Pattern Crimes (31 page)

Gati, offering no explanation as to how he had acquired these priceless objects, watched with curiosity as David took them in. Finally, when David sat down, Gati met his eyes.

"So—nothing can be done. I was afraid of that. Poor Gutman. I had hoped. . . ." He made a gesture to show he understood the inexorable processes of the law.

"Still," David said, "we have loose ends. Gutman's case, it turns out, is not as simple as we thought."

"Oh? I thought you found the Torahs in his apartment."

"Yes. But now it's not the scrolls that interest us."

"What then?"

"Collateral aspects. Certain statements the man has made. He's a strange fellow, clear one moment, barely rational the next. He sees us alternatively as friends and persecutors. In his paranoid phases he sometimes says the most extraordinary things."

"Such as?"

"Well, for one thing, he hints at knowledge of inflammatory facts."

"Is this what you've come to tell me?" Gati was studying him with the same cool evaluating gaze he'd employed on his unexpected visit to Abu Tor. "You have something to say, David, go ahead and say it."

David nodded. "I know now why you came to see me, even though you always hated Gutman's guts."

"Why did I come?"

"You were afraid he'd talk."

Gati didn't wince or blink or exhibit any other symptom of stress. "What could he say, that crazy old man?"

"He had plenty to say about you. Including the fact that you'd been recognized leaving the scene of a certain unreported accident."

Gati laughed. "Ever since his daughter was killed, Gutman's had accidents on the brain." He continued to gaze at David. Then, after a long silence, he shook his head. "You're bluffing. And what's more, you know I know you are." He stood up, went to the huge window, stared out, then turned. "Tell me—what do you really want?"

"Since you ask so bluntly, I'd like to see you without your mask."

"An honest man. You're not like your father. I always found him a little ...oblique."

"And my brother? Do I remind you of him?"

"No. Not at all. He was a completely different type. Extremely talented, perhaps the most effective pilot I ever had in my command. But he was a coward killing himself the way he did. Not that there's anything wrong with suicide. In appropriate circumstances it can be honorable. The zealots of Masada; that Japanese guy, Mishima; Svidrigailov in
Crime and Punishment.
But your brother...look, if he wanted to take his own life, okay. But a single bullet would have done the job. To destroy a perfectly magnificent aircraft in the process —I'm sorry, I lose sympathy. I don't respect grandiose gestures designed to distract attention from—and let's be honest now—unsavory personal flaws."

Gati seemed actually to froth as he said this. Now he stood in a defiant posture as if challenging David to mount a physical assault.

"I notice something about you, general."

"Yes?"

"You like to stand in front of windows when you talk."

Gati grinned. "Not a bad observation. Though I'd have hoped for better from the 'best detective in all of Israel.' " He shrugged. "Anyway, since I'm standing here, let me say a few words about the view." He turned his back, stood at parade rest, and stared out as he had done in front of David's window in Abu Tor.

"We hear a lot of talk these days about territory. It's become our national fetish. West Bank. East Bank. Frontiers. Annexations. Lines drawn and redrawn again and again. Parties are formed. Old friends become bitter enemies. People shout. People scream. But in the end they're squabbling over nothing. Because the real issue isn't territory. It's something else. It's character—who we are and what we want to be."

He faced David again, then pointed through the window toward the Western Wall. "Take the Wall. Sometimes I stand here and stare at it for hours. Such a tired bedraggled place. Such pathetic performances too. A wretched remnant. Old men bobbing up and down. Tourists gushing tears. But look above it. The Mount! Now there's something serious. We took it in '67, paid for it with Jewish blood. And then, like perfect idiots, we gave it back. Can you imagine? The high ground!
Gave it back!"

He left the window, sat down wearily on the couch. "I ask you: What kind of people are we that we would give up our temple site and settle for a moldy cellar wall? So you see, David, if I give long speeches while standing in front of windows, it's just the reaction of a bitter old patriot to a truly sickening sight."

The man was crazy. It was time to leave. David leaned forward as he spoke.

"I'm going to be very frank with you, general. I didn't come about Gutman. He was my excuse. I came about certain personal papers stolen from my father. You took them, and I want them back."

Then, for the first time since he had entered the apartment, David saw Gati shake. It was only a tremor, it lasted only for a moment; the general regained his composure almost immediately. But in that single instant of trembling all of David's suspicions were confirmed. He knew for certain now that Amit Nissim's identification had been correct, and that Max Rosenfeld, on his deathbed, had told Jacob Gutman the truth.

The Mendelssohn sonata: now Anna worked on it every day. Whenever David came up the stairs to the apartment he could hear her practicing portions through the door.

"It sounds better," he told her. She shook her head. "Well, not hopeless."

"No, not quite hopeless," she agreed.

She had a special way of smiling even when she was sad. That smile touched him. It made him want to take her in his arms.

She was worried about Targov. "He's here for a purpose. He won't tell me what it is, but I think the unveiling is a pretext for something else."

"Sokolov?"

"Yes. But not just to see him—it's not just that. He has a plan. Something complicated. Deep and strange, I think."

"He wouldn't try to hurt Sokolov, would he? To cover up what he did?"

"No, no—he's too torn up with guilt. I'm more worried he'll hurt himself. He liked you, David. Very much. He told me that several times. But he's cryptic. He talks about redemption, making things right, settlements, settling scores. He has something in mind. Perhaps something dangerous. I wonder if Jerusalem is really good for him. He's become obsessed with martyrdom. That's all he sees here, all he thinks about…."

