Mount Terminus (8 page)

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When they sat down to dinner that evening, Bloom's mind remained fixed on the images he observed that afternoon through the eyepiece of the telescope. Seeing as it was his father who revealed to him the brigade of laborers advancing up the mountain, he assumed he would explain the circumstances of their arrival. But the elder Rosenbloom deliberately avoided the subject, and, instead, spoke for the entirety of their meal about the many ways the visible world had excited his boyhood imagination. He spoke of the philosophers and men of science whose intent was to prove there was a mystical unity in all creation. He spoke of the ways in which he saw the world as ecstatically alive, to what extent he believed light to be the exuberance of God's great goodness and truth, how mirrors and prisms divine the means to reflect that truth. He spoke of Shakespeare's Prospero and Marlowe's Faust, of a disciple of John Dee's who descended into an erupting Vesuvius to study its smoking vents, of a mad fantasist who spent his life's work disproving the Tower of Babel could have ever reached the moon. For as long as men of imagination appreciate the wonders of the mind, he insisted, they will draw inspiration from such men; throughout the ages, their spirits will continue to manifest themselves in characters we can only now dream of.

That, my dear Bloom, was the type of man I wanted to become, Jacob said. One whose ideas and inventions had the power to shape visions.

Here his father paused. And here Bloom looked up from his meal, and he could see a wet film had formed over his father's eyes. But you can see in my face every day what I've become.

No, said Bloom.

Yes, insisted his father. He pushed back his chair and stood up. Come, there's something I want to share with you in the drawing room. Something, I believe, you need to see.

*   *   *

If we lived one hundred years ago, his father said as he led Bloom to the parlor after dinner, if this were a great ballroom or cathedral, and held in it several hundred spectators, I might introduce what I am about to show you by declaring, That which is about to happen before your eyes is not frivolous spectacle. It is made for the man who thinks, for the philosopher who likes to lose his way. This is a spectacle that man can use to instruct himself in the bizarre effects of the imagination. When it combines vigor and derangement. If I were the great Etienne-Gaspard, who began all his phantasmagorias this way, I would spread open my arms in some grand gesture and you would see floating into the center of the room an apparition, or a phantom, or the head of Medusa, or, perhaps, have rising up out of Daedalus's labyrinth the waxen wings of Icarus moving toward the radiance of the sun. And, I daresay, Jacob said with a hush, you would be dazzled.

The elder Rosenbloom ushered his son toward a table in the center of the room and said, Open it. There on the table rested a wooden box not unlike the one his father had retrieved earlier that day from the crescent-shaped dwelling. The young Rosenbloom did as he was told: he unlatched an iron clasp and pushed open the lid, underneath which he found, immersed in fitted compartments, two copper objects with thick veins of patina running through their wear. The shape of the first resembled an oil lamp; the other was a cylindrical lens at whose base was a slot into which one could slide a silver dollar. Within the tube, Bloom saw when he pulled it out, was a configuration of mirrors; in its orbit was fixed a clouded lens. Careful now, said his father as he removed the lamp, it's very old. Jacob took the tube from Bloom's hands, delicately fitted the two parts together, and set them on the table. From a separate compartment, he pulled out a box within the box, and when he opened it, he asked Bloom to extinguish the drawing room's flames. As soon as Bloom had done this, and they were ensconced in darkness, his father struck a match and lit the lamp, and he instructed the young Rosenbloom to sit facing the empty wall. Bloom sat down in the armchair his father slept in most evenings and heard the first of the slides slip through the slot. When it was illuminated by the lamplight, he saw an image of his mother standing before a window in which he could see, reflecting back, her profile. She painted these, said his father. With a very fine brush and a magnifier, she reduced herself into miniature. Always with a shadow image standing somewhere nearby, watching, observing. Do you see, my dear? It's important that you see.

Bloom, who hadn't initially seen the shadow, now saw it quite clearly and said as much to his father. Yes, Father, I see.

The elder Rosenbloom changed the slide to a likeness of his wife standing before a mirror in which her reflection stared past her to the ghostly double, this one's lines better defined, bold enough that he could see expressed, in the creases of its eyes, scorn and contempt for the image reflecting from the mirror. And this one?

