Mount Terminus (15 page)

Instead of trailing after him, Bloom walked to the pendant and picked it up, and noticed all along the coin's curve, on its face, wear so thorough from touch the edge had been thinned to a point, and the moon on both sides had been nearly rubbed away. With the pendant in hand, he followed the path his brother had taken, hoping now to catch up to him, to invite him inside, so they might talk, so Bloom might better comprehend the source of his sorrow, but before he reached the rose garden's outermost circle, the roadster's engine combusted, and Bloom heard the whine and grind of its motor descending the mountain, and with each step he took along the path to the courtyard, the noise grew less and less audible.

*   *   *

That night Bloom dreamed every surface of the villa had become a mirror, and reflecting from every mirror was his image. Everywhere he turned, he was there, yet it was some manifestation of himself he hardly recognized. Every countenance was disturbed, every feature that composed his form, a distortion. When he shut his eyes to escape his image, the interior of his lids opened a door to another room replete with mirrors. He climbed the mirrored stairs of the tower and set his eye onto the night sky; but even there, the combined light from the stars formed in the firmament a projection of his face. He reached out to it and found himself stepping off the pavilion's rail. Down he went, and as he plummeted, the villa broke apart and fell with him. It shattered into mirrored shards refracting crimson points of light, all of which gathered into a core sounding a heavy beat, a throbbing pulse, followed by a terrible moan. When he awoke from this heavy slumber, he recoiled from fright at the sight of his brother hovering over him.

There, there, said Simon. All is well with the world. He removed a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and pressed it to Bloom's brow, then placed the soft piece of linen in his hand.

What time is it?

It's after ten.

Bloom looked at the dark velvet curtains drawn across his bedroom windows and saw a piping of white light brightening the borders. Yes, said Bloom as he dabbed at his temples, it's late.

I've been waiting for some time, said Simon. He took Bloom by the arm and helped sit him up.

What for?

To apologize for having been so unpleasant and abrupt yesterday. It's been a trying week.

How so?

It seems we are both now fatherless. Me, twice over.

Mr. Freed is dead?

Simon nodded. It was a long time coming.

I'm sorry, said Bloom.

You shouldn't be. I know he was a great source of grief for you.

Nevertheless …

To the world at large, said Simon, Sam could be a nasty piece of work. A tyrant on his best days. To me, however, he was decent and kind. Out of the love he felt for my mother, he treated me like a son. Did for me as he said he would. Fulfilled his promises. Gave me all I have. And having done as much, I prefer to let others talk of his flaws. Simon smiled at Bloom, reached out to his head, and shook his curls. Wash up, do what you do, and meet me downstairs in the drawing room. And off went Simon out the door.

Then he returned and asked, Breakfast?

Yes, said Bloom, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, please. I'll be along in a minute.

Simon nodded, and off he went again.

*   *   *

Because Meralda couldn't bring herself to remove them to the library, where they belonged, on the parlor table sat the magic lantern and the box of slides Bloom had illustrated for his father. Standing upright next to these items today was a film projector not like any Bloom recognized from his father's collection. With his head still clearing from his long sleep, he studied its components. Simon, meanwhile, walked the length of the parlor wall, shutting the curtains to the view of the canyon. When the room had been sufficiently darkened, he sat at the piano, lifted the lid, and with impressive dexterity, ran his fingers over the keys. This will do nicely, he said. Do you play?

No. I have no talent for it.

For me, there's no better way I can think of to spend my time.

Bloom was pleased to hear Simon sounding so affable. The somber mood on display at the edge of the promontory, in the heart of the rose garden, had all but disappeared.

I can't begin to tell you how many hours I spent as a child in Sam's theaters when they were dark. It was my greatest pleasure to sit alone at the piano in the orchestra pit, living between the notes, anticipating the next bar, modifying my internal tempo to the changing time signatures. Simon played a run up and down the board then settled onto a pleasant melody. Over the music he said, with his nose directing Bloom to the projector, It's an automatic. See the mechanism? The knob? There on the back?

