Pattern crimes

ANNA

She was nervous-he sensed it the moment he entered the apartment. She was practicing, in a pair of white shorts and a sleeveless white jersey, and when she pulled her bow she looked as though she were trying to saw through the cello's strings.

He moved toward her. Her forehead was dripping. When he raised her hair and felt the back of her neck he found it slick.

She stopped.

"What's the matter?"

"'Something Yosef said this afternoon. I got upset."

David sat down. "What did he say?"

"Nothing. He had the right to say it. We criticize each other all the time. It's just that we've been working on the Mendelssohn and he said the way I was doing this passage was 'gypsyish.' " She picked up her cello, played a portion of the D Major Sonata with exaggerated sentimentality. "Later he took it back, said what he meant was I was playing like I was trying too hard to please. I wanted to kill him." She paused. "I think maybe he was right."

He watched as she carefully placed the cello back on the floor, stood up, and walked into the kitchen. When she came back out she was smoking a long black silver-tipped Russian cigarette.

"Smoking again?"

"Just since this afternoon. I got so nervous I walked over to the King David and bought myself a pack." She exhaled. "No wonder Israelis are such smokestacks. Everyone's nervous here. I'd be too if I weren't so damned disciplined."

He studied her. "What's the matter, Anna?"

She started to pace the room. "Every day now you ask me that."

"Someone's turned up, hasn't he?"

She stopped pacing. "David, how did you know?"

"It's Targov, isn't it? There's an interview with him in the Post."

She nodded. "But how do you know his name? I'm sure I never mentioned him, unless I talk in my sleep."

"I'm a detective, remember."

The Russian in her accepted that: in the USSR detectives knew everything, so why not in Israel too?

She took another long puff. "Damn him for coming. Damn!"

"Sit with me." She came to the couch. "What's the matter? Have you seen him? Did he come here to track you down?"

"No. His secretary phoned. A very strange, very thin man named Anatole Rokovsky. He said Sasha was here and asked me to please come and see him. I told him I'd think about it. I was doing that when you walked in."

Then, suddenly, she began to speak. David was amazed. It was as if she had stored up her feelings for a year, and now, releasing them, was so caught up she couldn't stop.

"…we were lovers. Did you know that? We had some wonderful moments too. But in the end it was impossible. He flaunted our affair in front of his wife. I was just one in a long string of younger women brought into the house to make her feel like shit."

She was up now, pacing the room again, puffing on another cigarette, waving her arms as she described the agony of the months she'd spent with the Targovs in Big Sur.

"…not, you understand, that Irina was some poor abused creature. She engineered a lot of it. He told me once that if it weren't for her contempt, he thought she'd probably die. He's a brilliant man, David. Knows everybody. Quotes great hunks of poetry. Pushkin, Pasternak, Tvardovsky. Huge gnarled hands. 'Sculptor's hands,' he'd say, 'but useless now.' Then he'd start in, his litany: Artistic paralysis. Old injustices. Bureaucrats who'd hated him and detested his style. How they cut him off from state commissions, demanded he sculpt more 'realistically,' and finally how they drove him into exile -or, at least, so he said. Complaints, complaints…all the time, too, making sure Irina knew about us. He'd steal pieces of my underwear and hide them in his bed where he knew she'd search them out. Awful scenes at dinner. The two of them screaming at one another standing inches apart. Sasha was good to me, helped me, but he used me too. I was his sounding board. He made me pay a thousand ways."

"How did you meet?"

She shook her head.

"What's the matter?"

"You don't want me to tell you that."

"I love you, Anna. We can't have secrets." He paused. "Listen-I'll tell you one of mine."

She stopped pacing, grinned. "I didn't know you had secrets."

"How do you think I found out about you and Targov?"

"How did you?" She gazed at him.

"An old girl friend of mine. An American. You see-you're not the only one around here with a past."

"She knew?"

"She's some kind of American agent. Jealous, and a liar too. She told me Titanov was seen recently in the West. I checked and of course it wasn't true."

She nestled beside him, hung her head. He stroked the back of her neck.

"I know your defection was legitimate, Anna. But there's something you're holding back. Tell me what it is. You'll feel better if you do."

Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't think I can."

"Guilt is stupid."

"Do they teach you to say that at detective school?"

He nodded.? They have a name for it. 'The tell-your-story method.' So come on, Anna, tell me your story. A detective who loves you-what better listener could you have?"

She began finally to tell it, starting back even before her defection in Milan. He had heard details of these incidents many times but he didn't interrupt her; he knew she had to work herself up before she got to the part that made her feel so ashamed.

