by Grand, David
He wanted to teach his elder brother the art of slowing time, so he might ease his anxieties, and prolong his life, but, Bloom suspected, the fiery core of Simon’s temperament, his dybbuk, would burn through such a whimsical gesture with the heat of a magician’s flash paper. At the very least, he thought, he could insist Simon share his burdens with him, but every time Bloom made further inquiries into his affairs, when he expressed a sincere interest in knowing the particulars about the elaborate plans he’d envisioned for the land on either side of Mount Terminus and the barriers he faced trying to realize them, Simon quietly and patiently redirected his attention elsewhere.
* * *
The passage of time at this early stage of Bloom’s life could be measured as a collection of dots at the end of a pointillist’s brush. Bloom, in his gray years, would be able to relive his rite of passage on the studio lot only as a toilsome series of nonsequential events, a nonlinear pastiche of window treatments and cornices, light riggings and costume changes, painted mattes, dark rooms, and strips of film. Had he ever chosen to revisit these days in any detail, to make any sensible order of them, he would have needed to consult a filmography of Mount Terminus Productions. He could, however, always recall this much: in the time it took for one to see from the peak of Mount Terminus the first glimmer of his brother’s metal aqueduct reflect off the eastern range of the valley, in the time it took for his brother to fell the citrus groves across the basin and raze their stumps, in the time it took Gus to arrange and present hundreds of floral bouquets and bowls of fruit to his beloved Meralda, in the time it took Meralda to consent to a dinner out with Gus at the Pico House Hotel, Bloom had worked in various capacities on more than two dozen productions with the unremarkable but kindly Murray Abrams, and two other equally unexceptional but endearing directors, Ned Weiman and Bud Manning. He took part in the making of The Counterfeiters; The Count of No Account; The Adventures of Mr. Troubles; The Amateur Hypnotist; The Hebrew Fugitive; The Daughter of the Gods; The Gambler; Colossus and His Dog; Neptune’s Daughter; The Man Without a Name; Beyond Eden; A Cry in the Night; His Wife, the Acrobat; The Muse of the Mews; and Master and Man as well as a multitude of other movies whose titles escaped Bloom not long after they were released to the chain of Freed Theaters, as they weren’t worth remembering. In fact, not one of the productions on which Bloom spent his considerable efforts did he think as engaging as those pictures his brother had shown him the day he arrived with his projector and lifted Bloom into the sky on their aeronautical voyage. Not one could compare with the sophistication of Gottlieb’s The Magnetic Eye, or, for that matter, the half dozen three-reel pictures—Undine; Memento Mei; The Face in the Window; The Astronomer’s Dream; A Good Little Devil; The Overcoat—Gottlieb had made since Simon introduced Bloom to his work.
For almost three years, Bloom awoke every morning at sunrise and retired in a state of exhaustion long after the sun had set, and he had still caught only the briefest glimpses of Gottlieb from a distance, as Gottlieb generally kept to himself, except for the occasions he was on stage, when he became a shadow puppet behind the white panels of muslin his minions erected for him. For three years, Bloom waited patiently for Simon to determine that he was ready for Gottlieb’s guidance. For three years, he didn’t broach the subject. For three years, he waited patiently. But the youngster had become a man. He possessed bushels of black hair under his arms, a woolly nest of black pubis in which a finch could luxuriate with its mate, a face of thickening Semitic stubble that required a daily shave, a ripe musty smell he needed to scrub away after a long day’s labor. As he neared his seventeenth birthday, Bloom, looking forlorn, sat across from Murray Abrams on the empty set of a romantic melodrama, A Long Day in the Sun.
Why so glum, Rosenbloom?
It’s nothing.
You look like you’ve been fed some bad gefilte fish.
It’s a case of disappointment, not indigestion.
Disappointment? In what? In whom?
In the fates? In myself?… In Elias Gottlieb, if truth be told.
Gottlieb?
Yes, Gottlieb. I thought I would have had the opportunity to work with him by now.
And this is the cause of your dyspepsia?
Yes.
Better you should consider yourself fortunate. Blessed!
Why?
