Mount Terminus: A Novel

by Grand, David

  In a voice muffled by the buffer of Meralda’s chest, the little man said with a crushed smile, Come come. Come, do away with them so I might catch my breast—breath! for God’s sake—so I might catch my breath. The hand that was consoling Meralda’s flank, he now used to thumb Bloom over to the counter. Please, he said, she is mightier than she appears. His hand returned to comforting Meralda, who was lost to the world she joined when she disappeared from this one. Bloom edged closer to the counter, on which he could see more clearly how carefully she had washed the litter clean and how respectfully she had arranged it. Side by side each unfinished body lay next to its sibling, very calm, very serene, as if they had been prepared for burial by the hand of a skilled mortician.

  Go on, said Gottlieb. Out of sight.

  Bloom gathered the lifeless bodies into his shirtfront and, proceeding as if the small nuggets were still alive and could feel every movement he made, he walked out the service entrance onto the drive with his vision focused on the creases of the unborn eyes, on the folds of tender skin, expecting at any moment for the eyes to awaken, for the limbs to wriggle. His attention was so narrow in this instance, he was unaware of what stood in his path. He was so concentrated, he didn’t see, obstructing his route to the front gardens, the ass of the old nag Gottlieb had ridden in on. With his eyes mesmerized by the sunlight illuminating the capillaries under the rabbits’ vellum skin, he collided with the horse’s backside with enough momentum that he spilled from his shirt the stillborn litter. It scattered onto the gravel, and as soon as it did, the horse rocked forward, and when it stepped back to right itself, it moved side to side as would an old drunk set off balance, and it proceeded to crush onto the stones with each clumsy step of its brittle hooves the entire brood, and at that moment, Bloom, who had been knocked on his back from the concussion against the nag’s ass, heard from behind him a basso profundo guffaw, which, like Elias Gottlieb’s eyebrows and nose, belonged to a fuller, taller, more prodigious man. The resonance struck Bloom as would a clap of thunder. So foreign and contagious was the sound of Gottlieb’s laugh, Bloom felt forming deep inside him, in the deepest region of his innards, a laugh so sustaining when it reached the narrow passage of his throat, it hurt upon eruption from his body, and once it began he couldn’t make it stop—it possessed him. For more time than could be considered dignified, he made a spectacle of himself. He rolled around on the gravel, pounding his fist on the small stones until he felt tears running down his cheeks.

  * * *

  Your brother tells me you and I are kindred spirits, said Gottlieb as Bloom upturned some earth under the purple-hued shade of a bloomed jacaranda. He spoke with a pipe lodged in the corner of his mouth. The smoke departing his lips curdled into the kinks of his mustache and hung in the nostrils of a nose whose bulbous tip was shaped like the bent-over buttocks of a well-fed woman. He thinks you’re something, Gottlieb said of Bloom’s brother.

  But you don’t believe him.

  And why should I? He’s a typical macher. Like all macher moneymen, if a man can earn him a dollar, this is enough to make him something.

  He saw something in you once, didn’t he?

  He saw a helpless, desperate man wandering the desert without shoes and water. He thought I had an intriguing face. His words, said Gottlieb, intriguing face. He wanted to put it in a picture. As a destitute man dying of thirst in a wasteland, who was I to deny him the pleasure of putting this intriguing face of mine anywhere he desired?

  Bloom looked up from his hole and at Mr. Gottlieb’s features. There was a feral quality to Gottlieb’s appearance. He was broad in the forehead, the bones of his cheeks protruded into a narrowing curve, and his chin—Bloom could see under the thick growth of his beard—formed at an acute angle, and he felt himself nodding in agreement with his brother’s assessment. It is an intriguing face, he said to Gottlieb.

  Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s the face of the primordial wood. Had I been born with haunches and a tail, if I cantered off in search of a glade after my mother deposited me onto the earth, it would have come as a surprise to no one.

  Bloom smiled at this. It’s a handsome face.

  Gottlieb shrugged. It’s a face. Gottlieb watched Bloom fill the hole he’d dug for the remains of the litter. The young Rosenbloom placed the crushed bodies inside the opening, and with the trowel he had used to dig the small grave, covered them over with clods of dirt. When he had patted down the mound, Gottlieb pushed his back off the smooth bark of the tree and walked out from under its shadows in the direction of the courtyard. Bloom left his father’s old tool on top of the tiny grave and took to Gottlieb’s side. Now tell me, said the man, who gave you the brains to write those words in your last note?

  My father.

  And where is this father of yours?

  Bloom pointed a finger to the center of the rose garden. There. In his grave.

  And your mother?

  In her grave. A great distance away.

  Fatherless and motherless.

  Yes, said Bloom.

  I see, said Gottlieb, and not without pity.