"…it was a couple of months later, after I got to the States. I was temporarily settled in New York. A cold winter day. The wind was biting. I was hurrying along West Fifty-seventh Street near Carnegie Hall when a man approached. He matched his stride to mine and started speaking to me in Russian. He was friendly, polite, open about who he was and what he wanted me to do. He was with the Soviet Embassy. He proposed a mission, and said that if I didn't perform it my brother would be expelled from Moscow University. He didn't put it to me like a threat. Just stated it sadly as a fact. And when I told him that whatever happened to my brother I wasn't going to be a spy, he said this wasn't like that, that spying was for professionals, that all he wanted me to do was report to him on the thinking of some emigres. He invited me into a coffee shop to talk. I was a little hesitant. But it was a public place, he didn't seem dangerous, and I was worried about my brother's future. There he revealed that he knew I was going out to California to give a concert the following week. While I was there he wanted me to telephone the sculptor, Targov, whose name I recognized but about whom I knew nothing at all. I was to introduce myself to Targov, arrange a meeting, then sound him out on his activities and plans. That was it. Stupidly I agreed. Now I'm so ashamed. But you see, at the time it seemed like such a harmless thing. Those people, old emigres-all they ever do is talk."

When she met Targov she was surprised. She didn't discover a militant anti-Soviet activist. Instead she found a tormented artist, flawed on the scale of a character from a Russian novel. There was a party that first weekend in Big Sur-refugees, defectors, other emigres. Tables set high with Russian food, meat pies and cakes, flasks too of spicy vodka endlessly refilled. Targov was attentive. Within hours she found herself in thrall. Grizzled, seductive, he swept her up in passionate talk, flinging out poetry, ideas, raucous jokes. Later, when the balalaika players sang, they stood and clapped together and then they danced.

Tears filled her eyes as she told David all of this, and then of how Irina had invited her to move in. It somehow fed Irina's fury, she thought, to provide a young woman for her husband to seduce. Irina's anger, Anna soon realized, was reserved solely for Sasha; the field of energy in the house was between the Targovs, not Sasha and herself. Enmeshed in their domestic melodrama she was only a bit player. And the longer she stayed the more trapped she felt, feeling she would be devoured if she didn't manage to escape.

It was then that she begged her agent to find her an accompanist, and went to San Francisco for a meeting with her contact from the Russian embassy. She told the man that Targov was harmless, that she was finished and would perform no further missions. Perhaps she was followed that day, perhaps that was how Stephanie Porter had learned of the KGB connection. It didn't matter. She didn't care. All she knew was that if she stayed on in Big Sur her life as a musician would be destroyed.

The last weeks there were especially mean. She sensed Irina was getting ready to reopen some old and dreadful wound. It all culminated on Sasha's sixtieth birthday when, after he jokingly accused her of being a Komsomol girl sent to extract his secrets, he confessed to her that long ago he had betrayed his closest friend. A painful story; he didn't give details and she didn't ask for any. She was too upset by the possibility that he had really found her out.

"That, you see, was the irony," she said. "I brooded on it through that afternoon. He had found the courage to confess his duplicity to me, but I couldn't bring myself to confess mine. Instead we made love, and then I played for him. And late that night Irina stole into my room, woke me up, stood at the foot of my bed, and told me everything in a torrent of triumph, fury and abuse."

Sergei Sokolov was the betrayed man's name, a schoolmate of Targov's, an artist too, not nearly so talented, but sweeter, less bitter, better able to cope with the bureaucrats. He'd been best man at Targov's wedding. For years they'd been inseparable. And after the marriage the three of them were a troika, going everywhere together, dining together nearly every night.

One winter evening there was a tremendous storm. Impossible for Sergei to get home. Irina invited him to sleep over on the couch, and the next morning, over breakfast, suggested he move in. Not long after began the period Irina called 'the sharing.' She was beautiful then, and irresistible; Sokolov could not resist. Thus began her year of ecstasy: swift sweet golden impassioned afternoons making love with Sergei followed by long hard silver nights with Sasha on the marital bed. Two males, two lovers, two men she loved. Her body sang. She gave herself up to pleasure.

But the worm of jealousy was there, waiting to wriggle in and feast upon her perfect joy. Sasha must have suspected. He was paranoid anyway, abused by the blockheads, curtailed and paralyzed in his work. He had a studio on the other side of Moscow, an old garage poorly heated with a wooden stove. He would go there each day and, unable to work, would sit with gloved hands staring at his clay.

One blistering winter day (Irina only learned this later) his self-pity built up to a rage. When he could no longer stand his agony he decided to return home. It was early afternoon.

Irina and Sergei were lying naked on the couch. They didn't hear him enter, didn't turn. He took one long slow look at them, then went out to walk. He would smite them dead, then fling himself upon the frozen Moscow River from the hideous Krimsky Bridge.

Better, Irina said, if he had done so; anything would have been better than what he finally did. For as he brooded through that biting afternoon, he forged a terrible plan. At first stunned and embittered, he now saw Sergei's treason as a tool. If he employed sufficient cunning, he would be able to end Irina's affair, avenge himself, and, best of all, buy freedom in the West.

