PART III

AFFINITY

 

 

 

Hal Dershowitz convalesced for the better part of three weeks in a netherworld. Meralda roused him from bed every morning and helped him to a chaise in the courtyard, where she propped his injured head on a pillow and served him a fulvous concoction of iced lemonade and tincture of laudanum. Thereafter, he slipped in and out of consciousness throughout the day, possessing in his delirium little more than the ability to whisper short phrases and mumble gibberish under his breath. Although he wouldn’t be able to follow the narrative, Bloom, thinking Mr. Dershowitz might take comfort in hearing a friendly voice, read to him from the back pages of Little Dorrit. As a man who had dedicated his life to the manipulation of money, he thought, perhaps he would take some pleasure in hearing under the haze of his laudanum twilight the ways in which hidden and corrupt capital twisted the lives of the Clennams, the Dorrits, the entire city of London. In a few instances while Bloom read of Mr. Merdle’s unscrupulous schemes, Mr. Dershowitz briefly emerged from his haze and mistook Jacob Rosenbloom’s younger son for the elder. With an arm struggling to lift itself, speaking in a voice that sounded from a nightmare, he said Simon’s name, and repeated it over and over until Bloom drew near. The old man crept his fingers up the sleeve of Bloom’s shirt to his collar, and using the weight of his arm, dragged the whorl of his ear to his lips, and in a barely audible rasp, he said, Your appetites will devour us. On another occasion when Bloom read aloud a section concerning this same character, he said in the same haunting wisp, Into the abyss you’ll plunge us all. On the final occasion, at the moment of the story when Mr. Merdle was found a suicide in the city baths, he said, God will punish you. After each of these episodes, Dershowitz quickly slipped back into the dark mists, and remained there. Before sunsets, Meralda escorted him to his bed and fed him some broth, a few morsels of bread and cheese, followed by an evening libation significantly stronger than the one he drank in the morning. In his docile state, the doctor posited, the wounds inflicted upon the bookkeeper healed more rapidly than they would have otherwise—the injuries to his face and his ribs, once plump and plum, deflated, and were reconstituted to the bruised complexion of an overripe peach. Meralda, on the doctor’s orders, stopped administering Mr. Dershowitz’s morning and evening cocktails, and, after several days of sobriety, he was soon able to walk from the cottage to the chaise on his own steam. His posture gradually straightened, and no longer did he hunch and clutch at his side. The pain that had been masked by the morphine he now expressed in the form of lighthearted jeremiads about dull aches and stiffness, in the same manner a browbeaten man might grumble about his dissatisfied wife; and when his head had cleared and he faced Bloom, he was able to recall who he was, and for his kindness and compassion, he expressed his gratitude. When Bloom asked him if he had any recollection of what had transpired over the course of the last several weeks, Mr. Dershowitz remembered nothing other than the soft touch of the shayner maidel who fed him his meals and led him to and from the chaise in the courtyard. But he did say he had many strange and disturbing dreams about the numerous ways Simon had brought about the end of days.

*   *   *

What Hal Dershowitz had seen of Simon’s character in his delirium, Bloom, at times, sensed as well, but in those instances when doubts about his brother’s character surfaced to consciousness, he turned away from them until they vaporized into afterthoughts. Even when on the rare occasion he saw fissures crack the veneer of Simon’s façade, when he recognized the presence of the dybbuk residing within him, Bloom felt intensely devoted to Simon, and Simon, in turn, appeared to be equally devoted to Bloom. He considered himself to be Bloom’s guardian, accountable for his well-being, and he did everything in his power to make certain he was properly looked after. Although he didn’t have the time in his schedule to play this role himself, he did assign Bloom his proxies, most notably, Gus, who moved onto the estate, into one of the cottages off the courtyard, to tend to the grounds and the gardens, to wire the villa for electricity and telephone service, to keep Bloom company during his meals, to rouse him out of bed in the mornings, to deliver him to work. On the studio lot, Simon surrounded Bloom with his most reliable people and made it clear to them they were being charged with the responsibility of educating his younger brother. He expected them to attend to their innocent protégé with the same compassion and steadfastness a parent would his or her own child, to shield him from petty squabbles and jealousies, gossip and rumors, and fix Bloom’s focus on his craft. Of course, this was hardly a necessary precaution, as Bloom had been set apart from the concerns of society for so long his seclusion had immunized him from the influence of trivial discord. He wasn’t any less human than the others—he certainly wasn’t above curiosity and intrigue—he was simply unaccustomed to small talk, whether it was composed of gibes or taunts, flattery or fawning. You just go better yourself, Gus told him, without self-pity or complaint. Don’t show off how clever you are. Do your work, keep to yourself, and you’ll earn their respect. This was all Bloom wanted. To prove his efforts were equivalent to that of his brother’s goodwill and his mentors’ attentions, to do his job well enough so that he might attract the admiration of Elias Gottlieb.

*   *   *

Not long after Hal Dershowitz departed the estate, Gus awakened Bloom early one morning and escorted him to the plateau. They passed a short convoy of trucks motoring out to the mountain pass. One was filled with a selection of perfectly ironed cowboys and a gloomy band of snaggle-haired banditos, the next harnessed a Jackass Mail stagecoach, a third had, lashed to its bed, cameras and lighting equipment. Simon had purchased a ranch in the valley to film their Westerns, Gus told him. The trucks were bound for a ghost town they had built on the property. When the roar and grind of the engines drifted off, they were met by a ragtime two-step sounding from the horn of a Victrola set atop a table on Simon’s porch. Beside the iron bellflower, Bloom’s brother stood conducting the morning orchestration of bodies about the lot. In an open field beyond the dwellings, a circus big top was being erected. There Bloom noticed at the field’s edge a chained baby elephant sitting on its haunches. Beside it, several cages on wheels, one containing a screeching chimpanzee dressed in a bridal gown, in another an ostrich garbed in a tuxedo and tiny top hat. Carpenters and set dressers were at work transforming the respective outdoor stages into a saloon, a Victorian parlor, a hospital room, a lady’s boudoir, an Arabian tent, the deck of a ship, an igloo, a hall of mirrors, a gypsy’s lair. A makeshift sign reading CASTING OFFICE had been posted outside one of the cottages, and there stood a long line comprised of sweating swabbies; overalled men with straw hats; men dressed in black suits and stovepipe hats; musclemen; clowns; grand dames in low-cut gowns; nurses; doctors; nuns; ballerinas; jugglers; acrobats; midget sword swallowers; sheiks; Eskimos; women draped in colorful tapestry. Bloom wanted a closer look at the costumed animals, but as he started wandering to the field, Gus grabbed hold of him by the collar and pulled him away in the opposite direction. Bloom asked Gus, as he was redirected toward the warehouse entrance nearest the estate, if he would take him to watch Gottlieb at work sometime.

No.

Why not?

Gottlieb worked only on closed sets. Behind sheets of muslin. To watch him at work required an invitation.

And how do I receive one?

For that, you do this. Bloom’s gargantuan guardian walked him up to the second floor, where, under the enormous skylight of Stage 3, he was introduced to the principal set builder, Percy Evans, a thick man with a thin, tight mouth. And as Gus had done the day he delivered him to the studio to meet the girl with the long braid, he pushed him off, and sent him on his way. Together Bloom and Mr. Evans started construction of what would become a laboratory in which the mad scientist, Professor Kronos, would invent a formula for The Primal Pill. They cut and finished long planks of wood, painted them black, lacquered them into a glossy sheen, assembled them into countertops. On their surface, he and the property master, Hershel Verbinsky, whose oily head secreted a camphor-like odor, labored into the night, arranging a complex puzzle of connecting test tubes, beakers, and Bunsen burners. Bloom rejoined Mr. Evans the following morning and helped him raise gray walls against which Professor Kronos’s lab coat would stand in contrast. On the walls, they hung cabinets, a periodic table, a piece of slate, arranged bookshelves he and the pungent Mr. Verbinsky would fill with dummy tomes—The Occult; Black Magic; Witchcraft; Curses of the Underworld. They displayed strange totems and otherworldly wood carvings of mythical therianthropes, a taxidermy lemur’s head topped with a pince-nez, staffs and trinkets, an assortment of tribal masks.

He and the rather mannish scenic artist, Hannah Edelstein, mapped onto the piece of slate an elaborate chemical formula for elements unknown to science: permiam, therbium, delirium; under her direction, they went on to paint pastoral backdrops to be inset into the laboratory windows, which would reveal in the distance the God-fearing town of Integrity. When they had finished the lab, Bloom moved on to the plateau, and there joined a loud and gregarious gaggle of carpenters who assembled on either side of the road’s paving stones the town façades.

Before the end of the third week, a Main Street on which townspeople would fall victim to Kronos’s diabolical plot had risen. A town hall was constructed, a church with a white steeple, a dress shop, a general store, a telegraph office, a schoolhouse, and stretched across the end of the cul-de-sac was a blank matte on which Bloom would assist Miss Edelstein in painting the reverse perspective of the lab windows—the extension of Main Street; beyond it, rolling hills; at the top, a cluster of columned buildings comprising the professor’s bucolic campus home.

With all this in place, Simon, who continued to conduct the lot’s activity from his porch to the syncopation of Scott Joplin and Eubie Blake, sent Bloom to Leonard Hertz, the lighting technician, a heavy smoker of a sweet-smelling herb Gus called drago, about which, he said, Should he offer you any, you politely decline. Bloom would help Mr. Hertz suspend arc lights from battens running under a scrim stretched below the studio’s skylight. They angled the parabolas in such a way that the mad professor’s figure would cast long shadows in every direction he turned. They likewise wheeled one of the cranes onto the road outside and equipped it with a reflector. Under it, Bloom stood in for the innocent passersby who, when they saw the lunatic Kronos approach, were meant to look up and appeal to God for help, at which point their faces would brighten. They were meant to bask in the glow for a moment, and then Hertz, in his enervated manner, which was often punctuated with a random and involuntary Heh, explained he would slowly pull the reflector away, and with it remove whatever hope the subject had for an act of divine intervention.

The director, Murray Abrams, an intelligent-looking figure who wore a pencil mustache and a powder-blue linen suit whose material billowed over his oxfords like a sail taking the wind, described to Bloom during a rehearsal in what manner Kronos would scatter his primal pills at the townspeople’s feet, how when the tablets made contact with the ground they—with flashes of gunpowder—would vaporize upon contact, and in an instant, men, women, and children would become possessed with the primal spirit. To capture this transmutation, Claude Strauss, the makeup artist, showed Bloom how he would shed the constraints of Integrity’s prim character: the women’s hair, once pulled back, would miraculously unravel by way of a slipknot. He would arrange their locks to hang over the shoulder and brush against the breast, darken the orbits of their eyes with pitch. To the men, he would do the same—tease their hair into demonic tufts, and go so far as to strip them down to their bare chests. The choreographer, Levi Sexton, demonstrated for him the frenzied dance he’d scored to a tribal drumbeat: the women would spin cartwheels and snake along the ground. The men would whirl like dervishes, throw one another up into feats of aerial acrobatics, and drag the women across the road by the hair. When their primitive energy was spent, when they regained control of themselves, when their sense of propriety returned, the cameraman, Stephan Harlow, would wheel up on a dolly, to close in on several of the actors’ faces, one at a time, so the audience could see in their expressions the shame they felt for what they had done while under the influence of Kronos’s drug, and without consulting one another with words, they would reflect on their undoing. At that moment the town’s reverend would lift his head and look up at one of his parishioners, Abrams said, and one by one, they would stand as a congregation and turn to the hills, gather into a mob, and march off in the direction of the professor’s lab. Once there, they would pull out the professor by his beard, bind him in ropes, and drag him back to town; in the middle of Integrity’s Main Street they would push him atop a mountain of wood and bind him to a stake, at which time a woman shaking a Bible in one hand and a torch in the other would set the heaping pyre, and Dr. Kronos, ablaze. The men would then comb back their hair and button up their shirts. The women would twist their manes into tight buns and right their skirts. And off they would walk, turning their backs on the black smoke lifting into Integrity’s clear sky.

