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 placed 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 every 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.

Bloom, who was deeply touched and uplifted by these words, thanked Mr. Geller for the kind sentiment, and then Mr. Stern, who had been listening quietly, reached for an attaché case resting at his feet, and removed from it some papers. Your father’s will, he said to Bloom. The fastidious man dug a pair of spectacles from his pocket, clipped them to his freckled nose, and began to list his father’s last wishes. Bloom was informed by Mr. Stern that morning, Mr. Geller would retain full autonomy over the foundry’s operation for as long as he was willing and able, and from this day forward would own a forty percent share of the company. The remaining sixty percent would be held by Bloom. In addition to operating the foundry and its day-to-day business, Geller would manage and hold in trust Bloom’s substantial holdings until he turned twenty years of age, at which time he hoped Geller would continue to dispense his invaluable advice. Bloom now held an interest in things and places holding no interest to him at all. He owned a certain percentage of a small oil field twenty miles to the south of the estate; five hundred miles to the north, a logging company; in the far reaches of the valley, a dairy farm and a cattle ranch; somewhere in the tropics, in a country he had never heard of, he held majority ownership of a sugarcane plantation; not very far from Mount Terminus sat an observatory whose rotunda was endowed in his father’s name, housed inside which was a telescope dedicated to studying the reversing polarities of sunspots, and, to which, he would, as his father had done, make a handsome donation annually. With the exception of the plateau on which Simon had built his studio, all the land on Mount Terminus, from top to bottom, was now his, as was the house and adjoining property in Woodhaven. Finally, he now possessed a considerable amount of gold bullion secured in a bank vault back east, and a sizable collection of precious gems stored in a bank downtown. To Simon, Mr. Stern told him, his father had added to his already substantial holdings the parcels of land Jacob held throughout the valley and the basin, what amounted to tens of thousands of acres, all of which he determined Simon should develop or sell as he saw fit to realize his future plans. You and your brother, and the generations that follow you, Stern said in conclusion, should want for nothing.

When Stern had finished the formalities of his recitation, Bloom wondered if there were any personal sentiments expressed in the will. The will, Stern told him, had been amended not long before Jacob died. As is the case with us all, he said, I’m sure he believed he had more time. Upon hearing this, Mr. Geller told Bloom his brother had been contacted about his inheritance and Mr. Stern had already made arrangements with Simon’s attorney to transfer the property. Mr. Geller then asked his cousin if he wouldn’t mind giving him a moment alone with Bloom. Stern excused himself and wandered out of the courtyard in the direction of the grove, and when he had disappeared from sight, Mr. Geller said to Bloom in a hushed voice, My cousin, Stern, he can be somewhat cold and humorless, but he is a good man, and I believe you need a good man nearby to serve your capital and show you how to maintain it when you come of age. I’m simply too far away and too preoccupied with the business of the foundry to be of any use to you here. Gerald, therefore, will be looking after your holdings and advising you about the decisions he makes on your behalf. Geller assured Bloom that Stern would hold his interests above all others and take his side in all circumstances. He would see to his investments as if they were his own, and to Bloom, to his well-being. Please, Joseph, he said, tell me I have your blessing. Humor an alte kaker who grows weary with the burdens he carries.

Yes, Bloom said, yes, of course, you have my blessing. If that’s what you think best, then I think it best, too.

Geller said what a fine young man Bloom had become, and he removed a business card from a pocket in his jacket and gently placed it in Bloom’s hand. Here is Stern’s card. If you need anything at all, call on him. He knows your business as well as I do. If you have concerns about anything at all, if you need help of any kind, Gerald is the man to go to. He’ll be doing a good deal of traveling for you, but when he’s here, he’ll look in on you without fail. Please, make good use of him.

And with that said, Mr. Geller vigorously shook Bloom’s hand. Your father might not have put it down on paper, he said in parting, but you and I both know what his last wish was for you. More than anything, he wanted to see you and your brother united and made whole. I very much hope this is what comes to pass. Should this dream of his go unfulfilled for any reason, be assured, you always have me, and my family, to turn to.

Thank you, Mr. Geller.

I mean it, said Geller. Every word of it. Mr. Geller now took Bloom by the arm and walked him in the same direction Mr. Stern had gone. Together they meandered through the grove of trees until they reached the head of the drive, where Stern was waiting in his sedan. Bloom wished Mr. Geller safe travels and thanked him for having come all this way, and he asked him to thank his daughters for their wonderful gift. The birds, said Bloom, have lifted my spirits, as has your visit.

Mr. Geller was pleased to hear it.

I will be seeing you, said Mr. Stern from behind the wheel. I’m available to you anytime.

Goodbye, Joseph, Geller called as they drove off. And good luck!

*   *   *

That afternoon, Bloom did as he had done before so many times in the past. Filled with the warmth and kindness he felt from Saul Geller’s visit, he returned to the courtyard and sat with Roya on the wall of the reflecting pool, sank his feet into its water. He reclined in the library for some time and read The Fall of the House of Usher.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

He took the book with him for a walk up the trail to Mount Terminus’s peak and remained there to read it three times over. Three times, he saw the mighty walls rush asunder. He returned in time for dinner, and when he walked into the dining room with his book in hand, he was pleased to find the walls freshened with a coat of whitewash. The table and the rugs, the sideboards and the drapery had all been substituted for furniture and material of a similarly baroque shape and pattern, yet dissimilar enough that the room appeared to Bloom sufficiently altered. Meralda placed a plate of enchiladas before him, bent over him, and pressed her cheek to his. I’m so happy to see you at your place again, she said. As she swung through the kitchen door, Bloom turned his attention to where his father would have been seated, and he was reminded of his shattered body lying atop the table, and with that image in mind, the buoyant mood he had fostered that morning and throughout the day was undone. He stared at the bands of color that had begun to streak the sky outside the window, and in this storm of particles, he felt nothing of its beauty, only the oncoming death of the day. Through the duration of the twilight, he waited for the fall of night, and sat with an emptiness within him, which wouldn’t be filled with food. When Meralda returned and saw he hadn’t eaten, and was entranced by the sight of the empty chair, she sat beside him and said, Tomorrow, let’s try the parlor, shall we? To this, Bloom nodded his consent. The aches, she acknowledged, they rise and fall with a mind all their own. In time, she said. In time.

*   *   *

Each morning now, he returned to the tower to commune with the birds given to him by Mr. Geller’s daughters, hoping he might recapture the exultation he’d experienced upon discovering them. He named the male cockatiel Elijah and taught him to say the meaning of his name.

My God is Yahweh, he repeated over and over until the bird squawked back, My God is Yahweh, My God is Yahweh.

To Bloom’s greeting, Hello, my dear Elijah, he taught Elijah to respond: Hello, my dear Bloom. Where have you been?

I’ve been here and there, Bloom would say.

To which Elijah responded, My God is Yahweh.

When Bloom asked Elijah, Do you want to be free?

Elijah responded, Open the door and we shall see.

No, Bloom would say. I need you here with me.

To which Elijah would say, My God is Yahweh.

Such amusements held Bloom’s interest for only so long before he found himself revisiting again and again the House of Usher. It began to inhabit him so thoroughly, when he wandered in and around the estate there grew in his mind a strange fancy. About him emerged an atmosphere, which had no affinity with the air of heaven. Around the villa’s exterior, within the walls of its rooms, hung a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, leaden-hued. He sat at the opening of the gate for hours at a time and in pencil and ink laid over the façade minute fungi … hanging in a fine tangled webwork from the eaves. Throughout the stucco walls, he inlaid a zigzag of fissures. He turned the roof’s clay tiles an ebon black, the white gravel of the drive, of the gardens, a dusty gray. He withered leaves, flowers, and fruit. He blew into the sky clouds of ash, lit the cadaverous landscape with feeble gleams of encrimsoned light, laid waste to livestock throughout the depression of the valley, turned the sea into an inky stain, scattered from the top of the tower into the wind the exotic feathers of his birds.

In time, said Meralda each evening, in time.

*   *   *

Weeks passed in this gloom, until one morning, while under the archways of the pavilion, the combustion and grind of a car shifting gears turned his attention outward. The birds noticed it before he did. The noise quieted their song and movement, and their silence disrupted his contemplation. On the final switchback at the top of the mountain, a white roadster motored into view, and in only a few minutes’ time, it entered the gates. When it had traveled the length of the drive and had come to a stop, it took Bloom a moment to apprehend who was there. For the better part of a year, he had been reminded of his brother each time the strike of a hammer resounded from the construction site. He knew he would return before long, but the circumstances of the past months had pushed the thought of him a vast distance away. That Simon now sat in the sunlight below, staring off through a pair of goggles in the direction of the promontory, took Bloom aback. He thought to call out to him, but his brother had yet to disengage the motor and likely wouldn’t hear him, so he started down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he walked out the service entrance to discover the car absent its driver, its engine no longer idling, his brother’s goggles hanging from the rearview mirror. He looked in the direction to which Simon had focused his attention when he arrived, and there Bloom saw his white suit reflecting the sun’s morning light onto the tall grass of the field. Bloom trailed after him, on toward the estate’s end, where the yellow meadow met brush and rock, and as he neared the headland, he recalled most vividly the first time he and his father stood together at the bluff’s edge to watch the twilight reflect off the surface of the sea, and for the first time in many years, he recalled the vow he had taken. Like a hypnotic melody he couldn’t detach himself from, he heard the words over and over again within his mind; and in a quiet voice, in the voice of the child who once fit snugly under his father’s arm, he repeated it in the form of a prayer. Blessed art thou, O Lord Our God, Ruler of the Universe, when I am a man and I fall in love, I will protect my love better than he protected his. Blessed art thou, O Lord Our God … When Bloom reached his brother at the edge of the bluff, the prayer turned into a whisper and was ended upon hearing Simon say, in a tone that held little recognition of Bloom’s presence beside him, How strange it is to know I’ll never have a complete picture of him. Not even a trace of his death remains.

As his elder brother continued to hang his head, Bloom stepped forward and inched his brow over the promontory’s border. It was true. The mound of earth in which his father had been buried was no more. The mud, the rock, the bramble had in the months since the accident been reclaimed by the mountain; it had hardened in the heat, crumbled, and, with the aid of gravity’s invisible hand, spread over the scree at the base of the ravine.

Tell me, Joseph. Do you think a man can fully assemble himself without having knowledge of his father?

I don’t know, said Bloom.

No, said Simon, nor do I.

Simon said after a thoughtful pause, I’ve lived out so much of my life on a stage. I’ve acted so many roles, appeared as figments dreamed up in the minds of others, I’m not convinced I’d recognize the original inhabitant of my body if it introduced itself to me on the street one day; it’s often the case I open a door to an unfamiliar room filled with unfamiliar faces, and find I haven’t a clue who will arrive on the other side of the threshold.

Actors, said Simon. Hydras all.

He now stepped back and took in the sight of Bloom, and Bloom stepped back and took in the sight of Simon, and each, unaccustomed to seeing himself reflected so precisely on the surface of another, looked off in opposite directions.