It’s Gottlieb! Even when he works with people, he works with no one other than Gottlieb, as there is no other human being on the face of the planet when Gottlieb is around, as there is no man more in love with Gottlieb than Gottlieb. Gottlieb. The man is a creature. A cretin. Too deformed in body and spirit to be loved by anyone other than himself. No one has ever told you this?
No.
And now that I’ve told you, you still sit there like a matzo ball?
What can I say, Mr. Abrams, I think he’s brilliant.
Gottlieb? Uhch. He’s unruly. Unpleasant. A grotesque. An unintended—unacceptable—consequence of your brother’s generosity.
How is that?
Like the punch line of a joke that gets no laughs, he wandered out of the desert while the company was between locations, and your brother, he takes him in as one would a stray dog. Gottlieb! He claimed to be a painter and a photographer, considered himself some sort of Plato or Aristotle, or some such mishegas. All I know is this, Rosenbloom: he never spent a day of his life working in the theater, knows nothing of production decorum, of human decorum, he’s unproductive, unprofitable, and your brother treats him like the fucking messiah. Trust me, Rosenbloom, you want nothing to do with this imp. Gottlieb’s concern is only for Gottlieb. To Gottlieb, everyone else is a shadow in a cave.
I would settle for being a shadow in Gottlieb’s cave, thought Bloom.
He didn’t have the heart to say this to Mr. Abrams, who continued to say Gottlieb as if the man’s name were a sneeze or a cough or a curse. If it’s what you want, go on, I won’t be offended. Get up off your ass and talk to your brother. Just stop with the moping and the acting like the love of your life was some Ophelia.
Mr. Abrams …
Go on! Go. You think I want to look at that long face any longer?
Bloom apologized to Murray Abrams and walked to his brother’s house. He paced the planks of his porch for a half hour until Simon peeked his head out the front door. Aren’t you going to come in?
No.
Would you like me to come out?
No.
Then what would have me do?
I would have you talk to Gottlieb.
I see.
I’m ready. I have long been ready.
From within the shadows of his foyer, Simon said, I know.
He knows, said Bloom.
Yes, I know. But it’s slightly more complicated than that.
What is?
Everything. Gottlieb included. Stay right there. Simon disappeared for a moment, and when he reappeared, he stepped out under the overhang, took Bloom by the arm, and walked him to his roadster. He opened the passenger door and commanded Bloom to get in.
Where are we going?
You’ll see when we get there.
That afternoon, they drove off the lot and down Mount Terminus’s winding road. At the bottom of the switchback they turned in the direction of town, traversed the hills of the boulevard for a little under an hour, and not long after they passed the heights of the Griffith subdivision, the dusty clay haze of the city’s asymmetrical grid came into view, the shallow channel of the river running through it, the lines of swaying palms and slow-moving trolleys drifting between them. A composite of architecture had risen up since Bloom first arrived at La Grande Station those many years ago. More and more buildings now towered over shaggy palm crowns, shouldered together along Broadway, stretched outward in the direction of Mount Terminus, and with them, people, hordes of them, had crowded there in greater numbers. They motored past old Sonora town, skirted around bicyclists, pushed through packs of pedestrians crossing the avenues, turned onto Broadway, and th
en into an alley behind a Freed Theater whose Moorish marquee read Master and Man. Simon parked beside the back door and told Bloom to follow him. From the bright light of the day, Simon delivered Bloom into a cool darkness choked with tobacco smoke, filled with the melodic vibration of organ music descending its scale to the lower octaves. They walked the length of a curtained corridor, at the end of which they arrived at an enormous screen flickering full of the snow-specked beards of Shelby Riordan and Hollis Grant playing the roles of Vasili Andreevich and his servant, Nikita. Master. Man. The picture was reaching its conclusion, when the two men were caught in a blizzard, unable to find the road to take them home. Bloom watched on as Vasili Andreevich, the selfish, self-important man of privilege, experienced an awakening, a revelation; he covered Nikita’s body from the cold, sacrificing himself for his humble but loyal peasant; Vasili, in that instant, becoming noble for the first time in the story, not only in name but also in the manner he conducted himself, in the face of death. Bloom and his brother stood at the edge of the curtain, beside the image of snowy tundra Bloom and Hannah Edelstein had painted together, and as the organ music began to swoon in a dramatic thrum, Simon said, Don’t look there. Look at the audience. Look at their faces. Bloom saw through the billows of smoke wet eyes glimmering in the flashes of light, women and men alike moved to tears by the unexpected change in Vasili’s character.
