Pattern crimes

IF I FORGET THEE…

As Targov shaved he recalled some lines from "Tourists" by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. Scraping his cheeks he spoke them to the mirror:

They weep over our sweet boys

And lust over our tough girls

And hang up their underwear

To dry quickly

In cool, blue bathrooms…

Half an hour later, trailed by Rokovsky, he mounted the staircase to the lobby of Mishkenot Sha'ananim. The pretty student called to him from the desk.

"Good morning, Mr. Targov. Your taxi's here."

He waved to her, then stepped through the glass doors. A moment later he was showered by blazing light.

The taxi roared out of the drive. The walls of the Old City shimmered.

If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem

Let my right hand forget her cunning.

It was early morning. They passed through residential streets, past sad old men sitting on benches and children playing joyously in flowering parks. Then they were on a modern boulevard speeding past buildings faced with lustrous stone. Sculptures were everywhere: works by Arp, Calder, Picasso, Henry Moore… Such company! At the site, the taxi shuddered to a halt.

He liked it. No, he loved it. He paced it up and down, and then around in nervous circles. He checked the background (a grove of cedars), the approach (a hedged meandering path). Rokovsky, balanced awkwardly on the pedestal, stood in for "The Righteous Martyr."

Targov squinted. He imagined how the sculpture would look in an afternoon rainstorm or illuminated by a waning moon. Yes, he decided, black bronze was perfect: The metal would fire up beneath this holy molten sun.

"Good," he yelled in Russian, "but where the hell's the lawn?"

"First the plumbers," Rokovsky yelled back. "They must lay water pipes before the gardeners plant the grass."

"Plant!" He moved a little so that Rokovsky eclipsed the sun. "They must be mad. Grass takes weeks."

"They'll lay sod," Rokovsky cried; his voice was growing hoarse and now he looked like a scarecrow silhouette.

Back into the taxi for a round of visits to other public sculptures: Rapoport's "Memorial Wall" at Yad Vashem; Lipchitz's "The Tree of Life" on Mount Scopus; Palombo's "Gates to the Knesset"; Elkan's "Seven-Branched Menorah"; then to the Israel Museum for Agam's "Eighteen Levels" and the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden for Maillol, Marini, and Archipenko amid Noguchi's spectacular system of terraces and walls.

Before Rodin's "Adam," Targov finally stood still. "Now here is something," he said.

Rokovsky nodded. He was exhausted, not yet recovered from the long journey from Big Sur.

"Oh, Tola," Targov said, "this is a city built for artists. Such light! Such terrible splendor! I never dreamed…" He turned back to the Rodin, examined it again. Unable to find a single fault, he announced: "But now we have so much to do!"

The grass! The unveiling! The invitations! Relations with the press! Within the hour Rokovsky was dispatched to Haifa to meet the Japanese freighter carrying "The Righteous Martyr" in its hold. Targov, free of his aide's gray grim presence, struck off happily on his own.

He spent the day exploring the Old City, hurrying down angled scorching alleys, shoved and battered by delirious mobs. Moans and mosques, churches and wails. An endless harangue of radio music, florid curses, bargains broken, bargains struck.

Cats prowled, greedy skeletal cats. Bearded men worked iron and boys sawed aromatic wood. Arms thrust out plying him with pastries. Arabs ushered him with sweeping gestures into tiny fetid shops.

In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher he gasped. Have I lost my mind? The incense was so powerful it snaked down his nostrils and threatened to burn the linings of his lungs.

Pushing his way past a defecating mule, he paused before a doorway. Twisted metal and discarded rusted machinery parts poured out onto the street. He peered inside. A bare bulb hung from a wire above a decaying table. Nearly lost in the rancid gloom were four old men in soiled undershirts puffing on water pipes and playing cards.

He had a feeling about the Old City, that it was compressed, filled with rancor, held together within an angry fist. A city of secrets, robed figures, hooded haunted faces, stern nuns with bloodied knees and mad messianic eyes. At 2 P.M. on the Via Dolorosa, watching a blind man with a white cane stumble out of the Church of the Flagellation, he thought: I walk where prophets and martyrs have trod.

He went to see the Dome of the Rock, waiting in line with the tourists. It was, he knew, the finest building in the city. A superbly tiled octagon supporting a large intricately decorated dome, it not only dominated the Temple Mount, it dominated Jerusalem.

The architecture was superb; he nearly swooned at its beauty. The rotunda was suffused with soft pastel light which entered through the stained glass windows of the clerestory and fell upon the rock. He stood at the railing beneath the cupola looking at this enormous outcropping of stone. To this place Abraham had come to sacrifice Isaac, and from it the Prophet Mohammed had leapt to heaven on his horse.