Perhaps it was Bloom’s new habit of dampening the light of the day into the darkest of shades, but when they turned back to each other a moment later, Simon appeared to him a duller version of himself. Paler in the cheek, more gray in complexion, more skeletal in stature. His eyes, too, appeared a dimmer version of what Bloom recalled. No longer were they burning with the same intensity he had encountered on the trail that day of their first meeting. He asked Bloom if he’d mind showing him where their father had been buried. To this, Bloom said, Not at all.

The brothers turned their backs on the ravine and wended a path through the grove. They circled into the center of the rose garden, where, at the foot of the grave, they stood in silence until Simon reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out a silver chain; attached to it was the other half of the pendant Bloom had received the day he and his father traveled to the sanitarium by the sea.

As long as I can remember, Simon said, this has been such a weight around my neck. It’s a wonder I can hold my head upright. He gripped the pendant in his fist and, with his jaw braced tight, he yanked the chain hard enough to break one of the fastenings. Bloom eyed the shimmering links that had fallen over his brother’s knuckles. When Simon saw Bloom observing his closed hand, he said, I understand you have one just like it.

I do, said Bloom, but I know nothing about it.

Simon pointed to the grave. Didn’t he say?

No.

No, said Simon, why would he? There was a note of scorn in Simon’s voice, sharp enough it troubled Bloom. His brother seemed to have heard it as well, because when he spoke next, he was more measured. He didn’t tell you because the gift of the pendant, it was a morbid gesture. To have told you would have been perverse.

I don’t understand.

I was told the story when I was a child. Sam, the man who placed the other half of this in your hand the day you visited him on the beach, he related it to me. Mother told him. Simon opened his fist to reveal the charm. It was a gift from our father. This coin was his only true possession when he arrived at the orphanage. It had been sewn into his swaddling, presumably by his parents. As a loving gesture to your mother and mine, he went to the orphanage’s tool shop to divide it in two and presented it to them on their eighth birthday. Simon’s eyes studied the object in his hand for a moment as if he hadn’t looked at it for a long time. Sam, he removed this half of the coin from my mother’s neck the day she died, and he clasped it here around mine the night he retrieved me from your home in Woodhaven.

Simon glanced over at Bloom. You know the night?

Yes.

He told you, then.

Yes. He told me everything.

Well, what he didn’t tell you was the half of the pendant Sam placed in your hand the day you visited him at the sanitarium was the half my mother pulled from your mother’s neck as my mother fell to her death.

No, said Bloom, no he didn’t.

No, said Simon with a thin smile. A thoughtful man wouldn’t burden a child with such an ugly account. A calm now came over his face and for a few moments he lost himself to his thoughts. When he returned, he breathed out a tremor of laughter that made Bloom wonder if he was taking some pleasure at his expense. But his brother then shook his head and said, as if dumbfounded by an idea he couldn’t fully grasp, Sam, on the other hand …

What about him?

He was the type of man who was mostly unaware he was an affront to all things decent. Simon laughed. A different sort of man altogether. One who took great pleasure in delivering the cruelest aspects of the world with an avuncular smile. As I’m sure he did when he handed the other half of this to you.

Why are you speaking of him in the past?

Simon turned to observe Bloom. His eyes narrowed as if he were trying to puzzle out a riddle. He now gripped the pendant between thumb and forefinger and rubbed at its surface. He walked around their father’s grave to the base of the statue and ran his finger over the contours of Psyche’s arm. Observing the languid features of her face, he said over his shoulder, I truly was hoping to know him. I hoped in time I would come to forgive him. To better understand him … He’s always been present in my life, you know. Sam never allowed me to forget. He always reminded me there was a father, my father, a Jacob Rosenbloom, who played a part in my mother’s ruin, a Jacob Rosenbloom who owed me more than he could ever repay me. I would have preferred the knowledge of his existence to fade, but Sam wouldn’t allow it. Simon turned back to Bloom and said with some seriousness, I would have preferred to live as you have. Quietly. In peace. Without a thought about what I was owed, in what ways I had been wronged. He set the pendant and its chain into Psyche’s lifeless hand. But you had him, and I, I had Sam. The petty. The unprincipled. The very hungry Sam. Simon laughed again at the thought of his protector and benefactor one last time, and then meandered off through the garden’s rings. Bloom thought to walk after him, but he could sense, from his brother’s shift in tone and the way he turned away from him, this was his exit.

Instead of trailing after him, Bloom walked to the pendant and picked it up, and noticed all along the coin’s curve, on its face, wear so thorough from touch the edge had been thinned to a point, and the moon on both sides had been nearly rubbed away. With the pendant in hand, he followed the path his brother had taken, hoping now to catch up to him, to invite him inside, so they might talk, so Bloom might better comprehend the source of his sorrow, but before he reached the rose garden’s outermost circle, the roadster’s engine combusted, and Bloom heard the whine and grind of its motor descending the mountain, and with each step he took along the path to the courtyard, the noise grew less and less audible.

*   *   *

That night Bloom dreamed every surface of the villa had become a mirror, and reflecting from every mirror was his image. Everywhere he turned, he was there, yet it was some manifestation of himself he hardly recognized. Every countenance was disturbed, every feature that composed his form, a distortion. When he shut his eyes to escape his image, the interior of his lids opened a door to another room replete with mirrors. He climbed the mirrored stairs of the tower and set his eye onto the night sky; but even there, the combined light from the stars formed in the firmament a projection of his face. He reached out to it and found himself stepping off the pavilion’s rail. Down he went, and as he plummeted, the villa broke apart and fell with him. It shattered into mirrored shards refracting crimson points of light, all of which gathered into a core sounding a heavy beat, a throbbing pulse, followed by a terrible moan. When he awoke from this heavy slumber, he recoiled from fright at the sight of his brother hovering over him.

There, there, said Simon. All is well with the world. He removed a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and pressed it to Bloom’s brow, then placed the soft piece of linen in his hand.

What time is it?

It’s after ten.

Bloom looked at the dark velvet curtains drawn across his bedroom windows and saw a piping of white light brightening the borders. Yes, said Bloom as he dabbed at his temples, it’s late.

I’ve been waiting for some time, said Simon. He took Bloom by the arm and helped sit him up.

What for?

To apologize for having been so unpleasant and abrupt yesterday. It’s been a trying week.

How so?

It seems we are both now fatherless. Me, twice over.

Mr. Freed is dead?

Simon nodded. It was a long time coming.

I’m sorry, said Bloom.

You shouldn’t be. I know he was a great source of grief for you.

Nevertheless …

To the world at large, said Simon, Sam could be a nasty piece of work. A tyrant on his best days. To me, however, he was decent and kind. Out of the love he felt for my mother, he treated me like a son. Did for me as he said he would. Fulfilled his promises. Gave me all I have. And having done as much, I prefer to let others talk of his flaws. Simon smiled at Bloom, reached out to his head, and shook his curls. Wash up, do what you do, and meet me downstairs in the drawing room. And off went Simon out the door.

Then he returned and asked, Breakfast?

Yes, said Bloom, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, please. I’ll be along in a minute.

Simon nodded, and off he went again.

*   *   *

Because Meralda couldn’t bring herself to remove them to the library, where they belonged, on the parlor table sat the magic lantern and the box of slides Bloom had illustrated for his father. Standing upright next to these items today was a film projector not like any Bloom recognized from his father’s collection. With his head still clearing from his long sleep, he studied its components. Simon, meanwhile, walked the length of the parlor wall, shutting the curtains to the view of the canyon. When the room had been sufficiently darkened, he sat at the piano, lifted the lid, and with impressive dexterity, ran his fingers over the keys. This will do nicely, he said. Do you play?

No. I have no talent for it.

For me, there’s no better way I can think of to spend my time.

Bloom was pleased to hear Simon sounding so affable. The somber mood on display at the edge of the promontory, in the heart of the rose garden, had all but disappeared.

I can’t begin to tell you how many hours I spent as a child in Sam’s theaters when they were dark. It was my greatest pleasure to sit alone at the piano in the orchestra pit, living between the notes, anticipating the next bar, modifying my internal tempo to the changing time signatures. Simon played a run up and down the board then settled onto a pleasant melody. Over the music he said, with his nose directing Bloom to the projector, It’s an automatic. See the mechanism? The knob? There on the back?

Yes, I see it.

Turn it to the right and take a seat.

Bloom did as he was told. He turned the knob on the back of the projector then walked to the sofa through a mist of silvery dust.

I think you’ll enjoy this, said Simon.

Over the clicks of the Rosenbloom Loop turning on its axis within the projector, Simon now produced an amusing rag, which modulated its rhythm to suit the movement of images Bloom saw on the wall before him. As he nibbled on eggs and toast, he watched a magnificent picture in which a vessel shaped like an exotic fish propelled itself from Earth’s surface and traveled through a region of space rich with sparkling showgirls. The spacecraft collided point first with the monocled eye of the moon, where it sank into a meringue crust. Graybeard scientists, bespectacled and hunched over, disembarked and wandered subterranean passageways. They encountered Hottentot moon dwellers wearing grass skirts and bones through their noses, and with a vitality that defied belief, the aged travelers gave chase. When they caught the tribal moon people, they thwacked them over the head with their canes, turning them into spectacular puffs of smoke.

Bloom was so entertained by this, his mood so elevated, it felt to him as if yesterday’s bleak encounter with Simon happened long ago. And without inhibition, he turned to his brother and asked, May we? Again?

Simon obliged. He rose from his seat, and acting the role of the obsequious servant, he bowed and then went on to feed the film into the reel out of which it had spooled. He cranked it back to its start, and again he performed the same syncopated rag he had played moments before, and Bloom, again, sat leaning forward over his knees, marveling at the fantastical spectacle flickering on the wall. Never before had he thought it possible for such enjoyment to be taken from a visual experience, short of watching the nighttime glow of a distant wildfire.

That morning, Simon showed him half a dozen more pictures made by the same motion picture director, the last of which he introduced as a metaphor for the life of the actor: a movie about a man who fell into a film projector and was made malleable. His head expanded and shrank in size and was replaced by a variety of animal visage. And this movie, like the first, Bloom asked to watch again. But in response to this request, Simon consulted his watch and said, As soon as we return.

Return from where?

I’ve arranged a short voyage of our own.

Simon took Joseph by the arm and started walking him to the front door. Bloom told him he really wasn’t prepared to voyage anywhere today.

I understand, said Simon. But I assure you: you won’t leave the grounds, not for a moment.

Then from where exactly will we be returning?

When they stepped out of the house and onto the drive, he said to Bloom, Right there.