  Bloom walked Gottlieb through the pergola into the courtyard and led him inside. They walked upstairs and entered the library. Here, Bloom said, looking down on his companion, this is what I wanted to share with you. With his arm outstretched, he led Gottlieb to a table running the full length of the library’s windows. On it were arranged in the order his father had left them the optical devices he’d inherited and collected from the time he was a child. Indonesian shadow puppets on one end, the very first Phantoscope equipped with the Rosenbloom Loop on the other. On shelves behind the objects were notebooks and pamphlets, antiquarian publications written in Latin, French, and German, boxes upon boxes of glass slides from phantasmagorias performed by Etienne-Gaspard. And then, on a separate shelf, there rested leather folders stuffed with designs and descriptions of patents for many of these objects, his father’s included. Gottlieb walked the length of the table with the fluff of his beard pressed to his chest, his bony little fingers tugging at curls.

  That and my mother were Father’s great passions, said Bloom in response to Gottlieb’s silence.

  Too engrossed in what he saw, Gottlieb made a guttural sound from the back of his throat. Bloom placed his hands in his trouser pockets and took a seat on a sofa, and from there he watched Gottlieb run a finger over the items. Before one of the magic lanterns he stopped and lingered for a while, then did the same when he saw a folio whose front cover read, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae. This, he said as he pointed to the old book, and that, he said of the lantern, what did your father tell you about these?

  Nothing.

  Nothing about where he acquired them?

  No. Nothing at all.

  A shame, said Gottlieb. The little man pulled the folio from the shelf and opened it. Slowly and deliberately—with great care—he turned its pages, paused every now and again to take in what he saw. Would you mind very much, he asked, if I write to a friend of mine and invite him here to examine these?

  Of course not.

  My friend, he’s a scientist, of a kind. He’ll be intrigued by such a comprehensive collection. More than intrigued, I should think.

  He’s welcome anytime.

  Gottlieb now walked over to Bloom and looked beyond him to the library’s shelves. From the beleaguered looks of you, he said, I’m going to conjecture you’ve read nearly every book in this room.

  Bloom nodded.

  Gottlieb began walking along the orderly rows of bindings at Bloom’s back and began to quiz him. You’ve seen the world of Homer.

  To this Bloom nodded once more.

  Gottlieb pointed to a nearby shelf.

  You know Scheherazade and her golden tongue?

  He did.

  Studied the cosmologies of Copernicus, Ptolemy, and Galileo?

  He had.

  Visited with Dante and Milton?

  Yes, he said to these, too.

  And on Gottlieb walk
ed some more and pointed some more, and Bloom continued to say yes. Yes to Leonardo and Swift, Diderot and Voltaire, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and all the books Gottlieb catalogued. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, he said to all of it.

  And you can quote Pliny the Elder to me?

  Yes, said Bloom.

  Do you know what all this tells me, Rosenbloom?

  No.

  It tells me, Gottlieb said as he took a seat across from Bloom, you have a mind too bright to waste on that halfwit Abrams and the nitwits he keeps company with—those other journeymen incompetents in which your brother sees something.

  Although Bloom didn’t believe Mr. Gottlieb was inaccurate in his estimation of his mentors, he nevertheless came to the defense of the men and women he considered to be his friends and protectors. They’re hardly halfwits and nitwits, he argued.

  Why? Because they’ve been kind to you? Stroked you until you purred? Coddled you in their knowing hands to show you something of their world?

  They have been kind to me, said Bloom. Kind and generous.

  Of course they have. Your brother owns them, Rosenbloom. It’s his money that allows them their livelihood. They should lavish you with kindness and attention if they know what’s good for them.

  Taking offense at this, Bloom said firmly, I expected no special attention.

  Gottlieb leaned forward in his seat and with a seriousness of purpose scrutinized Bloom’s face. His tawny eyes lingered on him in the same way they lingered over the lantern and the book. No, he said, I don’t believe you did. Gottlieb protruded his lower lip. Allowed a moment more to pass. Clever, loyal, and good-natured? he said, waggling a finger. A dangerous disposition for a young artist. He shook his head at Bloom with disapproval and started to once again twist the curls of his beard. So, he said, I’ve seen what I’ve come to see. Now what?

  I’m not sure, said Bloom.

  Well, said Gottlieb, you do away with the pretense and you tell me the real reason why I’m here today.

  Bloom searched for a way to begin describing how important this moment was for him. He tried to formulate an argument in which he could articulate the effect Gottlieb’s pictures had had on the way he perceived his craft, but he failed to speak.

  I am at best, what, Rosenbloom? Four feet, eleven inches in height?

  I’m sorry?

  Do you generally fear men a little more than half your size?

  No, Mr. Gottlieb.

  You are what? A regal six feet in stature?

  Bloom shook his head. I don’t know.

  And you—a giant Jew, a colossal Semite whose ancestors likely commingled with villainous Cossacks—sit across from me like a milksop? Have I not praised you enough? What? Do I need to cradle you in my arms?

  I beg your pardon.

  Or is it because you believe I’m the intolerant dog everyone says I am? Or maybe you’ve concluded all on your own, I am that intolerant dog?

  I don’t know.

  Well, you should know. What is a man—what is an artist—if he doesn’t know his own mind? His own heart. What kind of weakling are you?… And your brother thought you and I were kindred spirits? Nonsense!

  Bloom now wondered if perhaps Mr. Abrams was right, after all. Perhaps Gottlieb was too enthralled with himself, too devoted to his adversarial role to extend a hand and guide him.