Anna looked different. In California she was bony and pale but here she glowed with health. Was it the detective? Targov examined him: a stocky, tanned, black-haired almost handsome man with full well-sculpted lips. He had a Roman warrior's brow, projected competence and strength. But there was something sensitive about his eyes; a seeker, Targov decided, a man on a quest. Yes, it's he who's changed her; he makes love to her properly, ignites such a fire that the heat rises even to her cheeks.

"…so brilliant, you Jews! Relativity. Psychoanalysis. Do I dare mention Marxism?" He glanced at Anna. She shook her head and grinned. "Now you're experts on irrigation, pioneering, archaeology. You raise an army, create new armaments, and against the world's expectations proceed to win all your wars."

He glanced around the restaurant. It was nearly empty. When he turned back he found himself object of the detective's gaze. "Perhaps most amazing to me you have rediscovered the heroic. In an era when we're told the hero cannot exist you have hundreds-soldiers, teachers, wisemen. But for all your virtues you're still fallible." He put down his fork. "This food for instance. It's terrible." They laughed as he pushed away his plate.

"By the way," he asked the detective later, "how do I go about finding someone here?"

"Depends who you're looking for. I use the phone book myself."

"You find criminals that way? Amazing!" He looked at the detective again. "There just may be a few old friends from Russia, new arrivals. Could I find them if I wanted to?"

"Give me their names, birthdates if you know them. I'll be glad to run them down."

"I don't want to trouble you. I thought there might be a bureau."

"The Jewish Agency. Or the Ministry of Immigrants Absorption. But, believe me, it's no trouble. With the police computer-"

"Dear God, computers! I wouldn't dream…"

A quizzical spark, then, in the detective's eyes. "Actually this is a very small country. We all know each other. All you have to do is ask around."

Anna excused herself to make a phone call. Targov paid the bill, then he and the detective walked outside. There was an awkward moment as they waited in the sun staring across the ravine. The light was harsh; it hurt Targov's eyes. Olive trees, powdered with dust, stood stark and gnarled against the iridescent sky.

"Listen," Targov said, "I don't want to sound paternal but you're good for her. I see that. She's blooming here. She needed your kind of strength."

"Thank you for saying that," the detective said. "I appreciate-"

"Ah, but here she comes. She wants to show me things. You're coming with us of course?"

The detective shook his head. "I think you two should speak Russian for a while." He bent to kiss Anna, then offered Targov his hand. Again Targov noticed the quizzical searching look. "Please call if you need anything."

"Yes, I will," Targov said.

Somehow he managed to climb the Mount of Olives. She led him by his hand up a steep path of broken rocks between walls that guarded the ancient graves. He panted. In Big Sur he regularly prowled the forest but here the heat was punishing. When they reached the top he looked back across the valley at Mount Moriah bathed in golden light.

"Why?" she asked him.

He turned to her. Her eyes had caught the sun, now reminded him of the color of the Kremlin's walls.

"I thought I was finished. Then suddenly it came. My best work. Perhaps my last…"

She shook her head. "I know you, Sasha. You didn't travel eight thousand miles just to see a ribbon cut."

He studied her. She did not blink or turn away. "Yes," he admitted, "the sculpture is only part of it."

"And the rest?"

"There is a settlement to be made."

"What kind of settlement?"

He spread his arms. "What else? My life."

"So it has nothing to do with me?" she asked him later, as they sat in the backroom of a tea shop on sweltering Ben Yehuda. Outside a juggler was entertaining a small crowd. Across the pedestrian mall a seedy violinist was scratching out a rhapsody for tourists.

"Nothing. But I'm very glad to see you."

"Tell me why you've come."

He paused. "Call it redemption. A year ago on my birthday I had a dream. A man shot at me. He missed."

"Well?"

"Perhaps next time he won't. Then there'll be repercussions. Yes, I think there will."

She stared at him. "I must tell you, Sasha, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Better that way. Listen, I'm here and I have many things to do. To see you was the most pleasant of them. You could have been my daughter. God, how I wish…"

Later, nervously pacing his apartment, he received Rokovsky's call. The freighter had been delayed three days. Meantime, bad news: Irina was on her way.

"What?"

"She's flying in day after tomorrow. There was a rambling cable at the hotel. I phoned to try and stop her, but Bianca said she'd left. She's in New York someplace, unreachable."

"Bitch!" She'll ruin everything.

"I can't think how you can keep her out."

"All right, she wants to come, be a pest, share in the glory-fine. Meantime, I have a confidential mission and it must be accomplished before she arrives. Find Sokolov. When you locate him, and remember you're searching on your behalf not mine, call me back and give me the address. Under no circumstances, Tola, are you to go near him, or tell Irina anything, you understand? When she comes your job is to keep her away from me. Tie her up in knots."

A short silence while Rokovsky, accustomed to fulfilling unexplained requests, pondered a solution.

"Perhaps she might enjoy a trip to the Galilee," he finally said.