*   *   *

Right there, Bloom found an inflated hot-air balloon whose silken bubble rose almost as tall as the villa’s tower. It was weighed down by sandbags and moored in place by three stakes driven into the ground, and attached to the basket’s undercarriage was a hook connected to a thick rope wound around a winch bolted to the bed of a truck. Simon removed a pair of azure coveralls from the passenger seat of the cab and slipped them on, and, acting as if it were the most ordinary activity to embark on an aeronautical adventure in the middle of the day, at the start of the rainy season, he said to Bloom, Shall we? Given the effort his brother had made to begin anew, Bloom couldn’t think of a courteous way to refuse him. He followed Simon up a ladder into the carriage, and when they were inside and secure, Bloom’s brother waved his hand. A man of considerable height and heft, who possessed a rather prolific nose, appeared with an ax in hand from behind the cab of the truck, and with three swift swings, he cut them free. Simon cast off several sandbags, then pulled on a string dangling from a lit stove rigged below the balloon’s opening. An azure flame the same color as Simon’s outfit spiked into the cavity of the bubble. They rose at a moderate rate. They rose over the tops of the eucalyptus, over the tower’s pavilion, inside which Bloom could see his colorful birds fluttering about in their cages. The brothers steadily ascended to a point in the sky from which they could see in one direction the horizon line grow more distant from the edge of the ocean; in the opposite direction, the humpbacked mountain range; and beyond it, the depression of the valley. And because it was a rare winter day, in that it was extraordinarily calm, no matter how high they rose, the balloon remained remarkably still. They drifted in no direction. Against all intuition, they hovered over the same point on the Earth from which they had taken off, and at this altitude Simon pointed to the plateau and said, It doesn’t look like much from up here, does it?

No, said Bloom as he looked down onto the miniature village his brother had built, it doesn’t.

Tell me. Did Jacob explain to you what we’ll be doing down there?

Yes.

Then you know all you have known is going to change.

In what ways?

In the most significant ways. I should think in the most remarkable ways. The balloon swayed a little. Tugged against the tether tied to the bottom of the carriage. People, said his brother. A jungle of them, all variety of apes and monkeys and lower order of primates will soon populate the land down there. A whole colony of baboons and chimpanzees, orangutans and marmosets, will be swinging from those trees. Men and women filled with desire and passion and purpose.

I’ve known so few women. And even fewer men.

You’ll soon be acquainted with more than your fair share of both orders. Simon bent down and removed from a case by his feet a motion picture camera, and he mounted it onto one of the metal rods securing the sandbags. Here, look in here and tell me if what you see is in focus. Simon reached out and guided Bloom’s hand to the camera’s lens. Bloom switched places with Simon, set his cheek and brow against the viewfinder and adjusted the lens slightly to make the image of the plateau crisp, and when he offered the eyepiece to Simon, his brother leaned forward and said, Well done. He now described to him what he wanted next. He said he should allow the camera to run for a short while, to then turn it slowly, first to the right in the direction of the valley, and then to the left in the direction of the sea, and while he continued to roll the film, to push left all the way to him, where he should set him off-center within the frame. Nice and easy turns, said Simon.

Bloom did as Simon asked. He rested his eye on the viewfinder and started to turn the camera’s crank. He wound the reel of film around the magazine as he remained focused on the stretch of the plateau; he slowly turned the lens to the right, and after a few breaths in and out, he proceeded to the left. And now all the way to me, said Simon. Farther to the left Bloom turned the camera to face Simon, and with his brother fixed right of center frame, he swung his arm around in a sweeping gesture, then stepped away to reveal the great expanse of the basin, its shore, the infinite ocean, all of it shone down upon by the coastal desert sun. And in that instant, every detail of the world Bloom had come to know so intimately was magically captured and contained in a way he had never captured it before.

What do you think? asked Simon as Bloom continued to feel in his hands, against his cheek, the sensation of the camera’s moving parts working in unison.

It’s wonderful, said Bloom. Behind the camera, I feel as if … He couldn’t quite find the right words to describe what he felt. It feels like … he tried once more.

Disappearing?

Yes, said Bloom. Like disappearing.

*   *   *

They remained aloft for the better part of an hour, and after the driver had cranked them back to Earth, Simon accepted Bloom’s invitation to lunch in the dining room. In her excitement at seeing the young Rosenbloom’s brother sitting in Jacob’s place at the head of the table, and perhaps because she was eager to please the first proper guest she’d had the opportunity to serve since having taken her position on Mount Terminus, Meralda swung into the room at regular intervals, with, it seemed, every morsel of food she had available to her in the kitchen. She presented to the young men shredded chicken in mole, a stack of steaming tortillas fresh from the oven, guacamole, rice and beans, salsa with sliced orange, an assortment of olives picked, cured, and pitted by her own hands, a pitcher of lemonade, and for dessert, a glazed custard flan. With each entrance she made into the dining room, her complexion appeared to Bloom as if it were lit from within, and he was nearly certain he could see evidence of tears having been wiped from her eyes. This display of emotion didn’t escape Simon’s notice, and at one point during the meal, he reached out for Meralda’s thick hand and asked, Have we upset you?

Oh, no, she said, dabbing the corners of her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.

But you’re crying.

Yes, but they are good tears, Mr. Reuben, I promise you.

Simon continued to hold her hand and looked at the full features of her face in search of a further explanation.

Just look at him, she said, her focus turning to Bloom. Look how your company brightens his eyes.

Is that my doing? asked Simon, who was now studying Bloom’s face as intently as Meralda.

Meralda removed her hand from Simon’s and touched it to his cheek. Bless you, she said with a tearful smile. Bless you. And off she went through the swinging door, and both young men could hear from within the kitchen Meralda sound a soft snuffle.

*   *   *

They lingered over lunch for some hours, during which time Simon was more than happy to do most of the talking. Bloom, after all, wasn’t disposed toward, nor practiced in, the art of conversation. He was, however, the finest of listeners and the most astute of observers, and, as such, the perfect audience for his loquacious brother, who appeared to be performing for Bloom an extended monologue, one containing within it the broad strokes of his past. As a result of his brother’s generosity of spirit and the gift he possessed to reveal himself in abbreviated fashion, Bloom came to know more about Simon over the course of this one afternoon than he had ever known about the man with whom he had shared his life up to this point. As Bloom had anticipated from having witnessed him walk the trails of Mount Terminus on the day they met, he was, indeed, a man of the world, but an even wider world than Bloom had imagined. Having come of age in the theater, he knew the idiosyncrasies of stage people. Having grown up at the side of Sam Freed, he knew the hypocrisy and corruption of men who conducted business and civic affairs. He knew the dirty habits of lowly thugs, the weaknesses of gangsters, the nonsense of rowdies and fancy men, the dreams of small-minded civil servants, the petty vanity of lofty politicians, the ill-mannered spirits of the moneyed, old and new. His education extended beyond the chain of Freed’s theaters and his production company. At Freed’s insistence, he had been sent to good schools, and at Freed’s insistence, he was made to work while he studied. In the theater, he acted away his childhood, and when he came of age he produced and directed. He photographed motion pictures, negotiated business deals. As part of Freed’s effort to shape him into a man of industry, as a means to groom him and better him, Simon attended a fine college, where, at the age of nineteen, he took an early degree in law and philosophy. At Freed’s insistence, to finish him off properly, he was sent abroad; he traveled widely, and from spending time in the world’s great museums, he learned about art and fashion. In salons and opera halls, he learned literature and music. From observing the workshop of the Lumière brothers, from having worked in the studio of Georges Méliès, he learned something of the craft of making motion pictures. When he returned from his travels abroad, he continued on with travels at home. He set out on dusty roads to manage one of Freed’s itinerant crews.

There was, it seemed to Bloom, so little his brother hadn’t done or seen or knew, and although, in Bloom’s estimation, Simon had already lived several lifetimes, he could sense his ambitions were boundless, and for reasons he didn’t entirely understand, Bloom was unsettled in his stomach at the mere thought of their enormity. And so when it came time for him to recall for Simon the events of his life that had preceded their meeting, he demurred. He told Simon he knew everything important that had ever happened to him, and that this latest development—Simon’s arrival on Mount Terminus—was surely his most exciting affair to date.

No, said Simon, I know for a fact there is more.

What more?

I’m afraid, he said as he glanced at his watch, that is a question you’ll need to reflect on until tomorrow. With an apologetic grin, Simon told Bloom he needed to keep an appointment in town, but he assured him he would return the following day. Bloom walked him outside. The driver had, in the time they had eaten their lunch and Simon had outlined the defining moments of his past, deflated the balloon and stored it on the truck. Until tomorrow! said Simon as they drove off. Until tomorrow!

*   *   *

Simon returned the following morning, and every morning afterward for the next several weeks, and each morning he and Bloom met, their day began as the day before, with a new picture or two to view, adventures and farces, parlor intrigues, tales of romantic love and longing, some exciting, some ridiculous, some sublime and full of wonder. Simon’s long reach strode the length of the piano’s keys in search of rhythms and melodies to capture the spirit of the images moving before them. Over lunch in the dining room, Bloom’s brother often invited him to speak about how he passed his time on the estate, how it was he could bear the long silences and the isolation, but Bloom, who still didn’t know how to articulate the ways in which he took pleasure losing himself to the still waters of the reflecting pool, to the soft cushions of the library sofas, to the gardens and the trails, to the tower’s pavilion and aviary, to the temporal expanse of his studio atop the mesa, encouraged his brother to ignore the simplicity of his life, and instead to tell him more about the strange and beautiful people he had met in the exotic places he had visited, about the colorful and dangerous characters who populated his past. Day after day, Bloom listened to his brother speak at length, and as his brother’s presence, and the places he described, grew in dimension, Bloom continued to search for some commonality he and Simon shared beyond their physical resemblance, for some deeper root that anchored them together, a familial trait, a mannerism, a movement, some similar characteristic he had observed in their father, but the more he listened and the more his brother performed his rehearsed speeches, the more Bloom marveled at the fact that, while born from the same man’s seed, from two women whose outward appearances were indecipherably identical, there couldn’t be anyone in the world more unlike him or Jacob than Simon. From top to bottom, from his theatrical expressions to his calculated style of elocution, he was a man, it seemed, entirely of his own making, and Bloom was left to wonder if beyond the information his stories imparted, if belying the bounty of language he enjoyed the feel of in his mouth, Simon had yet to show Bloom his authentic self, the unadorned spirit that lived within him. Or was it possible that his existence was composed of, as he claimed on the day of their reunion, the disparate roles he played in life and on the stage? Perhaps he was merely a composite of invented personae. Or, Bloom wondered, was there more to him buried beneath the fragments, somewhere under the amalgam constituted by his own will? Or was it in that act of self-invention, in the absence of a mother and a father, that Simon and Jacob were alike? They, at the very least, retained this similarity.

Bloom imagined if he’d had the opportunity to stand Simon and Jacob back to back, to bind them together, they would have formed a countervailing force in whose reversed polarity could be manifested the one attribute he was now convinced Jacob did pass on to Simon, and, for that matter, to Bloom: the invisible quality of being unknowable.

