Mount Terminus (46 page)

Our Mr. Stern?

Yes, said Geller, our Mr. Stern.

Bloom could only shake his head at the thought of it.

I've informed the authorities and I've retained a team of investigators, but, if I'm to be honest, Joseph, I wouldn't hold my breath. Stern is a clever man and it would seem he's highly motivated not to be found. Geller lifted the glass out of Bloom's hand and he returned to the schnapps for a second go. I'm so sorry, said Geller as he handed Bloom the drink. I swore to your father I would look after you, and this, this is what happens.

Bloom was dumbfounded. He wasn't certain what to think about the loss of the money. What did he know of money? He was hardly an extravagant spender. Whatever income was left from the company, he speculated, would suffice. And he told Geller as much. You shouldn't blame yourself, he said to his father's old friend.

But I do blame myself. Who else, if not me, is there to blame?

Mr. Stern.

Yes, but it was I who insisted Stern handle your affairs to begin with. It was I who built this house of cards.

There's no way you could have known it would come to this.

No. But I am responsible. It
was
my doing. And I've decided. I want you to have the shares in the company your father gave to me after he died. I think it's the least I can do to compensate you for such a great loss.

No, I won't hear of it.

You must think of your future, Joseph. You have a wife now. Soon you'll have a family of your own.

Bloom's eyes returned to the empty bottom of the glass, to the multitude of eyes staring back at him.

The income from the foundry? It's nothing to sneeze at, said Geller. But it's not the legacy your father left you. He would have never said it out loud, but he was proud of the fact that you and the children who follow you would want for nothing. And now …

I will still want for nothing. There is nothing more I want.

That is the shock speaking, said Geller. When your head has cleared, we'll revisit this conversation. For now, let's leave it.

