Mount Terminus (7 page)

*   *   *

The attraction of Manuel Salazar's secret chamber drew Bloom back to face the eye of Cyclops many times in the months that followed. He often lay awake at night preoccupied with the dark cavity hidden inside the villa's walls, and he imagined there the face of a man resembling his father's, and he imagined reflected on the projection table the unblemished visage he had come to memorize from Salazar's diary, and he wondered, Had she sat as still for Salazar as Roya sat for him? Did she know he was there observing her? Could she feel his need to be nearby? On one such night he weighed these thoughts, Bloom's father appeared to him in what he thought at first was a dream. A barely visible outline of a man, a shock of white hair glimmering like the twilight's gloaming, rose up over him, and said, Come, my dear, we have a journey to take.

Bloom reached out to touch his father, and when he was convinced that what he saw and heard was real, he protested, But, Father, the sun hasn't risen.

It will soon enough.

I want to sleep.

Later, Jacob said, you'll sleep.

Bloom, as he neared the end of his twelfth year, had grown to the height of a man, still thin and lanky, but sizable enough that his father grunted when he pulled his weight upright. Jacob wet his hands in the washbasin on the dressing table, and with more attention than Bloom was accustomed to receiving from him, the elder Rosenbloom crept his fingers through his hair and pulled back the tight coils that stubbornly clung to the corners of his eyes when his forehead moistened in the heat.

There now, he said. Dress yourself and meet me downstairs.

Outside, Jacob sat atop the buckboard, holding the reins of the mare, which appeared to Bloom hypnotized by the lightening colors stratifying the sky. When he climbed on board and took his seat, his father placed an attaché case on his lap, and just as Jacob was about to turn away from him, he looked onto his son's face not unlike the way the horse had become transfixed by the aurora. The grooves between his brow squeezed shut, and appearing as if he wanted to elaborate on the purpose of their trip, or on something else altogether, Jacob shook his head to cast away whatever was on his mind, and turning his focus to the mare's ass, he snapped the leather straps, sending them on their way. They rode over the gravel drive dividing the gardens in which Jacob spent his days, and because it was rare he and Bloom ever ventured beyond Mount Terminus's gates, because Bloom felt a deepening connection to the estate's creator, he was drawn back to the villa's grandeur. He watched it fade into the distance, and as he did so, he noticed, standing in silhouette between two pillars of the tower's arcaded pavilion, the diminutive figure of Roya. He watched her stand there before a crimson sky for as long as he could see her and looked away only when his father said in a conciliatory voice, There, there, we are not going very far.

They switched back and forth down the mountain road without talking, and cantered past citrus groves rooted to ruts of desiccated earth. Extending into the distance as far as they could see, baubles of fruit weighted down muscular limbs. Dust devils formed in the wake of their tracks and spun into Aeolian wisps of smoke whose tendrils dispersed upward into vapor trails, on which a condor lofted and circled about. When some hours later they reached the bluff overlooking the ocean's expanse, they descended a slope to the coastal trail, not far from whose head stood alone at the edge of the beach a blinding structure, tall and long and molten white. Illuminated by the morning sun, it appeared to Bloom a mirage, as liquid and formless as the sea. As they neared it, the building's shape solidified into what looked like a steamship three tiers high, along each of whose decks ambled figures neutered of their gender by white gowns and wide-brimmed hats. Beyond this building was a smaller vessel, where a horseshoe hung on a brace over a pair of barn doors. It was to this structure the father steered the mare, and here the man and his son disembarked, and left the horse and buckboard with a liveryman. Jacob handed the attendant a coin and said they would only be a moment. He then took the attaché case from Bloom and pressed his hand to his back to set him in motion. They walked together onto white planks filling the gap between the two buildings, where, before they reached its end, Jacob halted. He turned to his son and looked into his eyes with the same probing uncertainty with which he had searched his face earlier that morning. As if he were apologizing in advance for doing something he knew to be of questionable judgment, he said, You needn't say a word. You must come with me, but if you don't feel moved to, you needn't utter a sound. It was impossible for Bloom to comprehend the meaning of his father's caution, the reason for his contrition, but when they reached the end of the boardwalk and turned the corner, it became clear. Spread out before him on a deck overlooking a significant region of the beach, the same gowned figures he had witnessed ambling along the landings reclined in rows of white chaises arranged like the groves they had just ridden through, and standing in contrast to everyone and everything about them at the far end, were the three dark figures who came and went, to and from Mount Terminus, dressed in black long coats and bowler hats.