For days, Simon filled the void created by Bloom’s reserve with amusing backstage dramas, of vaudeville routines gone wrong, of performances so good and so bad they resulted in small riots, until one day it occurred to Simon in the middle of a perfectly entertaining anecdote about a mezzo soprano who had accidentally fallen through a magician’s trapdoor that he should stop speaking altogether. Listen to me, he said to Bloom. Just listen to me. How I go on and on. You must forgive me, he said, and quieted, and after a minute or two of a perfectly restful stillness, he asked, and then insisted, that Bloom take charge of the day, which left Bloom feeling quite uncertain as to how to proceed. He eventually stood up, took Simon by the elbow, and led him to the sanctuary of the library, where he showed him the shelves on which he kept his favorite books, his Homer and Bulfinch, Pliny the Elder, the Brothers Grimm, his Poe, Hawthorne and Dickinson, Byron and Keats, Wordsworth, Cervantes, Chekhov, Melville, Flaubert, Dickens … and after summoning the courage to speak of their father, he directed Simon’s attention to Jacob’s optical devices, the blueprints of his inventions, the patents he filed when he was a younger man, the artifacts he inherited from Jonah Liebeskind. And when he saw in Simon’s open expression that he was receptive to learning something more about their father, he told Simon about Jacob’s apprenticeship with the master optician; described how the fastidious man lived at the altar of greatness and progress, and how he died at the moment he had outlived his relevance. He told Simon about their father’s brief meeting with Thomas Edison, about Edison’s humorous retort upon seeing the Rosenbloom Drive function for the first time. And when Simon laughed at the idea that his young father had outwitted the great man of the modern world, Bloom escorted him through the villa’s many rooms and up the tower stairs, where he introduced him to Elijah and ran him through his routine, all the way through to Open the door and we shall see … No, I need you here with me. They gazed through the telescope’s lens, over the basin to the sea, and Simon pivoted the eye to align with a clear path running through the groves, and said, In three weeks from tomorrow, they will all arrive at the same time, a convoy of trucks along the port road. If you look for us, he said, pointing over the scope’s hollow tube, you will see. And Bloom said in three weeks from tomorrow, he would seek them out.

When they returned indoors, Bloom, feeling that much more at ease with his brother, returned Simon up the stairs to his mother’s gallery, where he sat him down on the chaise longue and explained to him what his mother’s paintings meant to him, how as a child he cast his eyes onto their horizons in search of sleep and the few memories he could recall of his mother sitting before the fires, and he explained what the landscapes represented to their father; and as their father had done for Bloom, he sat Simon down in the drawing room and displayed through the eye of the magic lantern, on the mandala of the Wheel of Life, on all the various devices he had introduced to Simon in the library, the miniature images Bloom’s mother had so carefully and masterfully crafted, the numerous ways in which she had been haunted by the ghosts of Simon’s mother; he allowed Simon to see the heavy burden, the madness, she carried within her until her heart, quite literally, broke. Do you see? Bloom asked as their father had once asked Bloom. Do you see how she suffered?

Yes, said Simon. Yes, I see.

On a late-afternoon walk to the top of Mount Terminus, Bloom recounted for Simon the year he was absent, the year during which the noise from the construction site resounded over the grounds of the estate, and he told him how their father suffered his shame as vigorously and unyieldingly as Bloom’s mother had suffered her lament. He lent his brother the flimsy copy of Death, Forlorn, which Bloom now carried with him in the inner pocket of his jacket, and when Simon had read it, Bloom escorted him to his studio, and there showed him the panels of finished drawings he had made for Jacob, showed him the multitude of sketches on which they were based, showed him the pages of Manuel Salazar’s journal from which their style was born, and he then returned his brother to the parlor, where Bloom proceeded to show him how, inspired by his mother’s miniatures and the lines of Salazar, he reduced the panels to fit onto the glass slides of the magic lantern. And upon seeing the last of these images projected onto the wall, Simon turned to Bloom and said, with his eyes squinting into the lamplight, I hadn’t realized.

Realized what?

That you’re a luftmensch. A true one, at that.

A what?

A dreamer. Always with his head in the clouds. The true luftmenschen is what Sam and I called the dreamers who could pull the clouds from the sky and bring them down to Earth for us lesser people to behold. You, brother, are a true luftmensch … And now I understand. Now I understand why it was that Jacob insisted I make a place for you. For the exchange of the land, for the rights to the water, he insisted I make a place for you at the studio. Now I understand why.

But I don’t know the first thing about making pictures.

No, said Simon. You know everything. Everything you need to know. It is all here, he said with a hush as he pointed the glowing embers of a cigarette toward the lantern and then to the wall. You were born for this. And do you want to know how I know this to be true?

How?

Because, at this very moment, I envy you.

You? Envy me? That’s … unlikely.

No. Your eye, your lines, Joseph, they are enviable.

Bloom shook his head at his brother.

Trust me, said Simon as he shook his head back at Bloom, the envy I feel is the envy all middling artists will feel when they look at your work.

Bloom continued to shake his head at this. You overestimate me.

If anyone’s to be disappointed, said Simon, I’m afraid it’s going to be you. The majority of pictures we make are rough and crass. There are a few true artists in my stable, but, if you can bring pictures such as these to life, you’re going to make all of them look artless by comparison. You must believe me, Joseph: if you weren’t my brother, if our father hadn’t put these conditions on me, I would have sought you out all on my own. Understand? It’s rare I find such a gift. With a talent like yours, you can do anything you like in this business. Anything.

Bloom took a moment to consider this. He saw no mendacity in his brother’s face, not in his eyes, in the shape of his mouth. When he had convinced himself that what his brother had said to him was genuine, Bloom said with some lingering skepticism in his voice, Anything?

Anything. Anything at all.

*   *   *

Before I left, said Simon the next day, I wanted you to see this. When you’re ready, when we’ve put some experience behind you, this is the man I want you to work with. This man, Gottlieb, is, I think, the man for you. As he did every morning for the past several weeks, Simon fed a reel into the projector and took his place at the piano, and as he began to play, Bloom watched a picture that matched the quality of the very first pictures Simon had run for him, and, maybe, even surpassed them. It was a living dream, artful and serene, yet funny and human. It relied on techniques he had thus far not seen in any of the other pictures Simon had shown him. This man, Gottlieb, transcended the cinematic rules of storytelling set down by—so far as Bloom knew—no one in particular. In a seemingly arbitrary manner, Gottlieb’s perspectives cut away from scenes to the natural world—to trees, to bodies of water, to open sky, a character’s fidgeting hands, a finger working out a wrinkle in a dress, to symbolic objects placed in the most unlikely places. He shifted camera angles to alter the frame of reference in such a subtle and seamless manner he enabled the viewer to see within, to reflect on, to reflect with, the subject before him. He made it possible for his audience to feel the echoes of what had already passed, to foreshadow—to anticipate—what was to come. With these invisible manipulations, with an illusionist’s sleight of hand, he inspired within his observer the type of spiritual dissociation Bloom had experienced only from reading the Romantic poets on his favorite shelf. In this last picture he watched with his brother during this period on Mount Terminus—Gottlieb’s The Magnetic Eye—Myron Bishop, a bitter curmudgeon, awakened one morning possessed by an eye charged with an unusual magnetism, one whose force worked in vexing opposition to Bishop’s truest desires. The people and objects he despised most, the magnetic eye attracted; the people and objects he most wanted to attract, it repelled. The cruelest of jokes, read the intertitle upon the revelation of the eye’s logic. To illuminate Bishop’s repulsion, Gottlieb introduced first the figure of a cantankerous old hag whom Bishop had seen in the distance and tried to avoid by crossing the street. Gottlieb cut away to Bishop’s fantasy about what cruel act he wanted to perpetrate on her, but the magnetic eye had other designs. When Bishop drew near to her, a Kewpie doll flew out a shop door and into Bishop’s hand, and, in its wake, the ugly old wretch lifted off the ground and followed. When her nose was only inches from his, and she saw what he held in his hand, she plucked the gift from Bishop’s fingers as she would a flower, observed the mawkish sentiment expressed on the Kewpie’s porcelain face, and then looked to Bishop with tearful eyes. The act of kindness softened her so, she smothered Bishop with unwanted kisses. Everywhere he went from thereon, Bishop found himself embracing the most wretched creatures—the infirm and impoverished, the town drunkard, an amputee, a forlorn dwarf, a widowed malcontent more malcontent than Bishop himself. Meanwhile, each time he tried to draw near the magnificent woman he adored, a bespectacled beauty whose white hair Gottlieb lit as if to appear on fire, the magnetic eye repelled her, in one instance by removing her spectacles from her face and catapulting them through the air into the hands of a handsome young gentleman, more well-to-do and free spirited than Bishop could ever dream of being. Gottlieb used proximity to the love interest to show Bishop’s spirit defeated. The camera, assuming Bishop’s point of view, pulled back farther and farther from the young woman, leaving him to observe her from a great distance away, and only from there was he able to see with what kindness and grace she embraced all the people he found so repulsive. From this distance, he came to understand it was this woman’s selfless qualities with which he longed to be acquainted, and from this distance, he began to model her example. Those he once felt most in opposition to, he now grabbed hold of freely. He expressed his affection for them, offered them his undivided attention. His face, once fallen and disturbed, transformed. With each act of kindness, it grew more attractive, appeared healthier, more sound, more alive, and soon he found that the poor wretches he now embraced with a full, compassionate heart were unable to enter his sphere. The magnetic eye wouldn’t allow it, as their company was now desired. The cruelest of jokes, the intertitle read again. Bishop stood alone, isolated and untouched, and as such, the world about him—brought to life by a sequence of Gottlieb cutaways—began to look glorious in all its aspects, at which point the polarity of the magnetism was neutralized by the unlikeliest hero. A mosquito flew into Bishop’s magnetic eye and pressed its proboscis into the dark center of its pupil.

For the moment, Bishop was blinded—the screen faded to black, over the lens a shudder blinked to simulate Bishop’s frenetic lid—and when the camera lens moved from soft to sharp focus, he saw the glowing hair of the bespectacled woman, there she was, examining the eye that had caused him his troubles. With the corner of a kerchief, she wiped from his cheek a bloody tear left by the mosquito, then extended him a hand, lifted him to his feet, and off Bishop walked down the street with her until the camera’s iris closed around them.

*   *   *

Bloom thought it marvelous, and before his brother could solicit his opinion, he said so.

As Simon stood before the projector and wound back the reel, he told Bloom that when he was ready, when Bloom had acquired the skills to be useful to Gottlieb, when he had matured a little more, Simon would do everything in his power to arrange for him to work as his assistant.

For this Bloom thanked his brother.

Simon removed Gottlieb’s reel and replaced it with another. When he had fed the leader into the machine and switched on the projector, he walked to Bloom’s side, took a seat on the sofa beside him, and together the brothers watched the picture Bloom had filmed on their aeronautical adventure over Mount Terminus. There, said Simon, the first of many pictures you’ll be responsible for. Bloom watched with the thrill of seeing his memory of that day re-created and projected onto the wall. He watched as the scope turned and constructed the panorama of the valley and the range, the basin and the sea. This print is for you, said Simon when the film had run through and all that remained on the wall was a square of light shining forth from the burning filament of the unobstructed bulb. Bloom watched his brother rewind the short reel and close up the metal canister in which it was housed. You must keep it safe, in a warm, dry place.

I will.

Be sure that you do, he said when he stepped forward and placed the container in Bloom’s hands, which felt warm to the touch. Before letting go, Simon added with a serious note, I mean it. It will be a memorial soon enough.

How so?

What I told you a few weeks ago, about the changes that are to come?

