Mount Terminus (10 page)

*   *   *

As the elder Rosenbloom said would happen, the same group of engineers and surveyors they had watched shape the lots below walked onto the estate some days later and began marking the land for a pipeline. Bloom, who, in Roya's constant company, had begun to sketch his illustrations of
Death, Forlorn
in the meticulous style of drawing he discovered in Manuel Salazar's sketchbook, watched from the studio as they staked a route from the spring's outlet. Through the courtyard. Between the cottages. Along the path. Down the hill. Soon afterward arrived a team of Chinese ditchdiggers whose long braided hair swung like pendulums as they lifted and set aside the walkway's paving stones. Under lines of twine the surveyors had strung to demarcate the water's route, they broke into the hard earth with pickaxes and dug a trench, into which they laid the pipe. When they had coupled all the conduits, they joined one end to a cistern, and continued their labors on the plateau. The day the water began to surge downhill, Bloom noticed the young man walking along the line of eucalyptus with a camera case strapped across his chest and a tripod slung over his shoulder. He stopped occasionally to admire the villa, then pressed on up toward the trailhead beyond the rose garden. From where Bloom sat, this figure, dressed as he was in his elegant white suit, and carrying himself with the determination of a man dividing a throng on a city street, appeared misplaced. He moved his body with little regard for the desiccated earth that scuffed at his shoes and kicked up eddies of desert silt onto the cuffs of his pants. He obviously didn't know or care about what fits of volatile temper this place was capable of, nor did he sense what Bloom saw from this distance, how small and insignificant his presence was on this giant rise of sediment and rock. He walked uphill with his shoulders square and his free hand thrust into his pocket, surveying the land with a keen eye, as if he were the behemoth and Mount Terminus merely a small mound of dirt, which he could flatten with the bottom of his shoe should he choose to. The intensity of spirit, this display of self-importance, disconcerted Bloom; yet, when the young man rounded the turn onto the trail, he was compelled to make himself known. He wanted to face him, to confirm what he suspected: that he and this man were somehow related. He placed aside his work and set out into the courtyard, onto the path, up onto the initial grade, and where it leveled out at a vista overlooking the plateau, Bloom came upon him standing before the camera mounted to the tripod. When the young man heard Bloom's approach, he turned, and when he saw him, he stopped what he was doing and stared, not with the same angry glare with which he confronted the elder Rosenbloom; rather, he appeared entranced. Bloom walked on and saw before him what he had seen through the binoculars and then again through the lens of his telescope: their commonality was manifest. Here stood a man, eight or ten years older than he, strikingly similar to himself. Their faces shared the same handsome lines around the jaw and the chin. Both bore bold noses, neither too long nor too wide. Their hairline rounded high on the forehead and they each had the same Tatar curve to their eyes. Their dark complexions, the coarse texture of their hair, were identical. The hands were long and narrow to suit their tall and slender frames. Even the eyebrows contrived the same herringbone weave.

Remarkable, said the young man.

Yes, said Bloom, nodding in agreement. The young man nodded along with Bloom and then said, with the same certainty and self-possession Bloom had witnessed from the window of the studio, You're Jacob's son.

Yes. Joseph.

But you are called Bloom.

That's what my father calls me.

The young man now moved away from the camera and took a step downhill. Do you know who I am?

Bloom, too, took an additional step forward. No, I don't think so.

Simon?… Simon Reuben? He inflected the pronunciation of his name in such a way that there was an expectation Bloom should have recognized it; but he didn't, and could only say in response that he was pleased to meet him.

You don't recognize the name?

No, I'm afraid I don't.

No one in the entirety of your life has ever so much as whispered my name?

No, said Bloom, never. He took another step toward the man to see if this even closer proximity would somehow enable him to recall a hidden memory. What, he asked from this short distance, should I know about you?

Why, said Simon with an edge of indignation in his voice, you
should
know
everything
about me. At the very least, you should know my name. You should have been carrying it around with you all your life. It should be filling your mind with mystery and wonder, as yours does mine.

