Mount Terminus (13 page)

*   *   *

Bloom awoke the following morning uncertain if what he had experienced in the night was real or if it was a dream. When he roused, he felt his nightshirt and his sheets wet and sticky; and when he removed his covering and his garment to inspect further, he discovered pearly beads nesting in his pubis. He dipped the tips of his fingers into the sticky liquid and observed as he pulled his hand away how it clung to his skin and expanded into glimmering strands. He would have spent the better part of the day wondering if this was some symptom of a disease or the product of some infection, but Roya, who was asleep in the armchair beside Bloom's bed, awoke, and saw how bewildered and concerned the naked Rosenbloom was, and without hesitation, she rose and sat by Bloom's side, where she unbuttoned her blouse and exposed the breast Bloom had dreamed of touching in the night. She took hold of his hand and placed it on the soft mound of flesh. Bloom rose to greet the hand now reaching out for him, and with Roya's eyes glancing down to her breast, she stroked the young Rosenbloom up and down, until he felt as if his body might levitate, at which point out shot a small butterfly of this same substance he had earlier discovered. It flapped its wings to the height of his nose, only to land unceremoniously in the depression of his navel. And with that, Roya brushed her hands together, buttoned her blouse, and for the first time in seven weeks left Bloom to his solitude, so that he might fully appreciate his new discovery.

*   *   *

When he had washed and dressed, Bloom felt himself enlivened. The weight of his grief no longer pressed against his chest and hung on his shoulders as it had only moments before his silent companion performed her compassionate act. He had no purpose to speak of, but at the very least he would greet the day and make himself part of it. He found a biscuit and a cup of coffee waiting for him in the kitchen and took both up the stairs of the tower. The higher he rose, the more he believed he heard the rustle of wings, a great many wings. Or, he wondered, was it the autumnal winds beginning to blow again? The closer he neared the pavilion's landing, the more distinct the restless flutter sounded. Staccato yips and plaited song soon met his ear. They were sounds not of this place, not screeches of the condor or the vulture; rather, they were the cries of some other, more exotic world whose soil was rich and whose plants and trees were verdant and wet and overgrown, and with these noises growing louder and more complex with each step upward, he experienced a psychic sundering. It was only after he had reached the last of the stairs and saw overhead four wrought-iron cages hanging from hooks and chains that he was once again grounded. Above him, enclosed in their respective aviaries, were yellow canaries and green parakeets, albino cockatiels and lovebirds wearing black masks and red beaks. They frantically hopped up and down the limbs of iron trees; some sat perched, nuzzling one another, burying their bills into fluff. Bloom marveled at the vibrant colors, at the boundless energy, and, for the time being, felt one with them. He visited each cage and fed the birds small morsels of his biscuit and tried to see if there was a way to tell the members of one species apart from each other. The variations were so minute, it would take him some time to recognize them individually, but he would try, and when he succeeded, he would name them all. As the birds squawked and sang and reacted to one another's calls, Bloom rested his coffee on the rail and noticed that, during this time he had been bedridden, Meralda had hired a gardener to remove his father's dismembered topiary from the front gardens. The living statues of his mother were gone. The only reminders of them, the holes in the hedgerows through which they looked out onto their vistas. The sight of her absence pained Bloom, but as his eyes explored the new landscape further, this brief ache dissipated. Not only could he see how beautiful these empty gardens were, but also he was comforted in knowing that with the mazes bared, there would no longer be the continual reminder of what had been lost. In time he'd have the opportunity to forget and begin anew. For the moment, however, he could still see his father refining the edges of his mother's face with his shears, and in this, too, he took solace.