Yes.

I wasn’t only speaking about the immediate changes on the studio lot. Simon waved his hand through the light. It cast a wave of a shadow across the wall. The fact of the matter is it won’t be long before the land all around us is changed forever. All of what you see today from the peak of Mount Terminus, you won’t recognize in the years to come.

I don’t understand.

Simon stood up and began walking about the room. Before I explain how and why, understand this: I won’t be deterred from my plans. They’re already set in motion. But, he said as he pulled back the curtains to let in the light, I thought, perhaps if I prepared you for what’s to come, the impact wouldn’t be as unsettling as it might have been otherwise. He walked to the case in which he carried his daily allotment of film canisters, reached into it, and pulled out a map. He returned to his seat beside Bloom, unpacked the map’s sections, and, with his eyes focused on the terrain, pointed to symbols and lines drawn over the topography of the region. Here, he said with his finger resting in the middle of Pacheta Lake’s outline, at the center of the source of his mother and father’s brief happiness together. I know you’re familiar with this place.

Yes, said Bloom.

Yes, said Simon. He pulled his chin to the knot of his tie, and said, Here. You see the line marked here? Simon ran his finger over a line of red ink running southwest from the lake to the northern edge of the valley to a red triangle near the canyon pass. I’ve made a deal with the county’s water authority to divert the lake water. Here, where the pass is, we’re going to build a dam for a reservoir. Simon’s finger now followed a tangential line west from the red triangle at the far reaches of the valley up along the ridge of the mountains leading to the basin on the opposite side of Mount Terminus. That water, it will flow through an outlet into the valley here, and through another outlet here, into the basin. Here, where for some years now, I’ve been buying up the property not owned by our father. Simon traced the red line until it stopped in the middle of the vast stretch of land leading to the sea. What I didn’t inherit from Jacob, what Jacob didn’t own, what I haven’t yet been able to acquire, I’m now in the process of purchasing.

What for?

To make the land habitable. To build on it. To expand the city center outward by road and rail. All the way to the sea.

Simon handed the map to Bloom so that he might study it more thoroughly, to take in the full extent of his brother’s vision, but Bloom couldn’t begin to imagine the outcome, nor could he fathom how in the world Simon would achieve it. The engineering. The machinery. The laborers. It seemed to him an endeavor on the order of a Chinese emperor, an Egyptian pharaoh, a Mayan god. He tried to recall the city center’s congested landscape, its architecture and industry, its tramways and public squares, and he tried to imagine it all superimposed onto the surface of the map, crowding the lens of his telescope, but the best he could do was to see a phantom image, a mirage on the edge of the desert shimmering in the heat and the wind.

When Bloom didn’t respond, Simon said, The moment I looked out over the vistas of Mount Terminus, I saw what the land to the west should be. I saw how to make it habitable. How to populate an entire region of the Earth no one until now had ever thought to populate before. And I knew I was the one meant to shape it. I’ve spent enough time in the company of true artists to know, in my heart, Joseph, I’m not one of you. I’m a producer. That is the truth of it. As a businessman, understand? I, like you, have the potential to leave behind something great, something monumental. And what you see here? he said with his hand returning to the outline of Pacheta Lake, I know in my gut, will be the most important thing I ever do. The running of the studio, it’s been my trade, a vocation like any other, for which I’ll be admired for a while, and then forgotten, but this, this, Joseph, will leave a permanent mark on the land that will live long after you and I have both turned to dust. Surely, you can understand?

Bloom nodded, if only to indicate he followed his brother’s reasoning, and recognized his conviction. He was able to comprehend Simon’s plans, but he wasn’t certain he understood the ambition that motivated him. Bloom had put little thought into what he would leave behind. He wasn’t certain he cared what he left behind. Nor was he certain that he appreciated his brother’s vision, as it stood in opposition to what he valued and cherished. He didn’t wish to set himself apart from his brother, so he didn’t express these thoughts out loud, but Simon was perceptive enough to see what weighed on Bloom’s mind.

Simon lifted his hand and playfully tapped Bloom’s forehead with the tip of his finger. We obviously have a great deal more to learn about each other, he said. I have come to see one thing quite clearly, however.

What’s that?

How deeply attached you are to this place. I’m not blind. Simon repacked the map and placed it in his case. And when he had closed the clasps, he stood and said, No need to worry. We’ll ease you into it. Before you find yourself in the thick of it, the least I can do is prepare you to become better acquainted with the terrain of what’s to come.

Before Bloom could ask how exactly Simon proposed to do this, Simon asked the question himself. Yes, he said, but how, exactly? Simon stared off through the window whose view crossed the canyon. He stood quietly, intently twisting one of the curls on his head, occasionally glancing back at Bloom with what appeared to be a solution, and each time he appeared to have plotted a course of action, he made a theatrical turn, puckered his lips, and shook his head dismissively. After two and then three comic dismissals, he made his final turn and said, with a gleam in his eye, And there you have it!

There you have what?

The very thing, of course! My man Gus, he’ll call on you tomorrow. He’ll explain everything then.

Uncertain what arrangement he was agreeing to now, but trusting his brother well enough, and unable to help but feel appreciation for Simon’s effort to lighten the blow of this news, Bloom said, All right. Yes, why not.

That’s the spirit!

Bloom followed Simon out to his roadster, where his brother removed from the passenger’s seat the case that held the fine-looking camera they had used on their aeronautical journey. Simon handed Bloom the container, and said, You’ll be needing this. He then observed Bloom standing there with it in his arms, and, with brotherly affection, added, It suits you.

Does it?

It does. Simon nodded. He placed a hand on Bloom’s shoulder. In all seriousness, he said. Do exactly as Gus says and we’ll put you to work when I return.

Simon cranked the engine at the front of the automobile, and when its interior sounded its combustion, he took to the seat behind the wheel and said over the ruckus, Remember: three weeks! Twenty-one days from today! Watch for us on the port road! Three weeks! he called from the driver’s seat. Until then! Simon turned the roadster around now and sped off down the drive onto the winding road. When the noise from his brother was no longer audible, Bloom set the case his brother had handed him in the foyer and climbed to the top of the tower, where he set his eye onto the viewfinder of his telescope and surveyed the land all around him, watched the ocean breezes waft dust up from the fields and the roads and settle over the canopy of the groves, and he tried once again to see into the future, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t fathom it.

*   *   *

From behind his veil of sleep the following morning, Bloom heard a voice rich in timbre repeating his name. Joseph, it called. Joseph … It’s time to wake up, kid. When Bloom opened his eyes, he saw first the inlay of his bedroom’s coffered ceiling, and when he turned his head he was given a start, as standing beside him in silhouette was a man in a black mackintosh and bowler hat. Don’t be startled. It’s only me, Gus.

Gus? said Bloom, recalling the name of Simon’s man.

Yes. Gus.

Why are you dressed like that?

Gus looked himself over and looked back to Bloom with his heavy brows pinching the bridge of his prodigious nose, and asked as a child might, How else would I be dressed?

The enormous figure bent down and folded over the blanket covering Bloom’s body. He lifted it off, and he walked around the bed, and when he set it in the lap of the armchair Roya had slept in during his period of convalescence after his father’s death, Bloom couldn’t help but notice the great pack of shoulder muscles shifting under the material of the coat. The young lady is waiting, said Gus.

What young lady?

Your character study. Simon told me to tell you: You’re to study the life within.

I’m to do what?

He wants to see what you can do with a living, breathing human being. She’s waiting for you in your studio.

Bloom sat up and searched for Gus’s eyes under the brim of his hat.

He said if you were to look at me the way you’re looking at me now, I was to say this … He pulled from his jacket pocket a piece of notepaper, and after he wiped his extravagant nostrils with the back of his hand, he read: You’re to become acquainted with her form and draw out what lives within. And then Simon said, if you still looked disorientated, like you look right now, I was to say, Let’s go. On your feet. But only more like this: Let’s go! On your feet! Only I don’t think I’m going to have to do that now, am I?

No, Gus. That won’t be necessary.

I’m glad for that. In spite of my appearance, I’m not the sort who enjoys making emphatic exclamations.

No, said Bloom for the sake of agreement, of course not.

Gus reached out to Bloom with his big paw and mussed his hair. You’re a smart kid, he said, then told him he’d be waiting for him out on the landing.

After Bloom had washed and dressed, Gus escorted him into the courtyard and up to the dwelling atop the mesa. When they reached the door at the side of the building, Gus said, Remember. The inner life, not the outer beauty, is your concern. Simon says if you don’t capture the inner life, he’ll know. Like that, he said with a snap of his meaty fingers. He now opened the door and gave Bloom a little pat on the behind, which pushed him through the threshold. He then shut him in.

Sitting on a stool in the light shafting through the studio skylights, Bloom found a naked woman with a long braid of auburn hair hung on her shoulder. She sat nicely postured with her back to him, her skin appearing as if it had been treated with a golden-pink gouache. Bloom was reminded of the occasions he had seen this mix of soft color and texture from the tower’s pavilion moments before the sun set, when a marine haze, whose moisture appeared more flowery than airy, hung on the horizon, and he further recalled how on such rare evenings when the sun slowly ebbed below the distant line of the sea to form in a few instants celestial bouquets of violet blue and saffron orange, all his worldly concerns ebbed into the arresting vision ahead, and vanished.

Hello, Bloom thought to say.

He said I shouldn’t speak, said the woman. The sound of her voice was soothing and mild and Bloom tried to imagine from its tenor what her face might look like.

He told her she didn’t need to speak to him if that was what she wanted.

She said it was, and then she said nothing more.

Forming a wide girth around his subject, Bloom gingerly placed the soles of his shoes on the planks of the floor, all the time observing along the way the cellolike curves of her back, the elongated tendons of her neck, the delicate bow of her left arm. When he reached the point in the studio where he could see her face and her chest in profile, he found she looked more like a girl than a woman. Although her cheeks were smooth, he could see pushing up through the taught skin a few white blemishes. Her jawline had yet to fully fill out, and to add to her youthful appearance, she had a petite nose and a full mouth, out of which poked at her lower lip a crooked bicuspid.

With each step, Bloom took none of the details composing her body and face for granted, as, other than in books and paintings and sculptures in and around the house, he had never seen a woman fully bared before him. He delighted in the way her small nose sloped at the same angle as her breasts, how the shape of her chin resembled the knobs of her knees, that the color of her lips was a shade darker than that of the broad rings of flesh circling her breasts. Her mouth was the same color as the crenellated flesh between her legs, which she opened for him with a coquette’s good humor.

As if in search of sprites and nymphs, he studied with great fascination the sparkling triangle of auburn hair under the small bulge of her stomach. He followed beads of perspiration up from her navel to the notch at the base of her throat, where he paused before gazing for the first time into the powder-blue hydrangeas that were her eyes. It wasn’t until he reached this most fragile and intimate of places that he discovered what he was meant to be looking for, and with this discovery of the young woman’s inner beauty, the internal pressure one would expect the young Rosenbloom to feel at the sight of such lovely flowers began to mount.