Yes, Father, this one is clear.

And then, said his father, she disposed of the windows and mirrors altogether, and, well, you can see here—again he switched the slide—and here—and again switched—and here, how the shade becomes more and more lifelike, and begins to resemble your mother in every way. You see, my dear, what she saw?

Yes, Father, I see what she saw.

Yes, said his father.

But why? asked Bloom. Why did she depict herself this way?

Bloom heard the tink of glass, and then the sound repeated, and then again, and he knew from that sound, and from the pauses between them, as much as his father wanted to continue with this, he had reached an impasse.

Tomorrow, Father, said the young Rosenbloom. There is always tomorrow.

Yes, his father agreed. Tomorrow.

*   *   *

The following evening, and for several more evenings afterward, Bloom's father produced a new optical device, and with each new device, Bloom witnessed the furtherance of his mother's peculiar preoccupation. Animated on spinning disks and carousels and drums, his mother ran away from herself through long corridors, hid from herself in dark closets, knelt before herself to beg for forgiveness.

Do you see? was his father's refrain.

To which Bloom said, Yes, Father, I see.

Do you see how she suffered?

Yes, Father, I see. But I still don't understand the cause of her suffering.

No, said Jacob. How could you?

And as these viewings went on night after night, Bloom said on more than one occasion, Please, Father, you needn't subject yourself to these if it causes you pain.

Yes, said his father, I do.

*   *   *

At home, in Woodhaven, his father told Bloom on one of these nights, Mother was so possessed by these visions she could no longer be left to her solitude. Both her doctor and our rabbi thought she should be committed to an asylum, but I couldn't do that to her. I decided for both our sakes to take her away. I put the foundry in the hands of my associate, Mr. Geller, who you may or may not remember … I packed a few trunks and we boarded a train with no destination in mind. We traveled aimlessly for several months, wandered deeper and deeper into the heartland, and along the way, if your mother chose to be stubborn or defiant, if her condition made her listless or confused, I didn't care—I would carry her in my arms if need be, and force her to stand on her feet, to open her eyes, to look upon the wondrous beauty we encountered along the route of our journey, and the more distance we gained from home, the more westward we moved, the more I agitated your mother to be active, the more she began to resemble the woman I had fallen in love with. By happenstance, we met a man in town who told us of this place, this estate, and one day we visited it. Mother was immediately drawn to the gardens and the groves, to the view at the edge of the promontory; on the summit of the mountain, in the quiet of the parlors, she felt at peace with her thoughts and at ease with me, so the day following, I bought it, I bought it all, the entire mountain and a great deal of the land extending to the sea, so no soul could intrude on Mother's happiness. And not very long after we arrived, some several months had passed, perhaps, no more, Mother started painting again, and took pleasure in her work. In landscapes, and only landscapes. Absent from them were any human figures at all. I, of course, encouraged this. And to show her how much so, we periodically ventured out into the valley in search of new terrain. To inspire her eye. And when she tired of the valley's barrenness, we journeyed beyond it. One day, while roaming trails we weren't familiar with, we arrived at the river I have taken you to, and then at the lake, and when we reached that enormous body of water, and looked upon its calm surface, Mother saw in her reflection something of herself she hadn't observed in a very long time. Whatever it was she saw, she felt moved to wade into that water, fully clothed, to the knees at first, then to the waist, and the neck, until she was immersed, her yellow skirt floating around the top of her head, she looked like a daisy, full of warmth and light. In that instance, on the shore of those waters we stand before on the Day of Atonement, your mother transformed. She was reborn. As if some agent of God had revived her spirit.

