it be a fairy tale, then. Once upon a time...

Hannibal: Bellissima.

Bedelia: Grazie.

Professor Sogliato: Dr Fell, I hope you translate as well as you waltz. Mrs Fell.

Man: Our new appointee was confirmed by the board after close questioning.

Professor Sogliato: You've examined him in medieval Italian, and I will not deny his language is... admirable.

Hannibal: Thank you.

Professor Sogliato: For a straniero. Are you familiar with the personalities of pre-Renaissance Florence? I think not. Dr Fell might hold in his hand, in his non-Italian hand, a note from Dante Alighieri himself. Would he recognise it? I think not.

Bedelia: Professor Sogliato, would you do me the honour of a dance?

Professor Sogliato: Of course.

Hannibal: "Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo meo core in mano, e ne le braccia avea madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. Poi la svegliava, e d'esto core ardendo lei paventosa umilmente pascea; appreso gir lo ne vedea piangendo." Dante's first sonnet. It fascinated Cavalcanti. The eating of the heart is a powerful image.

Professor Sogliato: If he's such an expert on Dante, let him lecture on Dante... to the Studiolo. Let him face them. Extempore.

Hannibal: I'm happy to sing for my supper.

Bedelia: Professor Sogliato.

Hannibal: We are among the palaces built 600 years ago by the merchant princes, the kingmakers and the connivers of Renaissance Florence.

Bedelia: There's connivers of modern Florence.

Hannibal: I've found a peace here that I would preserve. I've killed hardly anybody during our residence.

Bedelia: You created a vacancy at the Palazzo Capponi by removing the former curator.

Hannibal: A simple process requiring a few seconds' work on the old man and a modest outlay for two bags of cement.

Bedelia: You no longer have ethical concerns, Hannibal. You have aesthetical ones.

Hannibal: Ethics become aesthetics.

Bedelia: You seem more interested in making appearances than maintaining them. Would you?

Hannibal: If this is about my position at the Palazzo, once the path was cleared, I won the job fairly. On my merits.

Bedelia: Yes, even the most contentious Florentines can't resist the verse of Dante ringing off frescoed walls.

Hannibal: One contentious Florentine can.

Bedelia: Have you given serious thought to eating Professor Sogliato?

Hannibal: My killing Sogliato now would not preserve the peace.

Bedelia: Your peace is without morality.

Hannibal: Morality doesn't exist. Only morale.

Bedelia: How you feel today.

Hannibal: How do you feel today?

Bedelia: I still believe I'm in conscious control of my actions. Given your history, that's a good day.

Hannibal: May I get dressed?

Bedelia: You may. What have you done, Hannibal?

Hannibal: I've taken off my person suit.

Bedelia: You let them see you.

Hannibal: I let them see enough.

Bedelia: How does it feel? Being seen?

Hannibal: Well, you're in no position to ask, Dr Du Maurier. You ended our patient-psychiatrist relationship.

Bedelia: I lacked the appropriate skills to continue your therapy.

Hannibal: I never found you to be lacking.

Bedelia: I'm sorry I didn't provide you with a suitable substitute for therapy. Is Will Graham still alive?

Hannibal: Will Graham was not a suitable substitute for therapy.

Bedelia: What was he?

Hannibal: Is this professional curiosity?

Bedelia: Almost entirely.

Hannibal: Do you trust me?

Bedelia: Not entirely.

Hannibal: Are you taking into consideration my beliefs about your intentions?

Bedelia: My intentions?

Hannibal: Human motivation can be little more than lucid greed.

Bedelia: Greed... and blind optimism.

Hannibal: You're optimistic I won't kill you.

Antony: Hello! Bonjour! Mr Jakov, isn't it? We met in Paris a few months back. Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, it's just here I was and then there you were. I never forget a face.

Hannibal: Antony Dimmond.

Antony: Nice to be remembered.

Hannibal: You're hard to forget.

Antony: What are you doing in Florence? Are you working with Roman?

Hannibal: Dr Fell?

Antony: I heard he took an appointment at the Capponi Library.

Hannibal: Yes, he's the new curator and translator at the Palazzo Capponi.

Antony: Evidently, the last one eloped with a woman or someone's money, or both.

Hannibal: That's the commonly-held belief. You just missed Roman.

Antony: Did I? Oh, I was hoping to take the piss.

Hannibal: Spare the piss for the time being. If you're free, my wife and I would love to have you for dinner.

Hannibal: Listen. They prefer eating in company. I've kept cochlear gardens since I was a young man, fattening snails on herbs and vine leaves. Like all of us, what they eat greatly influences and enhances their flavour.

Gideon: When I'm not busy eating myself, you wish me to be eating oysters, drinking sweet wines and snacking on acorns. All to make me tastier?

Hannibal: Oh, yes. And you are making them tastier.

Gideon: And I you. Imagine what you must taste like. Won't be long until someone's taking a bite out of you.

Hannibal: You're becoming brighter, Abel. Dying hasn't dulled you one bit.

Gideon: The snails are certainly having a lovely experience, fattened on me in a red-wine marinade. They have no idea they're going to be eaten. We do.

Bedelia: How well do you know the Fells?

Antony: As well as anybody. Which'd be not really. Lydia a friend of yours?

Bedelia: Not really.

Antony: I'd be surprised to hear she had one. We share a mutual detestation. She disapproves of my disapproval.