They took fifteen days to film The Primal Pill and a day to break down the sets they had spent five weeks building. Simon sent Bloom next into the lab, where he sat in the dark with the technician, Max Heinrich, and listened to the reels wind through the chemical baths; he watched Max work through the toilsome process of making contact prints—the positives cast from the negatives, which, when complete, they walked to the editor, Constance Grey, and Bloom, along with six young women, catalogued scenes and hung them by their perforations in orderly rows so the senior Miss Grey could glue together the sequence provided to her by Mr. Abrams. When all was done, and after further prints were made, Bloom walked the final cut to his brother’s home, where they sat in his offices on the ground floor, in a black velvet room reserved for screenings, and there, in the dark, they watched, and there, as he judged the first professional picture in which he had a hand in making, he reflected on the extraordinary effort, the time and resources put into each and every frame of film. And he had to wonder … He had come to occupy his time so completely with the disciplines of the studio’s work, he no longer experienced the passing hours of the days and weeks as vacuous and endless in their movement; he no longer dwelled on the sun’s position in the sky, on the smallest barometric changes in the weather, in the reflection of Roya’s eyes staring back at him from the still water of the courtyard’s pool. He exerted himself so thoroughly, he rarely, if ever, had a reserve of energy to utilize his imagination in the manner to which he was once accustomed. This didn’t bother him. Not really. He had come to enjoy the novelty of living in service to others. He took satisfaction knowing his hands and his mind had become an extension of the kind and patient men and women undertaking the task of training him. But for what? For this picture? If each frame were a painting or a drawing, the content was sound—the images of the town, the actors who inhabited it, the painted backdrops—but there was something about the transitions from scene to scene, from cut to cut, that bothered him. The movements from one location to the next, from one actor to the other, appeared to him clumsily executed, lacking a fundamental logic, as if done with no awareness of how one form followed the next. Too little attention was paid to something as obvious as to how the direction a character’s eyes looked at an opposing character with whom he or she was speaking. When one addressed the other, his eyes moved one way, the other’s moved in the opposite direction, and it caused nothing short of a sensation of vertigo. He didn’t understand why the props and paintings he, Miss Edelstein, and Mr. Verbinsky created and placed in Kronos’s laboratory, with such tedious care, hadn’t been adequately observed by the camera. Why had they built an elaborate set and dressed it so fastidiously, if they weren’t going to use its full affect to establish the professor’s character? The camera’s positioning, its location relative to its subjects, made for an inadequate frame through which to observe their movements. Nor was the camerawork nimble enough in its mobility, particularly when the ensemble of actors filled the screen. It would have been beneficial to have a second or third camera rolling at alternate positions to capture the strongest performances, to give Miss Grey the opportunity to cut between the crowd and the individual dancers. In the few instances Mr. Harlow did trail the movements of the actors, the lens was pulled too far back when it should have been close, close and tight when it should have been withdrawn. The quality of the light, the contrasts of dark to light were often inharmonious with respect to the tone of the story; too light when it should have been dark, too dark when it should have been light. It wasn’t at all what Bloom had envisioned when he was quietly tending to his tasks. It wasn’t at all what Murray Abrams described—nothing of what the gentlemanly figure claimed to live in his mind had been realized. Bloom couldn’t help but think it a grave disappointment. Was it possible none of them really knew what they were doing? Were they merely making it up as they went along? While Bloom possessed the language to express to his brother precisely how Murray Abrams and the others had failed The Primal Pill, he wasn’t yet confident enough to prescribe the techniques he would engineer to remedy it. He had an inkling, however, that he could do better. A great deal better. When he had this very thought, the lights in the viewing room turned on, and he saw that Simon had already turned to face him. Seeing what expression was on Bloom’s face, he said with a laugh, I warned you. I did warn you. And now you see for yourself. You and I, dear brother, are young parents to a precocious infant no one quite knows how to handle. Patience, he advised. Have patience. Believe it or not, you have a thing or two more to learn before you embark on your own enterprise. And you certainly have more than a few things to learn before you embark on an adventure with Gottlieb.

*   *   *

Except for the occasional evening meal they ate together and the brief moments they stole from their busy schedules, he and Simon remained in close proximity to each other, but largely lived parallel lives. If he seems distant, Gus told Bloom, don’t take it personally. He rarely sleeps, and when he does, it’s never restful. As you’ve seen for yourself, when he’s at the studio, he never stops, and when he’s finished on the lot, his attention is on the waterway, and when his attention is on the waterway, he never stops. Making it so he never stops.

In many regards Bloom and Simon’s relationship began to resemble the one the young Rosenbloom maintained with Jacob, an arrangement, Bloom, at the outset, felt as disappointed in as he felt about the outcome of The Primal Pill, but he eventually came to find it strangely comforting, satisfying even; although their time together was limited, Bloom began to observe in their private moments—when Simon appeared to him the truest and most mild version of himself—something most unexpected: the familial qualities he had been searching for in those weeks they spent together before the others arrived. Perhaps because he was exhausted and at ease in Bloom’s company, his brother began to unknowingly exhibit their father’s manner, embody his idiosyncrasies, approximate the qualities with which Jacob exercised his ruling passions, and there was something about recognizing these traits within Simon that not only created a sense of continuity for Bloom, but also, to some extent, demystified the competing impulses of his brother’s persona. Of course, Bloom told Gus, knowing how Simon felt about Jacob, he wouldn’t presume Simon would want him to point out their commonalities.

No, said Gus, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Bloom secretly took pleasure when these unmistakable similarities revealed themselves, when, for instance, not very long after Mr. Dershowitz departed the courtyard and the state of affairs on Mount Terminus had normalized, they met in Simon’s parlor, in his white room where the furniture and the furnishings resembled his brother’s attire—white settees and armchairs, white walls trimmed with white wainscoting, adorned with white filigree, white bookshelves, a white Pleyel grand—and Bloom asked Simon if the farmers’ revolt had caused him any further problems, and in a demeanor that was nearly exact to Jacob’s, in a display of gestures almost homologous to their father’s, Simon contained within him whatever burdensome news he didn’t wish to reach his brother’s ears; in a pantomime Bloom knew well, Simon drew his hands together, stared at the young Rosenbloom as if he were making an apology, and finishing with a half-formed smile said, You needn’t concern yourself with such things. That weight is mine to carry, and mine alone. The accuracy with which Simon reflected the departed Rosenbloom’s bearing and diction to deflect Bloom’s inquiry gave rise to a prickling of gooseflesh, as Bloom was convinced that Jacob Rosenbloom, however fleetingly, had been raised from the dead for the purpose of inhabiting his son’s body.

In the months following, after the studio had gone into production, when the white walls of Simon’s parlor had grown cluttered with colorful theatrical posters, productions in which Simon had played roles high and low—Henry IV; Henry V; Hamlet; Trigorin; Gregor, the Straight Man; Hollis, the Holy Dunce; Favish, the Singing Philologist; Calamitous, the Acrobat; The Wunderkind, Harvey Plum, Whistler Extraordinaire—Bloom recognized other reflexive behaviors his brother shared with their father—the way the two rested their chin on the heel of their palm when sitting in an armchair; the habit they both had of rubbing their thumb against their fingers when pausing in the middle of a sentence to search for a lost word or thought; forming the same slight pucker of the lips—as if awaiting a kiss—when they drew a glass above their chin, and Bloom, again and again, would be revisited by the uncanny sensation of déjà vu. It seemed at times, he told Gus, as if Simon had somehow studied his father in the way Bloom imagined an actor would mirror a subject he was to portray on stage.

And Gus said to Bloom, That would be impossible. They spent no more than a few minutes in each other’s company. And that was that.

The similitude was never more apparent than the times Bloom watched Simon meticulously attend to the shrine he dedicated to the dead mother he had never known. In a room with thick white lintels framing the canyon road, the basin, the haze hanging at the edge of the sea, Leah, the identical image of Bloom’s mother, hung on the walls as the ingénue Eloise, as Medea and Lady Macbeth and Scheherazade, as the subject of paintings and drawings and illustrated songs, blue renditions of The Little Lost Child and After the Ball, as buxom caricatures captured on cocktail napkins, as a distant figure on a stage enveloped in cigar smoke. Beneath the window’s ledge, organized by composer, were shelves neatly stacked with sheet music, some of which, Simon told him, were tunes written for his mother by Joey Haden and Theo Metz, “A Hot Time in the Old Town” his favorite. Then there were the sheets from her childhood, her Bach and Brahms, Chopin and Mozart, her numerous versions of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which, Simon had learned, she devotedly read in silence, claiming to hear in the measures the strings of Berlioz’s aching heart. In this same room, at its center, stood an enormous table on which rambled the topography of a raised relief map, Mount Terminus and the valley, the lake, the basin, the reservoir, the aqueduct, an expansion of the studio at the bottom of the switchback road. Like the elder Rosenbloom in his gardens, like the elder Rosenbloom with his shears in hand, Simon often lingered over the rise and fall of the mountains, in the depressions of the valley and the basin, circled it when he talked to Bloom, and, as a small child might, toyed with pins in the shapes of houses and trees, railcars and motorcars, and he would articulate what Bloom was thinking; he would joke about the great tyrants and master builders, about whom he said, All children of one sort or another. Children playing childish games with the lives of men. On the rare occasion Simon visited the estate for dinner, Bloom came to further appreciate the intimacy and continuity he experienced in his brother’s company. On these nights, he always visited alone. After Bloom, Simon, and Gus completed their meal, they would sit in the parlor until their conversation lulled, when his brother’s gaze would retreat inward as if drawn there by the forces of an interior gravity. On these nights, Bloom would observe the patterns of lines prematurely etching themselves onto the edges of Simon’s mouth, across his brow, around the corners of his eyes, onto the otherwise smooth surface of his skin. This sight transported Bloom through time, to the past and the future simultaneously, through whose open doors he could see in what way the ridges and grooves on his elder brother’s face would come to resemble the configuration forged on their father’s. He easily imagined the direction in which the lines would lengthen their reach and grow more compressed. During these instances of attenuated temporalities, he envisioned his brother aged before his time, becoming the man for whom he felt nothing but bitterness and disappointment, the man whom he had been at odds with in his mind his entire life, and when bearing witness to the ways in which time inscribed its marks into his brother’s skin and prematurely salted the roots of his hair, Bloom was often tempted, for the sake of his brother’s amelioration, to take Simon by the hand and walk him up to the top of the tower, where, in the company of his birds, they could look out onto the simple wonders of the sky and the sea.

He wanted to teach his elder brother the art of slowing time, so he might ease his anxieties, and prolong his life, but, Bloom suspected, the fiery core of Simon’s temperament, his dybbuk, would burn through such a whimsical gesture with the heat of a magician’s flash paper. At the very least, he thought, he could insist Simon share his burdens with him, but every time Bloom made further inquiries into his affairs, when he expressed a sincere interest in knowing the particulars about the elaborate plans he’d envisioned for the land on either side of Mount Terminus and the barriers he faced trying to realize them, Simon quietly and patiently redirected his attention elsewhere.