Bloom could only shake his head. About the past, my father says very little. Almost nothing at all.

That shouldn't surprise me, said Simon, but I find it disheartening all the same.

I don't understand.

No, Simon said angrily, how could you?

And then arrived a pause.

The two young men, who were identical in almost every way except for their age, looked each other over for a prolonged moment in which Simon appeared, from the movement of his eyes, engaged in an internal deliberation. When he concluded this inner discourse, he regained his equanimity and said, I'm sorry, but I must be on my way. Simon Reuben lifted the tripod with the camera attached and continued charging the trail upward.

I wish you would take just a few minutes to explain.

No, said Simon from over his shoulder, it's for your father to explain. Ask him. Ask him what became of Leah. Ask him who Leah was to your mother. Ask him how I am related to you.

Upon hearing this, Bloom set after him. Then we
are
related?

Ask your father.

Please try to understand, said Bloom as he ran to catch up, I will, but I assure you, nothing will come of it.

For years, Simon said, speaking to Bloom as if his concerns belonged to a world beyond the one on which they walked, I've been chasing the sun. Do you know what kind of displeasure it brings me to chase the sun from season to season?

I'm sorry?

Like Moses and the tribes of Israel must have felt wandering the desert. You see there, he said, pointing with the toes of the tripod in the direction of the plateau. That is my Promised Land, and today I refuse to allow God or anyone else to keep me from it. He took three long strides and then, talking more to himself than to Bloom, said, When I return, it is here that I'll stay. No more running. When the construction is complete, I'll return, and when I do, you and I will become better acquainted. Until then, I must continue on. Simon quickened his pace.

Please, Bloom pleaded. He's sent me to you for the answer. I don't have the patience to wait.

As abruptly as he had reengaged his movement up the mountain, Simon Reuben stopped, and with a plume of dust drifting beyond him, he turned back and grabbed hold of Bloom's left hand.
Look
, he said as he held out his same hand, it couldn't be more plain. On Bloom's palm, just below his thumb, was a brown birthmark resembling a thorn growing from a stalk. On Simon's palm, in precisely the same location, was the identical blemish.

There, he said. Take that back to him and see what he says.

Bloom looked up at the familiar face and asked in a voice upset from the unexpected turn, You are my
brother
?

Go home and talk with our father.

He turned again and continued his charge up the mountain. Bloom didn't follow this time. He looked at his hand and then looked at Simon's. He watched it clench into a fist, which he used to drive himself ahead to the appointment he was keeping with himself at the top of the trail.

*   *   *

It was almost too much for Bloom to apprehend. He had a brother? An elder brother? How was it possible he had a brother? Headstrong and ambitious. Self-absorbed and easy to anger. A man who knew something of the world. Had he not been so astounded by this revelation, he might have stopped to wonder about his father's motives for having concealed his existence from him, but Bloom, for the time being, could only feel the preternatural thrill of the event. For the moment, he was filled with a joy he had never known before. He had a brother! An elder brother! Alive. Vibrant. Determined. Nothing else mattered to him. His only desire was to know Simon better, to stand with him when he did whatever it was he was going to do under Mount Terminus's unyielding light.

Father! he called out when he reached the front gardens.

Father! he called again into the mazes of hedgerows.

I've seen him! I've talked with him! I've done as you've asked!

Father?

Up here, Bloom heard from above. He pitched his head back and saw the elder Rosenbloom's profile edge out over the rail of the tower's arcade. I am here, my dear.

I'll come to you! And on Bloom continued in his enlivened state to the tower stairs. When he had climbed to the pavilion's landing, he discovered his father standing before the telescope, its small aperture pointing to the slope Bloom had just descended. Jacob's eyes wouldn't turn to his son; they gazed out in the same direction as the hollowed tube. He looked off into the distance as if he were still imagining the dramatic turn on the mountainside. Bloom was accustomed to his father's reserved silences, but this reticence to engage him he had never before encountered. His remove unnerved Bloom, and he couldn't help but wonder if by doing what his father had asked, he had somehow betrayed him; if by allowing himself to experience the quiver of exultation he felt in his joy, had he in some way breached the elder Rosenbloom's trust?

