She did so.

How beautiful she was. I chose my words carefully.

"He said he didn't know any Black Wall. That black means wise in Arabic. Maybe the Black Wall is a wall of wisdom."

"Yes! It is there in the Old City. I know."

I introduced myself.

"I'm a poet," I said. "I came to Jerusalem to write a poem. There's so much light here, and so much darkness, too."

Her name was Isabella Santos. To confide in me, a sympathetic stranger, was a relief, and, besides, she was becoming desperate.

She was from Southern California and worked as a checkout operator in a supermarket.

Hardly as wild and impetuous as I had imagined. She had always been thrifty. When her local church planned a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, at first she had no intention of spending her savings on this.

"Then I had dreams . . ."

Dreams of a city of gleaming stone, ramparts, gateways, towers, domes, churches and mosques and crowded markets, a city through which she would fly like a bird along alleyways crowded with robed monks and ringletted black-clad Jews and brightly-dressed Bedouin women, and always she would come at last, alone by now, to a seamless wall of glossy basalt or jet in which she would see herself outlined thinly in silvery light as if her faintly reflected body was a doorway. She would press against her reflection, face-to-face and palm-to-palm, till the door would yield, and, although the wall held on to her, she would glimpse what lay in the looming shadowy vastness beyond.

"I did not tell anyone because they might not have brought me. I thought I would find the Wall easily because it called me. But now I fear it only appears from time to time-and in different places, now here, now there. And we go to Bethlehem tomorrow, then to the Dead Sea, and afterward we are flying back."

"What does lie beyond the Wall, Miss Santos?"

"Strange beings. Glittering beings. They wait. It is as if that gloom holds manycheckerboards, transparent, one above another like floors of a building all of dark gla.s.s."

I itched to make notes. The Dream of Isabella Santos, a narrative poem by Philip Wilson.

"I cannot tell the size of the beings."

"Why are they in darkness?"

"Are they in h.e.l.l, do you mean? They seem wonderful, but strange. I name one the Sphinx-Angel and another the Centaur-Angel. They are different from anything I know. I feel there is power in them, and knowledge waiting for me."

I sipped some beer. "Why do you think you in particular saw these visions?"

I thought she might not tell me, but then words spilled from her.

"My grandmother, she was a bruja. Do you understand?"

Witch, sorceress, wisewoman. Maybe the grandmother chewed peyote in some Mexican village.

"When she died, my parents came to California. They did not want to remember such things. My mother is normal and Catholic."

Some sort of gift, or curse, had skipped a generation. Definitely not your average John the Baptist delusion. How I conjured with it.

"After I saw pictures of Jerusalem in the brochures our priest handed out, I dreamed. I did not invite the dreams! If I dream tonight-when I was younger, I walked in my sleep. Maybe I will walk to the Black Wall. I am so close here. If you see me, will you follow?"

It was only fifteen minutes on foot to the Old City, down and along and steeply upward, but I could hardly imagine a sleepwalker undertaking that journey. Did she imagine that I would sit out here half the night in case she drifted out of the front door of the YMCA in a trance?

I proposed, "Why don't you and I go up to the Old City right now and look around? If no one will miss you, and so long as we steer clear of the Arab Quarter."

"Oh, will you?"

It was as if I had released her from confinement. Despite her obsession she must have been scared to set out on her own while wide awake. The Old City practically closed up at sundown, and Alon had mentioned that women on their own could be hara.s.sed by both Arabs and Jews. I, too, felt a bit wary.

We should both have fetched warmer clothing, but someone from her group might detain her and the moment might pa.s.s. If we walked briskly . . .

We were in the Jewish Quarter in a tree-graced square which I recognized from the tour that same morning. A stone archway to one side was all that remained of a grand synagogue destroyed during fighting in 1948. What was the name? Ah yes, Hurva, Hebrew word for ruins.

In the eighteenth century a rabbi and immigrants from Poland had built the original edifice, but creditors enraged at unpaid debts burned it down-to be splendidly rebuilt the following century. A place of ruins twice over. Stars were bright, but there was no moon. I was shivering, as was Miss Santos, but she did not care about the chilliness.

"I feel it! It's near!" She stared around, then pointed toward the ruin. A broad flight of steps led up to a walled terrace fronting the arch.

We hurried that way and mounted. I recalled information boards inside, but those werebarely visible now. Earlier that day, rough stones all around. Tonight, faintly starlit at the back of the emptiness: a wall so black and sheer and smooth.

"Yes, yes. . . !"

As we advanced, a silvery silhouette appeared-of a person. Isabella Santos had no doubts as to who it represented. She ran to it.