*   *   *

The passage of time at this early stage of Bloom’s life could be measured as a collection of dots at the end of a pointillist’s brush. Bloom, in his gray years, would be able to relive his rite of passage on the studio lot only as a toilsome series of nonsequential events, a nonlinear pastiche of window treatments and cornices, light riggings and costume changes, painted mattes, dark rooms, and strips of film. Had he ever chosen to revisit these days in any detail, to make any sensible order of them, he would have needed to consult a filmography of Mount Terminus Productions. He could, however, always recall this much: in the time it took for one to see from the peak of Mount Terminus the first glimmer of his brother’s metal aqueduct reflect off the eastern range of the valley, in the time it took for his brother to fell the citrus groves across the basin and raze their stumps, in the time it took Gus to arrange and present hundreds of floral bouquets and bowls of fruit to his beloved Meralda, in the time it took Meralda to consent to a dinner out with Gus at the Pico House Hotel, Bloom had worked in various capacities on more than two dozen productions with the unremarkable but kindly Murray Abrams, and two other equally unexceptional but endearing directors, Ned Weiman and Bud Manning. He took part in the making of The Counterfeiters; The Count of No Account; The Adventures of Mr. Troubles; The Amateur Hypnotist; The Hebrew Fugitive; The Daughter of the Gods; The Gambler; Colossus and His Dog; Neptune’s Daughter; The Man Without a Name; Beyond Eden; A Cry in the Night; His Wife, the Acrobat; The Muse of the Mews; and Master and Man as well as a multitude of other movies whose titles escaped Bloom not long after they were released to the chain of Freed Theaters, as they weren’t worth remembering. In fact, not one of the productions on which Bloom spent his considerable efforts did he think as engaging as those pictures his brother had shown him the day he arrived with his projector and lifted Bloom into the sky on their aeronautical voyage. Not one could compare with the sophistication of Gottlieb’s The Magnetic Eye, or, for that matter, the half dozen three-reel pictures—Undine; Memento Mei; The Face in the Window; The Astronomer’s Dream; A Good Little Devil; The Overcoat—Gottlieb had made since Simon introduced Bloom to his work.

For almost three years, Bloom awoke every morning at sunrise and retired in a state of exhaustion long after the sun had set, and he had still caught only the briefest glimpses of Gottlieb from a distance, as Gottlieb generally kept to himself, except for the occasions he was on stage, when he became a shadow puppet behind the white panels of muslin his minions erected for him. For three years, Bloom waited patiently for Simon to determine that he was ready for Gottlieb’s guidance. For three years, he didn’t broach the subject. For three years, he waited patiently. But the youngster had become a man. He possessed bushels of black hair under his arms, a woolly nest of black pubis in which a finch could luxuriate with its mate, a face of thickening Semitic stubble that required a daily shave, a ripe musty smell he needed to scrub away after a long day’s labor. As he neared his seventeenth birthday, Bloom, looking forlorn, sat across from Murray Abrams on the empty set of a romantic melodrama, A Long Day in the Sun.

Why so glum, Rosenbloom?

It’s nothing.

You look like you’ve been fed some bad gefilte fish.

It’s a case of disappointment, not indigestion.

Disappointment? In what? In whom?

In the fates? In myself?… In Elias Gottlieb, if truth be told.

Gottlieb?

Yes, Gottlieb. I thought I would have had the opportunity to work with him by now.

And this is the cause of your dyspepsia?

Yes.

Better you should consider yourself fortunate. Blessed!

Why?

It’s Gottlieb! Even when he works with people, he works with no one other than Gottlieb, as there is no other human being on the face of the planet when Gottlieb is around, as there is no man more in love with Gottlieb than Gottlieb. Gottlieb. The man is a creature. A cretin. Too deformed in body and spirit to be loved by anyone other than himself. No one has ever told you this?

No.

And now that I’ve told you, you still sit there like a matzo ball?

What can I say, Mr. Abrams, I think he’s brilliant.

Gottlieb? Uhch. He’s unruly. Unpleasant. A grotesque. An unintended—unacceptable—consequence of your brother’s generosity.

How is that?

Like the punch line of a joke that gets no laughs, he wandered out of the desert while the company was between locations, and your brother, he takes him in as one would a stray dog. Gottlieb! He claimed to be a painter and a photographer, considered himself some sort of Plato or Aristotle, or some such mishegas. All I know is this, Rosenbloom: he never spent a day of his life working in the theater, knows nothing of production decorum, of human decorum, he’s unproductive, unprofitable, and your brother treats him like the fucking messiah. Trust me, Rosenbloom, you want nothing to do with this imp. Gottlieb’s concern is only for Gottlieb. To Gottlieb, everyone else is a shadow in a cave.

I would settle for being a shadow in Gottlieb’s cave, thought Bloom.

He didn’t have the heart to say this to Mr. Abrams, who continued to say Gottlieb as if the man’s name were a sneeze or a cough or a curse. If it’s what you want, go on, I won’t be offended. Get up off your ass and talk to your brother. Just stop with the moping and the acting like the love of your life was some Ophelia.

Mr. Abrams …

Go on! Go. You think I want to look at that long face any longer?

Bloom apologized to Murray Abrams and walked to his brother’s house. He paced the planks of his porch for a half hour until Simon peeked his head out the front door. Aren’t you going to come in?

No.

Would you like me to come out?

No.

Then what would have me do?

I would have you talk to Gottlieb.

I see.

I’m ready. I have long been ready.

From within the shadows of his foyer, Simon said, I know.

He knows, said Bloom.

Yes, I know. But it’s slightly more complicated than that.

What is?

Everything. Gottlieb included. Stay right there. Simon disappeared for a moment, and when he reappeared, he stepped out under the overhang, took Bloom by the arm, and walked him to his roadster. He opened the passenger door and commanded Bloom to get in.

Where are we going?

You’ll see when we get there.

That afternoon, they drove off the lot and down Mount Terminus’s winding road. At the bottom of the switchback they turned in the direction of town, traversed the hills of the boulevard for a little under an hour, and not long after they passed the heights of the Griffith subdivision, the dusty clay haze of the city’s asymmetrical grid came into view, the shallow channel of the river running through it, the lines of swaying palms and slow-moving trolleys drifting between them. A composite of architecture had risen up since Bloom first arrived at La Grande Station those many years ago. More and more buildings now towered over shaggy palm crowns, shouldered together along Broadway, stretched outward in the direction of Mount Terminus, and with them, people, hordes of them, had crowded there in greater numbers. They motored past old Sonora town, skirted around bicyclists, pushed through packs of pedestrians crossing the avenues, turned onto Broadway, and then into an alley behind a Freed Theater whose Moorish marquee read Master and Man. Simon parked beside the back door and told Bloom to follow him. From the bright light of the day, Simon delivered Bloom into a cool darkness choked with tobacco smoke, filled with the melodic vibration of organ music descending its scale to the lower octaves. They walked the length of a curtained corridor, at the end of which they arrived at an enormous screen flickering full of the snow-specked beards of Shelby Riordan and Hollis Grant playing the roles of Vasili Andreevich and his servant, Nikita. Master. Man. The picture was reaching its conclusion, when the two men were caught in a blizzard, unable to find the road to take them home. Bloom watched on as Vasili Andreevich, the selfish, self-important man of privilege, experienced an awakening, a revelation; he covered Nikita’s body from the cold, sacrificing himself for his humble but loyal peasant; Vasili, in that instant, becoming noble for the first time in the story, not only in name but also in the manner he conducted himself, in the face of death. Bloom and his brother stood at the edge of the curtain, beside the image of snowy tundra Bloom and Hannah Edelstein had painted together, and as the organ music began to swoon in a dramatic thrum, Simon said, Don’t look there. Look at the audience. Look at their faces. Bloom saw through the billows of smoke wet eyes glimmering in the flashes of light, women and men alike moved to tears by the unexpected change in Vasili’s character.

They haven’t just seen them, Simon whispered. They’ve become them. They don’t see what you see. They don’t see the flawed technique. They’ve forgotten where they are, who they are. They’ve forgotten those are grown men up there, pretending to be something they’re not. They only see what that man is doing for that other man, and it wrenches them in their guts. They don’t know it yet, or maybe they’ll never know it, but they are the better for it. They’ll walk out of the darkness into the light changed people. That, Joseph, is what you do for them. That, right there, is our business, to manufacture emotions, as quickly and as frequently as we can.

I know, said Bloom. It’s just …

What?

I see a better way. I see Gottlieb’s way. I see it, Bloom said, tapping a finger at his temple, up here, all the time.

Simon stepped close to Bloom and looked at him not unlike the way he had looked so intently at him when they first stood face to face on Mount Terminus, and he said, I know, I know you do.

Then why haven’t you allowed me to work with Gottlieb?

I haven’t disallowed it.

You haven’t encouraged it. You haven’t arranged it.

No, said Simon, I haven’t. But not because I don’t think you’re ready.

Why, then?

It’s simple mathematics, really. For every picture Gottlieb makes, Abrams makes four, Weiman makes six, Manning eight. And, well, you have been important to each of them. You’ve made them better at what they do, and I was afraid to give that up, because without them, the studio doesn’t run, the theaters don’t turn over pictures, and if we don’t have pictures to attract new audiences, the waterway doesn’t get built, the basin doesn’t get developed, families don’t buy homes, the rails to town don’t get laid, the boulevard doesn’t get paved, and we all continue living in a desert, possibly without a business, because, Joseph, I’m all in, well over my head, as deep as can be, I’m drowning in it.

I didn’t know.

You didn’t need to know. And you don’t need to worry about it. Listen, if you want to work with Gottlieb, you should work with Gottlieb. I won’t stand in your way. But you have to understand, it’s a position you’ll need to secure on your own. If I approach him and tell him what a gift you would be to him, he wouldn’t trust a word of it. I can mention your interest, but I can’t persuade him to do anything he doesn’t want to do on his own. Nor would I try.

Why not?

Because Gottlieb is Gottlieb. A special case. His value to me is what I expect your value will be to me one day. He’s an inventor, an innovator, in an art form that’s at its inception. When he innovates, the members of his crew absorb his innovations—they are transformed by them. When he is great, those who work with him become marginally better. The influence spreads, and that influence, however invisible it might seem to those on the lot, will be the very thing that keeps our studio relevant and profitable in the future. Gottlieb knows this. And he knows I know this. He knows how much I need him, how much I admire him and his pictures. He knows I won’t send him packing. So he takes great pleasure in refusing me anything and everything. If this is what you want, you’ll need to find a way to do it on your own.

*   *   *

Once a week, for months, Bloom sent Gottlieb an invitation to join him for dinner on the estate. And for months, Gottlieb sent no response in return. Over dinner one evening, he told Simon about having extended these invitations, and Simon told Bloom he had a thought about how he might just attract the elusive Gottlieb to the estate. What’s that? asked Bloom. Simon said he would share his idea in return for a small favor. Bloom asked his brother what he needed from him, and Simon said he had some business to discuss with Gerald Stern. He wondered if Bloom wouldn’t mind writing a letter on his behalf, telling Stern he had Bloom’s permission to contact him. When Bloom asked what was the matter he wanted to discuss with Stern, so he might mention it in his letter, Simon told him it wasn’t his affair to speak of. An old friend was in some trouble. He promised to find her an attorney, someone well liked and respected around town. More than that, he wouldn’t say, due to the sensitive nature of the woman’s predicament. In exchange for his advice, Bloom told his brother he would write the letter that night and put it in the mailbag in the morning. And with that settled, Simon advised the following. Rather than implore Gottlieb to do what you want him to do, he said, entice him with something he’ll find too irresistible to ignore.