Hannibal: What do you disapprove of?

Antony: Roman, mainly. Lydia isn't quite bright enough to see I'm just intimidated. Roman does, of course. How he loves to strike fear.

Hannibal: Dante wrote that fear is almost as bitter as death.

Bedelia: Dante wasn't dead when he wrote it.

Hannibal: Are you travelling alone, Antony?

Antony: The only way I travel.

Hannibal: Oh... Roman is speaking to the Studiolo Friday on Dante. You should come.

Antony: Sounds appropriately hellish. Are you avoiding meats?

Bedelia: I'm trying not to eat anything with a central nervous system.

Antony: Oysters, acorns and Marsala. That's what ancient Romans would feed animals to improve their flavour.

Bedelia: My husband has a very sophisticated palate. He's very particular about how I taste.

Antony: Is it that kind of party?

Hannibal: It is not that kind of party.

Bedelia: No, It really isn't.

Antony: Shame. You were both suddenly so fascinating. Buonasera.

Hannibal: Buonasera.

Bedelia: Buonasera. You let him go.

Hannibal: What would you have me do, Bedelia?

Hannibal: Bedelia.

Bedelia: He attacked me.

Hannibal: Is that your blood?

Bedelia: No.

Hannibal: You were defending yourself?

Bedelia: I was reckless.

Hannibal: This wasn't reckless violence. It was a controlled use of force.

Bedelia: I know what happened.

Hannibal: Do you?

Bedelia: He was your patient before he was mine.

Hannibal: He died under your care. You were not defending yourself. I can help you tell the version of events you want to be told. I can help you, if you ask me to.

Bedelia: Will you help me?

Hannibal: In accord with my own taste for the pre-Renaissance, I present the case of Pietro della Vigna, whose treachery earned him a place in Dante's Hell. He was disgraced and blinded for betraying his emperor's trust. Dante's pilgrim finds him in the seventh level of the Inferno, reserved for suicides. Like Judas Iscariot, he died by hanging. Judas and Pietro della Vigna are linked in Dante's Inferno. Betrayal and hanging, then, linked since antiquity, the image appearing again and again in art. This is the earliest-known depiction of the Crucifixion, carved on an ivory box in Gaul about A.D. 400. It includes the death by hanging of Judas, his face upturned to the branch that suspends him. On the doors of the Benevento Cathedral, we see Judas hanging with his bowels falling out. And here, from a 15th-century edition of The Inferno is Pietro della Vigna's body hanging from a bleeding tree. I won't belabour the parallels with Judas Iscariot. Betrayal, hanging, self-destruction. "lo fei gibetto a me de le mie case." "I make my own home be my gallows." Mr Dimmond, welcome. Please join us. We were just about to discuss the matter of chewing in Dante.

Hannibal: Thank you for your kind attention. Thank you.

Hannibal: Would you say I secured my position, Professor Sogliato?

Professor Sogliato: The Studiolo seem satisfied.

Antony: Satisfied? I thought the applause was downright enthusiastic in its soft and dusty way.

Professor Sogliato: Dottore Fell is a friend of yours?

Antony: I was his TA at Cambridge. The tales I could tell.

Professor Sogliato: Please do.

Antony: What kind of friend would I be?

Professor Sogliato: What kind of friend, indeed. Dottore.

Antony: An exposition of atrocious torture instruments appeals to connoisseurs of the very worst in mankind.

Hannibal: Now that ceaseless exposure has calloused us to the lewd and the vulgar, it is instructive to see what still seems wicked to us.

Antony: What still slaps the clammy flab of our submissive consciousness hard enough to get our attention?

Hannibal: What wickedness has your attention, Mr Dimmond?

Antony: Yours... "Dr Fell". I have no delusions about morality. If I did, I would've gone to "la polizia". I'm curious as to what fate befell Dr Fell to see you here in his stead.

Hannibal: You may have to strap me to the breaking wheel to loosen my tongue.

Antony: You overestimate my affection for the genuine Dr Fell. Clearly, you found him as distasteful as I did.

Hannibal: On the contrary.

Antony: We can twist ourselves into all manner of uncomfortable positions just to maintain appearances, with or without a breaking wheel.

Hannibal: Are you here to twist me into an uncomfortable position?

Antony: I'm here to help you untwist... to our mutual benefit.

Hannibal: Observe or participate.

Bedelia: What?

Hannibal: Are you, in this very moment, observing or participating?

Bedelia: Observing.

Hannibal: You say you're observing, but this... This is participation, Bedelia. Did you know what he would do? I would prefer you answer honestly.

Bedelia: I was curious.

Hannibal: You were curious what would happen. You were curious what Mr Dimmond would do. What I would do. Did you anticipate our thoughts? Counter-thoughts? Rationalisations?

Bedelia: Yes.

Hannibal: Is this what you expected?

Bedelia: Yes.

Hannibal: That's participation. What have you gotten yourself into, Bedelia? Shall I hang up your coat?

Hannibal: Would you rather I extended you the same kindness as the escargot?

Gideon: Eating me without my knowledge? No. I find knowing to be far more powerful. Why do you think I'm allowing this?

Hannibal: Why do you think I'm allowing this?

Gideon: Cause snails aren't the only creatures who prefer eating with company. If only that company could be Will Graham. I'm just fascinated to know how you will feel when all this... happens to you.