How could a woman fuse with a wall and become semitrans-parent! That is what happened. Vaguely I could see through her into a great gulf where figures were arrayed into the distance and above and beneath, just as she had told me-otherwise I would scarcely have known what I was viewing. Since the view was still unclear, I pressed forward-and the door, I mean she, Isabella, Miss Santos, opened.

Crying out, and possessed of full solidity again, she drifted away from her silhouette, arms flailing, afloat in that domain, receding slowly like an astronaut in s.p.a.ce whose tether has parted. I staggered back momentarily in case I might follow her.

The figures I could see on those gla.s.sy planes were bizarre chimerae, minglings of man or angel and beast-biding their time, motionless like pieces in a game, pa.s.sive yet potent. This was awesome! No gravity existed in that s.p.a.ce beyond, but Miss Santos could certainly breathe, for again she shrieked, flapping and kicking in an effort to swim or fly backward, all the while drifting farther.

"Isabella!" I shouted, and her head jerked. The sound of my voice may well have awakened the pieces. A sudden flurry of activity: some of the shining beings traded s.p.a.ces, up, down, across. All seemed to have come to life.

A smiling, Buddha-like, toad-being opened its mouth. Out flicked a tongue, unrolling like a scroll of seemingly endless length, toward her, toward her. Surely by now the creature must have unrolled the whole of its insides! The end of the tongue wrapped around her waist and reeled her in as she screamed.

A beautiful winged female with glorious nude b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but whose body below the waist was more whirlwind than flesh, reached out. Her arm stretched incredibly, unreeling like a cable, until she snared Isabella by the elbow. A radiant, kingly Eagle-Man kicked out his own leg like a Thai boxer-this, too, elongated enormously till its clawed foot caught hold of Isabella at the knee.

The three beings tore Isabella apart.

Blood sprayed and trailed in clouds as each creature pulled part of her toward its personal s.p.a.ce.

In horror and terror I sprang back. I was staring at an empty silhouette like the chalk outline of a murder victim on a floor or pavement after the body has been removed. Already the silhouette was shrinking until it sealed itself, and there was only the Black Wall, and moments later the Wall became merely the rough sh.e.l.l-wall of the ruined synagogue.

Racked by shock and by shivers, I stumbled through the almost deserted maze of streets. If I had not pushed . . . but Isabella had wanted to enter the domain of the beings-no, that was no excuse!

I had seen something so abominable and so amazing. Did Sour-deval or the Sufi or the Rabbi see any such activity on the part of the beings? I might well be the only living witness onEarth. And as to witness, had anyone seen me leave the garden of the YMCA Hotel together with Isabella?

How could I sleep that night? Back in the sanctuary of my room I must have drifted off at last, slumped in a chair fully dressed, for the next thing I knew bright sunlight was behind the curtain and it was 8:30 in the morning.

For a moment I was totally disoriented, then nightmare washed over me like a choking, icy wave-only it was not nightmare but reality, a different and unsuspected reality. A while later from j^y window I saw a couple of peak-capped men in navy blue uniforms-policemen-striding toward the hotel entrance. Isabella's group leader must already have reported her disappearance. She had no excuse to be absent; the group needed to leave for Bethlehem.

I could not speak to the police-I could tell them nothing. They would arrest me on suspicion of having murdered Isabella and hidden her body. At best I would be sent off to the psychiatric hospital specializing in religious crazies. Reason had fled! What I knew now was so astounding and confounding. At the same time I had almost antic.i.p.ated what had occurred-had I not mused that Jerusalem, this axis of the world, ought to contain hidden dimensions?

Not such as I saw, inhabited by creatures who tore a person apart! As part of some game beyond my comprehension.

I confess to a cowardly sense of relief when no one accosted me and accused me of being with Isabella the night before, and when I saw her party complete with luggage boarding a bus.

I supposed they had no choice but to continue without her. What would the police do? Check morgues and hospitals, liaise with the American emba.s.sy, file a missing person report?

Surely poor Isabella from Southern California couldn't have been the only one who had sensed the Black Wall from afar. There must have been others. Devotees, explorers of this mystery must exist, and where else but in Jerusalem, unless they had been dragged to their deaths? I dared not go back to Ruin Square yet, even by daylight.

What I did instead was phone the Jerusalem Post to place a boxed advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Cla.s.sified section: Black Wall, Centaur, Buddha-Toad-How Much Do You Know? Please Urgently Contact, hotel phone number, etc.

And I added a bit of verse that welled up in me: Bright, so bright, Yet a wall of darkness, A curtain of night, Is in Old Jerusalem.

I killed time by visiting the Israel Museum and the Rockefeller Museum and such.

Next morning my ad looked weirdly eye-catching amongst mundane stuff about cars and home-helps and apartments. The paper contained a missing person story, but the person in question was an Israeli soldier thought to have been kidnapped. People going absent from religious groups might not be uncommon even if the police did release the news.