Having no illusions that his subject would miss the ascent of his mood, Bloom retreated a few steps to an armchair sitting beside the camera and tripod Gus had presumably set out. He sat down, and here, in this position, he pressed his hands into his lap, and waited. With a hapless grin, his face aglow, he focused his attention on the young woman’s feet. But here, too, he saw in the rise of her instep, in the delicacy of the tendons, a configuration of lines that reminded him of the curve of her hips and the shape of her face, and he returned in his mind to what beauty projected from her eyes. Wherever his thoughts turned now—to the shafts of light, to his birds in the tower, to the limbs of trees hung with fruit—he returned to what lived behind this woman’s eyes. When a good amount of time had passed, the young woman—as if she couldn’t bear witness to his mortification a moment longer, or perhaps because she had simply grown impatient with the stillness of the room—rolled her eyes to the skylight above, stepped down from the stool, and padded over the wooden planks. There she knelt down between Bloom’s knees, placed a finger to her lips, and nodded her head as if they were in agreement. The young Rosenbloom’s instinct was to protest, to protect the young woman’s integrity, to save her from herself, but with her mouth only inches from the zipper of his pants, with her weighty breasts pressing upon his inner thighs, with the musty aromas rising from under her arms and between her legs, with the expectation he might experience the same levity and release he had felt with Roya, his senses were too overwhelmed to do anything other than nod back his consent, and before he knew it, in a few swift motions, his subject, with whom he had shared less than a dozen words, had undone the fly of his trousers and had taken him into her mouth.

This lush sensation was so unusual to him, he tried to push her away, but she acted possessed—or was at least very intent to do her good work—and not only did she manage to hold Bloom there, but she also overpowered him, outmaneuvered him. She thrust her head forward faster and faster until the young Rosenbloom gave in to her and arched his back, allowed himself to present to his full length, at which point, only then, she slowed, at which point, he, with one hand gripping her long braid and the other hand gripping her ear, gushed, and, to his great pleasure, felt the unique sensation of her nibbling away at him with her fang as she drank down every last drop of the very same substance that had landed in his navel so unceremoniously months before.

*   *   *

Now that the coil within Bloom had been unraveled, he was able to concentrate on what had been asked of him. The young woman daintily touched a finger to the corners of her mouth and returned to the stool, her braid coming undone, her lips spread in a mischievous grin, her eyes glowing as if electrified. Bloom wrapped around her shoulders his mother’s paisley shawl and he gathered the tripod and the motion picture camera whose lens he set back a small distance from her shoulder. Look away from me, he said to her. Look over your other shoulder, he commanded, and when I say so, slowly turn to me with your eyes shut. When your chin touches this shoulder, slowly open them, and look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.

He focused the lens on the back of her head and began turning the camera’s crank.

And begin, he said.

And she began.

*   *   *

In the days he waited for his brother’s return, the young Rosenbloom’s education in inner beauty continued in this way. Every morning, Gus appeared beside his bed to announce the arrival of a new subject, and with each new arrival, Bloom now walked to the studio on his own, eager to see what type of woman awaited him; as every one Gus brought to the estate varied in size and shape and had such different features and temperaments, Bloom’s ideas of physical and psychic beauty were constantly changing, and he began to understand the nature of his brother’s exercise. He became, in this brief time, a great admirer of women, of all women, whether they were classically beautiful in balance and symmetry, or enormously imbalanced, with urn-sized breasts that hung to oversized waists. All forms, he found, appealed to him. Ever since his first experience in the studio, he particularly appreciated women with imperfect teeth. He found himself particularly aroused by one woman whose front two were substantially gapped. Because of the duality he observed in the face of another woman on another day, he thought women with high cheekbones and high foreheads were much more becoming if included in the composition of their faces was a small overbite. In profile, he was left with the impression that the woman was awkward and shy, but when he walked around her and looked at her directly, she appeared appealingly predatory. Gus introduced him to women who had peculiarly exaggerated physiognomies. A woman with a thin face and an aquiline nose. A woman with a large mouth full of oversized teeth. A woman with a narrow torso and wide hips. A woman with rolls and folds of flesh that lapped over her God-given curves. And he discovered, when he rolled the film over in the camera, he was more intrigued by the faces of these women, especially the shapeliest of the lot. The women with strong thighs and muscular rumps, those with hefty bellies and breasts, with broad shoulders and thick wrists. These women, unlike the women undistinguished in their shapeliness, didn’t retreat to invisible and mysterious places in their minds. They didn’t deflect the cold gaze of the lens. Rather, as one would reflect outward onto the night sky, they appeared to be searching for meaning in its darkness. In a few frames of film, Bloom discovered, a shapely woman, uninhibited, could reveal in an instant the full essence of her character, and to this he was drawn in, so closely, he was compelled to turn away.

*   *   *

The women departed with Gus each morning at precisely eleven o’clock, and he would return just before two with a man who possessed an unusual talent. The object here, Gus said, is to capture the character behind the thrill of the event. He arrived first with a one-eyed Negro cowboy dressed in spurs and chaps. A scar like the tail of a rattlesnake curved down his cheek, ending near the opening of his ear. Like Gus, he wore a bowler hat, only his had two bullet holes on each side and had tucked into the band of its brim a mottled peacock feather. At his waist was a holster holding two six-shooters and in his right hand he held a rifle with a pewter finish. The sight of the man, who stood as tall and wide and as taciturn as Gus, frightened Bloom, until the cowboy walked into the grove and plucked from their respective trees an orange, then a lemon, an avocado, a plum. He handed them to Bloom and together they walked to the open field, some distance from the headland, and there the man pointed to the sky. Throw them all up, one after the next, real fast like, as high as you can, he said. Bloom looked to Gus and Gus said, Do as he says. Bloom readied himself and then, starting with the largest of the fruit, he threw them up in quick succession as hard as he could. Avocado. Orange. Lemon. Plum. As the avocado rose to its apex, the one-eyed cowboy drew each of his pistols and shot each piece of fruit out of the sky, the plum just as it started its descent. He then turned to Bloom and smiled, showing him where he’d lost his two front teeth. My wife smacked ’em right out o’ my head. He laughed when he saw Bloom innocently gazing through the gap into the back of his mouth. Bloom spent the afternoon filming the cowboy’s face in the afternoon light. Straight on. In profile. Close up, to take in the detail of his scar. He rolled film to capture the way he walked with his hands at rest on his pistol grips. From a distance he filmed him plucking fruit from trees. From up close he filmed his dark hand reaching up to grasp hold of a lemon. Lying on his back, he focused on the point in the sky where he could best capture the exploding fruit. At his side, he filmed the cowboy drawing his gun. From the front, from the back, from every angle he could think of to re-create that one moment in time, Bloom rolled and rolled the film in the magazine, until there was no more film to be rolled. And off went the one-eyed Negro cowboy sharpshooter with two missing teeth as the sun began to dip below the horizon.

In the days to come, Gus drove up to the top of Mount Terminus a Chinese dwarf who spun miniature plates at the end of bamboo poles, a dozen of them, simultaneously; a mustached, one-armed Greek who juggled five baseballs at a time with his one good arm, his shoulder, and a foot; a strongman who wrestled a wild pig; a team of Russian acrobats who formed atop a single bicycle a reverse pyramid; a lazy-eyed magician who failed to make Gus disappear; a six-foot-tall contortionist who squeezed into a small box from which he couldn’t remove himself; and then there were several dipsomaniacs Gus plied with drink so Bloom could film them stumble about through the maze of the knotted gardens until they could stumble no more.

*   *   *

Except to say that Sam Freed had given him a chance at a new life after he’d fallen on hard times, Gus Levy shared little about his past. Yet Bloom felt at ease in his company. He trusted him. Inherently. Even if he was dressed as one of the henchmen from his childhood nightmares, he didn’t resemble his father’s tormentors. There was warmth and an innate kindness belying Gus’s exterior. Even Mr. Stern, who had stopped by several times to advise Bloom on his holdings, took a liking to Gus. Despite his monumental presence, Gus, a man of his father’s generation, more often than not struck Bloom as a small boy wearing an oversized suit. When he didn’t know he was being observed, Bloom caught him on several occasions burying the tip of his proboscis in a rosebud to take in not a manly snort, but more a feminine whiff. Not long after he arrived, he carried with him—inside the internal pocket of his long coat—a pair of pruning shears, which he used for several purposes. Once, sometimes twice a week, while Bloom filmed his subjects, he would ask Meralda for a vase or a bowl and would clip flowers or fruit, and present them to her at sunset. On the days he wasn’t arranging flowers in a vase or fruit in a bowl, he trimmed back branches in the grove, so they produced healthier fruit, he told Bloom. To occupy his time further, he lumbered up to the top of the tower, where he did as his young charge did: observed the world about them through the eye of the telescope. Communed with the birds. He even went so far as to take with him a bucket of water and a brush to clean the cages. What Bloom liked about him best of all, however, was the respect he showed the guests he delivered to the estate. No matter what variety of woman he met at the door of the studio, after Bloom had finished with her, Gus bowed his head, handed a yellow rose to her, and offered his arm for the walk back to the motorcar. To the one-eyed cowboy, to the one-armed Greek, to the dipsomaniacs who could hardly stand upright, Bloom was introduced as if they were respectable gentlemen. To the most unusual of the lot, he treated their differences with the nonchalance of a man who had experienced the world enough to know when to shrug his bulky shoulders at its most intriguing peculiarities.

*   *   *

One night after Gus had twice been to town and back, Roya appeared before Bloom in the parlor and touched his shoulder. He followed her out the front door and down the drive. When they reached the gate, she handed Bloom a flashlight and pointed to the right, along the stone wall. Bloom turned on the light and there he saw Gus’s black sedan, and in it, Gus, snoozing upright with a shotgun’s double barrel resting against his chest. Bloom approached and woke him. And said, Won’t you come inside, Gus? There are more than enough rooms. Or, if you like, you can sleep in one of the cottages.

I can’t, said Gus. Simon wouldn’t like it.

Why not?

I’m supposed to be looking out.

What for?

He grimaced. It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.

You’re hugging a shotgun, Gus.

The big man looked down at the two barrels in his arms, raised his thick brows as if to say, So I am, then said, Walk around and take a seat.

Bloom did as he was told, and when he was settled next to Gus, Gus said, Simon’s told you of his plans? For the reservoir and the aqueduct?

Yes.

Well, the farmers up there near the lake haven’t been in a particularly obliging mood. They sort of have it out for him at the moment. And seeing as it was Mr. Rosenbloom, the departed, who turned the lake’s stewardship over to Simon, I’m afraid they’re not too pleased with you, by association, see.

No, said Bloom, I don’t see.

Look, said Gus, it’s like this. You’ve got the farmers out at the edge of the desert there who aren’t too pleased because they say the people down south are going to suck the water right out of their fields, and then you’ve got the citrus farmers over here on the other side of the mountains, he said, pointing out to the basin, who’ve yet to sell to Simon—they’re not too pleased with the amount of money Simon’s offered them for their groves. They feel like they’re getting squeezed. They consider the way your brother does business something of an injustice. But the thing is, the courts have said it’s Simon’s right, and it’s the water authority’s right, to divert the water from the farms in the north, and put the squeeze on the farmers in the south, and it’s the courts, in the end, that say what’s what. So, said Gus, it’s no surprise tempers are up, and, it’s been my experience, when tempers run hot, right minds don’t prevail. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re part of Simon’s venture, see? When people think their livelihood is threatened, anyone will do. Until now there have been whispers about some unpleasant business, nothing more than whispers; nevertheless, Simon wants me here to sit out the nights. As a precaution.