Father?

With his eyes still unable to look onto his son, Jacob said in a plaintive voice, The two of you, you're nearly one and the same.

Yes, said Bloom in a tone now matching his father's.

Yes, Jacob repeated, nearly one and the same. He nodded as a philosopher might when formulating a complicated course of logic. After a long silence, he turned, not to Bloom, but in the direction of the sea, and said, I've envisioned this day many times, you know. And each time I've lived this moment in my mind, I've never been able to move beyond this point in the conversation. You and I have often stood together in these temporal events of mine, very much as we are right now, and they've all concluded with the same result. Always we end as participants in a stillborn scene, one in which I'm unable to form the words of the story I must tell you. And here I am, paralyzed by the same hesitation, the same reluctance to say what I must say.

Please, Father, said Bloom. I must know. It's time I knew.

Jacob looked into his son's eyes for a few moments, almost as if he were bidding him farewell, then said, Come along.

*   *   *

In the drawing room that afternoon, the elder Rosenbloom placed in his son's hands a photograph and said, Tell me what you see. Bloom took the silver plate from him and saw on it a lustrous image of his young mother standing on either side of his father. Two mothers, each holding one of his father's arms. Is it an illusion? asked Bloom.

No, it isn't an illusion. On my left arm is your mother, Rachel. And on my right is her sister, Leah.

One was indistinguishable from the other. They were identical in every way. With no trace of a physical inconsistency. Pointing to Leah's image, Jacob said,
This
is Simon's mother. And Bloom now understood his father's hesitation in the tower. He now comprehended his unease, as he could hear a disquieting voice emerge within his mind, one calling into question everything he once thought he knew about the man who had fathered him. It was as if a mask had been lifted, revealing to him a face with which he wasn't at all familiar.

Jacob reached for the pouch of tobacco on the table beside his chair and with trembling hands packed the bowl of his pipe. With your mother's sister, he said, with Leah, I had a son. And before there could be any recriminations, Jacob began at the beginning. He told Bloom of the obscure origin of his, his mother's, and his aunt's birth, of their epic journey to and across the sea. He told him of the old Rabbi Rosenbloom and his wife, the life he, Rachel, and Leah shared at the orphanage. He described the day he learned they were lost to him, the years he apprenticed with Jonah Liebeskind, the circumstances in which he and Rachel found each other again. He told Bloom about his mother and his aunt's estrangement, how, together, he and Rachel searched out Leah. He recounted their happy reunion, the happy wedding, how content they felt upon their move to Woodhaven. He told Bloom the tale of Leah's deception, detailed the extent to which her betrayal destroyed his mother's spirit, described how devastated Rachel was when she received the announcement of Simon's birth, set out the order of events that led to Leah's death, to his mother's descent into madness, revealed to Bloom the identity of the man he had met at the sanitarium on the beach, explained to him how Simon had come to be in Samuel Freed's care.

They moved from the drawing room to the dining room, and Jacob continued to speak through dinner, during which time he chronicled for Bloom the history of Samuel Freed's extortion.

*   *   *

Some days after Leah died, Jacob told him, Sam Freed arranged for his men to meet him at his bank. On that day, Jacob provided them a large sum of money, more than enough, he thought, to provide for Simon's care for an entire lifetime. He thought, perhaps, that would be the extent of it. The following year, however, and every year afterward on the anniversary of Leah's death, Freed demanded more, and, having no recourse, Jacob provided him larger and larger amounts of money. With this money, he learned, Sam Freed was purchasing a great many burlesque and vaudeville houses throughout the city, and from all accounts Freed's fortunes rose. The theaters flourished and Freed prospered greatly, particularly after he had gathered his theatrical talent, hired photographers, and put them to work in an open-air studio on the riverfront.