WIlliam Bayer: Pattern crimes

Later he stood in the center of the plaza and gazed at the buildings all around. The golden dome of the Dome of the Rock caught the dying fire, held it a while, and glowed. Beside the shelter on the top tier above the rabbinical tunnel he made out soldiers, and, on a ledge within the Mount, several men, garbed in cloaks, staring down. He turned, looked up at the apartments just behind, found Gati's great window, and saw that it was black. It was from here the general would have viewed his spectacle of destruction: the bomb floating down to meet the Dome, the explosion, the fire, and then the beginning of the Holy War. Except that Gati hadn't cared about Armageddon, or the rebuilding of the Temple, or even recapture of the "high ground," the Temple Mount. What he had wanted was a provocation that would ignite a War of Wars. His dream was of a final decisive war of conquest, in which all Arabs would finally be driven from the land, and the borders of the Jewish State would become those of the biblical "Greater Israel."

A mad scheme. It would never have worked, and it would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Three fanatics, each with his own horrible agenda, conspiring together in a van…

He left the plaza, ascended into the Jewish Quarter. Here, on this cool autumn night, the narrow pedestrian streets were still. He passed a soldier in battle dress, submachine gun hanging from his shoulder, kissing his girl in a quiet corner.

Lights burned in apartments. He peered in and saw families, people talking, children playing, women preparing meals. These domestic scenes filled him with a great longing to be home.

He rushed through the maze of alleys, then out through the Zion Gate. Descending Mount Zion, there came a point when he caught sight of his own apartment across the valley of Hinnom. His window was lit, which meant that Anna was home. He strode faster, and, on the descent, began to run. The air, scented with an intermingling of pine and rosemary, parted easily before him. He was barely winded when, a quarter hour later, he arrived in Abu Tor.

En Rogel: a special street of old Arab houses and new apartment buildings and gentle dogs that communicated with savage barks. Hinnom was all blackness now. The Arab town of Shiloah sparkled in the east. The Jerusalem of Gold Folklore Club was empty, and the street lamps projected shadows upon the cars parked along the curb.

The moment he entered number sixteen he heard the music. Faintly at first, as he passed the doors of apartments where people were listening to radios and TV news, then more clearly on the second floor. He thought: It the sonata. She finally gotten herself a record. But as he climbed to the third floor he realized this wasn't true. There was no piano part, which meant that the music was live. But played by whom? Could another cellist be working with Anna now?

Whoever this cellist was, he was playing the sonata well, David thought. Playing it very well. He paused outside the door and listened. Then he thought: Is it possible? Could it be?

He opened the door quietly. Anna was perched on her stool facing the window. Her back was to him, her body was swaying; the music swelled up and filled the room.

She was playing, and when she sensed his presence she turned to him. He saw the triumph on her face. And then he realized that even as he had entered the building he had known that the music could not have been played by anybody else.

He walked to the couch, sat down, and listened. Her eyes glistened with pleasure and a glow of conquest reddened her cheeks. She bowed and swayed and her expression said everything. She had it now-every phrase, every nuance. She'd mastered it. Now the music was hers.

Later he thought: Perhaps now too this city belongs to me.

It was past midnight. Anna was asleep. The sound of her breathing filled the room. David sat before the large window staring out at Jerusalem. The buildings were the same-the hills, the lights, the shadows and silhouettes. On a thousand clear nights like this he had gazed upon them. But now, on this particular night, at last he was seeing them whole.

It was the pattern of Jerusalem finally revealed, the pattern he had been seeking and which until now he had not permitted himself to see. He recalled the events of the afternoon: the way the light had struck and made perfect all the domes and minarets, the look of sad pride in his father's eyes, the nod of shared acknowledgment with the rabbi, and the satisfaction on Anna's face when he had come upon her at the moment of her conquest. He knew that each of these events was a part of some inexpressible whole, and that his embracing of this whole meant that at last his fractured world had cohered.

Staring out at the moonlit city he trembled at the lucid power of this vision. It was as if, until this moment, there had been no design. But now, like iron filings suddenly organized in the presence of a magnet, everything, every person and place he knew, came together in a pattern demarcated by the city spread below.

It was a beautiful pattern, moral too: Everything was connected, every life touched every life, and he himself was part of all of it.

As he gazed out marveling, he knew that this vision was one he would not forget. And he knew too that if one day he confronted chaos again, worked a case again that would perplex, obsess, and taunt, he would be able to look back upon this night, recall that he had seen the pattern, and then his world would become orderly again.