Yes, I see it.

Turn it to the right and take a seat.

Bloom did as he was told. He turned the knob on the back of the projector then walked to the sofa through a mist of silvery dust.

I think you'll enjoy this, said Simon.

Over the clicks of the Rosenbloom Loop turning on its axis within the projector, Simon now produced an amusing rag, which modulated its rhythm to suit the movement of images Bloom saw on the wall before him. As he nibbled on eggs and toast, he watched a magnificent picture in which a vessel shaped like an exotic fish propelled itself from Earth's surface and traveled through a region of space rich with sparkling showgirls. The spacecraft collided point first with the monocled eye of the moon, where it sank into a meringue crust. Graybeard scientists, bespectacled and hunched over, disembarked and wandered subterranean passageways. They encountered Hottentot moon dwellers wearing grass skirts and bones through their noses, and with a vitality that defied belief, the aged travelers gave chase. When they caught the tribal moon people, they thwacked them over the head with their canes, turning them into spectacular puffs of smoke.

Bloom was so entertained by this, his mood so elevated, it felt to him as if yesterday's bleak encounter with Simon happened long ago. And without inhibition, he turned to his brother and asked, May we? Again?

Simon obliged. He rose from his seat, and acting the role of the obsequious servant, he bowed and then went on to feed the film into the reel out of which it had spooled. He cranked it back to its start, and again he performed the same syncopated rag he had played moments before, and Bloom, again, sat leaning forward over his knees, marveling at the fantastical spectacle flickering on the wall. Never before had he thought it possible for such enjoyment to be taken from a visual experience, short of watching the nighttime glow of a distant wildfire.

That morning, Simon showed him half a dozen more pictures made by the same motion picture director, the last of which he introduced as a metaphor for the life of the actor: a movie about a man who fell into a film projector and was made malleable. His head expanded and shrank in size and was replaced by a variety of animal visage. And this movie, like the first, Bloom asked to watch again. But in response to this request, Simon consulted his watch and said, As soon as we return.

Return from where?

I've arranged a short voyage of our own.

Simon took Joseph by the arm and started walking him to the front door. Bloom told him he really wasn't prepared to voyage anywhere today.

I understand, said Simon. But I assure you: you won't leave the grounds, not for a moment.

Then from where exactly will we be returning?

When they stepped out of the house and onto the drive, he said to Bloom, Right there.

*   *   *

Right there, Bloom found an inflated hot-air balloon whose silken bubble rose almost as tall as the villa's tower. It was weighed down by sandbags and moored in place by three stakes driven into the ground, and attached to the basket's undercarriage was a hook connected to a thick rope wound around a winch bolted to the bed of a truck. Simon removed a pair of azure coveralls from the passenger seat of the cab and slipped them on, and, acting as if it were the most ordinary activity to embark on an aeronautical adventure in the middle of the day, at the start of the rainy season, he said to Bloom, Shall we? Given the effort his brother had made to begin anew, Bloom couldn't think of a courteous way to refuse him. He followed Simon up a ladder into the carriage, and when they were inside and secure, Bloom's brother waved his hand. A man of considerable height and heft, who possessed a rather prolific nose, appeared with an ax in hand from behind the cab of the truck, and with three swift swings, he cut them free. Simon cast off several sandbags, then pulled on a string dangling from a lit stove rigged below the balloon's opening. An azure flame the same color as Simon's outfit spiked into the cavity of the bubble. They rose at a moderate rate. They rose over the tops of the eucalyptus, over the tower's pavilion, inside which Bloom could see his colorful birds fluttering about in their cages. The brothers steadily ascended to a point in the sky from which they could see in one direction the horizon line grow more distant from the edge of the ocean; in the opposite direction, the humpbacked mountain range; and beyond it, the depression of the valley. And because it was a rare winter day, in that it was extraordinarily calm, no matter how high they rose, the balloon remained remarkably still. They drifted in no direction. Against all intuition, they hovered over the same point on the Earth from which they had taken off, and at this altitude Simon pointed to the plateau and said, It doesn't look like much from up here, does it?