It seemed there was another old schoolmate, Anna explained, a horrid mediocre KGB official named Zabolinsky. Yes, there's always a Zabolinsky…, David thought, as Anna described how, since their school days, this man and Sokolov had been enemies. Now Sasha approached Zabolinsky, presenting him with a way to settle the ancient grudge. All he asked for in return was a pair of passports so that he and Irina could travel abroad for a year of study and "artistic growth."

The plan was simple. Sasha and Sergei often engaged in bitter anti-Soviet talk. Sasha would inform on Sergei, arrange for choice bits of their dangerous conversation to be overheard. Sergei would be arrested, tried, and convicted of agitation. And of course it wouldn't hurt that he happened to be a Jew.

"Irina told me all this," Anna said, "standing rigid at the end of my bed. The relish in her voice was positively evil. It was my last night there and she wanted me to know the truth. Sasha's plan worked. Sergei was convicted and sent to a strict regime labor camp. And then, when the visas came through, Irina, fearful and confused, agreed to take advantage and defect.

"Years later, one drunken night, after they were settled in America and Sasha had gained wealth and fame, he confessed everything, explained what he'd done and why, then wept and begged Irina's pardon on his knees.

"But she would not forgive. No matter her own infidelity, what Sasha had done could never be forgiven. Her husband, she told me again, was a common informer. Moreover, the KGB stories about him were true. 'Oh, sure, he hates them now,' she said. 'Now he can afford to call them snakes. But he's the real snake. That's what I want you to understand.'

"For a while she stood there staring down at me with this awful gloating look. 'Listen,' she said, 'I've seen the two of you fucking in the studio like a pair of randy goats. Well now, I want you to know, the circle's turned. By some miracle Sergei's finally out. This morning I told Sasha, his birthday gift. I really fixed him-he's so afraid of being exposed he'll never sculpt again.' And then she laughed."

For a while they sat together in silence, David gently massaging the back of Anna's neck, she sobbing silently by his feet. When she spoke again she did not look at him. "After I met Yosef and we played so well together, I knew it was time to begin my second life. And when we came here to give a concert, and I saw this city, I knew this was the place for me to live."

She kissed his knees, then turned her face to him; he saw the tracks of tears upon her cheeks. "Then I met you. It seemed like such a miracle-the way you looked at me, the way we fell in love. Too good almost. And all this time I've been afraid of what you'd think if you knew the terrible thing I'd done…"

David was moved: Anna's story matched Stephanie's perfectly in certain ways, but in meaning was entirely different. And he understood too how Anna saw her own small moment of weakness grossly mirrored in the Targovs' tale of treachery, deceit, and grief.

Ah, Russians…, he thought. "Listen," he said, "you did nothing. Just agreed to contact this sculptor so your brother wouldn't be expelled. You think that's so terrible?"

"David…"

He took her face in his hands. "That's nothing. Believe me. My father taught me about these things. You feel guilty because you equate your original call to Targov with his betrayal of his oldest friend. But you didn't betray him, Anna. You did just the opposite. You told them he was harmless. That's not the same. Not in any way. What you did was nothing-nothing at all."

Later they made love, but not in the wild frisky way they often did. This time their lovemaking was gentle and solemn. Afterward he held her until she fell asleep.

In the middle of the night he sensed her restlessness. "What's the matter?"

"It's the music," she said. "That sonata-no matter how hard I try I can't seem to get it right." He heard real fear and trouble in her voice, resignation and despair. "For years I've played it. And now, I don't know why… I just don't know, David, but now I can't."

He turned so he could look into her eyes. "Anna, how can this be true? You're a musician. You choose a piece, study it and master it. What's so difficult here?"

"It's not so difficult. But it resists. I wander around, get lost, and then I can't find my way out again."

"Play it for me."

"Now?"

"Sure."

"The neighbors…"

"A few days ago we gave them an ambush. Now they'll have a concert."

She got out of bed, pulled on her robe, tuned her cello, then started to play. He listened. He was no expert, but he sensed that though she started out well, and played all the right notes, the music soon lost coherence and that this was what she meant when she said she lost her way.

When she was finished she looked dismayed. "Impossible!"

"No. But difficult. I can think of three solutions. You must choose the one that's best."

'Tell me."

"You can go and see my father, talk it over with him. Perhaps he can help you uncover the cause behind your block." He paused. "Then, of course, you can give it up. Tell Yosef the Mendelssohn's not right for you now and you'd like to work on something else."

''The third?"

"That's the hard one. It's what I've been doing with my case. Work on it. Worry it. Worry all its components day and night. Imagine what it will be like when you finally master it, how magnificently you'll play it, how marvelous it will sound. Labor over every segment until you solve it, then move on to the next. As the segments snap together and your performance builds you'll begin to catch glimpses of the design. It may evade you at first but eventually it will be revealed. And when it is you'll have it. You'll understand it, see it whole and clean. Then it will be yours. The music will belong to you forever."