The three men whose faces Bloom had never seen. There they were, forming a dark constellation around one of the lounge chairs. Bloom's father placed a hand on his shoulder and said again: You needn't utter a sound. They walked in and out of shadows cast by white umbrellas, past gaunt faces lathered in zinc. Bloom noticed hands clutching handkerchiefs spotted with blood; he avoided the stare of milky eyes thick with jaundice. At regular intervals, the sickliest of the patients appeared to suffer simultaneous fits. Bodies convulsed in on themselves, rasping coughs from lungs too damaged to expel whatever invading substance occupied them. The sad noises once trumpeted into the ocean breeze acted like a contagion, setting off a percussive echo of croaks and caws into the crash of waves. I needn't say a word, thought Bloom when he and his father halted before the humorless faces of the grim triumvirate, whose motives remained concealed in the cloudy rheum of their eyes. Lank hair fell from under the brims of their hats, dampening insipid brows; sweat gathered on the thick bulbs of their noses and occasionally dripped onto the toes of their boots. Their mouths were thin, their jaws locked, and each possessed a unique taxonomy of pink, wormlike scars fossilized on their jaws, around the orbits of their eyes, on the knuckles of their brawny hands. They held a perimeter around an invalid, passing an unlit cigar under his nose. Unlike the other infirm, this man didn't wear the wide-brimmed hat or the cake of zinc on his face. Nor did he wear the white gown. Instead, he reclined in a cream silk robe tied off with a purple sash. While his thick arms and chest were matted with wiry hair, the crown of his head was bald and browned, and what hair remained above the ear and around the pate was white and cropped close to the scalp. His face belonged to that of a caricature. Wide nostrils. Fat lips. Heavy jowls. Hooded eyes. It belonged to a man who had inflicted, who had been afflicted by, pain.

At the first sight of Bloom, the steely eyes of the reclining brute softened and became those of a moody, quizzical child. His cigar fell limp between his thick fingers as he said in a voice deep and graveled and full of bent foreign syllables, Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. Without breaking his open gaze, he told Bloom to come closer, to sit with him. The young Rosenbloom looked at his father, who nodded his assurance. And with that, Bloom left his father's side and sat at the man's hip.

Your papa has said who I am?

Bloom shook his head.

No, of course he hasn't. The old man set his cigar in his lap and rested a coarse palm on Bloom's cheek. You're a fortunate young man to have such a sensible papa. With his brow raised, he drew his chin to his chest. He has done good today. For you, young man, he has done good. He searched Bloom's eyes again, this time as if he were hunting for evidence of something intimate they shared. He now withdrew his hand from Bloom's cheek and turned his attention to Jacob. The air. The sound of the salted sea. These men of God here, they say it will do miracles for me. But they say in the same breath, I don't help myself because I don't believe. What do you say, Mr. Rosenbloom? Do I suffer from a lack of faith? Bloom's father stepped forward without replying and presented the attaché to the sickly man, who lifted it into the waiting hands of the nearest member of the triumvirate. He then reached into a pocket stitched onto his robe and removed a silver pendant, half of a coin embossed with a full moon, bright and shiny on one side, dark with tarnish on the other. Give me your hand,
malchik
. It is for this I've asked your father to bring you here today. Bloom lifted his hand and in it the man placed his gift. One day soon, he said as he looked at Bloom's father, as if he were speaking to him as much as to his son, you will know its other half. He then smiled as he closed Bloom's fist. This world of ours, young Rosenbloom, it is a world of wondrous surprises, is it not? Bloom nodded in agreement. One never knows what astonishments await us. Isn't that so, Papa? The old man lifted his heavy lids and once again directed his eyes at the elder Rosenbloom. Jacob didn't answer the man. He instead tugged on Bloom's collar, and when the young man looked up he saw his father's chin motioning him away. At that moment, he could see in the hollows of his father's eyes the malignant influence these dark figures held over his will. For the first time, he could see in the tightening folds of his father's face how terrified he was of these men. As they walked off in the direction from which they had come, rather than upset Jacob's pride by asking where these brutes derived their power, or what the significance of the pendant was, Bloom took hold of his hand and said, When we return home, shall we climb to the top of the tower and look at the sea?