Which would be what?

Well, I can tell you this: I’ve recently learned my friend Gottlieb has a deep fascination with historical artifacts. In particular? The type of objects you have on display in the library. That, my dear brother, is your way in.

*   *   *

That evening, Bloom wrote to Stern on behalf of his brother, and after he had spent a sufficient amount of time deliberating how he would word his missive to Gottlieb, he wrote:

Dear Mr. Gottlieb,

In the middle of the first century, a ship belonging to soda traders spread out along the Phoenician shore of the Belus River to prepare a meal of fish stew. They had no stones to support their cooking pots, so they placed lumps of soda from the ship under them, and when these became hot and fused with the sand on the beach, streams of an unknown, translucent liquid flowed … I have treasures to share with you. They are here for you to view at your convenience.

Yours truly,
Joseph Rosenbloom

As with his invitations, his letter received no written response. Some weeks later, however, at the most unexpected time of the morning, something entirely unexpected happened. While he was eating his breakfast in the tower’s pavilion, an old nag carrying a man plodded through the front gates. When Bloom looked through his telescope and saw who it was, he asked Elijah, Is it possible? Is it him?

He looked again. It was him. It was most certainly him. Up the long drive rode the disheveled Elias Gottlieb, who, at that moment, was hunched over his seat in such a way he appeared to have taken ill. It soon became apparent to Bloom he was leaning over the old plug’s neck to whisper something in its ear—words of encouragement, perhaps? This, followed by a loving rub of its hoary mane. Having seen the intimate moment shared between man and beast, the worry and anticipation Bloom felt about engaging this artist he so much admired, the man he had so long been waiting to meet, was to some extent eased. Here, he tried to convince himself, was a good man, a man from whom he had nothing to fear. Hardly the creature Mr. Abrams insisted he was.

Bloom was moved to call out and greet Mr. Gottlieb, but when he was about to speak, he reconsidered; he thought it more prudent to wait, to watch. Of course! He would allow Meralda the opportunity to greet their guest. She would, after all, enjoy escorting him inside. Take his hat and coat. Offer him some sweet morsel she had baked that morning. I don’t want to appear too eager, he said to Elijah. Overly zealous is not attractive. And so Bloom looked on while the great Elias Gottlieb, the unequaled Elias Gottlieb, tied his horse to the hitching post beside the service entrance and made his way inside. Bloom, meanwhile, stood in the sanctuary of his aviary long enough for Meralda to have engaged their visitor with small talk, to offer him her small kindnesses. He then began his descent. He rounded the first turn in the stairwell and then the second, and when he reached the second-story landing, a horrible sound, a most unsettling and unwelcome sound, rose up to meet him. It was a moan, a bellowing, gut-wrenching moan, punctuated by a sharp jag of sobs. No, he said. No no no. Not now. Bloom halted and listened, hoped his loving cook would regain her composure … But no. The noise repeated and reverberated upward through the hollow shaft. Only after he came to the conclusion that the noise was not likely to stop did he proceed down, slowly, apprehensively, and when he eventually reached the bottom of the stairs, he peeked through the kitchen door to see Meralda’s shaking shoulders. She stood before the butcher block with her back to the window, in front of which two skinned rabbits hung from strings by their necks, and, to Bloom’s dismay, he discovered, clenched to her chest, was Mr. Gottlieb’s bearded cheek. Bloom had never noticed when he caught distant glimpses of Gottlieb on the studio lot what a diminutive figure he was—he always appeared to him larger than life, but even when wearing a pair of lifts and standing with a straight back, as he did today, Bloom was surprised to see his face reach only as high as Meralda’s bosom. Presently, one lens of his spectacles was buried in soft flesh, while the other magnified an amber eye, bemused in its expression, as if it were looking off to some distant horizon in search of a train. When Mr. Gottlieb’s eye caught sight of Bloom arrested at the doorway, the tufted brow residing on his forehead lifted into an arch, at which point Mr. Gottlieb motioned with a hand for the young Rosenbloom to come closer, and when Bloom had done so, Gottlieb rolled his visible eye to the countertop, where Bloom saw what it was that had upset Meralda enough to grab hold of this perfect stranger in the same manner she had so often embraced him when he stood at Mr. Gottlieb’s height. There before Meralda was a third hare, its belly sliced open, its viscera neatly piled beside its head, and at its feet lay a dozen miniature rabbits, each the size of a small toe.

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

Go on, said Gottlieb. Out of sight.

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

*   *   *

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

But you don’t believe him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My father.

And where is this father of yours?

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

And your mother?

In her grave. A great distance away.

Fatherless and motherless.

Yes, said Bloom.

I see, said Gottlieb, and not without pity.

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

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

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

Nothing.

Nothing about where he acquired them?

No. Nothing at all.

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

Of course not.

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

He’s welcome anytime.

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

Bloom nodded.

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

To this Bloom nodded once more.

Gottlieb pointed to a nearby shelf.

You know Scheherazade and her golden tongue?

He did.

Studied the cosmologies of Copernicus, Ptolemy, and Galileo?

He had.

Visited with Dante and Milton?

Yes, he said to these, too.

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

And you can quote Pliny the Elder to me?

Yes, said Bloom.

Do you know what all this tells me, Rosenbloom?

No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m not sure, said Bloom.

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

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

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

I’m sorry?

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

No, Mr. Gottlieb.

You are what? A regal six feet in stature?

Bloom shook his head. I don’t know.

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

I beg your pardon.

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

I don’t know.

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

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

Well? said Gottlieb.

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

What? said Bloom. What is it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, said Bloom. I’ll do as you ask.

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

I belong to you.

Precisely. Then we’re agreed?

Yes, said Bloom, we’re agreed.

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

Three weeks from today, Mr. Gottlieb.

Good afternoon, Rosenbloom!

Good afternoon, Mr. Gottlieb.

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

*   *   *

For hours after Gottlieb had left him alone, Bloom paced the floor of the library, waiting for the first image to come to him. He paced through the remainder of the day and into the night. He lay awake in his bed, hoping something in the shadows of his room might take hold. The following morning, for the first time in a long time, Gus didn’t wake him to go to work. Bloom climbed the stairs of the tower and through his telescope searched the basin, thinking perhaps there he would see something, anything that would stir him. But he found only an image of a landscape ravaged by his brother’s endeavors; across the vast stretch of the ancient seabed a number of citrus groves had been razed, their fields left barren. The disheartening image advanced an even duller emptiness than he’d felt before he climbed to the tower’s pavilion; his mind void, his spirit enervated, he searched for Roya, from whom—without intending to—he’d grown apart in the three years he’d spent on the studio lot.

For some time after he started work on The Primal Pill, she continued to search him out in the evenings, to sit with him in the parlor after his meals, to lie with him on the chaise in his mother’s gallery, but when he began to return later and later from the studio, she withdrew from him. Only from great distances did he catch glimpses of her—on the trails, in the tower, standing on the promontory, and soon afterward she seemed to disappear from the estate altogether. He would sometimes awaken in the middle of the night and think she was standing in his room, watching him sleep, but when he turned on the electric lights, he would discover he was alone, at which point he would wrap himself in his blanket and walk to the gallery, where he would stare into the pinholes of Aphrodite’s eyes, thinking that perhaps she was there, watching him from inside Salazar’s chamber.

For three days, Bloom searched for her, and for three days, she managed to elude him. He wrote notes to her and left them about the house, in his room, in the gallery, in the parlor, all of them saying the same thing. My dear Roya. Please come back to me. I am waiting for you at the pool. And for three days, he waited at the pool’s edge, much of that time spent looking at the still waters in search of a way into Gottlieb’s scenario; but still, nothing came. On the third day, he reclined on the pool’s ledge and fell asleep, and when he awoke to a tickling sensation on the tip of his nose, he saw falling over his face the canopy of Roya’s hair backlit by the noontime sun. She sat beside him, lifted his head onto her lap, and when Bloom asked for her forgiveness, she stroked away the hair hanging in his eyes, bent down, and kissed him on his mouth. And with the sensation of that kiss, he recalled what had been lost to him in the years he’d spent away from the quiet rhythm of the estate. In the toil of work, in the tedium of labor, he had forgotten the profound pleasure he had once taken in Roya’s quiet company; he forgot how uninhibited and free his imagination was with her at his side. As he did when he was a child, he spent the afternoon trailing after his silent companion through the rooms of the villa, sat with her over lunch in the parlor, and in the late afternoon, he meandered with her through the mazes of the front gardens, and there he shared with her the scenario Gottlieb had written for him, and there she showed him what he had been waiting to see. She climbed atop an empty pedestal on which a long-lost statue had once resided, and she playfully struck a pose for Bloom. And then another. At which point, Bloom began to envision in the darkness of his mind all the images that had refused to show themselves to him when he was alone in his solitude. He took Roya by the waist and gently lowered her to the ground. Thank you, he said. Thank you. And he took hold of her hand, kissed it several times, and walked with her to the courtyard, to his studio, where, for the next several weeks, she would keep him company in the evenings, late into the night, and there he would remain, shut away. With Roya’s help, he conceived Mephisto’s underworld as a hell bathed in white, white light, white walls, a world in which the food and décor, the complexions and garments were white on white on white, so absent contrast when the audience looked on, they would find themselves craving—not unlike Mephistopheles—the smallest divergence. He drew Mephisto dressed in Simon’s style, white suit and shoes, white vest and tie. He would stare down a never-ending white corridor, declaring, Eternity! How tiresome! How tiresome! he would declare to the unchanging white horizon out a white window frame. How tiresome, he would declare to the face of a white clock whose white hands he would spend his time starting and stopping at will. At which point, his wife would declare: How tiresome you can be! Sweeping white dust from a white broom in his direction, she would proclaim him an idle layabout. Go! she would order, sweeping him off. Be gone! I can’t stand the sight of you! Take a holiday! Mephisto would brighten momentarily at the very thought. He would pack a small case and kiss his wife goodbye. One rotation of the Earth, she would say, and not one revolution more. Mephisto, in that instant, would raise his arm and rise into a billowing white sheet, out of which he would emerge through a crevice in the Earth shaded in blacks and grays. In the world of the living, his white suit would turn charcoal, as would the lines about his eyes and the hair of his mustache and goatee. He would pass a picnic blanket on which a man as large as a sedan would be parked before a cornucopia of meats and fruits, cakes, pitchers of ale. Bloom drew an image of a man reclining on his enormous side, pointing a thick pickle at a cadaverous manservant. More! the man would order. The gargantua would rip away chicken legs with his hands, crunch with his teeth into the heads of squabs, take voluminous bites out of legs of lamb, from frosted cakes and crusty pies. Mephisto, as he witnessed the cheeks swell larger and larger, would be tempted to approach the glutton, but would restrain himself and proceed forward to a circle of men throwing dice. There he would watch as more and more money piled onto the ground, and he would witness a man shed from his finger his wedding band, and from his wrist his watch, and he would observe him go so far as to extract a gleaming crown from a tooth. For a second time Mephisto would refrain from conducting business, and move on, to find himself in a meadow, where he would be drawn to a fountain at whose top would stand a statue of a naked nymph. He would walk over the water collecting in the catch basin and run his hand over the pedestal, and with a wave of his finger he would bring the marble to life, and with another wave, turn the living stone to flesh. Together, he and his naked creature would set out arm in arm into a garden maze, where they would animate a general and his horse, an ancient god and goddess, a storybook maiden and storybook villain. He and his companion would shepherd them to a meadow, where, for a full day and night, they would dance and dine under the sun and the moon. Bloom conjured a stage on which each figure would perform a short pantomime, an allegory in which they would enact the plight of the seven deadly sins. And when the day would begin again and then wane into a second sunset, Mephisto’s wife would appear in an agitated state. She would be so aggravated by her husband’s antics she would freeze the statues in mid-reverie, and Mephisto along with them. With a flick of her finger, she would open a crevice in the Earth, take her beloved by his marbled nose, and drag him down into a pit of white light.

