Mount Terminus (36 page)

When a group of merchant mariners saw him, they gathered around to watch, and seeing how skilled Bloom was, they asked if he would sketch them. Bloom spent the remainder of the afternoon deciphering the lines and forms of these men's figures, hoping in the process to divine some inspiration that would set him on his way in one direction or another. And after some time of standing face to face with these men, he confided he was aimless and looking for a destination. They were bound for the vanilla plantations of Madagascar. That, Bloom said, was perhaps a little too far. The largest, most doltish of the men, screwed up his muscular face and said, Leave it to me. At the insistence of this man who reminded Bloom of Gus, he took several puffs from a pipe containing in its bowl a black, tacky substance, which, when lit, smelled edible. Sweet. And as soon as Bloom inhaled the rich smoke into his lungs, his head tingled, then turned pleasantly numb, and soon thereafter his limbs grew weary and his mind began to pattern the world into sequences of incongruous images and sounds. The seamen sat before him, their faces indifferent and still. They each pointed at him, but their eyes stared into the sun. Although their lips were shut tight, Bloom heard originating from inside their chests hearty guffaws of laughter. Each of them, one in succession of the other, then shut his eyes. And as each set of eyes closed, the sound of the laughter—as thunder from a lightning storm sounds as it passes into the distance—quieted into whispers. And then there was silence. Then darkness. Then a dream, in which Bloom was levitating over the surface of the ocean.

Bloom woke up to the sway of water beneath him and felt running through his body the vibrations of an accelerating motor. He recognized the sensation of being in motion, and when his vision cleared he found himself in his car. It was parked on the deck of a ferry, and gathered around his windows was a menagerie of children costumed as swabbies, the group of them volubly discussing their disappointment with the fact that Bloom wasn't dead. He opened the car door and stepped onto the deck, where he saw the port behind them had flattened into two dimensions. The definition of the coastline grew soft, and with the basin and the distant mountain range spreading out before him as would an eroding sandcastle, he had a difficult time locating Mount Terminus.

Watching the coastline slip farther and farther away, Bloom turned to the nearest ferryman—a man with a topographical map of acne scars—and asked him when the next ferry would run back to the port. But this is the last ferry of the day, he told Bloom. All of us, he said, turning his head to Santa Ynez, we now all go home. The soonest Bloom could return would be first thing in the morning. Upon hearing this news he must have looked like a lost little boy, because at that moment, this unfortunate-looking man, who the others unkindly called Guapo, smiled sympathetically and patted Bloom on the back.

He introduced himself as Eduardo and told Bloom not to worry, that there were very nice accommodations on the island. Because Bloom liked the way Eduardo spoke and thought his eyes understanding, he said to him, Have you ever met a grown man who has never spent a night alone away from home? Eduardo shook his head. I'm not sure why I'm telling you this, said Bloom, but I'll miss waking up to my birds in the morning. When Bloom mentioned his birds, Eduardo's entire presence brightened. And then he asked if, like him, Bloom had a great love of birds. Bloom told him he loved his birds very much. Then come, he said, I show you a trick I no show many people.

Eduardo led Bloom to the ferry's stern, where from a compartment he pulled out a metal tub filled with minnows. He rolled up the sleeve on his right arm and in one deft motion sunk his hand into the water and pulled out a sparkling fish. He held on to it by the tail and asked Bloom, You are no' very delicate, are you? Bloom wasn't certain he understood what Eduardo meant, but he shook his head no. Eduardo, in turn, lifted his other hand to the struggling fish, placed his thumb and forefinger over its bulbous eyes and squeezed until the fish stilled. He wiped the pink ooze that had gushed onto his fingers on the legs of his yellow uniform, and now, with a hearty smile that revealed a mouthful of chipped teeth, he pointed the fish up to a flock of gulls trailing in the sky at the back of the boat.

Pick one, he said to Bloom.

What for?

You pick one, any one, I make it come for a visit. Bloom now must have looked at him with disbelief because Eduardo said, You like birds, yes?

Yes, said Bloom.

You no afraid of birds, no?

No.

Then pick one. I make it come for a visit.

To make it easy for him to know which of the birds, Bloom pointed into the shadowy underbelly of the anarchic flock and said, That one, the one farthest to our right.

