My kind of serial killer

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 3 NOVEMBER 2002

NOW WHERE IS Hannibal Lecter when you really need him? I have of late been thinking about Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter, I am compelled to admit, is my kind of guy.

I have always liked Hannibal Lecter, I suppose, in a distant sort of way. He had a fine nose for perfume and a way with women that impressed me. Like John Malkovich chatting up Michelle Pheiffer in Dangerous Liasons, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs touched a nerve deep in every young man’s heart. “Say, I don’t need a flashy car or an expensive haircut in order to interest the ladies,” every young man realised, on some deep and perhaps inarticulate level. “All I need is to learn how to speak to them. Maybe not precisely like Hannibal Lecter speaks to Jodie Foster – in some circles that may be regarded as a little creepy, and not all women respond well to the rumbling threat of being eaten on the first date – but he does seem to know a thing or two about holding up his end of the conversation.”

What was captivating about Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs was that he was himself captured. His power was the power of a low voice in the darkness, like a brooding fallen Lucifer plotting one day to get back up there where the air is rarefied. It was comforting to a young man. When you are a young man without money, a vehicle or much by way of desirable social resources, life can feel very similar to a solitary cell in a maximum-security prison: you can’t go anywhere and you have to wear unattractive clothing and your only companions are other men in a similar social position with unattractive personal habits. Ah, but with a voice and a mind, Hannibal Lecter could transcend all that! And win an Oscar too! Hannibal Lecter was a quiet inspiration.

But last week, tucked up on the sofa with a barrel of fried chicken, a full heart and Hannibal (M-Net, Sunday, 8pm), it occurred to me that Hannibal Lecter on the loose is altogether a different proposition. I had not seen the sequel before, although I had nearly watched it one night in wintry Amsterdam when I was on my own and at a loose end. (Traditionally single men at night in Amsterdam find other entertainment than an Anthony Hopkins movie, but I was not much tempted by such ruddy delights. The human body is capable of many splendours and wonders, but I would like to keep some of them as a surprise for my middle age. Besides, even alone and in Amsterdam, there are some loose ends at which you do not want to be.)

I had chosen not to watch Hannibal that night, even though there was an English-language print showing in a theatre somewhere off the Kaizersgracht, because I was already lonely and cold and in a foreign city, with the canals stirring slow and dark and menacing. The last thing I needed was to feel lonely and cold in a foreign city with the pressing suspicion that I am being followed down the side alleys by a cannibal in a Panama hat. But last Sunday I was not lonely and I was not cold, and all of a sudden I found myself wishing that I had Hannibal Lecter on personal retainer.

In Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter is on the loose. Outside of prison, much of his personal power is dissipated. His voice and his personality are not as important – he can buy things and wear disguises and even become involved in tussles with the forces of evil. Well, the other forces of evil. It is, I suppose, a little like being a young man grown older. Life is a little easier and much more fun but not necessarily as dramatic. I identified far less with Hannibal Lecter in the second movie, but I approved of him even more.

Hannibal Lecter kills and eats people. Big deal, you might say. There are plenty of people who kill and eat people. But Hannibal Lecter’s gimmick is that he prefers to kill and eat people who deserve it, not because they are immoral or unethical, but because they are without grace or taste. Oh, what a thought! The problem with serial killers is that they are so random. Worse: they are often fairly uncouth individuals themselves. What could be a more dismal fate than being randomly killed and eaten by some unshaven yob scratching his belly and listening to The Best of Queen in his pick-up truck? But if serial killers were calm and rational and dedicated to making the world a better place by removing, not the sinners and the harlots, but the bad mannered and the poorly dressed, I would be all in favour of them. Ah, would that there were a squadron of Hannibal Lecters.

Different serial killers resemble different understandings of God. I would love to believe in a God like Hannibal Lecter – an individual of taste and breeding, punishing those who jump queues or who have facial piercings or who bring babies to restaurants or who insist on telling you jokes. Sadly, in my limited experience, if God is a serial killer, he more closely resembles the Washington sniper. It is a random harvest.

Such at any rate were my thoughts, late of a Sunday evening, having watched Hannibal Lecter eat part of the living brain of Ray Liotta with a knife and fork. At such moments my mind turns frequently to improving the world. If only we could identify the part of the brain that enjoys Big Brother, and that makes people stand reading their transaction slip at the ATM instead of stepping aside already, and that invented the mullet hairstyle. If only we could, I might just turn Hannibal myself. Pass the salt.