And in the days that followed, as a gesture of love, I suppose, or perhaps as a way to preserve the place where I witnessed this miracle, I was compelled to seek out the men who owned the water rights to the lake, and, to protect that place of sacred beauty, to preserve the landmark that filled me with hope, I bought them as well. I hired a local family to manage the irrigation of the farms in the region, to manage the lands and the wildlife, and for the few years Mother and I lived on the estate, we frequently traveled there, often enough, for certain … But then we were happy. More happy than we had ever been. And with our happiness constant for an extended passage of time—as people are prone to do—we both began to forget our troubles. We forgot what condition of mind Mother was in when we first arrived on Mount Terminus. She and I, both, took for granted the miracle we had experienced in the rift valley, at the lakeshore, and I, thinking Mother's change was irreversible, started to feel restless. She had become pregnant with you, my dear, and as I saw her growing larger and larger, I selfishly longed for Woodhaven, to return to the business, to my workshop, to the foundry, to do something more industrious than caring for my wife, and I began to wonder, what precisely was keeping us from going home? Mother, after all, had been well for so long, I didn't think it wrong or unfair, I certainly didn't think it a risky proposition to return. And, of course, when I did make the proposal, Mother convinced me I had sacrificed enough of my time for her. She said it was important I return to my work. She said herself she felt the pull of Woodhaven, that she dreamed of raising you in our old home. And while I was convinced these words were spoken from her heart, I did see something in her eyes during that conversation, something I chose to ignore. It was little more than a flicker of light, what amounted to no more than a few frames in one of her projections, a miniature moment cautioning me she was still as fragile as she had ever been. In that exchange—had I only been more alert—I would have seen how easily she could reverse course. Instead, who knows what my mind did? Disregarded the possibility? Interpreted it as a vestigial fear from a period in our marriage I believed to be long since past? And so, we packed away what we had accumulated here over the years, and returned to the East, where, in reverse course, she experienced a decline in such small gradations I wasn't even aware it was taking place. Not until it was too late. Not until she had disappeared from me again did I understand to what extent she was irretrievably lost.

You must remember, Jacob said after a long silence, how faraway her eyes could be. And Bloom recalled how she stared into the fires at night.

You do remember, don't you?

Yes, Father. I do.

Yes?

Yes. Like you. In the gardens.

Yes, said the elder Rosenbloom with a contemplative pause. Like me in the gardens.

*   *   *

The morning after his father confessed to Bloom what had been weighing on his conscience these many years, the elder Rosenbloom walked into the courtyard carrying a crowbar, and proceeded up the steps to the crescent dwelling. Bloom watched from his bedroom window as his father wedged the bar's bucked teeth behind the shutters and pressed his body into the work of dislodging them. A creak sounded, followed by a loud crack. Jacob maneuvered his way around the edges, one window after the next, the creak and crack building into a steady rhythm, and before the sun had reached its apex in the sky, a pile of discarded wood gathered on the landing. Meralda went and returned with a mop and pail, and when she had finished her part, the elder Rosenbloom stood at his son's door and said, There is more to say, and soon enough, I will say it all, but for the time being, my dear, come along. Bloom followed his father out of his room and down the stairs, into the yard and up the stone steps to the top of the mesa, and there Bloom saw through the windows, a room, far from derelict, certainly never burned from within, but, rather, a spacious opening, bright and clean and white. I've cleared everything away and arranged it in the library, said his father, then he pointed to a large wooden cabinet with a scope rising out of the top, All for that.

What is it? asked Bloom.

It was for that, he said, I sacrificed your mother's calm.

They walked around the corner and entered the dwelling, and once there his father led him to the back of the cabinet. He pulled away its covering to reveal inside a complex system of spools and feeds, clips and mechanisms throughout which snaked a gray film. This one, Bloom's father said as he touched his finger to a network of cogs, is the Rosenbloom Drive. Without which, neither this device nor any motion picture projector can function properly. From this, he said, we want for nothing. As he turned the reels with his finger, he said, It's little more than a timepiece, really, a mechanism that makes it possible for your eye to perceive a crisp and fluid movement of light and shadow, leaving the mind free from distraction to interpret the images as it would the life passing before you. His father reached into a compartment, pulled out a battery the size of an ingot, and replaced it with another of the same. He then handed Bloom a nickel and said he should go ahead and give it a try. Bloom walked around and slipped the coin into the slot at the front of the box, and as soon as it clunked into a metal bin, the viewer's mechanisms sounded a whir and a continuous clicking, and up through the eyepiece, he witnessed a flickering of light. Do you hear it? asked his father. The clicks?