*   *   *

Bloom would learn upon his descent from the tower that morning that the aviary was a gift from two men presently sitting in the courtyard drinking coffee. One was named Saul Geller, his father's lifelong business associate. He possessed a round face and a pair of frowning eyes Bloom vaguely recalled from his boyhood in Woodhaven. The other man was Mr. Geller's cousin, Gerald Stern, a local attorney who kept an office in the Pico House Hotel downtown. Mr. Stern was a perfectly bald middle-aged man with a freckled head and nose. Unlike his relation, he stood as tall and thin as Bloom, and was fitted into a bespoke suit whose fine cloth and stitching shimmered in the sunlight. Mr. Geller told Bloom he had traveled the entire breadth of the country to spend only one day on Mount Terminus. He had come to deliver Bloom the aviary bought for him by his daughters, to pay his respects to Jacob, and then there was the matter of witnessing Mr. Stern's execution of Jacob's will. Geller wished he had more time, but for reasons he didn't specify, he was needed at home and at the foundry. As it was, he feared his world would be turned upside down when he landed in Woodhaven. When the mild-mannered Mr. Geller had established this much, he told Bloom a story, the very same story he said he'd told Jacob the day they met.

When they were much younger men, Bloom's father had placed an advertisement in the newspaper, calling for a man of considerable ambition who had some understanding of optics and mechanical engineering to represent his interests in the marketplace. An army of candidates called on Jacob at his home in Woodhaven, any one of whom would have suited his needs to one extent or another, but it wasn't until he sat down with Mr. Geller, and listened to the events of his life, did Bloom's father feel the sort of kinship he thought necessary for such an intimate association. The sad tale Geller told Jacob that day was about how a family of Russian criminals who, with the help of a government minister, stole his father's livelihood. With a perverse pleasure, these men drove Geller's father into their debt for money he never borrowed and for services he never requested. They used these invented arrears against him to take his property: his storefront, his home, his carts and horses. Over and over again, the bailiffs arrived with ministerial papers and took what was his. This succession of seizures, which elapsed over a period of years, exhausted his father's nerves so completely he fell into a paralytic malaise. One day, when the elder Geller appeared to be returning to some semblance of the man he used to be, he dressed in his finest clothes, kissed and hugged his wife and children, and said he was going for a stroll to clear his head. He walked out of their rented rooms and proceeded to the bank of the river. With no fear, without hesitation, with a smile, said one witness, he stuffed his pockets full of stones and waded out into the frozen current until he was submerged. In the end, Geller told Bloom, he, his two younger sisters, and his mother possessed nothing but a small trunk in which they kept a bolt of linen and three pieces of silver: one fork, a serving spoon, and a Kaddish cup, which they used to mourn his father's passing. When his mother suffered the indignity of asking the authorities for the smallest pittance of charity to see them through their troubles, the very same men who had taken everything from them, and who they believed could take no more, took away the country they had known for as many generations as their familial memory could recall. They placed them in one of their father's former carts, drove them to the border, and forced them into exile on foot.

At this juncture, Bloom acknowledged what a maddening tale of injustice Mr. Geller's was. That, said Geller, is precisely what your father said to me. In return, Jacob described to Mr. Geller the unfortunate events of his own life and the predicament he found himself in with Sam Freed. Their shared experience, said Geller, created a deep bond of trust and loyalty between the two men. Jacob, who had recently secured terms with Dickson, entrusted Mr. Geller with the prototype of the Rosenbloom Loop, and for his new employer and friend, Geller signed contracts with Siegfried Lubin and Ruff & Gammon; and with the biggest manufacturers of motion picture projectors endorsing Jacob's device, its reputation grew; and as news of the Rosenbloom Loop spread, Geller received requests for Jacob's invention from projector manufacturers around the world. In less than a year, the demand was overwhelming, so great, the small workshop Jacob had established in his Woodhaven home proved inadequate. Mr. Geller, therefore, searched out a proper facility, and discovered, on a tract of land not far from the Rosenbloom residence, an abandoned candle factory. Jacob bought the title, and he and Mr. Geller transformed the old brick building into a manufacturing plant, hired metallurgists and engineers, who, under Jacob's direction at first, and Mr. Geller's to follow, duplicated the individual parts of the device, and then arranged an assembly line. There, Geller said, I have made my living. For every year since the foundry opened, he had managed it, grown its business, and for every year Jacob and Bloom had lived on Mount Terminus, he and his sisters, his mother, his daughters, and his wife had looked after Jacob's interests, his accounts, his investments. It is because of your father's genius and generosity, said Geller, I have my beautiful family, have built homes for my mother and my sisters, have more than I ever dreamed of having. To your father, said Mr. Geller, I owe my life. To you, he told Bloom, I owe the same. And so, he said, I make this promise to you, Joseph. You have my loyalty and devotion. For as long as I live, I am yours to rely on.