*   *   *

After expressing further distress and dismay, after making one too many apologies, Saul Geller departed that morning. He was off to meet the investigators to search through Stern's office and home in hope of finding some clue as to where he'd absconded with Bloom's inheritance and the man-eating Marianne Merriweather. And Bloom went off in search of Isabella. He felt compelled to share Geller's news with her. For the briefest of moments he forgot all the ways in which their life together had been upended, and he wanted her to comfort him, to tell him they would see their way through. But as he ascended the stairs to the landing, Bloom grew increasingly agitated. His only thought was what would become of Mount Terminus. The parcels of land Stern had sold would be developed. It was inevitable. A fait accompli. He easily imagined the city overrunning the mountain. He saw in his mind the physical structures taking shape. He imagined the noise of people overwhelming his peace of mind. And he was reminded of his father's last months, his last days, during which he packed his ears with cotton and sought refuge in the gallery. Bloom better understood now. He better comprehended what was lost to Jacob, what it was that had driven him so deep into the interior of his home. He wasn't merely mourning the loss of his wife; he wasn't merely dwelling in the darkness of regret; he was grieving the end of silence. The silence that had renewed Rachel during their happiest days on Mount Terminus. The silence he dreamed of as a boy in the orphanage. The silence that lasted days on end. And, oh, how Bloom wished he could return the silence to the open vistas, to the open land that ran to the sea and out into the valley, as far out as the dam that now held back the waters of Pacheta Lake. How he wished his brother were a simple man, a man of smaller ambitions, of smaller stature, a man of little means and little experience, a man who held Bloom in esteem, who considered his marriage sacred, who would have shrunk at the thought of touching his wife. Oh, how Bloom wished his father had never gone in search of his aunt after he and his mother had been reunited. How he wished his brother never existed. How he wished he could make him disappear, reduce him to a puff of smoke, a mere shadow in Gottlieb's cave. When Bloom saw Isabella sitting in the gallery, in his mother's chair, her shoulders wrapped in his mother's paisley shawl, her eyes gazing on the outline of Rachel's form in the window overlooking Woodhaven's lake, Bloom couldn't bring himself to subject her to the dybbuk taking hold of him. He would not allow any malcontent spirit to disturb the glow of her motherhood, of her future with her child. He stood and stared at her from the threshold, and then quietly backed away. As noiselessly as Roya, he withdrew, past the library in which he had spent so much time, he withdrew down the stairs to the kitchen and took in the sight of Gus and Meralda looking lovingly at each other from across the table. He would not disturb them either. He walked out the front door, turned over the engine of his car, and sat behind the wheel. As he was about to drive off, he looked up to see Roya looking down on him from the tower's pavilion. What happened next, Bloom wouldn't fully comprehend for as long as he lived. At the moment he was about to wave farewell to her, he noticed Roya had, cupped in her hands, Elijah, who, upon seeing Bloom, tried to break the hold she had on him. Roya gave Bloom's clever bird a kiss on his crest to quiet him, and when she lifted her head, something came over Elijah. He began to peck at Roya's hands. He managed to free one wing, and then the other, and with a final peck directed at Roya's nose, he was free. Bloom's silent companion ran to the rail and let out a silent scream as Elijah tumbled forward. He fell over once and then twice, and then Bloom witnessed Elijah's wings spread. His crest retracted to face the offshore breeze, and for the first time since Mr. Geller delivered his aviary to the tower's pavilion, Bloom watched the beauty of this bird take flight. Elijah circled about the gardens for a few moments, turned back, swooped over Bloom's head, and then flapped on toward Mount Terminus's open gates, and out and up along the mountain road that led to the summit. Bloom threw the roadster into gear, and, with little else on his mind other than the thought of retrieving his beloved friend, sped after him. Elijah flew up and around and kept pace with the car, doubled back every now and again, as if he were intentionally leading Bloom up and over the peak to the valley. Bloom waved his free hand and screamed out Elijah's name over the engine's whine and grind. Elijah, he called. Elijah, I need you here with me. Elijah, who appeared to look down at Bloom from time to time, arced over the mountain and down the canyon switchback, leading Bloom on his descent into the valley. Elijah, Bloom called. Please. Please, come back to me! He lost sight of him as the cockatiel dipped down into the canyon, and he would then suddenly reappear in a long sweep up over the road, and dive down again. Please, Bloom called out, this world isn't for you! And on Elijah flew, paying Bloom no mind at all. For a while the bird flew so high, he blended in with the wisps of haze brushing the washed-out blue of the desert sky. But Bloom felt him up there, felt his presence, and he trusted Elijah would return to him, so he drove. He drove the turns, back and forth, skirting the dry bed of the rusted canyon, passing the folded mantle of chaparral that met the morning sun. He drove to the head of the steep grade of the straightaway that led to the long, long valley road, at which point Elijah sailed down out of the haze, swept over Bloom's roadster, and landed on the remains of a fir tree long ago burned in an autumn blaze. He perched himself right at the end of a blackened limb that hung out over the road. Bloom pulled over onto the road's shoulder and turned off the motor. He held out his arm and called out to his bird, his old friend. Please, he said, I need you here with me. But Elijah wouldn't come. He stared down at him with the same patient gaze as the buzzards of Pacheta Lake who covered his father in the shadow of their heraldic poses and guarded his juniper trees. And Bloom sat looking over the valley with Elijah, and waited and watched, as he did on those days he spent with his father during the Days of Awe, on Yom Kippur. And he was reminded of the mountain's melt cascading down volcanic craters, pressing its way through canyon and gorge, feeding the river that flowed into the graben of the rift valley, and he recalled how the waters had been diverted into the irrigation canals at the desert's edge, and the ways in which his brother had diverted the water through the aqueduct to the immense face of the dam, and he saw his brother's shadow over the world he had delivered to Mount Terminus, with its myriad intended and unintended consequences, and was convinced now, more than ever before, the choice he and Isabella had made together, to remain united as one, was an illusion. For Simon was no simple man. He was no humble man. He had grown so enormous in size he could hardly be considered a man at all. His image had come to hold as many meanings as there were people beholding it; he had become an idol of old, a golden calf worshipped and adored, the producer of dreams at the desolate end of the world, the shaper of implausible destinies, the man who moved living waters to make paradise on Earth, the emperor, the pharaoh, the deity, Simon Reuben. And Bloom had come to know what lived behind his brother's many masks. He knew what formed the core of his humanity, he knew what motivated him, and he knew Simon would never allow Bloom to raise his child. This shaper of the impossible would sooner sacrifice Bloom as a brother before he turned into Jacob Rosenbloom, the abandoner, the missing part, the mysterious ghost. He would not be subject to twists of dramatic irony. He would fight for the child. And, no matter how much he claimed to love Bloom, he would fight for Isabella. Here, thought Bloom, were the unintended consequences of this thread of the tale. Here was the truth of the matter. Here was why stories such as these were told. Here was why men fought bloody battles. Here was why Troy fell. Here was why students of the invertiscope were little more than innocent boys hanging precariously from limbs of trees, filling baskets with acorns in an Eden that had long ago closed up shop.