Despite the unsettling news, the sight of Gus, enormous and armed, made Bloom feel secure. Nothing, he thought, could penetrate this large barrier of a man, this amiable Golem. Nothing.

The lengths he goes to, Gus remarked after a long silence. It dizzies the mind. After another pause, he added, I know he wasn’t Sam’s natural-born child, but there are times when I wonder if he didn’t inherit a little of his soul. Gus shifted his eyes to Bloom, and Bloom returned Gus’s gaze, hoping Simon’s man would continue on. Sam, Gus said after he and Bloom stared at each other for a little while, he had something of the dybbuk about him. And now I can see it in Simon. Same as Sam. Follow?

Bloom shook his head.

Gus went on at some length to explain how Sam Freed started off—not unlike Gus himself—as a dirty immigrant kid working the saloons back east along the city’s Bowery. By all accounts, Sam was a decent, levelheaded boy until he took a job at P. T. Barnum’s dime museum on Broadway, where, day after day, he spent his time attending to Barnum’s cabinets of curiosities. While looking after them, Gus explained, something inside him changed. Gus was convinced a malevolent spirit, a dybbuk, came to attach itself to him. Got him fixated on the freaks and geeks. He fell in love with them, along with the variety acts, the animal shows, the acrobats, ventriloquists, melodramas, the panoramas, the living statuary. While working for Barnum, Gus told Bloom, Sam left behind his family, stopped attending shul, and took up running a numbers and booking racket, to make enough money to rent a small theater. When he secured a lease, he filled the small venue with lewd acts and minstrel shows, worked the same crowds everyone else did, the rowdies and the riffraff, the fancy men, the poor hardworking, hard-drinking bastards who needed to step out on their families at night. The small theater filled up every night—and while Sam might not have conducted himself in the most upright fashion, while he wasn’t the most pleasant of human beings to pass the time with, the man knew his business. And he knew people. He could see right into them, what they wanted, what they needed—and with the profits he made from that small theater, he was in a position to rent a bigger theater, and after some time, Sam had enough dough to buy his own place. For a long time, he continued to work the East Side and the Bowery Boys, and one night he saw something that changed him. One night he saw one of his patrons assault a young, innocent girl in the most unspeakable manner, right there, in one of the balcony seats of his theater, and that night the dybbuk loosened its hold on him, and, like he’d just woken up from a nightmare, he had a vision of something altogether new. He started to imagine the money he could make by putting on a clean front and going broader, widening the appeal of his acts, making it so women and children didn’t feel scared when walking out for a night of entertainment. They had their own troubles, their own concerns to forget, Sam had said to Gus when the idea struck him, and he took it upon himself to open a place uptown, right on the edge of privilege, at the doorstep of the upright native borns, and he got rid of the drink in the theaters, cleaned up the acts, brought in real, trained talent and mixed it up with the song of the street, clad the working girls in respectable garments, brought in a Henry Higgins to teach them some manners, and after a while found himself growing respectable, a bridge builder, some reporter said of him. And, Gus suspected, he would have continued bettering himself, but, he said after taking a pause, it wasn’t too long after he’d thrown off the malevolent spirit, there was that business with your mother and Leah. Leah, she was the only woman Sam ever really loved. He loved her more than himself. And, well, that changed Sam, reacquainted him with his former scruples, and he began to see in what ways his business would benefit from pressing Jacob, by taking from him what he believed he needed. And, like I said, he knew his business, and it turned out his business benefited. He could always see what was next, Sam, always found the means to push what was new into the world, and for the worse, I think, he bred his ambition into Simon, poisoned him with the dybbuk’s aspirations. And now Simon sees this place as his territory to conquer. To make of it what Sam made in the East, only bigger, a great deal bigger. His own empire, said Gus. With his enemies at the gate and all the rest that accompanies a big head. But you rest easy, kid. The big man patted the shotgun with his hand. I ain’t gonna let nothing happen. And Bloom believed him. The big man gazed into the distance and looked off in the direction of Mount Terminus’s peak for a long while. When he turned back to Bloom, he said, I could take you out there sometime if you like.

Where’s that, Gus?

To the lake. On the High Holidays. To pray and fast. Maybe the three of us can go, all together.

I’d like that.

If you ask me, Simon could stand to find some solace. He could use a day of rest and peace, to reflect, be written into the Book of Life. If you can believe it, Gus said in the same manner he sniffed at the flowers in the gardens, I’ve been looking after your brother since he’s in diapers. Long enough to know exactly what kind of fronts he puts on. Simon’s not like Sam. He’s got all the makings of a good man. But there’s always some obstacle in his way, always some new affair twisting away at what lives in his heart. He doesn’t know how to slow down long enough to enjoy what he’s got. He thinks he’s like Sam, thinks he’s gotta make himself bigger than he is, that he’s gotta be larger than life generally allows, but … Gus humphed through his cavernous nostrils and let out a sigh that sounded like a small laugh, I’m getting too slow and old to keep up with the size of him. You, Joseph, you can teach him a thing or two about what it is to be a man. A human being. He unconsciously patted the barrels of his gun, and when he did, his stomach rumbled through the sedan’s interior.

You’re hungry, Gus.

Gus looked to his wide midsection with some amazement at the sound it produced. I’m hardly at risk of fading away.

Never mind that. I’ll send Meralda out with some food.

You shouldn’t trouble yourself.

It’s no trouble at all. Bloom opened the car door and returned to the gate, where he met Roya, and the two of them walked back up the drive, and when he found Meralda, he told her where Gus was and what he was doing. She would gather together a picnic for him, she said, and carry it out when it was ready.

*   *   *

Every night after this night, Bloom noticed Meralda left the kitchen earlier than she normally would after dinner. When she didn’t return, he went out to check on her, and found her sitting in Gus’s company. A short duration of time the first week, longer the second week, and by the time the three weeks had lapsed, she sat with him well after Bloom had fallen asleep in his bed.

*   *   *

On the twenty-first day of his brother’s absence, Bloom stood in the company of his birds, his telescope pointed down the long stretch of road leading to the sea. He waited. And waited. And waited. And while he waited he searched for unique markings on each of his lovebirds, drew those with the most recognizable features into a book, and recorded their names. Three females he named Scheherazade, Desdemona, and Beatrice. Three males he named Bergerac, Roderick, and Candide. Did the ship skirt the coast of Tierra del Fuego? he asked Desdemona. Did it navigate the arctic waters around Cape Horn? he asked Candide. He returned to the telescope every few minutes to search the line that separated land from sea at the end of the port road, and a little before noon, a plume of dust no bigger than a granule of sand appeared at the edge of the basin, and at just half past noon he could see charging ahead of the burgeoning cloud the lead truck of the approaching convoy. As that truck grew larger in dimension within the telescope’s frame, the tower’s pavilion was overtaken by the same silence Bloom heard the day Simon arrived on Mount Terminus in his roadster. The calls and song sounding from the aviary silenced. The frenetic motion stilled. And a moment later, he heard echoing through the canyon pass below, a beehive of engines. He looked again into the viewfinder of his telescope to see what progress the trucks had made, and when he saw they remained some distance away from the start of the mountain road, he turned the aperture down onto the farthest turn visible to him, and there caught speeding in and out of frame three trucks whose beds were loaded with men. He turned to the next visible bend in the road and a few moments later they again moved in and out of his field of vision. And when they reached the final curve before the turnoff to the plateau, two of the trucks pulled over on either side of the pavement and one parked lengthwise across it. The beds of the trucks now emptied and Bloom could see step out into the sun no less than two dozen men, many of them dressed in overalls, every last one of them holding the barrels of a shotgun across his chest, some wore rifles slung across their backs, others holstered pistols on their waists. They congregated in small groups. Lit cigarettes. Smoked. Paced. Didn’t talk. These weren’t the faces of the conquistadors he knew so well from Salazar’s prints, but like them they wore an expression resembling a religious conviction. The squint eye and pursed lip of piety and righteous intent. There was something about the clarity of their bearing that began to fill Bloom with dread. It was the alignment of faith and duty—the absolute presence of a visible motive—that distressed him.

He turned to Elijah and said, Some horrible thing is about to happen. To which Elijah responded, Open the door and we shall see. Bloom returned to the scope and watched on. The mob continued to pace without words shared between them, and then, some ten minutes later, the collective of birds again grew silent. Bloom searched the visible turns of the switchback and eventually saw a black sedan slowly making its way up the grade. Upon hearing the approaching vehicle, the rabble bunched together at the center of the road in a disorderly fashion, and when the sedan arrived, they surrounded it in such a way Bloom couldn’t see the face behind the windshield. He prayed it wasn’t Stern. Or Gus. Not even Gus was a match for this army of men. A man whose face was cast in shadow by the brim of a cowboy hat, presumably their leader, exchanged a few words with the driver, then a few words more, and in the next instant, this same man pulled open the car door and, the next thing Bloom knew, the driver—as if he had been swallowed by a mythic beast—disappeared into the scrum of bodies. Bloom watched the butts of shotguns and fists rise into the air, and then silent blows fell, one after the next. They silently pounded, and pounded, and, no doubt, they would have continued their assault had they not heard the rumble of trucks echo through the pass. Like Bloom’s birds, their frenzy calmed. They abandoned the body on the roadside, left it there, facedown, unmoving. And again, they waited in silence, this time, their guns raised, their hands shaking from the aftermath of the violence, with thoughts of the impending violence. Those farmers who were still smoking flicked what remained of their cigarettes to the pavement and stood fixed when the lead truck rolled up before them and came to a stop.

Bloom trained his telescope on the cab, and he was able to see through the glare of the glass, Gus behind the wheel, and beside him on the passenger seat, Simon, his eyes looking cold and hard at the sight of the men, at the body laid out on the road’s shoulder. Bloom’s brother casually extended his arm out the window, at which point the young Rosenbloom noticed Simon’s lips curl up one side of his face; a smirk transformed into a grin as he swung his arm down and smacked the side of the door several times. Hard enough, Bloom could hear the thud from this distance. The truck began to rock in such a way it looked as if it were about to lurch forward, and then up along its sides, a number of armed men appeared, each and every one of them pointing a shotgun in the direction of those men aiming shotguns at them.