*   *   *

For two weeks and four days, Bloom went without sleep. In two weeks and four days, he drew and redrew more than eighty panels. And when he had completed the last of his drawings, he reclined for a moment in his armchair and fell asleep. He was shaken awake shortly after dawn, when he found Gottlieb holding up Bloom’s work in his hands, and he said with a note of capitulation that made Bloom wonder if he wasn’t dreaming, Perhaps there is something to you after all. Recover today. Tomorrow we make our plans. And off Bloom drifted back into slumber. When he awoke again later that afternoon, he was delighted to find Simon walking along the curved wall at the back of the studio, to which Gottlieb—he presumed—had tacked his drawings.

Simon?

Hello there, said his brother. Simon walked the length of the wall, and when he reached its end, he returned to the middle and stood facing an image of Mephisto clawing his way up out of hell, onto the Earth, his white suit turned black. With his back still to Bloom, Simon said, I’ve just been accosted by Gottlieb, demanding this and that, a budget, a crew, actors, stage time. It seems you’ve made quite an impression.

What do you think?

What do I think? He reached out and touched an image of Mephisto, ran his finger down the trim of his white suit. I think you’ve done wonderfully, he said after some time. In Gottlieb’s hands, this will be something to admire.

So, then, you’ll give him what he wants?

And then some, I’m sure. Simon now turned to face Bloom, and to Bloom, who had come to know the many faces of his brother, Simon appeared transformed, a version of him he didn’t recognize. He stood looking at Bloom as if frozen in time, his eyes searching for something intangible. Like an image from one of Bloom’s mother’s miniature glass plates, Simon gestured to his brother with an extended arm and an open hand, looking as if he were in search of Bloom’s understanding. A long and odd silence passed between the brothers as Bloom waited for Simon to utter whatever thought was lodged in his mind.

What is it? the young Rosenbloom eventually asked. Is everything all right?

Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I have a lot on my mind. That’s all. Yet he continued to stand there, unmoving, still unaware his hand remained reaching out, its fingers splayed, like they wanted to grab hold of Bloom, but couldn’t.

Simon?

Yes. Yes! He became conscious of his pose and lowered his arm to his side, retracted his fingers into a tight fist, and shook it at the wall of Bloom’s images. The quiet here, it’s filled you with precisely what you needed. You’ve done well, Joseph. Very well. Simon approached Bloom, put his arm around his shoulder, and when he gave him a tight squeeze, Bloom couldn’t help but notice how he smelled sharp from worry. We’ll celebrate the moment it wraps. As quietly as you like, he said with a palm to Bloom’s cheek. Simon turned to go, but before he did, Bloom said, Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do for you?

Do? Simon halted and looked off to the courtyard, over the pool and the lawn, to the tower’s pavilion. No, he whispered to himself. No, he said to Bloom. No. You are doing it, aren’t you? You’re doing exactly what you were meant to be doing. Think of nothing else. Think of nothing more. But now Bloom couldn’t think of anything other than Simon’s bizarre turn.

*   *   *

Early the following morning, he discovered Gottlieb pacing in the parlor around Hershel Verbinsky, Hannah Edelstein, Percy Evans, Leonard Hertz, Claude Strauss, Levi Sexton, and a half dozen others. And where were you? said Gottlieb. It’s time! From that moment on, they met early every morning and worked late into the night. In order to capture the domestic bliss of Mr. and Mrs. Mephisto, Mr. Evans erected white walls on one of the lot’s open-air stages, on each of which Hannah Edelstein painted the optical illusion Bloom had devised to make it appear as if the room extended into infinity. Mr. Verbinsky dressed the front of the never-ending room with the white furniture and white props Bloom had drawn for their underworld home, and to a second stage, Verbinsky masterfully whorled a white sheet of muslin into which Mephisto, and later, Mrs. Mephisto, would ascend with the aid of wires, painted white, attached to a harness fitted under their garments. The seamstresses in the costume department sewed to Bloom’s specifications a fitted white housecoat and apron for the missus, to which they matched a sensible pair of white pumps for the feet and a white-handled feather duster with white plumage for the hand; and for the mister, they pieced together a white suit and added to it all its accoutrements; they then duplicated all the garments in black. Into the grounds of the estate’s grove a deep hole was dug and around this opening in the earth where Mephisto would emerge were set an assortment of rocks and boulders of varying size and shape. Adjoining the big hole was dug something akin to a gopher hole, through which steam would be pumped. Mr. Evans manufactured an enormous canvas-lined wooden catch basin for the fountain, built around it plaster walls, and re-created, from a plaster mold, the base of Bernini’s Triton Fountain, in the middle of which a platform was secured to prop up the actress playing the marble sea nymph. When the fountain had been filled, Mr. Evans lined the basin with stones painted aqua blue so it would appear as if Mephisto were walking over the water’s surface. Per Bloom’s instruction, Claude Strauss devised pantomime routines that followed the themes of the seven deadly sins, all neither too farcical nor too serious, neither too lyrical nor too pedantic. Light humor, he said of it, yet cautionary. Pedestals were secured throughout Jacob Rosenbloom’s sanctuary, his garden mazes, and a statue of a horse was driven around from one of the warehouses. The last location built was the stage on which Mr. Strauss’s routines were to be performed. Opposite the fountain, Mr. Evans constructed a simple but elegant platform on whose corners he erected tall Corinthian columns. The actors were cast in their roles by Mr. Gottlieb, all except one—the rotund giant with elastic cheeks—who was left to Gus to scavenge from town. When they were all assembled, Mr. Gottlieb sent them off to be fitted in their costumes. The following day, when filming began, Bloom took to Mr. Gottlieb’s side, thinking he would function as his silent shadow, but Gottlieb’s method of teaching reflected the man himself, talkative, abrasive, and Socratic, and his method of filmmaking, it turned out, while full of noise and bluster, ran contrary to his obstinate demeanor. Rather, it allowed for the possibility of future indecision, for the likelihood of incertitude, after the fact. Unlike Mr. Abrams, he labored over each frame of film exposed. Using Bloom’s drawings as a starting point, and all the time questioning him about what he had envisioned preceding and anteceding the moment at hand, he blocked and reblocked the movement of his actors, sent them through their paces in a cycle of eternal returns, positioned three cameras about the stage, and while the actors remained in their places, he supervised the setting of the scrims and, to Mr. Hertz’s displeasure, positioned the lights himself, and only then would he call action and roll the film through the camera, taking no fewer than a dozen takes. When the formality of the scene was captured, he continued on to film cutaways and close-ups, what amounted to inspired, spontaneous acts. With his mind preoccupied with the scene, he walked the stage or the set with camera and tripod on his shoulder, as if with a divining rod, and when he felt moved, he planted the tripod’s legs down, positioned his lens on a subject or an object, and rolled for fifteen, twenty seconds, never longer. And when this material was canned, that was a day, a process for each take he repeated for three more days, during each of which he set a new pattern of blocking, used different scrims and a new arrangement of lights and reflectors, repositioned the cameras, called upon all to action, over and over again, and again filmed more spontaneous moments, until there seemed nothing spontaneous about them whatsoever. For every drawing Bloom had presented to him, Gottlieb ran through the same routine, and for every fourth day Bloom worked at his side, Gottlieb asked him to block and light the same course of action in his own individual way. At the end of every seventh day, well known to all as Gottlieb’s Sabbath—which just so happened to fall on a Thursday—Gottlieb invited Bloom to sit with him in the parlor to review the work they had done together, and when they had seen all the film they had run, which every week accumulated that much more, Gottlieb asked Bloom to map out the sequences—based on the blocking, the lighting, the quality of the acting—he thought worked most harmoniously. By abiding by Gottlieb’s Talmudic method, a two-reel picture, that would have otherwise taken no more than five days to shoot under the direction of Mr. Abrams, took seven weeks, and because they had filmed the equivalent of four separate pictures, and, what’s more, because Mr. Gottlieb’s practice was to have multiple copies reproduced in the lab for each take filmed, he and Bloom would spend an additional month reviewing and compiling the already reviewed material, what, in this case, amounted to four final cuts, all of which Bloom thought magnificent and couldn’t be more proud of, especially because each of the final cuts included at least half a dozen scenes he had conceived and directed. Bloom could now understand why Gottlieb was considered insufferable by the entire colony, why so many regarded him with disfavor and took no pleasure in working with him. If Bloom were an actor on one of Gottlieb’s stages, a lighting technician, a cameraman, made to stand by in the heat of the day for prolonged periods of time, for reasons no one other than Gottlieb could immediately grasp, he could see in what way they would detest him. But Bloom felt nothing but admiration for Gottlieb’s method, as he managed to command his people with an iron will, to keep them in place—to control them not unlike Mephisto did his statues—in such a way he was able to exercise the full capacity of his imagination in public, to work to excess in the same manner Bloom did in the privacy of his studio, cloistered and unseen. And for this feat, Bloom—who without Gottlieb at his side didn’t think himself capable of taking such extreme measures—envied him; and he now knew why Simon revered Gottlieb, why Murray Abrams felt threatened by him. In the small realm over which he ruled, Gottlieb was nothing short of a Napoleon riding a monumental steed.

*   *   *

After many long conversations between Bloom and Gottlieb about which finished version of Mephisto’s Affinity was superior, Gottlieb never informed Bloom which cut he presented to Simon for distribution. He merely said he had chosen the right one, and then told Bloom to put it behind him. Better, he said, to leave the business to his brother, and move on to the next conceit. There was little enjoyment in dwelling on finished work, Gottlieb believed; because all one could find in the aftermath of creation were its flaws, he abandoned it as he would an unwanted child. He, therefore, never attended premieres at the theater, and he expected Bloom to follow his example. On the very day Gottlieb delivered the final cut of Mephisto’s Affinity to Simon, he sat Bloom down in the library and said it was now time to consider their next scenario, before they grew too pleased with themselves for having accomplished their first undertaking together. Only this time he expected Bloom to choose the scenario himself. A choice easily made for Bloom, as he had long dreamed of transforming Death, Forlorn into a motion picture, and even before he had been properly introduced to Gottlieb, he knew he wanted to collaborate on it with him. That afternoon he walked Gottlieb down to the parlor, sat him in Jacob’s chair and proceeded to show him the slides he had labored on in the dim light of Salazar’s chamber. And when he had removed the last slide from the slot of the magic lantern, Gottlieb was so impressed by what he saw, he nodded his head, and then nodded it some more.

Are you saying yes? asked Bloom. We can work on this next?

Yes. Most definitely, yes. But first, I must pause and think awhile.

Why? asked Bloom.

Because, said Gottlieb, that is my prerogative. I must think of what to do with you.

With me?

Yes, you. Gottlieb whirled his skinny fingers about Bloom’s chest. There’s something missing in there. Something needed before we begin.

What?

I will tell you what. After I’ve paused and thought awhile!