And then it happened. The unexplainable moment whose timing Bloom would marvel at for as long as he lived. Why, he would ask himself, was he not down there, but up here on the heights of the straightaway? Had Stern not stolen his money, had Elijah not felt an instinctual need to rest his heretofore unused wings, would he have been dead with the rest of them? Would he, too, have been claimed by his brother's hubris? For this is what next came to pass.

Some invisible, exterior force startled Elijah. He jumped from his perch and flew off down the long narrow road in the direction of the valley. The moment after he lifted away, Bloom heard what Elijah had sensed. A percussive boom, like timpani rumbling at the edge of a passing storm, echoed and reverberated against the mountain's face, its canyons. As Elijah's small body began to disappear from sight, Bloom felt the ground shift under him, a tremor, the mildest of earthquakes, strong enough to wobble the roadster on its metal springs. And then he heard the onrush, whose sound was equivalent to nothing Bloom knew of in nature; it was a sound that made his ears ache; as it intensified, it transformed into a vibratory hum that bathed his skin, shook the cuffs of his pants, the sleeves of his shirt, clattered his teeth. He tried to speak, but he couldn't hear his words. Words erupted from his mouth, but the oscillation of the pitch neutralized them. There was no rush of wind, no rustle of leaves or brush, no chips or chirps of insects or birds. Before he ever saw what was producing it, there was only the blanketing sound, an ocean of it, an entire planet's atmosphere of it. From his vista, he could see miniature figures, ranch hands, horses, cattle, all turning northeast, looking off in the same direction. None ran. None moved at all. They just stood paralyzed. And before Bloom had a chance to think a rational thought, the sound's source arrived, and when he saw what it was that was generating what he imagined the voice of God to sound like, Bloom said, and did not hear himself saying, Oh God. Oh God. Oh Gottlieb. Poor Gottlieb. A wall of water, fifty, seventy-five, one hundred feet high, an enormous wave of tumbling brown water, lifted, splintered, devoured all of what stood fixed on the landscape. All that the water had made possible to arise was now being reclaimed. Houses and barns lifted off foundations, tractors and trucks were tossed into the air, bodies of men and women and livestock snuffed out. Like every sentient being who had beheld the maelstrom before it arrived, Bloom, too, did not move. He thought to turn over the car's engine. He thought to turn and run, to climb the dead tree. He could see the trajectory of the water channeling through the valley in his direction. He could see its behemoth force pressing its behemoth mass up the canyon's straight road. He could easily imagine an arm forming from its amorphous heap, and it reach up and out to him, pull him back into the vortex of its maw. Yet he still did not move. Instead, Bloom watched the muddy head of the beast, the golem, crash against the rise of sediment and rock. He watched it funnel its force up the narrow canyon road. He watched its reach extend up at an unimaginable speed, and as it ascended to him, he knew, if he survived this moment in time, what it was he wanted. If he survived the leviathan born of his brother's ambition, from his most feverish dreams, he knew where he would go. If he survived the End of Days foreseen by his brother's accountant, Mr. Dershowitz, if Bloom didn't become flotsam, or some buried archaeological curiosity for some future digger, he knew where he belonged. In this arrested moment of time, he saw it in his mind. It was clear. It was true. He knew now where it was he had experienced his truest happiness. And he knew now the rarity of true happiness. And he knew now for whom his father had decided to live apart, to abandon all. In the face of the oncoming fist, Bloom could see the desk set before the window. He could see the ocean's vast expanse, its uninterrupted view. He could see Estella looking off to the swells rolling endlessly from the horizon. And, he thought, how blissful and at peace he had been there, how easy it would be to lead a quiet life of dreaming there. A quiet life interrupted only by the sound of the sea, the sight of Estella walking the rocks, the pleasant piano music in the evenings, fishing off the coast with Eduardo. Isabella would be free to go to Simon, and Simon would need her now. He would need someone to help see him through this atrocity. He would need her to help him understand the unmerciful ways in which Death visited the world. He would need the child to distract him and comfort him. Bloom was not so cruel as to deprive his brother of these things. Yes, thought Bloom. Yes! he screamed at Death as it rushed to him. Yes! he screamed at what he believed was his inevitable slaughter. Yes! he screamed loud enough to hear his own voice over Death's approach. And he screamed again, Yes! when the muddy fingers were only yards away. He gripped hold of the steering wheel and shut his eyes, and he waited, and he waited, to be swept away, to be pulled in, to be overtaken, consumed, and then …