Mount Terminus: A Novel

by Grand, David

  He should have wanted to scream out at them, to curse them, shame them, chase them down, but he couldn’t, he simply couldn’t, and not because he was afraid, rather, because contrary to what he was supposed to have felt at this moment in which his worst fear had been made real, he was overtaken by a profound feeling of release. He could feel the intensity of his father’s torment lift. He could sense it being swept out to sea by the desert winds. Vaporized by the heat. It was wrong, it was all wrong, but Bloom, who was, indeed, doing his best to struggle against this deviant emotion, couldn’t help himself.

  The euphoria outweighed him.

  PART II

  LIFE

  Meralda wept. And wept. And wept. She sat vigil at the promontory’s edge for a day and a half until the sheriff arrived with two deputies and a mule. They dragged the elder Rosenbloom out of the ravine and set his broken body on the dining room table. There she continued to weep at his side until the gravediggers, along with the rabbi and three members of the chevra kadisha—tailors all—entered through Mount Terminus’s blackened gate. Roya led the men carrying picks and shovels to the burial site. The rabbi, who was forbidden by religious law to sit in the same dwelling as the dead, consoled Meralda in the courtyard. The tailors, meanwhile, performed the tahara. They lifted Jacob into a metal basin and lit candles all around. They covered the remains with a shroud and disposed of the dirty clothes, all the time careful not to breach the space over his body where the soul was believed to make its departure. They carried in pails of water and washed him clean; they wrapped him in a tallith and cocooned him in knotted linen, recited at the end Tahara he Tahara he Tahara he. He is pure. He is pure. He is pure. Jacob, orphaned child, we ask forgiveness from you if we did not treat you respectfully, but we did as is our custom. May you be a messenger for all of Israel. Go in peace, rest in peace, and arise in your turn at the end of days. Bloom, all this time, sat with Roya in the rose garden, watching the two bearded gravediggers labor into the earth. The young Rosenbloom couldn’t fathom the idea of burying his father’s remains inside the garden labyrinths among his dismembered creatures. He chose instead to walk about the estate until he was drawn to the right burial place. For the day and a half he waited for the sheriff to arrive, for that one day more he waited for the rabbi and his cohort, he walked and went without sleep, until he heard in his delirium through the rushes of wind the faintest whisper of his name, so faint, he disregarded it as a figment and began to move on. But he then heard it again, again as if his name had been spoken by the currents of air, and this time he turned around, and found nothing, only roses, clustered and swaying, red upon yellow upon white upon red, roses set against strata of veined rock and blue sky. The garden radiated outward in concentric circles at the center of which rose up Cupid and Psyche fixed in marble embrace. The desert wind again swept over Mount Terminus, but this time Joseph didn’t hear his name; rather, this time, a short burst of sunlight reflected into his eyes. He now wandered into the garden, to the source of the light, followed one of the gravel paths that joined the circles at each quarter turn, and when he reached the innermost ring—the one whose circumference enclosed the naked angel holding in his arms his love sleeping the Sleep of Death—he stepped onto a bed of red petals disseminated from their buds, and walked onto nests of thorny stalks uprooted in the storm, and there at Psyche’s lifeless feet, he decided, was where he would bury his lifeless father. Here, on the last day of Yamim Noraim, on the morning before the sun would set onto Yom Kippur, on the day he and his father would have atoned at the lakeshore, they all gathered. Here, the rabbi sent his father on his way with a few prayers and a few kind words about a man he didn’t know. And beginning with Bloom, they each emptied a fistful of dry earth over the linen shroud, and left the gravediggers to their chore.

  * * *

  As the small processional wound its way out of the rose garden on the day of Jacob’s funeral, Roya handed Bloom a note. It is time for you to lead the way. Every day for seven weeks, Roya followed him to the headland overlooking the ravine that had swallowed Jacob Rosenbloom, and every day for seven weeks, Bloom recited the mourner’s prayer he had heard his father recite for his mother; and every day for seven weeks, Roya followed him back to the villa, to his bedroom, where she sat with him and fed him his meals. At night, she remained at his bedside. She reclined in an armchair set under a shrouded mirror, and watched him sleep, and if he stirred, she moved to the edge of his mattress to stroke his hair until he settled back to rest. And if he became restless from a disturbing dream, she pursed her lips and blew on his neck until his body was once again still.

  One night when Bloom felt this pleasant sensation, he extended his arm until his hand had reached the source of the breeze, and felt in his grasp a soft fabric, beneath which his fingers discovered the weight and warmth of some tender and unfamiliar thing. He was neither awake nor asleep when he opened his eyes, but when he saw his hand had become acquainted with the rise of Roya’s chest, he grew more alert in all the ways one expects a young man to do so. His silent companion sat at the edge of the bed, and he could make out, in the glow of gaslight, her eyes shut and her hand hidden under the pleats of her skirt. She occasionally drew in a sharp breath through her nose and arched her back, not pulling away from Joseph, as he expected she would, but, rather, the more the bed shuddered with the small motions of her concealed hand, the harder she pressed herself into his palm. Bloom thought he saw her mouth frown a rictus of disapproval at his unconscious act, but he soon became aware of the spirited pulse in her chest. The bed continued to tremble and the more vibrant the movement, the more shallow Roya’s breaths. The motion and the excitement he saw flare on her nose, in the shape of her lips, he could sense, was building to something; to precisely what, he didn’t know, but in that instance she appeared as if she were going to speak. For the first time, he believed he would hear Roya’s voice bellow an animalistic howl or screech. It was for this, with great anticipation, he waited, wondered with some excitement as to what the sound would be. But when the moment arrived, other than the respiration from her lungs and the rhythmic creak of the chair, Roya produced no sound at all. Instead, a silent tremor radiated over her entire musculature. Her body contracted in on itself. Her lips quivered. The tendons in her neck attenuated. Her free hand clenched into a fist. And then, an aftershock, and then one more, each new tremor diminished in strength from the one preceding it. And then, a deep inhalation, expressed in one last audible breath. And then, calm. And then, silence. Her eyes now opened, awakening the darkness with their light, and when her sight adjusted to the dim luster of the burning gas lamps, and she saw Bloom had borne witness to her pleasure, she reacted with the same composure she reacted to the most joyful and most tragic of events. With placid temper, she reached for his wrist and gently pulled his hand away so the tips of his fingers relaxed and skimmed over the nub of her breast. And with this, she did what she did with any other nocturnal disturbance: she stroked away the hair from the young Rosenbloom’s eyes and brushed her fingers over his cheek, to say, in her way, he had done nothing for which he needed to be forgiven. And neither had she.

  * * *

  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 plac
ed 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 eve
ry 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.