No pro'lem. And then Eduardo, most certainly the ugliest man on all the seas, showed Bloom the most beautiful display of man controlling the natural world he had ever seen. With the panache of a magician who worked at sleight of hand, this unassuming ferryman striped his palm with the silver minnow, and using its glimmering surface reflected the sun into the eye of the very gull Bloom had pointed to. By casting the light just so, he lured the bird away from the flock to the rail of the ship, where, as if it were hung on an invisible string, it gracefully hovered with its wings outstretched on the headwind. Bloom laughed with delight. He could feel his smile fill his face. And Eduardo, seeing him smile for the first time, again shared with Bloom his broken teeth. Now you know why it is we call him Guapo! Bloom heard from over his shoulder. When he turned, he found one of the other ferrymen, a fat pink man with a strawberry nose, who added, The birds! They find Guapo irresistible! Bloom turned back to Eduardo then, when, at just the right angle for the gull to catch the fish in its crooked beak, he lobbed the minnow into the air. The bird snatched it up and with Eduardo's spell now broken it lifted away beyond the flock and flew into the blinding glow of the sun.

*   *   *

They motored into a marina in which small sailboats and yachts bobbed in their slips. The town on the eastern side of the island was composed of colorful cottages terraced onto steep hills. A levee of boulders blasted from the side of the mountain buttressed a winding road from the channel waters. To the south was a small patch of sandy beach on which Bloom could see orderly lines of lounge chairs and folded umbrellas. As Eduardo had told him, the town of Santa Ynez was becoming and clean, very dull, very quiet.

At Eduardo's insistence, Bloom was to go home with him. They drove on a dirt road to the other side of the island, to the lodging house owned and run by his sister, Estella Maria Tourneur. Her husband, Eduardo told him, a famous acrobat, no longer lived. The Great Guillaume one year earlier fell to his death from the trapeze, and ever since then, to make her life less lonely, Estella rented her many rooms to vacationers. She calls the house after her name on the stage, said Eduardo, La Reina del Fuego, the Queen of Fire. This was how his sister was known across all the deserts and the prairies and the greatest of the cities when she traveled with the Grand Versailles Circus, for whom Estella dressed in a bloodred leotard and ate and blew fire, and walked over hot coals with bare feet, and fearlessly hung and spun over bright orange flames with only her teeth biting down on a thin leather strap.

It is empty now, Eduardo said of the house, but because you are a lover of birds, instead of sleeping in one of the rooms meant for the strangers, I would be honored if you would stay in my room.

But where will you sleep? Bloom asked him.

I sleep where I prefer to sleep. On the water, in my boat, where I can better hear and feel the sea. After many thousands of years, Eduardo explained to Bloom, he and his sister were the only Chumash people left on Santa Ynez. The others, he said, had either died from disease or had been collected like pieces of pottery and gold by the missionaries. It is in my blood, he told Bloom, to want the sea near me when I dream. Tonight, my friend, you keep my birds company and care for them since you no' with your own. All right?

They turned off the seaside road circling the island and drove onto an unpaved incline lined with pairs of braided ficus trees. Their tops formed a clattering canopy through which the late-afternoon sun broke and dappled yellow light onto the hood of Bloom's roadster. When they emerged through this tunnel of foliage, they reached the level ground of a cul-de-sac paved in cobblestone and bordered with a vibrant ring of strawberry lupine and amethyst blazing stars whose soft spikes stood nearly as tall as Bloom. The white-and-crimson façade of La Reina del Fuego sat at the edge of a bluff.

It was Queen Anne in style, three stories tall, with a sheltered porch running the length of the house. A turret rose up on one side, and on the other stood a tall chimney slightly taller than the turret's point. Beyond the plantings around the cul-de-sac was a well-kept lawn at the border of which rose an enormous oak, one of whose limbs nearly spanned the entirety of the yard, and had hanging from it the bar of a trapeze. That, Eduardo said when he saw Bloom mystified by the silver rod swaying in the ocean breeze, is where Guillaume lies dead and buried.

Bloom followed Eduardo into the house, and he could see why a rugged man such as himself wouldn't feel at home here. The furnishings were as ornate as they were delicate, and although the Great Guillaume lay dead and buried under the lawn of the garden, this was still very much his house. His likeness was everywhere, enshrined on the walls of the foyer and sitting rooms, in posters and paintings, the Great Guillaume fearlessly tumbling and spinning through the air. On the mantelpiece and on pedestals were planted heroic busts. And covering a grand piano with elephantine legs were standing photographs of the great trapeze artist shaking hands with European royals and American dignitaries, in palace gardens and ballrooms, on the fields of fairgrounds.