David nodded. The city was filled with repentant madmen—saints and saviors of every stripe. "Messiahs" walked the streets, along with criminals and psychopaths, each harboring his agenda, his plan for redemption, his way of righting ancient wrongs and putting an end to tortured sleepless nights.

"You hate me. That's only natural," Targov said.

The old man shook his head.

"But that's impossible, Sergei. You have to hate me. You
have
to. You simply must."

Something shriveled about him, Targov thought, as they examined one another now in silence. The room was small and simply furnished—new immigrant's furnishings in a room without character, in a basic housing block without style, in a barren neighborhood southwest of the city. All the flats here were identical; aside from the numbers on the doors the only way to tell them apart was by the laundry hanging from the balconies. Now night was closing in. The room was dark except for the single unshielded low-wattage bulb that burned from a fixture in the wall. Targov pulled his chair forward. He knew he must engage this man. But Sergei sat staring at him refusing to be engaged, huddled in his chair, shriveled, wrinkled, withered, and, Targov hated to admit this, looking almost, yes ... almost repulsive.

The glossy black hair that had waved up straight up from his forehead was all gone now. His teeth were rotten and his mouth, that mouth Targov had seen one cold afternoon pressed so ardently against Irina's throat, reminded him of a misshapen piece of clay.

But it was Sergei's eyes that frightened Targov most, for they lacked all trace of glimmer. Sergei stared at him with eyes so dead they showed nothing, no pain, not even contempt.

"Listen to me, old friend. We both know what happened. Each of us knows what he did to the other and can see the disproportion. Now I've come to you with a way to even up the score and at the same time stick it to our common enemy. But you say nothing. Don't even bother to refuse. Surely you must feel something about my coming here. Or at least about my plan...."

Silence again, and that implacable deadening stare, the stare that said it didn't matter, nothing did, that life was the same as death.

"I'm recalling now..."
At last he was speaking! "…
how you always liked it when the irregularities were balanced. In painting, sculpture, architecture most of all. Many times, when we'd walk in Moscow, you'd see it in a building and point it out. 'Look, Sergei Sergeievich! The beauty of it! The subtle symmetry!' I remember...so many years ago. And now, well..." he smiled, "your taste is still the same."

"You haven't answered me."

"What exactly is your question?"

"Will you do it?"

"I don't despise it," Sergei said. "But it wouldn't mean anything."

"
It would!"

"To you, perhaps. But not to me." He shrugged. "Now, Sasha, tell me about your work...."

It was only toward the end that Targov saw how cleverly he'd been baited. Those occasional little nods, tight little smiles—small encouragements, perhaps, but large enough to make him boast. Too late he realized he'd sounded like a pompous ass. But why, anyway, was Sergei so interested in his success? He didn't seem like a man who reveled in envy. Why then? What was he after? What did he really want?

Targov found himself beginning to dislike him. He asked himself: Do I really want to put myself into the hands of this withered old man with dead eyes and foul-smelling teeth and a horrible uncentered mouth?

"You needed me as nourishment, to feed yourself..."
What was he talking about?
"
If I'd been killed you'd have forgotten me quick enough. But alive, locked up, degraded, my condition incited you to greater triumphs. You had to make up for what you'd done so you became a better artist than you had any right to be. Without me, Sasha, you would have been mediocre. Did you ever think of that?"

No, he hadn't thought of it, but now he saw how the camps had turned Sergei mean. "Is that why you sent the postcard—to tell me this? You've been expecting me, haven't you? You knew one day I'd come."

Sergei shrugged. "I thought you might. But it wouldn't have mattered if you hadn't."

His eyes were very bad, he said; he'd lost seventy percent of his sight. But still he could work, he said, though in a different style and on a much grander scale.

"Do you have a studio?" Targov looked around. He could see no workspace in the little room.

"Don't need one. I lost my touch. I don't work with my hands anymore. I do conceptual pieces now, design them. The bulldozers do all the work."

Conceptual pieces? Bulldozers? Now what the hell was he talking about?

"Only a year here but already I've received a major commission. They've carved it out in the Negev." He stood. "Come, I'll show you." He motioned Targov toward the second room, where, in the gloom, Targov made out a narrow bed and several open suitcases containing neat piles of clothes.

A bare bulb hung from the ceiling. Sergei grabbed hold of it, switched it on, then flung it out by its cord. It swung crazily back and forth casting rapidly moving shadows on drawings and photographs tacked up to the walls.

"What is this?" Targov caught glimpses of an enormous four-sided trench.

"An environmental sculpture. An earthwork."

"Really? Remarkable. But, tell me, what does it mean?"

Sergei turned to him. "Nothing. It means nothing at all."

"So you've become an abstractionist?"

A small smile. "You could put it that way. No more daintily crafted ballerinas or tourist gift shop junk. My sight's too dim for that." He glanced mischievously at Targov. "It does surprise you, doesn't it? And the scale too. Well, it
is
very big." For a moment, Targov thought, Sergei actually seemed to gloat.

"How did you conceive of such a thing?"

"No studios in the Gulag, though some men do nice work with pipe cleaners, discarded chess pieces, assorted odds and ends. I worked differently. I designed sculptures in my mind. And now this one," he said proudly, "has actually been dug. Dug out in the Holy Land."

Targov examined the photographs. He could see trucks, bulldozers, men laboring beside an enormous trench. The shape itself was very simple: a modified rectangle, something like a trapezoid, containing a circle near its center. Simple, geometric, highly abstract, and, according to Sergei, meaningless. It was difficult to believe that this shriveled broken man beside him had been responsible for such an outpouring of human labor.

"It must mean
something."

Sergei grabbed hold of the cord, stopped the lamp from swinging. "Why must it?
Why?"