I did return to the Old City, to wander its alleys in the heat and arrive eventually at HurvaSquare, to all appearances a safe enough place to be. Plenty of people were about. Snack bars and cafes were open. In the ruin of the synagogue a party of French teenagers were touring the ill.u.s.trated information boards, their teacher a gaunt philosophical man in a thin black suit. The far wall looked utterly normal. I ate lunch at a kosher restaurant with a great view from its terrace of the Dome of the Rock, out of bounds, as out of bounds right now as the Black Wall.

When I got back to the hotel, three messages awaited me, consisting of numbers to call. I retired to the privacy of my room to dial out.

A man's voice invited me to join a Multifaith Religious Poetry Circle. A woman declared that she worked for the intelligence service as a code a.n.a.lyst and wanted to know what cypher I was using-I presumed she was cuckoo. However, the third person I called, a man with a Central European accent, said to me, "The Black Wall can appear in different places."

"Where I saw it was in the ruins of Hurva Synagogue."

An intake of breath. "You saw it yourself? Was that by chance?"

"No, it was not by chance."

"We must meet. Where are you?"

The middle-aged man who approached me on the terrace of the YMCA Hotel, black satchel over his shoulder, was burly, bald, and sun-bronzed. He wore jeans, a blue open-necked shirt, and a lightweight dark blue jacket. His name was Adam Jakubowski, a Pole, an archaeologist.

I explained why I was in Israel.

"I have seen the Wall once in many years," he said quietly. "You sought it and you actually found it? How did you know?"

I must confide in this man, or else I would get nowhere.

"Will you be very discreet?"

"What is discreet?"

"Private."

"Oh, I will be very private. Mr. Wilson!"

He digested what I related, and then he told me about the Knights Templar and Sourdeval. The collector to whom Sourde-val's letter was sold was Adam Jakubowski's great-uncle.

"Hebrew, he understood. He paid scholars to translate doc.u.ments from Latin and Arabic.

The Black Wall became a fascination to him, so he hired an agent in Jerusalem who found a few modern witnesses who were very frightened by their experience. My great-uncle visited here several times. On the last occasion he did see the wall and what was beyond. By then, so he said, an affinity had grown."

An affinity. Such as had led Isabella Santos here.

Had Jakubowski and his great-uncle also given rise to silhouette-doorways in the peculiar substance of the Wall?

Indeed. Jakubowski proceeded to speak about shadows. And shadow-traders. To give strength and stability to a building in the past, animals or even people would be sacrificed. An alternative was to lure a person to the site and to measure the shadow they cast-the personwould die within a year. A shadow could even be trapped elsewhere and measured.

"Shadow-traders were people who would sell to architects the outlines of other people's shadows."

In Jakubowski's opinion an a.n.a.logy existed. What was cast upon the Wall, not by sunlight but by some emanation from within the Wall itself, was akin to a shadow-into which the spectator could fit himself. At that point, the spectator was poised precariously between our reality and that other reality.

"The Black Wall may have been able to appear ever since Solomon built the original temple."

"What game are the beings playing?"

"A game of power, I think. Power must be a big part of it."

"And what are they?"

Jakubowski spread his hands.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

About a hundred people in Israel and in other countries knew of the Black Wall. A brotherhood existed, dedicated to discovering its secrets, a sort of modern Knights Templar.

They actually called themselves the KBW, Knights of the Black Wall. The t.i.tle had been his great-uncle's idea. Was this pretentious, or profoundly thrilling and appropriate?

"Are there any sisters in this brotherhood?"

"Oh, a few. Your Miss Santos would have belonged, had she not ..." He grimaced.

"Thanks to her and your report we have vital new data. You belong with us, Mr. Wilson. This brings access to greater understanding-certain responsibilities, too."

"Responsibilities ?"

"You yourself mentioned secrecy. Silence."

To find my theme in Jerusalem, just as I'd hoped, and to be censored? Never to write or publish a great breakthrough poem on the subject? Obviously this was a trivial, selfish thought in the circ.u.mstances, compared with the enormous implications-but still I felt a hackle rise.

"I don't recall applying to join your KGB."

"KBW. Your advertis.e.m.e.nt was an application, wasn't it? Or else, why am I here? I hate to sound any dark note at this early stage in our relationship." He broke off and smiled ruefully.

"I'm no diplomat, am I? Let me show you something."

After a glance around, he burrowed in his satchel. Producing a flip-folder of photos, he displayed one. I gasped. For the photo showed darkness, faint planes, distant glittering denizens. A camera had captured part of the domain behind the Black Wall!

"Who took this?"