No, said Bloom as he looked down onto the miniature village his brother had built, it doesn't.

Tell me. Did Jacob explain to you what we'll be doing down there?

Yes.

Then you know all you have known is going to change.

In what ways?

In the most significant ways. I should think in the most remarkable ways. The balloon swayed a little. Tugged against the tether tied to the bottom of the carriage. People, said his brother. A jungle of them, all variety of apes and monkeys and lower order of primates will soon populate the land down there. A whole colony of baboons and chimpanzees, orangutans and marmosets, will be swinging from those trees. Men and women filled with desire and passion and purpose.

I've known so few women. And even fewer men.

You'll soon be acquainted with more than your fair share of both orders. Simon bent down and removed from a case by his feet a motion picture camera, and he mounted it onto one of the metal rods securing the sandbags. Here, look in here and tell me if what you see is in focus. Simon reached out and guided Bloom's hand to the camera's lens. Bloom switched places with Simon, set his cheek and brow against the viewfinder and adjusted the lens slightly to make the image of the plateau crisp, and when he offered the eyepiece to Simon, his brother leaned forward and said, Well done. He now described to him what he wanted next. He said he should allow the camera to run for a short while, to then turn it slowly, first to the right in the direction of the valley, and then to the left in the direction of the sea, and while he continued to roll the film, to push left all the way to him, where he should set him off-center within the frame. Nice and easy turns, said Simon.

Bloom did as Simon asked. He rested his eye on the viewfinder and started to turn the camera's crank. He wound the reel of film around the magazine as he remained focused on the stretch of the plateau; he slowly turned the lens to the right, and after a few breaths in and out, he proceeded to the left. And now all the way to me, said Simon. Farther to the left Bloom turned the camera to face Simon, and with his brother fixed right of center frame, he swung his arm around in a sweeping gesture, then stepped away to reveal the great expanse of the basin, its shore, the infinite ocean, all of it shone down upon by the coastal desert sun. And in that instant, every detail of the world Bloom had come to know so intimately was magically captured and contained in a way he had never captured it before.

What do you think? asked Simon as Bloom continued to feel in his hands, against his cheek, the sensation of the camera's moving parts working in unison.

It's wonderful, said Bloom. Behind the camera, I feel as if … He couldn't quite find the right words to describe what he felt. It feels like … he tried once more.

Disappearing?

Yes, said Bloom. Like disappearing.

*   *   *

They remained aloft for the better part of an hour, and after the driver had cranked them back to Earth, Simon accepted Bloom's invitation to lunch in the dining room. In her excitement at seeing the young Rosenbloom's brother sitting in Jacob's place at the head of the table, and perhaps because she was eager to please the first proper guest she'd had the opportunity to serve since having taken her position on Mount Terminus, Meralda swung into the room at regular intervals, with, it seemed, every morsel of food she had available to her in the kitchen. She presented to the young men shredded chicken in mole, a stack of steaming tortillas fresh from the oven, guacamole, rice and beans, salsa with sliced orange, an assortment of olives picked, cured, and pitted by her own hands, a pitcher of lemonade, and for dessert, a glazed custard flan. With each entrance she made into the dining room, her complexion appeared to Bloom as if it were lit from within, and he was nearly certain he could see evidence of tears having been wiped from her eyes. This display of emotion didn't escape Simon's notice, and at one point during the meal, he reached out for Meralda's thick hand and asked, Have we upset you?

Oh, no, she said, dabbing the corners of her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.

But you're crying.

Yes, but they are good tears, Mr. Reuben, I promise you.

Simon continued to hold her hand and looked at the full features of her face in search of a further explanation.

Just look at him, she said, her focus turning to Bloom. Look how your company brightens his eyes.

Is that my doing? asked Simon, who was now studying Bloom's face as intently as Meralda.