Simon allowed the tension to build for a few moments longer, allowed the men on the road to size one another up, before he stepped out onto the macadam in his gleaming white suit and tie, and when he did, Bloom watched his brother step up to the mob. He stared down as many of them in the eyes as he could. He then waited. The same man who pulled the driver from his car now stepped forward, and Simon, without a moment’s hesitation, matched his step. For a long time they said nothing to each other so far as Bloom could see. He could then see Simon’s lips move. Nothing else. Only his lips. His face, otherwise, was stone. He showed no fear. No concern for the menacing figures before him. He pointed to the man on the side of the road and then made a brief speech. Another heavy silence passed. And then the farmer had his say, during which time Simon didn’t so much as blink. He held his ground. And when the farmer had said his piece, he paused for a moment. Observed Simon’s determined indifference, then gestured with the brim of his hat to a man standing behind him. The man he had appointed for the job strolled over to the truck blocking the road, climbed into the cab, and cleared the way. Simon didn’t move. He stood in clear view of the farmer—in defiance of him—for what felt to Bloom like a very long time. He then turned his back on the mob and rejoined Gus in the truck. Two men lifted the beaten man from the roadside and sat him upright next to Simon, then remained on the road with their guns drawn until the convoy continued on its journey, and when it had, the farmers departed. They returned to their vehicles, started their engines, and motored away in the reverse order in which they had arrived. Bloom didn’t move. He could hardly breathe. He stood frozen until the road was clear, and when it was, when Simon’s men had continued their journey to the plateau on foot, he went to Elijah’s cage and said, Thank God.

My God is Yahweh, squawked Elijah. My God is Yahweh.

To which Bloom said, Amen.

*   *   *

When he regained his composure, the young Rosenbloom descended the staircase of the tower and made his way to the stand of eucalyptus. He thought he should go down and greet Simon, but, after having witnessed what his brother had done on the road, he was reluctant to do so. There was something about Simon’s doggedness he found unsettling and he grew wary of being in his company. He instead watched as the trucks lined up on the plateau road to meet Gus at the warehouse loading dock. Gus stood there with a clipboard and pen in hand. In his calm, quiet manner, with his pronounced nose, he pointed the laborers in various directions as they hauled cargo past him. When a truck was emptied, the vehicle moved ahead to the cul-de-sac where it turned around and motored off onto the mountain road. Moving past Gus was lumber and hardware, spools of cable, steel rails, dollies, a crane, a multitudinous variety of furniture and lintels, windowpanes, mirrors, signs, lamps and lanterns, ceramics and statuary, all forms of lighting equipment, framed artwork, pianos small and large, orchestral instruments, music stands, garment racks and more garment racks, sewing machines, bolts of fabric, rolls upon rolls of rugs, pyramids of cases, trunks, and crates, and a great many items to which Bloom couldn’t give names. He observed for several hours what equipment and materials entered the warehouse, and as he looked at the procession of trucks, the unloading, the storing, he grew increasingly eager to find out the fate of the man who had been so brutally beaten on the roadside. For the better part of the afternoon, however, the man was nowhere to be seen. Nor, for that matter, was Simon. It wasn’t until near the wane of day, when the lead truck of the convoy had returned with its second load, that Simon emerged from the turreted house at the center of the cul-de-sac. He walked to Gus’s side, looked over what progress had been made, nodded his approval, then pulled Gus away. They strolled to the house Simon had just exited. Gus now entered and after only a moment hobbled out with the broken man cradled in his arms. Gus, who didn’t appear overly taxed by the weight of the beaten man, trudged up the incline to the edge of the estate. When he finished his journey uphill, and he and the man were standing before Bloom on a patch of dappled earth, the young Rosenbloom could clearly see the entire left side of the man’s face had been beaten purple. His right eye had ballooned shut, the lid so pregnant with blood Bloom could see capillaries worm over its surface. Near the corner of his mouth swelled a similar, but lesser contusion. Here his lip had been gashed, and the blood spilled from it had dried in streaks down the curly hairs of his beard. On the less injured side of his face, he appeared to be a man of mismatched features. He possessed a prominent nose and a recessed chin, an eye too small for its orbit and a full cheek that would one day soon fall over the line of his jaw. Atop his head was an unkempt mane that flared up about his ears and on either side of a widow’s peak.

This is Mr. Dershowitz, said Gus. He keeps our books.

Bloom said with sincere concern, How do you do, Mr. Dershowitz?

As you can see, said Dershowitz out of the less injured side of his mouth, not very well. Not well at all. His good eye moved between Gus and Bloom then turned in the direction of the villa.

He needs a bed, said Gus. The truck with the mattresses hasn’t arrived yet.

Bloom said, Why don’t you take him to one of the cottages and I’ll fetch some ice.

As Gus continued to carry Mr. Dershowitz’s weight along the path leading to the courtyard, Bloom ran to the kitchen, where he chipped away shards of ice from the block in the icebox, bundled them into a wet cloth, and carried them outside. In the cottage nearest the studio, he found Gus had removed Mr. Dershowitz’s jacket and vest, his shoes and socks, and was now propping up his head on a pillow.

Dershowitz thanked Bloom for the compress and pressed it first to his lip, then arranged it so it rested on his eye. Much better, he said. Much, much better. He now started laughing. I’m accustomed to men finding me a little unpleasant, but never have they exercised their displeasure with me quite like this. I warned your brother something of this nature would happen, you know. Only I never expected I would be the victim of his folly. Again he laughed, this time taking hold of his ribs. Oy! he groaned. Then: Just my luck I should arrive at the precise moment.

I’m very sorry, said Bloom.

Mr. Dershowitz dismissed Bloom’s concern with a feh and a wave of the hand. Had it not been me, someone else would have been made to suffer. To ask, Why me? It’s not worth the breath in my lungs. They were here to menace. To send a message. Here I am: the message. Mr. Levy there, he knows the way of the world. He’ll tell you the same: the unexpected is always unexpected. And generally unwelcome.

Gus shrugged in agreement.

Dershowitz, whose open eye was beginning to behave strangely, repeated: I warned your brother. In a voice now somewhat adrift, he added, There’s little profit in animosity, I told him. It didn’t take a genius to imagine in what ways the animus would grow. You remember that, he said, jutting a finger at Bloom. The motion was abrupt and caused him to groan. This time with a breathy ach rather than an oy.

We should send for a doctor, Bloom said to Gus.

Simon already phoned for one. He should be here presently.

Bloom then turned to Mr. Dershowitz, who said with a return of his senses, It’ll take more than a mob of faygala farm boys to kill off this old Jew. I’ll be all right, young Rosenbloom. You wait and see.

I’m going to ask my cook to sit with you until the doctor arrives. She’ll have a better idea as to what to do for you.

You’re a fine young man.

I’ll send her in with some hot water. Should you want her to clean your wounds.

If she isn’t too troubled by my appearance, who am I to say no to the soft touch of a shayner maidel.

Bloom patted Mr. Dershowitz’s hand and went in search of Meralda.

*   *   *

By the time he and Meralda had prepared the hot water and had chipped away a bucketful of ice, the doctor had arrived. He was a portly, red-eyed man wearing a checkered vest and a trilby too small for his wide face. Bloom escorted him and Meralda to the cottage, where Gus continued to sit at Mr. Dershowitz’s side. Bloom set the basin of hot water on the bedside table, and to make room in the cramped cottage, he stepped outside. He watched from the window as the doctor and his cook began the work of cleaning the blood from Mr. Dershowitz’s wounds. This, however, he decided he needn’t see. This whole ordeal had shaken Bloom more than he realized. He took a seat at the edge of the reflecting pool to calm himself. He watched on the surface of its water the sky turn from crimson to violet to black. In it he saw the moon crest over the peak of the villa’s roof, and with the moon’s arrival the still water of the pool phosphoresced. A silver sheen brightened the air, hung there, as would a vapor. It reflected from the spines of cacti planted on the terraced hill rising to the studio; it mixed with the mist of electric light emanating from the plateau.

He felt at this time Roya’s eyes on him. Somewhere. Nearby. He could sense her presence silently maneuvering through the ghostly light. But when he turned to search the courtyard for her, he saw instead Gus’s familiar figure, aglow, in motion, moving toward him. When the big man arrived at his side, he rested a heavy hand on Bloom’s shoulder and said, He won’t be very pretty to look at for a while, but he should be all right. The doctor, Gus told him, recommended he not be moved. Mr. Dershowitz’s head had been concussed and he had a broken rib, maybe two, maybe three. Gus and Meralda would sit with him through the night should delirium or a fever take him, in which case they would need to drive Mr. Dershowitz to the hospital in town. Gus asked Bloom if he would please go down onto the lot and tell his brother what he had just told him, and Bloom said he would do it right away. He followed Gus as far as the cottage and continued on through the pergola to the stand of eucalyptus, and there he discovered, on the very boulder where his father had sat the first time he gazed upon Simon as a grown man, his brother. Simon was looking down on what remained of the returned convoy. More props were being hauled into the warehouse, and at the end of the cul-de-sac he could see men carrying furniture and trunks into the strange assortment of dwellings. When Simon saw Bloom standing beside him, the young Rosenbloom delivered Gus’s message about Mr. Dershowitz, and Simon, upon hearing it, appeared relieved. That is welcome news, he said. He patted the rock with his hand and Bloom took a seat beside him. He asked if Bloom had been in the tower this afternoon, and Bloom told him he had done as Simon said he should do the last time they were together.

So, said his brother, you saw it all, then.

Yes, said Bloom.

They continued to watch and listen to the activity on the plateau for some time. Breaking the silence, Simon turned to Bloom and said, Gus, I understand, explained the points of contention.

To this, Bloom nodded.

Then you know why those men were here.

Bloom nodded again.

Good, said Simon, nodding along with Bloom. Good. Again he fell quiet for a moment. Had I thought anyone would arrive ahead of us … I only learned early this morning there would be trouble, you see, and Hal wasn’t meant to be here until later in the week.

If it helps, said Bloom, when we spoke, Mr. Dershowitz sounded accepting, perhaps even a little fatalistic, about what’s happened to him.

That’s merely the way Hal is disposed. Hal Dershowitz, Simon explained, had been something of an uncle to him; the unwelcome uncle who on festive occasions spoke of nothing but death and disease and suffering. He had looked after Sam’s books since before Simon could remember, and now he was looking after his, and, as he had meddled in Sam’s affairs—largely to Sam’s benefit—he now meddled in Simon’s, and almost always landed on the right side of an argument. He warned me of the challenges we would face in the north, said Simon, and he cautioned me against the venture. I would be better served, he advised me, to leave well enough alone. Why, he asked as he extended an arm to the plateau, can’t I be satisfied with this? When I made the deal with the water authority, he called it my great folly, my grand misadventure. Perhaps he’s right? Simon looked to Bloom for his response, but at that moment a strong gust of wind blew at Bloom’s and Simon’s backs, rushed through the spindling limbs overhead. Bloom looked away from his brother and turned to the villa to face the onrush. He saw the moon had lifted up in its entirety over the line of the roof, its light bright enough now to cast shadows. On the periphery of his vision, he saw something move within the tower’s pavilion, and when he focused on the archway, he saw at its center Roya’s silhouette. As if to embrace the oncoming wind, she spread out both her arms, and when she stretched them to their full length, two small birds darted out of her fists into the argent haze. They arced about the moon’s circumference and met at its center, where they crossed paths and fluttered out of sight. When Bloom turned back, he found Simon had eased himself off the boulder and was walking downhill in the direction of an approaching truck, his white suit turning black in the night.