*   *   *

Neither Bloom nor his father mentioned in the following days and weeks anything about their journey to the sea or the identity of the man who had set his hand on the younger Rosenbloom's cheek. Bloom asked no questions about what the attaché case contained or what might have been the meaning of the pendant. He was deeply curious, of course, and at times was tempted to breach the darkness his father had forbidden him to enter all his life, but Bloom sensed the questions he was keeping to himself would be answered soon enough. He intuited from the softening of his father's manner, from the warmth he heard in the tone of his voice, from the concern he expressed for Bloom's well-being, his forbearance would not persist.

Bloom, now approaching the age of manhood, had become familiar enough with his father's character to know that whatever the nature of the transaction he had witnessed on the beach, it was most certainly one marking a significant change in his association with this man. Something of consequence had transpired. Something momentous enough, his father was compelled to break from the comfort of his routines to ready Bloom for what was to come. Jacob ceased spending the entirety of his days tending to the grounds and communing with the animist spirits of his topiary; instead, he approached the courtyard each morning from a vanishing point at the end of a path dividing the dark grove of avocado trees from the bright lattices of the rose garden. His arrivals coincided with Roya's departures: as she entered the shadows of the loggia and disappeared behind the villa's walls, he walked between the twin cottages forming the yard's border, bowed his head through a pergola wearing a toupee of bougainvillea, and announced his presence with a grim smile.

In the same manner Bloom sat with his mute companion, he sat with his father, who drew their attention to the crescent-shaped building terraced onto the shelf of the short, crescent-shaped mesa. One afternoon while looking at this structure, Jacob described a place on the sluggish Belus River where in the middle of the first century a ship belonging to soda traders spread out along the Phoenician shore to prepare a meal of fish stew. He told his son they had no stones to support their cooking pots, so they placed lumps of soda from the ship under them, and when these became hot and fused with the sand on the beach, streams of an unknown, translucent liquid flowed. This, he said, was the origin of glass. This, he said, has given our eyes their greatest purpose. His father patted the air with his long fingers, indicating to Bloom that he should remain still, and off he went up the stone steps with a skeleton key dangling from a string tied to his wrist. When he reached the landing, Bloom watched him follow the curve of the building until he rounded its side. A gust of desert wind rustled the grove, through which he could hear the unmistakable cry of a long-unopened door. The sharp noise of the stiff hinges scattered the lizards on the building's surface; they scurried and refixed themselves into a new configuration, until a few moments later, with as little ease as it had opened, the door shut, and a new pattern was formed. Around the corner his father walked, pressing to the chest of his coveralls a wooden case nearly as tall and wide as he. When he had descended the stairs and reached Bloom, he said, Today we will give your eyes greater purpose. Climb the tower after lunch and this will be waiting for you. He turned to go, and then turned back. Looking at his dusty boots, he said, You must prepare yourself, my dear.

What for?

Jacob tapped the case with his knuckle. With this, you will see.

*   *   *

Assembled inside the tower's pavilion was a reflecting telescope whose optical tube was crafted from ash and trimmed with cast iron. It was mounted to a decorative globe resting atop a pedestal whose thin base was held secure by metal supports. All was affixed to a dais that snugly fit onto the shoulders of a tripod. The lacquer applied to preserve the wood had darkened and in places was altogether stripped bare; aquamarine streaks of oxidation had begun to accrete over the iron's surface; and whatever words had been etched into the brass plaque set onto the dais's foundation had long since been rubbed away into a flat sheen. Old as the telescope might have been, when Bloom set the orbit of his eye against the viewing piece, the mirrors magnified into his mind a wide field of vision, full of clear images, their colors crisp and containing no aberrations, all of it so impressive and bright, when he saw what was in its sights, it summoned within the young man the thrill of being present at the focal point. But when this initial excitement wore off, and he was left to contemplate the substance of what he saw, he wanted some explanation for what was out there. His father had trained the tube's aperture onto the section of winding road that snaked up to the estate's gates, and there, occupying the annular frame, was a team of hulking men swinging picks, driving them in unison into the ground. Following them, a line of laborers turned over earth with shovels, and beyond them, a line pulled rakes; next rolled carts piled high with tarmac, and what was beyond that, Bloom wouldn't see until some time later, when the men who spread the pitch onto the raked earth edged out from behind a turn on the road. It would then be some more time before he saw the stacks of the steamrollers belch black smoke as they paved the tarred macadam into a smooth surface. And there the parade came to its end, all for the three dark figures he had encountered on the beach. They casually strolled up the grade, each biting down on a smoldering cigar; the tails of their long coats, the brims of their hats, catching the steam rising up from the cooling pavement.