*   *   *

For reasons Bloom assumed were related to business, and because Bloom himself had been busy on the set of Mephisto’s Affinity, he hadn’t spent any significant time with Simon since their peculiar conversation in Bloom’s studio. When, by chance, they passed each other on the lot during the production, Simon would do little more than exchange pleasantries with Bloom. He remained guarded and distant and moody. Bloom pressed him on several occasions to visit the set, but Simon insisted Gottlieb wouldn’t allow it. When Bloom suggested they instead eat a meal together, Simon prevaricated. Perhaps, he said, perhaps when you’re through filming. And when the filming was through, when Bloom pressed his brother again, Simon lost his patience with him. Please, Joseph, not now. Just not right now, I beg you. In the weeks following, the morning music his brother chose was all requiems. Requiem after requiem hung like a pall of despair in the dry desert air. Mozart’s Requiem in D minor; Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts; Verdi’s and Dvořák’s Requiem; Fauré’s Requiem in D minor. What, Bloom asked Gus one morning, has gotten into him? And Gus said he didn’t want to say, not right away. But then several more weeks passed, every morning now beginning with Simon pacing contemplatively on his porch to the heavy choral arrangements of Verdi’s opera Nabucco. He played it all the way through and then started it again, at which time Gus approached Bloom and said, I need you to do something for me.

What?

I need you to walk back up to the estate and go out the gate. A car’s waiting for you there. Get in it, he said, and do what the driver tells you to do.

What’s this all about?

Divided loyalties. A clouded conscience.

I don’t understand.

You want to know what’s eating your brother, do what old Gus is telling you to do. I’ve made all the arrangements.

Where, Bloom asked, would he be going?

And Gus told him it would all become clear before the day was out.

Bloom did as Gus said. He walked up the hill and through the grove, down the drive and through the gate, where he found a black sedan idling. The driver was a man he had never seen before, a Negro with a handlebar mustache, young and lithe, dressed in a checked suit, his face narrow and serious. You Joseph? the man asked. Bloom nodded his head. Then get in. He pointed a thumb to the back. Bloom opened the door and took a seat, and off they drove. The driver looked up in his rearview mirror from time to time, but didn’t say anything until they were parked in town, on Broadway, in front of the pavilioned sidewalk covering the entrance of the Hotel de Ville, a tall French Baroque pile whose tower rose up from the corner and appeared to be cinched at its neck, just below its onion dome, by a belt. Room five thirty-three, said the driver. That’s where you go. He handed Bloom a key and an envelope. Gus says you should go straight on up and keep yourself there until it’s time to leave.

When will that be?

Gus says you’ll know. I’ll be waiting outside when that time come.

All right, said Bloom. Thanks.

The driver tipped his hat.

Bloom exited the car and strode between two lines of potted palms into the hotel lobby. A tidy man with slick hair directed him to the elevator. Bloom told the operator the room number, and they rode up to the fifth floor, where Bloom stepped into a foyer papered in Art Nouveau birds of paradise. When the operator had pushed the gate shut and Bloom could see his head descend below the line of the floor, he turned around to find Room 533 directly behind him, and went inside.

It was a sizable sitting room with a view of the street, a desk, a sofa, several comfortable armchairs, a coffee table set with a plateful of finger sandwiches, a pitcher of lemonade, and a tall glass. Through open windows the noise of the street rumbled in. Bloom took a seat on the sofa and opened the envelope the driver had handed him. Inside was a note from Gus, a list of directions he should follow, the first of which was for Bloom to shut the windows. Bloom got up and swung them closed, and when he did, the room quieted for a moment, and then voices, playful and unencumbered, one a man’s, the other a woman’s, murmuring through a door adjoining the room next door. The second directive in Gus’s note was for Bloom to eat his lunch, which Bloom did—he was rather hungry after his drive; he finished off the entire plate of sandwiches and drank through the pitcher of lemonade. And now, according to Gus’s note, he was to wait until two o’clock, half an hour from the present. At that time he was to gather his courage and open the door to the adjoining room, just a crack, absolutely no more than that. If he stood still and quiet, Gus assured him, he would not be seen. Having read this third item on the list, Bloom, now feeling quite nervous about what he would discover next door, paced about the room, keeping an eye on the desk clock, occasionally stopping to look down onto the procession of traffic and hats moving through the thoroughfare below. At two o’clock, he heard the heavy gate of the elevator crash open, and he listened at the door leading to the hallway. There were footsteps and then voices directly on the other side, and Bloom could make them out quite clearly. It was Simon and Gus.

For Christ’s sake, Gus, stop looking at me like that.

I know you got misgivings about this.

Of course I do.

Then why go through with it?

Because I can’t see a way around it.

The kid’d give you the eyes in his head—he’d give you his heart—if you asked him.

You know it’s not that simple.

What I know is you. You love that kid, and what you’re about to do is gonna fill you with bile and regret. This is the way Sam would’ve handled it. You’re better than that. Smarter than that.

Is that so?

Yeah, that’s so.

Well, apparently, I’m not.

You don’t know what you are yet. But, you do this, it’s gonna become real clear, real fast. There’s no coming back from something like this. I’ve seen men more golden than you changed inside by less devious acts.

There was a long silence after this. And then: I can’t see the alternative, said Simon. I really can’t.

Yeah, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’ve grown real fond of the kid. Real fond.

I know, said Simon. So have I.

He doesn’t deserve this from you. Not from his own brother.

But it’s not just his welfare I have to take into account, is it?

Well, then. You know where I stand.

Another long silence passed, and then: Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, Gus. I really am.

Bloom could now hear Simon and Gus walk on, down the corridor, and Bloom followed the direction of their footsteps to the door Gus instructed him to open. He rested the weight of his hand on the knob and slowly turned, pulled it open a crack, and set his eye in the opening to discover Simon walking up to the foot of a bed, on which a thick, curvy woman with a mane of ginger hair straddled the hips of Gerald Stern, whose wrists and ankles were securely tied to the bedposts with neckerchiefs. Mr. Stern was so stunned to see Simon and Gus, he reacted in a manner Bloom couldn’t imagine was typical, but what did he know? Stern neither called out in protest nor struggled to release himself. He merely lay there prostrate, half his face pressed into the down of his pillow, repeating to himself with his eyes squeezed shut, I should have known, I should have known, I should have known it was too good to be true … The young woman, whose back and hair appeared familiar to Bloom, shrugged her shoulders at the pitiful sight of him, and when Stern had finished berating himself, when there was nothing left in him but a few whimpers, she bent over and gave him a peck on the cheek. She whispered something in his ear and pecked him again, this time on his lips, as she removed what remained of his flaccid member from inside her. As she covered Stern with a blanket, Bloom recalled where he had become intimate with her form—she was one of the women Gus had delivered to his studio; she tucked his attorney in a bit, and walked to a screen standing in the corner of the room on which her clothes were draped.

Thank you, Miss Merriweather, said Simon.

No bigs, said the young woman, then with a twist of her wrist, added, A part’s a part. When she’d finished dressing, she presented Gus with the open mouth of her handbag, into which Bloom saw Gus deposit a fat roll of cash. Don’t be too hard on the old boy, Simon. He’s a soft touch. She blew a kiss in Stern’s direction, and off she went.

Mr. Stern? said Simon as the door shut behind Miss Merriweather. Please, Mr. Stern. This’ll go much faster if you’ll just open your eyes and look at me.

Stern lifted one lid and proceeded to focus his attention on the ceiling.

Over here, Mr. Stern.

Stern now turned his head, and with as much dignity as a man could rally in his position, sniffed a few times and said, What can I do for you, Mr. Reuben?

I don’t want to be here, said Simon. In fact, it’s the last place I want to be.

Then why are you here?

Well, said Simon with a sympathetic grin, it appears that, not unlike you at the moment, I’m caught in a bind. Before I get to that, however—he said with less levity—let me tell you what it is I have on you. Simon, who was carrying a briefcase, opened its clasps and pulled from it two large envelopes. From the first, he removed a collection of photographs. As you can see, said Simon as he sorted through the images—slowly, so that Stern could fully appreciate to what extent his assignations had been documented—some friends of mine have been keeping an eye on you and the lovely Miss Merriweather.

So I see.

It’s my understanding you’ve been married for nearly twenty-five years, Mr. Stern.

Yes.

I also happen to know you have two daughters about the age of Miss Merriweather: Mildred and Hannah, is it?

That’s right.

They’ve recently married well, I hear. A double wedding it was. To two young men whose parents are longtime clients?

The top of Stern’s head turned a bright shade of crimson. Yes, he said.

You are a member of the Jonathan Club. You attend shul regularly at the B’nai Brith Synagogue on Ninth and Spring. I know you to be a philanthropist with your various Hebrew charities. All in all, a well-respected man about town.

I like to think so, said Stern with his mouth turned down and his eyes returned to the fine woodwork of the ceiling.

I presume you’d like to keep it that way.

Yes, said Stern, I would.

In which case, you wouldn’t want it getting out you’ve been caught up in a tryst with a young woman who allows herself to be filmed doing the sort of unspeakable acts the two of you have gotten up to, said Simon as he sorted through the photos once again and presented one of particular interest. A woman, Simon added, who, I should probably mention, has been up before the court on charges of indecency and promoting the sale of pornographic material.

Stern’s lower lip began to quiver and Bloom could see a tear now run out the corner of his eye.

Right, said Simon. Now, I’m going to be straight with you, Mr. Stern. I’m going to tell you something I trust we can keep between us?

Yes, said Stern, gathering himself. Yes, of course.

What’s happening today between the two of us? It’s the act of a desperate man. At the moment, you might think yourself the desperate man, but I can assure you I am that man. As I know you’re well aware, I’ve been helping the water authority finance the construction of the Concord Reservoir and the Pacheta Lake Aqueduct.

Yes, I’m aware.

Well, said Simon. And on he went to reveal to Stern the complications he had been concealing from Bloom these past several years. Simon explained to Stern that had everything gone according to plan, all of his investments would have been safe and secure. He fully expected there to be a struggle, but he never expected the farmers and the ranchers to turn into such a steely resistance. They had been dynamiting key junctures of the waterway and taking hostages. Making a real mess of things, said Simon. Just the other day, he told Stern, they destroyed hundreds of yards of piping in three separate locations and kidnapped a member of the water authority out of his bed. They drove him to a remote part of the Mojave and abandoned him there with a small jug of water and a pencil and paper to write a farewell note to his family. For three days the poor man walked westward, only just barely returning with his life. Simon thought, however foolishly, the waterworks would be finished by now, that he’d be well into the construction of his real estate development. The farmers and the ranchers had managed to set his plans back a year, a year at the very least, perhaps longer, and, to the chagrin of the fastidious and dogged Hal Dershowitz, Simon was reminded daily to what extent he had overextended himself. More was going out than coming in, Dershowitz was telling him more often than he’d like to hear. Which had left Simon in quite a predicament. Simon was sure Stern would appreciate that he couldn’t readily go to the bank and open a line of credit, as his interests were tied to the public interest, and, like Stern, Simon had an appearance to uphold. If he announced to the world that he was on the verge of ruin without first parting with assets he held dear, How, he asked Stern, would that look? How could he rationalize not selling off his theaters, his studio, the very property he hoped to develop and keep the public’s trust? How would that look? he asked Stern.

Stern agreed it wouldn’t look good.