They haven’t just seen them, Simon whispered. They’ve become them. They don’t see what you see. They don’t see the flawed technique. They’ve forgotten where they are, who they are. They’ve forgotten those are grown men up there, pretending to be something they’re not. They only see what that man is doing for that other man, and it wrenches them in their guts. They don’t know it yet, or maybe they’ll never know it, but they are the better for it. They’ll walk out of the darkness into the light changed people. That, Joseph, is what you do for them. That, right there, is our business, to manufacture emotions, as quickly and as frequently as we can.
I know, said Bloom. It’s just …
What?
I see a better way. I see Gottlieb’s way. I see it, Bloom said, tapping a finger at his temple, up here, all the time.
Simon stepped close to Bloom and looked at him not unlike the way he had looked so intently at him when they first stood face to face on Mount Terminus, and he said, I know, I know you do.
Then why haven’t you allowed me to work with Gottlieb?
I haven’t disallowed it.
You haven’t encouraged it. You haven’t arranged it.
No, said Simon, I haven’t. But not because I don’t think you’re ready.
Why, then?
It’s simple mathematics, really. For every picture Gottlieb makes, Abrams makes four, Weiman makes six, Manning eight. And, well, you have been important to each of them. You’ve made them better at what they do, and I was afraid to give that up, because without them, the studio doesn’t run, the theaters don’t turn over pictures, and if we don’t have pictures to attract new audiences, the waterway doesn’t get built, the basin doesn’t get developed, families don’t buy homes, the rails to town don’t get laid, the boulevard doesn’t get paved, and we all continue living in a desert, possibly without a business, because, Joseph, I’m all in, well over my head, as deep as can be, I’m drowning in it.
I didn’t know.
You didn’t need to know. And you don’t need to worry about it. Listen, if you want to work with Gottlieb, you should work with Gottlieb. I won’t stand in your way. But you have to understand, it’s a position you’ll need to secure on your own. If I approach him and tell him what a gift you would be to him, he wouldn’t trust a word of it. I can mention your interest, but I can’t persuade him to do anything he doesn’t want to do on his own. Nor would I try.
Why not?
Because Gottlieb is Gottlieb. A special case. His value to me is what I expect your value will be to me one day. He’s an inventor, an innovator, in an art form that’s at its inception. When he innovates, the members of his crew absorb his innovations—they are transformed by them. When he is great, those who work with him become marginally better. The influence spreads, and that influence, however invisible it might seem to those on the lot, will be the very thing that keeps our studio relevant and profitable in the future. Gottlieb knows this. And he knows I know this. He knows how much I need him, how much I admire him and his pictures. He knows I won’t send him packing. So he takes great pleasure in refusing me anything and everything. If this is what you want, you’ll need to find a way to do it on your own.
* * *
Once a week, for months, Bloom sent Gottlieb an invitation to join him for dinner on the estate. And for months, Gottlieb sent no response in return. Over dinner one evening, he told Simon about having extended these invitations, and Simon told Bloom he had a thought about how he might just attract the elusive Gottlieb to the estate. What’s that? asked Bloom. Simon said he would share his idea in return for a small favor. Bloom asked his brother what he needed from him, and Simon said he had some business to discuss with Gerald Stern. He wondered if Bloom wouldn’t mind writing a letter on his behalf, telling Stern he had Bloom’s permission to contact him. When Bloom asked what was the matter he wanted to discuss with Stern, so he might mention it in his letter, Simon told him it wasn’t his affair to speak of. An old friend was in some trouble. He promised to find her an attorney, someone well liked and respected around town. More than that, he wouldn’t say, due to the sensitive nature of the woman’s predicament. In exchange for his advice, Bloom told his brother he would write the letter that night and put it in the mailbag in the morning. And with that settled, Simon advised the following. Rather than implore Gottlieb to do what you want him to do, he said, entice him with something he’ll find too irresistible to ignore.
Which would be what?