  Well? said Gottlieb.

  All right, then, said Bloom. Yes, if you must know the truth. Yes, I fear that you might be the rabid dog everyone makes you out to be. The instant Bloom let these words slip from his lips, he wondered if he should retract them, but his riposte shaped a broad smile on Mr. Gottlieb’s goatish face, a smile he let linger for some time.

  What? said Bloom. What is it?

  What is it? he asks. Still smiling broadly, now to the ceiling, Gottlieb extended his arms as if he were seeking an embrace, then looked back down to Bloom. A sign of life! Of honesty! This is what it is.

  Again, without intending to, Bloom in response to Mr. Gottlieb’s condescension shook his head with a snarl of consternation. An entirely involuntary reflex.

  Aha! Gottlieb, delighted at the sound of Bloom’s small exhalation, was now pointing with both hands. Listen to that: a set of balls has descended! Come now, he cajoled, his arms waving in toward his chest as if motioning a boat into a slip. Sit up in your seat. Pull back your shoulders. And speak!

  Bloom was resistant to do anything this vicious little man asked of him, but, as if he were being pulled by invisible strings, he slowly sat up in his seat and drew back his shoulders. And now at a loss, said, What would you have me do now, Mr. Gottlieb?

  Say what you want from me, Rosenbloom! Tell me why you’ve written to me once a week for more than three months. Say it! Once and for all! Commit yourself to your own cause!

  It was at that moment Bloom understood precisely what was happening. He was in the midst of his first lesson. Mr. Gottlieb was, in effect, teaching him how to communicate with him in such a way he could tolerate Bloom’s company. Now that he understood what game Gottlieb was playing, Bloom, with as much dignity as he could find within himself after recovering from Mr. Gottlieb’s humiliations, said without any constraint whatsoever, I want to work as your apprentice, Mr. Gottlieb.

  Gottlieb leaned forward in his seat so his face was near Bloom’s. In a tone no longer playful, but dead serious, he asked, And I should accept you, this meek wisp of a boy, as my protégé, why?

  Bloom now leaned forward in his seat, and with his nose only inches from Gottlieb’s grotesque protrusion, he said in a gritty voice charged with a conviction he didn’t know resided within him until this very moment, For reasons I can list ad nauseam, Mr. Gottlieb, I’m able to speak of what I find brilliant in your pictures. To my great misfortune, it seems, I’ve been cursed as one of your great admirers, and, however foolhardy it might be, I want to learn from you everything you can teach me. If such a thing is possible.

  Now there, whispered Gottlieb as he pulled back from Bloom and nodded with approval, is a man to whom I wouldn’t mind imparting my wisdom. Gottlieb rose to his full, stunted height, and said, We’ll waste no time! He walked to a nearby desk and pulled out from a drawer a piece of paper, on which he scribbled a few lines. Paused for a moment, then scribbled a few more. Here, he said, a dramatic sketch for you to do with as you please. I give you three weeks to draw up a scenario. Plan for two reels. Twenty minutes, no more. Prove to me you have what I consider something, and then we’ll see. In the meanwhile, you stay away from that stronghold of amateurs and poseurs down there. You remain here on the estate.

  But I was meant to be on set with Mr. Evans this afternoon.

  I’ll inform him—and all the others—you belong to me for the time being. You understand? You belong to me.

  The thought of this troubled Bloom. He had in the time he’d worked on the lot grown accustomed to the company of Mr. Evans and Murray Abrams, of Hannah Edelstein and Constance Grey. He’d grown accustomed to the discipline and rhythms of his routine. He would especially miss meeting Gus for lunch in the canteen and eating the food Meralda prepared for them each morning.

  If you’re hesitant to make a commitment, said Gottlieb, if you’re unwilling to sacrifice what I think necessary …

  No, said Bloom. I’ll do as you ask.

  Not even Simon will drag you down there, understood? If he asks what’s become of you, what do you tell him?

  I belong to you.

  Precisely. Then we’re agreed?

  Yes, said Bloom, we’re agreed.

  And with that said, Gottlieb made his exit. Three weeks from today, Rosenbloom.

  Three weeks from today, Mr. Gottlieb.

  Good afternoon, Rosenbloom!

  Good afternoon, Mr. Gottlieb.

  Once Bloom heard the front door slam shut, he walked over to the desk on which Gottlieb had scribbled his hand. On the blotter, Bloom read the title, Mephisto’s Affinity. Following this was a short description of a domestic scene in which Mephistopheles’s wife
grants her husband leave to visit Earth for a day of long-needed holiday. He rises up from the underworld and enters the world of the living, wrote Gottlieb. He witnesses the sins of sinners, sees the avaricious, the gluttonous, the envious, etc., all in need of his services, but because he is on leave, he resists temptation and turns away from their folly. He is resigned to do as his wife said he should. He is resigned to enjoy a devil’s Sabbath. Today, he will write no contracts and make no bargains. Today, he will capture no souls. In which case, where, Mr. Rosenbloom, will Mephistopheles find his joy? How will he experience abandon? In whom will he find his affinity?