Pattern crimes

A SHAPE IN THE CLAY

Big Sur

Six Months Before…

"Oh…Targov…"

She was like that-after she climaxed she always moaned his name: "Targov, Targov…oh…oh…" Then, always, she fell asleep.

She was a big girl, this one, taller than Anna, California-grown with a quick smile, a dimpled Irish face, and a Milky Way of freckles across her chest. Strong hard breasts and a ribbon of reddish hair between her legs. She jogged. She took dance class. She lifted weights. Her hair was long and auburn. Her hands were powerful. She was a potter.

He left her on her mattress amid rumpled salmon sheets. There was no bed in the loft, just the huge mattress and her clothing, costumes really, stored in straw baskets scattered on the floor. Smaller baskets, containing underwear and stockings, hung from the ceiling amid her hanging plants. A ladder led down to her studio. He descended it, his cock swinging. A little tired, a little droopy, he thought, but still it swings and rings…

He went to the refrigerator, poured himself a vodka, sat down naked on her sofa upholstered in musty olive corduroy. Then he inhaled the aroma of her freshly made pots sitting on their wheels, still wet and wrapped in towels.

They had a date every Tuesday. He drove up to Palo Alto in the morning, taught his Master Class, met Maureen for a quick pizza near the campus, walked with her to her studio, screwed her brains out until five o'clock, then drove back down to Big Sur, arriving home just in time for dinner.

Irina knew. "Dish him out more soup, Rokovsky. Poor thing's exhausted. Look at the circles beneath his eyes." Then she'd smile her cunning smile and then she'd glower. Later, when she retired for the evening, she'd make sure they heard her throw the latches on her door.

"Targov? Where are you? Come back up here, naughty man!"

Maureen wanted him again; he obeyed her summons, ascended, and then paused on the ladder so she could see him only from head to waist. Her fiery green eyes focused on his navel. He took another step. She stared and moaned. Yes, he thought, the lusting lion is back to mount the rutting sow.

After his birthday he ordered Rokovsky to collect the mail early so Irina would not be able to intercept. It was torment waiting to hear from Sergei again, but perhaps torment was what he had in mind. How could he write just once from Vienna and then not a second time? But, of course, that was his method; he would torture his betrayer slowly by degrees. Men in camps fantasized such things, used fantasies of vengeance to keep themselves alive.

Anna had written from New York. She was so grateful for all the contacts he'd helped her make, and too for all the loving memories. Her agent had introduced her to an Israeli pianist, they'd played together, there was instant rapport, and then they'd given a hastily prepared recital at the prestigious YMHA.

One critic praised her "expressive clarity"; another described her tone as "dark and sensuous" and her phrasing as "limpid and full of nuance." There were some reservations: a wish for a little better balance and a little less "Russian imperative." But the reviews were excellent and now the agent was booking them into small halls all over Europe.

There was something else in her note that saddened him, the delicate suggestion that as lovers they were finished. He accepted that, had known, even as she was leaving, that she was probably departing forever from his life. At least now he had Maureen, not so silken as Anna, nowhere near so refined, but much more exotic, an American primitive and insatiable. God only knew how much longer he would be able to keep her satisfied…

A week before, there'd been a tremor. Outside the sea was wild. A winter storm was battering the peninsula. The coast had been gouged and now mud slides blocked the road.

This morning he knew, even as he unlocked his studio, that his hands were ready to work. He grasped up some clay, took it to his bench, closed his eyes, began to work it between his palms. Yes, he felt something-there was something there. He tried to discover what it was.

A subtle curve across the top. A ridge down the center with shallow recesses on either side. Like a back perhaps, bent in supplication, the spine exposed, the head bowed to the ground.

No! Impossible! Targov's figures never bowed. They suffered but didn't plead. But still he found something moving in the curve. Forced to bend, the head twisted to one side perhaps, but the face, the features, the posture would repudiate. Yes, that was it, the suffering body would resist.

He worked through the morning, playing with the clay, and then, in the afternoon, the work turned serious. Outside he could hear the wind. Through the big window he caught glimpses of trees thrashing in the storm. He started on a larger model, one as wide as his own chest, roughing out a wire skeleton, piling the clay on quickly, chopping out an image, then using a wide knife to carve and cut and smooth.

By nightfall he had something. He took it to the platform, placed it on a dolly, turned it beneath the spotlights, studied it some more. Something powerful about it, which surprised and almost frightened him. To be naked like that, bent over, struggling against a merciless power-he didn't know why but he identified that posture with something important in his life.

He slept in the studio. In the morning the storm was over. The sea was rough, not wild, and the trees swayed in a gentle breeze. He looked at his model, circled it once, and then, suddenly, he saw it clear. Hurrying to the main house to eat and bathe, he didn't give the sea a glance. He must instruct Rokovsky-he would move into the studio and from now on take all his meals there. Now, at last, he had what he'd been seeking, a work into which he could fling himself. A vision to be wrested. A shape to be released. He would sculpt a martyr.