Well, I can tell you this: I’ve recently learned my friend Gottlieb has a deep fascination with historical artifacts. In particular? The type of objects you have on display in the library. That, my dear brother, is your way in.
* * *
That evening, Bloom wrote to Stern on behalf of his brother, and after he had spent a sufficient amount of time deliberating how he would word his missive to Gottlieb, he wrote:
Dear Mr. Gottlieb,
In the middle of the first century, a ship belonging to soda traders spread out along the Phoenician shore of the Belus River to prepare a meal of fish stew. 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 … I have treasures to share with you. They are here for you to view at your convenience.
Yours truly,
Joseph Rosenbloom
As with his invitations, his letter received no written response. Some weeks later, however, at the most unexpected time of the morning, something entirely unexpected happened. While he was eating his breakfast in the tower’s pavilion, an old nag carrying a man plodded through the front gates. When Bloom looked through his telescope and saw who it was, he asked Elijah, Is it possible? Is it him?
He looked again. It was him. It was most certainly him. Up the long drive rode the disheveled Elias Gottlieb, who, at that moment, was hunched over his seat in such a way he appeared to have taken ill. It soon became apparent to Bloom he was leaning over the old plug’s neck to whisper something in its ear—words of encouragement, perhaps? This, followed by a loving rub of its hoary mane. Having seen the intimate moment shared between man and beast, the worry and anticipation Bloom felt about engaging this artist he so much admired, the man he had so long been waiting to meet, was to some extent eased. Here, he tried to convince himself, was a good man, a man from whom he had nothing to fear. Hardly the creature Mr. Abrams insisted he was.
Bloom was moved to call out and greet Mr. Gottlieb, but when he was about to speak, he reconsidered; he thought it more prudent to wait, to
watch. Of course! He would allow Meralda the opportunity to greet their guest. She would, after all, enjoy escorting him inside. Take his hat and coat. Offer him some sweet morsel she had baked that morning. I don’t want to appear too eager, he said to Elijah. Overly zealous is not attractive. And so Bloom looked on while the great Elias Gottlieb, the unequaled Elias Gottlieb, tied his horse to the hitching post beside the service entrance and made his way inside. Bloom, meanwhile, stood in the sanctuary of his aviary long enough for Meralda to have engaged their visitor with small talk, to offer him her small kindnesses. He then began his descent. He rounded the first turn in the stairwell and then the second, and when he reached the second-story landing, a horrible sound, a most unsettling and unwelcome sound, rose up to meet him. It was a moan, a bellowing, gut-wrenching moan, punctuated by a sharp jag of sobs. No, he said. No no no. Not now. Bloom halted and listened, hoped his loving cook would regain her composure … But no. The noise repeated and reverberated upward through the hollow shaft. Only after he came to the conclusion that the noise was not likely to stop did he proceed down, slowly, apprehensively, and when he eventually reached the bottom of the stairs, he peeked through the kitchen door to see Meralda’s shaking shoulders. She stood before the butcher block with her back to the window, in front of which two skinned rabbits hung from strings by their necks, and, to Bloom’s dismay, he discovered, clenched to her chest, was Mr. Gottlieb’s bearded cheek. Bloom had never noticed when he caught distant glimpses of Gottlieb on the studio lot what a diminutive figure he was—he always appeared to him larger than life, but even when wearing a pair of lifts and standing with a straight back, as he did today, Bloom was surprised to see his face reach only as high as Meralda’s bosom. Presently, one lens of his spectacles was buried in soft flesh, while the other magnified an amber eye, bemused in its expression, as if it were looking off to some distant horizon in search of a train. When Mr. Gottlieb’s eye caught sight of Bloom arrested at the doorway, the tufted brow residing on his forehead lifted into an arch, at which point Mr. Gottlieb motioned with a hand for the young Rosenbloom to come closer, and when Bloom had done so, Gottlieb rolled his visible eye to the countertop, where Bloom saw what it was that had upset Meralda enough to grab hold of this perfect stranger in the same manner she had so often embraced him when he stood at Mr. Gottlieb’s height. There before Meralda was a third hare, its belly sliced open, its viscera neatly piled beside its head, and at its feet lay a dozen miniature rabbits, each the size of a small toe.
