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It was snowing.
The lake had been frozen over for — months — an eternity: an opaque, three-foot-thick sheet, pocked and pitted and striated with craquelure like veins of graphite in marble, a grey-white expanse that blended, imperceptibly, with the overcast sky. Will stood on its mottled surface and could not distinguish the horizon, or indeed establish distance and direction, except for the wheel tracks of the vehicle that had brought him here.
He closed his eyes and felt the air, cold and dry and unmoving. Imagined the fish beneath his feet, massed and waiting in the twilight dark; restless as souls, hungering for sustenance.
Dante’s icy Cocytus — or somewhere close to the Canadian border.
He turned.
The rented wooden shack behind him was painted a cheerful, fire-engine red, like a child’s drawing of a house. Against the grey-white background, it struck the eye with the force of apparition. A tendril of wood smoke rose from a vent in the roof, evidence of an ongoing culinary effort.
Will re-entered the shack, and pulled the door close behind him.
“Perch are clean,” he said, handing the brace of fish over to Hannibal, who was doing something redolent of brown butter on the cast-iron stove top, and went to dump the bucket of guts down the nearest fishing hole. He’d drilled and placed lids on several inside the shack, in order to follow the shoal around as it moved. It helped to have that flexibility, with perch — and a second pair of hands with a manual line, once one found oneself directly above the fish.
Jack Crawford was not outdoorsy by choice, and the one time Will had taken him ice fishing, he had neglected to mention to Jack that they could drill and sit inside the shack where it was warm. That, like a deer blind, this was in fact the point of the shack. Petty, but Will had felt particularly icy at the time. The externals had merely matched his interior landscape.
“The finger bowl is to your right,” Hannibal said. “You’ll find the consommé course on the table. I apologize for serving in advance — the sauce for the boar is at a crucial point.”
“I’m a big boy,” Will said, “I can clean my hands by myself.” He usually used kettle water and wipes, but a finger bowl of what looked to be polished antique silver had indeed appeared, steaming gently, on the built-in shelf that also held Will’s tackle box. The water was warm and faintly scented with lavender.
Will wiped his hands dry on the accompanying towel, and was suffused with a pleasant sense of — not unreality — but lightness; as if the always porous line between reality and imagination had effaced itself, had more crucially ceased to matter, if only in this time and place. It was a feeling that would have dizzied and sickened him, once, even as it thrilled. He still associated it with Hannibal.
He sat at the table, which was set for two, as impeccably as it would have been at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris. Snow-white tablecloth, folded napkins, gold-rimmed china and crystal. A bottle of white wine chilled, table-side, on a block of river ice.
He studied Hannibal. The other man’s straight-backed stance at the stove. The perfectly turned collar of his blazer over a knit pullover — a concession to the weather. The sure motion of his hands as he stirred and seasoned and moved one pan closer to the heat, another further away.
Hannibal liked to watch too. He never complained about Will’s choice of hobby. He had protested when Will went outside to gut the fish, but only casually. For the most part, neither preferred to kill where he ate, if only out of a concern for formality.
The consommé, served in shallow bowls, was a clear amber, and as richly scented as cognac. Will waited until Hannibal had taken the seat opposite him, unfolding his napkin with an economical flick of the wrist, before bringing his own spoon up for a sip. It tasted like veal or pork, but gamier. A globule of what he knew to be melted foie gras trembled on the liquid’s surface, only to dissolve, blood-warm, on impact with his tongue.
He thought of a wild boar, rooting through forest mulch, digging into the ground for hidden treasure to devour. A beast that grew strong in secret, unchallenged.
“Dark earth for dark meat,” he murmured. Hannibal smiled.
“In time,” he said. “Will you pour? The wine is a Chasselas, from the Lavaux terraces above Lake Geneva. I had very good perch while summering in that area, years ago.”
Will poured.
In time Hannibal removed their bowls and the perch reappeared before him, transformed: filleted, stacked over crisp-fried wild asparagus in a pool of creamy sauce, scattered with minced chives, and topped with a generous, midnight-black dollop of caviar.
The white flesh was flaky and sweet, and the sauce bright with lemon and butter, complementing the briny richness of the roe.
“All this on a camp stove,” Will said.
“Heat is heat, assuming the appropriate implements,” Hannibal said. “The preparatory work is done elsewhere, and a wood fire is only traditional. You must have cooked like this often.”
“Pan-fried catch du jour, with salt and pepper. The bones thrown back in the river.”
“Simple, and environmentally friendly.”
“Not the order of the day, is it?” Will isolated a single sphere of roe on his fork tines. It appeared to glow from within, like a pearl or an eye. He placed it in his mouth and savoured the way it popped between tongue and palate. “Don’t tell me this is the real deal.”
Hannibal still watched him, eyes half hooded. “What would you say if it were?”
“I’d say you served me ortolan because you’d tasted it once before, and it provoked an emotional response: one that made you wish for a worthy dining companion with whom to share it. But you must have had beluga caviar countless times.”
“It’s a stereotypical splurge for a certain set,” Hannibal said. “Let me reassure you: this comes from farmed Fraser River white sturgeon. Sustainable, and organically fed. One must keep in mind the pollution level in the Caspian and Black Seas, if nothing else.”
“If nothing else,” Will echoed, drily.
“For a price, the connoisseur might even choose ‘no-kill’ caviar, where the roe is massaged from the fish’s body cavity — modulo a certain loss of flavour. Rarity does not automatically imply waste.”
“Except for that loss of flavour,” Will said. “I take my fish wild. But there’s plenty of perch in this lake.”
“Quite. The matter is one of personal appreciation, and appetite.”
There was a pause. At length Will took a last bite of the fish and smiled over the edge of his wine glass. “Don’t be coquettish,” he said. “Ask me if my appetite has improved.”
Hannibal reached over the table and gripped Will’s knife hand, briefly. “Very well. Has it?”
“Let’s say my appreciation has grown,” said Will. “Tell me about the boar.”