No, said Simon. Not good at all. But Simon wasn’t prepared to give anything up just yet. He still believed his plans were sound. Which was why he was here today: to speak with Stern in his capacity as the trustee to his brother’s fortune. He assured Stern he had no intention of stealing a penny from Joseph. He simply wanted Stern to arrange for him to become a silent partner in this endeavor. He needed Stern to sell off whatever holdings or assets he needed to raise the money Simon required to continue operating the studio and the theaters, to ensure the funds he’d committed to the county were available. He needed Stern to arrange for Bloom to become an investor in all his business ventures. When the reservoir and the aqueduct were complete, when the land was developed and sold, he would return all he borrowed from his brother, with interest, and provide him a small percentage of each enterprise. But—and this was rather important to Simon—Bloom should be none the wiser. That, Mr. Stern, is my aim here today, said Simon. To coerce your cooperation. Simon, at this point, removed a stack of papers and put them on the table beside the bed. Here is everything you need: the contracts, the banking information, the amounts I’ll need, and what Joseph can expect to receive in return. I expect you to sign the agreement before the week is out, and I expect to see the funds deposited into my accounts at the same time … Do you think you can manage this? asked Simon, who was once again holding up one of the lewd images of Stern.

Mr. Stern studied the photograph and said after a short moment of reflection, Let me consider your proposal?

Of course, said Simon. You have the week.

Thank you.

All right, then. Gus? Simon stood up and Gus joined him at Mr. Stern’s bedside. Together they untied the bound man from the bedposts. End of the week, said Simon. Not a minute longer. He offered Stern his hand, and Stern, looking to Gus first, took hold of it and reluctantly shook. Bloom watched as his brother and Gus left Stern’s side and exited the room. He now closed the door, but continued listening. He heard Stern begin to moan and cry and curse himself for having been such a reckless fool. Bloom was beside himself. He didn’t know what to do. Stern still hadn’t let up on himself. After listening a moment longer, he couldn’t bear it any longer. He opened the door through which he had witnessed his brother embody a character with whom he would have preferred not to have become familiar, and walked into the room to find Stern pacing about the bed in the buff. Oh, come now! Stern declared. Not you, too! Where in the world did you come from? Bloom told Stern to calm himself. He told him to get dressed and sit down, and as Stern went in search of his clothes, Bloom explained to Stern how it was he had come to be in the room next door and assured him everything would be all right. He had nothing to worry about. He swore to him his reputation would remain intact, his secret wouldn’t be revealed—he could rely on his discretion, and he and Bloom would continue on as they had, as if nothing had happened today. Here, said Bloom as he took the stack of papers from Stern’s bedside. Take them. Sign them. He walked over to the desk and returned with a pen. Go on, he said. Stern looked at Bloom and looked at the pen, and said, You’re willing to do this for me?

To which Bloom said, Yes.

Stern deliberated a moment longer and then, without looking at Bloom, signed the documents in all the places that required his signature.

All done. Bloom advised Stern to follow Simon’s instructions, to do everything he asked of him today and whatever he might ask of him in the future. It is only money, said Bloom. Had he thought to ask me for it, I would have insisted you give him whatever he needed.

Yes, but he was well aware I would have never permitted it. He knew I would never have allowed you to take such a risk. He was well aware I would have felt obligated to protect you from his folly. He’s a shrewd man, your brother. I’ll give him that. After a long silence, Stern said, You were good to come in, Joseph. I don’t know if I could have gone through with it had you not shown yourself.

For Stern’s sake, for the sake of his family, Bloom said he would keep today their secret. And for this, Stern said he was in Bloom’s debt, and the poor man started to weep all over again. I should have known when Simon sent her to me. I surely should have known when she took an interest in me. In me, Joseph? I know what I am. But she was just so, so … young and glamorous and … liberated. Stern opened his mouth and bit down on the palm of his hand and cried some more, this time, thought Bloom, not from humiliation but because he would miss Miss Merriweather.

*   *   *

How does one reconcile something like this? Bloom wondered all the way home. He tried to rationalize the events he’d just witnessed as a necessary deception rather than an act of betrayal. It was an act of a desperate businessman. It wasn’t personal. Simon did love him. He heard him say as much to Gus. He loved Bloom and didn’t wish to hurt him. There was simply no other way, not without damaging a project years in the making, a project bound to the fates of countless lives, Bloom’s being only one of them. It was a Machiavellian maneuver, he thought, one that would have likely been considered tepid in the time of the cutthroat Borgias. No one had been murdered. No one had been irredeemably harmed. Stern, as a matter of fact, had enjoyed exercising a middle-aged man’s passion. He reveled in his indulgence, felt the thrill of his lapse in judgment, which, in the end, if he was being frank with himself, significantly endeared Stern to Bloom, who found Stern only tolerable before. A little money would be shifted from one investment to another, there would likely be a handsome return, so, really, what harm had been done?

Bloom tried to be a man about it. He tried all the way home to be as strong-willed, as thick-skinned, as his brother. But the only problem with that: he wasn’t Simon. He wasn’t nearly as malleable or pragmatic. He wasn’t practiced in the art of playing roles, and he hadn’t yet experienced enough of life’s compromising positions to hold a relativistic view of the world. Was it really too much to ask, he wondered, to expect his own brother’s loyalty?

By the time he entered the estate’s gates, he had relived the days after his father had revealed the omitted truths of their family history, and as he reflected on that period of time he couldn’t mitigate the dull ache of disappointment he now felt in his brother; it rivaled the disappointment he had held for his father. He had been used by Simon to set up Stern, was made to be his unknowing accomplice. He had written that letter, given him his entrée. For months Simon had been planning this, in a cold and calculated manner. And for a young, sensitive man like Bloom, it was all too much. Too, too much. There had been too much sadness, tragedy, and disenchantment compounded in too short a time. Bloom wanted to overcome it all, but he simply wasn’t equipped to sufficiently distance himself. Not with humor. Not with irony. Not with philosophies whose bedrock relied on humanity’s innate moral shortcomings. When the driver dropped Bloom at the villa’s entrance, he discovered Gus sitting on the stone bench beside the front door. He was dressed in powder-blue slacks and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Bloom sat beside him and asked him why he had chosen to reveal Simon’s betrayal, and betray Simon in the act of revealing the betrayal. He’s gone too far, said Gus. I thought maybe he’d see sense. I thought maybe his heart would overcome his head, but it didn’t, and, well … I have something at stake here, don’t I? Gus looked off in the direction of the kitchen, from which they could hear the sounds of Meralda preparing dinner.

You love her that much that you would do this?

Gus inhaled a big whiff of air through his cavernous nostrils. What would you say if I asked to continue on here? To keep the grounds, look after your general well-being, and such?

I would say, Yes, of course. This is your home now. But what about Simon? You won’t have anything to do with him?

Gus shook his head. To do so would mean I would need to deceive you. To deceive you would be to deceive her. To deceive you would be hard enough. To deceive her? I just couldn’t do that. I don’t have it in me. Not anymore.

But by making this choice, you’ve deceived him.

That I have.

Why?

For his own good.

Because he’s gone too far?

Because he’s gone too far.

And now that I know? What am I supposed to do?

I don’t know. You should speak with him. Tell him what you know, what you saw and heard.

I’m not sure that I can.

And why not?

I promised Mr. Stern I would keep his secret. If Simon learns that I know what he’s done, he might not believe it was you. He might choose to believe it was Mr. Stern who told me.

It will make no difference. He needs Stern’s cooperation. It’s not in Simon’s interests to make trouble for him. So, you let him know, and then …

What?

You can choose to forgive him. Or not. If not, I do wonder who will be left to redeem him.

*   *   *

Meralda was delighted to spend more time in Gus’s company. She often joined him in the grove and in the rose garden, where they lunched together on a picnic blanket, on which Meralda would linger afterward, to watch the enormous man delicately work his pruning shears around the garden’s lattices, along the muscular limbs of the fruit-bearing trees. On the few occasions Bloom noticed Meralda’s full figure sneaking across the courtyard in the early morning, he was tickled by the need she felt to protect Bloom from her liaison by upholding the pretense that she had slept in her own bed.

Why, he asked Gus one day, didn’t he ask her to marry him?

Gus said he had. She refused him.

Why?

She’s waiting for you.

For me to do what?

To marry. To find love and happiness.

But she doesn’t need to delay her own happiness on my account.

No, but she is anyway. She feels responsible for you. Loves you like you’re her own. Mi’ijo, she says when she talks about you. My boy. My son. Bloom wondered if he should have a word with her, and Gus said no, he shouldn’t, absolutely not. She doesn’t know you know about us. If you let on, she’ll call it quits for sure. As it is, she’s down on her knees every night with her Dios mio, praying to Jesus to forgive her for loving a big-nosed Christ killer. No need to complicate things any more than they are. Our lives are complicated enough, are they not?

They are, indeed.

*   *   *

Simon had been to and from the estate several times since Gus had taken up work on the grounds, and so far as he let on, all was right with the world. Pangloss couldn’t have been more convincing, thought Bloom. Simon couldn’t be more pleased to see Gus taking a well-deserved break from the business. The rate of production on the lot and the progress they were making up north was moving along at pace. The construction of his housing development in the basin would soon begin. The spirit of Scott Joplin and Eubie Blake had returned to the syncopated palaver of his brother’s speech and their music once again amplified across the lot. Simon related the details of his business to Bloom while taking photographs of him building a miniature replica of Death’s fortress out of stones he and Gus had collected on the estate’s grounds. Gottlieb had shared the director’s credit with his young protégé on Mephisto’s Affinity and there had been some inquiries about him by The Motion Picture Story Magazine, by the Answer Man himself (a herself, if you must know, Simon told him), and knowing Bloom wouldn’t enjoy sitting for an interview, and knowing Gottlieb wouldn’t permit it, Simon took it upon himself to send them a few publicity photos, along with a page or so of hyperbole about the reclusive teenage genius of Mount Terminus Productions—unequaled scenarist, unrivaled production designer, director extraordinaire.

On each of these short visits, Bloom had every intention of telling Simon that he knew what he had done. There was a part of him that wanted to tell him in order to relieve him of the need to put on a false front. But every time Bloom thought to draw the curtain on his brother’s performance, he couldn’t bear the thought of the consequences. He wondered if their brotherly bond would survive Simon’s feelings of shame and embarrassment. If he wouldn’t recoil from having been made the fool by Gus. The irony, of course, was that because Simon had been relieved of the financial burdens that had been weighing him down and occupying so much of his time and energy, his visits to the estate had become more frequent. He began to show up for dinner once, sometimes twice a week, which required Bloom to perform his own false role, to pretend that nothing had happened to alter his perception of his brother. After three or four meals like this, in which Bloom did what he could to hide the displeasure he felt about his brother’s deception, without really meaning to, without having planned the moment, Bloom interrupted the silence they shared in the parlor after dinner, and said, I know what you did.

Simon, who was sitting in Jacob’s chair, smoking a cigarette and reviewing his handiwork in The Motion Picture Story Magazine, turned to Bloom and said, I’m sorry?

I know what you did, said Bloom. To Mr. Stern. To me.

How do you …

I was there. In the adjoining room. Watching through a crack in an open door.

Simon set the magazine down in his lap and began to nod slowly as he searched his thoughts as to how Bloom could know. How he would have been there. And then it came to him. Gus? he said.

Bloom now nodded.

Gus, he said again, as if in a state of disbelief. Simon discharged a heavy sigh.

Bloom wasn’t certain what to say next. So he said nothing. He waited for Simon, but for the first time since he had known his brother, Simon, it seemed, was at a loss as well. He sat there tapping his finger against the chair’s armrest. And then it occurred to Bloom to say, I heard enough to know why you did it. And Mr. Stern explained why you hadn’t come to me in the first place.