Less prominent, but certainly well represented, was also La Reina del Fuego, depicted in images performing all the stunts Eduardo described on the drive to the house. As startling as it was for Bloom to see such a beautiful woman spit brilliant orange flames ten feet into the air or to see her hanging by her teeth over a crown of fire, it was more shocking to discover two siblings could look any more different than Eduardo and his sister. In these images in which she was costumed as a savage, with her face colorfully painted and her hair decorated with feathers and charms, he could sense that beneath the artifice of exaggerated beauty was the symmetry and form and style only the smallest numbers among us are graced with.

There she is, Eduardo said from the dining room at the back of the house. Bloom walked to Eduardo's side and looked with him out a large window down onto the rocky coastline at the bottom of the cliff, where he found a woman with long black hair dressed in a white gown. She stood with her arms extended, balancing herself on the spine of an oblong rock as she looked off at the descending sun. His finger tapping on the glass, Eduardo said of his sister's outstretched arms, Like the wings of the great heron, no?

Yes, Bloom agreed.

He then pointed down the beach. That way, around the jetty, is Willow Cove. This is where I keep my boat. This is where I will go now.

But what shall I tell Estella? asked Bloom.

I will talk with her on the beach. I will tell her you are here as my guest. She will be happy to know you are in my room tonight. The birds are no' as loud when they see in my bed the shape of a man. Eduardo turned to go, but before he left Bloom in this unfamiliar place, he said, I will return early in the morning to collect you. Eduardo exited a side door and walked down a staircase built onto the side of the bluff. He disappeared for some time and then reappeared on the beach, where he called to Estella. From a distance, they spoke briefly, and then Eduardo turned away from her and continued on, stepping with youthful agility over the shore toward the cove as if he knew intimately the surface of each rock on which his feet fell.

Bloom was pleased to find a small library in the sitting room. Most of the books were in French and Spanish, but many were in English. He saw titles he had never seen or heard of before and wanted to browse through them. However, because he didn't feel at home, because the books were so pristine and tidily arranged, he was too timid to remove any of them from their shelves. Instead, he stared at their bindings and he began to imagine Calypso's cave, where Odysseus was held captive, where all the time he was left to his solitude, he wept with thoughts of Penelope. In his mind, Bloom imagined from the images he saw of her in her posters, Estella, as Calypso, who stood with the posture of a powerful being, but who possessed eyes as vulnerable as the love she so deeply felt for the soul of her mortal prisoner. Bloom imagined himself as Odysseus, his will weakened by the nymph's never-ending loneliness and beauty. And thus, he saw himself lying with her on a slab of stone with his arms wrapped around her waist and his cheek pressed against her midriff.

He gathered his sketchbook from his bag and quickly drew in pencil these images he saw in his mind. He added an image of Athena, whose face and body he modeled from memory on the young woman who was first delivered by Gus to his studio. He drew her into a panel with an arm outstretched to the heavens, and in another panel with her arm outstretched to Calypso, threatening her with the power of Zeus if she didn't release him to start his journey home. In the next panel, Calypso's shoulders fell with her head turned in profile, her eyes focused on a broken seashell resting in the sand beside her foot. And, in the last panel, as he was about to venture into the hands of Poseidon, Bloom had fallen on his knees before Calypso, and he saw in his mind Isabella, his Penelope, but he nevertheless had reached out to Calypso. She had already turned away from him, dejected, moving toward the dark hollow of her cave.

This activity kept Bloom so preoccupied he hadn't noticed Estella had long since entered from the side door and had been silently standing over his shoulder watching him sketch for some time. He was made aware of her presence only when she said in a voice that wasn't quite sure how it wanted to sound, You must be the lover of birds my brother spoke of. Bloom looked up to find her neck and arms bare. She wore a gown whose diaphanous material revealed the curves of her figure and hinted at the lines of her breasts. He could see from the dispassionate expression on her face—not unlike many of the actresses on the lot—she was accustomed to being stared at in a state of near undress. Given how weathered and old Eduardo looked to Bloom, she was much younger than he expected her to be. She couldn't be older than twenty-five. Otherwise, she was very much the way he had imagined her, and, to Bloom's satisfaction, very much the way he had drawn her.