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criticism.
    Tom
had found David in the kitchen again that morning. To be more precise, by
waiting there, pretending to rinse cups, David had found him. Within moments
he'd offered Tom some decent coffee in place of the mud provided free by the
hotel. Minutes later he insisted on their breakfasting together on fresh
croissants and pastries from a nearby delicatessen. Tom suggested they go together,
but David showed great reluctance to step outside the hotel.
    When
Tom got back, David had laid the table. Coffee had brewed. As they ate, the old
man coaxed information from Tom with practised skill: that his wife had died,
that he was thirty-five, that he had travelled a little and that he'd quit
teaching suddenly and for reasons he was not about to divulge.
    Tom in turn
learned that David was born in Greece, had lived in Paris, London and French
Algeria and, in addition to the languages of those countries, spoke both Hebrew
and Arabic. He made his living, he said, as a poorly paid translator of
academic papers.
    'So how was
your first visit,' David asked, steering the subject elsewhere, 'to the Holy
City?'
    'Disappointing.' Tom refilled his coffee
cup.
    'From
which remark I take it that your visit to Jerusalem has special significance?'
    'You're
asking me if I'm a Christian? Yes, I am. But I keep forgetting.'
    'Why were you disappointed?'
    'Everywhere
I went I was being ripped off. Christians, Muslims, Jews. I was a target.'
    'Why
are you surprised? Is this not the city where your Lord overturned the tables
of the money-changers? It hasn't improved.'
    David's
manner made Tom smile. 'But I hoped to feel something. Inside.'
    'And you didn't?'
    'At
first. I got a big rush when I approached the city. Then it was sullied by the
people. I mean, it doesn't help your faith, does it? If you have any.'
    'Faith? Faith is the
bridge, monsieur, between hope and a dirty world. If it is to be broken
so easily, with what poor materials did you build it?'
    'Do you have faith, as a Jew?'
    He let a finger float towards the ceiling and sat back
in his chair. 'On a good day. On a day when I can get good coffee and fresh
pastries and talk like this with intelligent company. What will you do today?'
The conversational game board was being folded away.
    Tom told him
about Sharon, mentioning her address. 'Would that be a Jewish area?'
    'Of course. Arabs don't live up there.'
    'I'm
sorry. Sometimes Jews and Arabs look the same to me. In the street I see
blond-haired, blue-eyed Jews and dark-skinned, brown-eyed Jews. Yet the Jews
are supposed to be a race. How can that be?'
    David
threw his hands in the air and closed his eyes. That question, clearly, was
another game of backgammon. Tom changed the subject and told him about his
encounter with the Arab woman. David listened carefully. 'Was this in the
Christian quarter?'
    I don't
know. I might have strayed into the Arab quarter. The woman was, I think, an
Arab. She spooked me, but in all probability she was just after a tip for
showing me a bit of archaeology.'
    'In all probability,' said David.
    Tom was not
about to be intimidated by Jerusalem. He'd hardly done justice to any of it,
and the Old City was a dense catalogue of spiritual and archaeological
interest, a square mile of religious labyrinth. He wanted to swim in its secret
pools and explore its caverns. He wanted to stand at its centre.
    Katie always wanted to come here and never
had.
    Did this city have a
great secret? Was there a secret? The Crusaders considered Jerusalem the centre
of the world, spawning the great monotheistic faiths that conquered the world
like tidal waves, fought over with the same religious blood-lust since time
unrecorded as it was still being fought over today. Here it stood, still
spinning from the collision of the European, African and Asian continents. The
landmasses of Europe and Africa were like the straddling legs and Asia the head
of a vast nutcracker, bearing in on Jerusalem, the bitter-sweet nut.
    There was