You weren’t the obstacle.

I know, said Bloom. Nevertheless …

Yes, said Simon. Nevertheless, I should have spoken with you first. I should have thought more of you.

I would have done everything in my power to help. I would have done what I could to influence Mr. Stern to help you. The money, said Bloom, I don’t care about the money. All you needed to do was ask for it, and it would have been yours.

Simon returned to nodding and tapping. He was unable to look at Bloom. I’m sorry, he said as he stood up and walked away. At the threshold of the parlor door, he stopped, and said, I truly am sorry.

Wait, said Bloom.

What is it?

Promise me something before you go?

Yes.

Promise me no harm will come to Mr. Stern.

No, no harm will come to Mr. Stern. He’s done what I’ve asked of him. There’s no reason for it. Simon now walked off in the direction of the front door. Bloom considered going after him. He stood up, and when he was about to start out, Gus stepped into the parlor and told Bloom to leave him be. Let him live with his shame for a while. It’ll do him some good.

There’s no need for him to suffer, said Bloom.

Yeah, said Gus, yeah, there is.

*   *   *

If living with his shame did Simon any good or harm, Bloom wouldn’t know about it for quite a while. Simon ceased his visits to the estate for the time being, and from what he had heard from Gottlieb, he was keeping himself busy making frequent journeys to the offices of the water authority, to his various construction sites. Besides, from Gottlieb’s perspective they had more serious concerns than Simon. Not long after Simon made his somber departure from the villa, Gottlieb barged into Bloom’s studio carrying an enormous canvas sack on his back, proclaiming, I have paused! I have thought! I have reached my conclusion! He dropped the bag on the studio floor and announced, Love! An intimate knowledge of love! Death, Forlorn would be significantly longer than Mephisto’s Affinity, he said, and Gottlieb insisted love was the key to bringing the story to life.

Love? said Bloom.

Love! cried Gottlieb. For this picture, you must begin to understand what it is to be in love. Truly in love. Deeply in love. Blinded by love. If the creator of this sort of picture hasn’t been undone by the visceral upheaval only a tormented heart can provide, it will be nothing more than a hollow fantasy. And what do you know of such a love? Gottlieb scoffed.

To this, Bloom could only say he had witnessed the aftermath of this kind of love. Lived in its shadows. If he had his way, he told Gottlieb, he would rather not love if what he observed in his father was the result of abiding love and devotion.

Nonsense! Gottlieb shouted. You would feel blessed if you were ever lucky enough to be cursed by such love!… No. We must find you a woman you can sink your teeth into. Isn’t there anyone on the lot who moves you?

No, said Bloom. The only women he had known well were Hannah Edelstein and Constance Grey, and Hannah, he was certain, had no romantic feelings for men whatsoever, and Constance was twenty years his senior. He had loved Roya for a long, long while, but when he considered the kind of love Gottlieb spoke of, their love wasn’t that. Their love was unconditional and unspoken, secret, familial. It was a love he relied on to sustain his spirit and his art. It was the love of a muse, not a love through which his body would be overcome by passion or heartache, jealousy or rapture. It wasn’t the type of love that had the potential to tear him asunder. He knew nothing about that kind of love. That category of infectious love he had distrusted and avoided for good reason.

Well, said Gottlieb, the hunt is on! He kicked the bag at his feet. Bloom asked what was inside. Letters, said Gottlieb. From admirers. Your admirers. Readers of that yenta column your pimp brother put you in.

I don’t understand. What am I to do with them?

Find a goddamned woman, of course.

Like this?

Why not? Can you think of any better way? You go nowhere. You see no one.

I know. It’s just … I wouldn’t know how to begin.

For chrissake! Get up! Pick it up! Give it here! Bloom lifted himself up from his collection of stones, from Death’s fortress, lifted the heavy bag from the floor, and handed it back to Gottlieb. Come along! Gottlieb marched down into the courtyard and made his way to the kitchen, where he dropped it between Meralda and Gus, who were sitting at the table, drinking tea and playing cards. Gottlieb said to them, Find this virgin Apollo a woman and turn him into a Dionysus.

Mr. Gottlieb? said Meralda.

It’s time he knew the true purpose of his heart. And here, said Gottlieb as he turned to Bloom. He removed an envelope from his jacket pocket and pressed it into Bloom’s hand. From your brother.

From Simon?

Who else? Remember this well. This, Rosenbloom, this is why for men like us we enjoy the work when we make it, and abandon it to the dustbin of history after the fact. The work! The work is essential! Whatever comes of it is ephemeral, momentary, a flicker on a screen, no more! he said as he made his exit.

As Bloom made his exit and walked back to the studio, he opened the envelope, thinking perhaps his brother had written some further explanation or apology, but the letter Gottlieb had pressed into Bloom’s hand was from Georges Méliès, the magician whose inimitable pictures Bloom so admired that afternoon his brother took him up in the balloon. Méliès had addressed the letter to Simon, thanking his old protégé for having sent the print of Mephisto’s Affinity to him. He was pleased to see his efforts had not been entirely wasted on Simon, that here, finally, was a picture he had produced worthy of his admiration. Mr. Méliès was pained to report that his production company had failed and that he had been insolvent for some time. Bankrupted beyond bankrupt. To feed and clothe himself, to pay his creditors, he had been forced to cede all the film in his archives to the courts. He believed one day it would be returned to him, but now, with his country preparing for war, someone in some ministry, some pecuniary functionary, had decided the film stock should be scrapped and melted, shaped into heels to be cobbled onto the boots of soldiers. All has been lost, he wrote. Nearly every trace of me, of our work together, will soon be marching into oblivion. Only children appreciated magic these days, he contended. And so he had taken to making toys for them. Stuffed into the corner of the envelope, Bloom discovered a tiny metallic moon whose face spun about on a spool when its string was pulled.

*   *   *

Bloom was informed by Meralda that he had received many letters from many young women expressing in refined penmanship a keen interest in making his acquaintance. She was in agreement with Gottlieb, as was Gus. It was time Bloom began a proper courtship. It is what your father would have wanted, she said to him when serving him one evening. And so she took it upon herself to respond to his letters and make invitations. For a period of a month—while Bloom continued cementing his rocks into the shape of the fortress—the young Rosenbloom dressed for dinner and sat in the dining room across from young women whose appearance and manners were as fine as the lines of their handwriting, and with each passing meal Bloom felt himself growing fat and bored. He thought the dozen women to whom Meralda and Gus had extended invitations priggish and prudish and self-possessed to such an extent they might as well have been dead. Not one appreciated the beauty of his birds or his view of the sea; they didn’t enjoy a senseless meandering through the maze of the front gardens; they complained about the steep grade of the trail leading to Mount Terminus’s peak; they thought it morbid that he would introduce them to his father’s burial site; and they all insisted he walk them down to the lot so they might catch a glimpse of their favorite idols, actors, so many of whom Bloom found dull and uninteresting. And Bloom, who, to one degree or another, had discovered the beauty and life within every life model Gus had delivered to his studio some years earlier, Miss Merriweather included, found it deeply troubling that there existed women into whose eyes he could look and see nothing at all. How, he asked one afternoon while standing at the foot of his father’s grave, before the eternal lovers, can I love if I’m not moved to love?

Don’t worry, said Gus when Bloom asked him the same question, the quivers hit you when they hit you, and when they do you’ll wish you never got struck by the little cherubic bastards.

*   *   *

The outer walls of Death’s fortress had been completed, and Bloom had moved on to building the exterior of the cathedral in which Death captured the souls of the dead, when he heard Gottlieb call out from the courtyard, He has come! Rosenbloom! He is here!

Bloom stuck his head out the studio’s doorway. Who’s come, Mr. Gottlieb?

Dr. Straight. He’s come to document your father’s collection. Stop what you’re doing and come meet him. Bloom put down his tools and met his miniature master and collaborator in the courtyard, followed him into the house and out onto the drive, where Gottlieb, who was in his usual animated state, made the introductions. Upon shaking Dr. Straight’s hand, Bloom couldn’t help but notice in what ways the man carried himself with a military bearing. He stood well over six feet tall, considerably taller than the taller-than-average Bloom. He possessed a bold nose and a sturdy jaw, wore an imposing mustache. He even had a brawny head, bald and gleaming, as if he applied a polish to it. His eyes looked at everything they beheld with such youthful intensity, they appeared as if they possessed a supernatural ability to see through solid objects. Bloom would have normally felt intimidated by a man of such overt, masculine stature—as he had felt around Gus when meeting him for the first time—but when Dr. Straight reached into the trunk of his automobile and presented to him a large box adorned with diamond inlay, Bloom saw the doctor’s robust countenance transform—as if built into the musculature of his face was a childish wonder and topsy-turvy logic—and he understood Dr. Straight wasn’t entirely defined by the body that contained him.

Go ahead, he said. The bristles of his mustache spread like the crest of a porcupine over the bridge of his smile. Open it.

Bloom unhooked a gilded latch and lifted the lid to find reflecting back at him his face turned upside down. He was so delighted by this, he shut the box and opened it again to repeat the experience, and upon opening it a second time he could now see there were two mirrors joined at a right angle. From somewhere behind him, he heard the voice of a woman say, Try turning it sideways. Bloom rotated the box and moved it about until he caught within the mirrors’ frame a young woman about his age. She had hair as black as the darkness leading to Salazar’s chamber and a complexion the color of cinnamon, a rich reddish brown that reminded him of the earth in Woodhaven after the rain had soaked the ground. As she neared, he could discern she stood almost as tall as he. Her shoulders were slim, neither too fragile nor delicate. She wore her hair with a flip at the nape of her neck, and short bangs that framed a face round and full in the cheeks, long and narrow in the chin. The lower half of her face provided an unusual balance to a most prominent nose that was thick along its ridges. In the shadow of this most sturdy feature, her mouth, whose lips spread tenderly when she smiled, appeared affectionate. But countering this warmth were near-translucent eyes, which, in the brightness of the afternoon, picked up the blue hue of the sky. Combined, the rich color of her skin, the pitch of her hair, the pastels of her eyes, made such an arresting image, Bloom felt something of an electric charge surge through him, and without meaning to, he clapped the box shut.

It takes some getting used to. She laughed. It’s your true image. Nonreversed.

Bloom reopened the box for a third time, and there within the mirror’s frame, he now saw himself looking at an image of himself he hardly recognized. She explained to him that the two mirrors joined at a right angle created the illusion of a single frame. The light hitting you refracts onto the right mirror, which then refracts again onto the left mirror. If you were looking at the right mirror alone, you would see yourself as you would ordinarily, in reverse, but once the light moves from the right mirror to the left mirror, you become reversed once again. There you have your true self.

It’s what you and I will see when we turn to face each other, said Bloom.

Precisely, said the woman.

Bloom thought he looked very strange as his true self. To see his hair fall off to the left instead of the right, to find his symmetry reversed in the eyes and the cheeks, the mouth, to see reversed the slight imperfections in his teeth, was all so very disorientating, he averted his eyes to the woman, who he thought much more pleasant in comparison.

I’ve grown accustomed to it, she said, but I still prefer to see myself in reverse.

Bloom couldn’t imagine in what way her beauty would be diminished from any perspective. He now shut the box again and turned to her, and there she was, exactly as she had appeared in the mirror.

I’m Isabella, she said.

I’m Joseph, said Bloom.

They held each other’s gaze without speaking, and although he thought he was most certainly deceiving himself, he believed he saw in her expression the same fascination for him as he felt for her. And the mere possibility unnerved him.