Bloom, who was deeply touched and uplifted by these words, thanked Mr. Geller for the kind sentiment, and then Mr. Stern, who had been listening quietly, reached for an attaché case resting at his feet, and removed from it some papers. Your father's will, he said to Bloom. The fastidious man dug a pair of spectacles from his pocket, clipped them to his freckled nose, and began to list his father's last wishes. Bloom was informed by Mr. Stern that morning, Mr. Geller would retain full autonomy over the foundry's operation for as long as he was willing and able, and from this day forward would own a forty percent share of the company. The remaining sixty percent would be held by Bloom. In addition to operating the foundry and its day-to-day business, Geller would manage and hold in trust Bloom's substantial holdings until he turned twenty years of age, at which time he hoped Geller would continue to dispense his invaluable advice. Bloom now held an interest in things and places holding no interest to him at all. He owned a certain percentage of a small oil field twenty miles to the south of the estate; five hundred miles to the north, a logging company; in the far reaches of the valley, a dairy farm and a cattle ranch; somewhere in the tropics, in a country he had never heard of, he held majority ownership of a sugarcane plantation; not very far from Mount Terminus sat an observatory whose rotunda was endowed in his father's name, housed inside which was a telescope dedicated to studying the reversing polarities of sunspots, and, to which, he would, as his father had done, make a handsome donation annually. With the exception of the plateau on which Simon had built his studio, all the land on Mount Terminus, from top to bottom, was now his, as was the house and adjoining property in Woodhaven. Finally, he now possessed a considerable amount of gold bullion secured in a bank vault back east, and a sizable collection of precious gems stored in a bank downtown. To Simon, Mr. Stern told him, his father had added to his already substantial holdings the parcels of land Jacob held throughout the valley and the basin, what amounted to tens of thousands of acres, all of which he determined Simon should develop or sell as he saw fit to realize his future plans. You and your brother, and the generations that follow you, Stern said in conclusion, should want for nothing.

When Stern had finished the formalities of his recitation, Bloom wondered if there were any personal sentiments expressed in the will. The will, Stern told him, had been amended not long before Jacob died. As is the case with us all, he said, I'm sure he believed he had more time. Upon hearing this, Mr. Geller told Bloom his brother had been contacted about his inheritance and Mr. Stern had already made arrangements with Simon's attorney to transfer the property. Mr. Geller then asked his cousin if he wouldn't mind giving him a moment alone with Bloom. Stern excused himself and wandered out of the courtyard in the direction of the grove, and when he had disappeared from sight, Mr. Geller said to Bloom in a hushed voice, My cousin, Stern, he can be somewhat cold and humorless, but he is a good man, and I believe you need a good man nearby to serve your capital and show you how to maintain it when you come of age. I'm simply too far away and too preoccupied with the business of the foundry to be of any use to you here. Gerald, therefore, will be looking after your holdings and advising you about the decisions he makes on your behalf. Geller assured Bloom that Stern would hold his interests above all others and take his side in all circumstances. He would see to his investments as if they were his own, and to Bloom, to his well-being. Please, Joseph, he said, tell me I have your blessing. Humor an
alte kaker
who grows weary with the burdens he carries.

Yes, Bloom said, yes, of course, you have my blessing. If that's what you think best, then I think it best, too.

Geller said what a fine young man Bloom had become, and he removed a business card from a pocket in his jacket and gently placed it in Bloom's hand. Here is Stern's card. If you need anything at all, call on him. He knows your business as well as I do. If you have concerns about anything at all, if you need help of any kind, Gerald is the man to go to. He'll be doing a good deal of traveling for you, but when he's here, he'll look in on you without fail. Please, make good use of him.