PART IV

LOVE

 

 

 

Over lunch in the courtyard that afternoon, Bloom learned Dr. Straight was an experimental psychologist whose sense of self-importance was equal to that of Gottlieb’s and Simon’s, as his humble aim as a practitioner was to find a means to curtail the collective impulse to wage war. He held the belief that civilization’s instinct toward violence wasn’t teleological in nature. If it were by design, he posited, why then would God provide man a conscience? Why would his creator provide him a moral imperative to nurture and sustain life, then ask him to ignore it? A soldier is trained to kill not by appealing to the best of his humanity, but by systematically stripping his humanity away from him, through a methodical act of reshaping his perception of men outside his tribe as something other than men. He had long ago concluded that if men were given the tools to see from an early age beyond the limits of who and what they were at any given time—if they were given the opportunity to foster within themselves a heightened consciousness, one that raised them closer to the aspirations their creator conceived for them—this broader perception of themselves would prevent such methods from being effective. They would more easily see with what narrow concerns authority was wielded and wars were waged. It is a matter of inhibiting the aggression inherent in men, he said, and replacing it with cold, dispassionate reason. It was his opinion that the most effective means to broaden consciousness and inspire enlightened, rational thought was through the means of visual perception.

He’s on a mission, Isabella teased him, to achieve peace through optical illusion, to shine light into the eyes of the person living in darkness.

Dr. Straight looked at Isabella and kindly grinned. She likes to provoke me, he said. But she understands better than most what forces—what organized interests—summon men to war, and how these men, once indoctrinated, are irredeemably transformed on the battlefield. Those who have experienced the savagery I speak of, Joseph, the variety of savagery I participated in in the Philippines when I was a soldier, they normally refuse to revisit the horror because they’re too haunted and repulsed by the memory, in some instances too regretful for the atrocious acts they’ve perpetrated, in other instances so overcome by pride they can’t admit to themselves they were ordered to act in unconscionable ways, in ways that defy explanation, and in place of shame they choose bravado. Instead of healing their conscience, they choose to lean on the fictions of past glory and dwell in the darkest of silences, leaving the people who dwell in their ignorance of war to remain ignorant. For reasons I can’t adequately explain, said Dr. Straight to Isabella, I have been affected differently than many of my comrades. I’ve been filled with a righteous indignation and am more than prepared to play the foolhardy proselytizer for peace, however naïve I might appear.

But how, exactly, asked Bloom, does the conceit of visual perception aid your cause?

Dr. Straight used his large hands to pantomime a barrier around him, and he explained to what extent man was a self-oriented, self-contained being, connected to others through spoken language, through the written word, through commerce, familial bonds, communal spaces, so much of which was predicated on what the individual saw of himself in relationship to others. I’ve been asking myself, said Dr. Straight, what would happen if we began to question not what we see on an ordinary day, but the very way we see it. How do we redefine what we take for granted? If we distance ourselves from our own points of view and question our basic assumptions of the world, what then changes within us? Do we begin to question what exists beyond our ordinary range of vision? Beyond the aggregate’s accepted beliefs? Beyond its involuntary assumptions of the world?

And now Bloom asked how one created a distance between the self and what one sees.

That is the pertinent question, isn’t it? said the doctor. Wearing a mischievous furrow on his brow, Dr. Straight turned again to Isabella. If you’re genuinely interested, he now said, turning back to Bloom, if you’re willing to give up a few days of your time to take part in our study, I’m sure Isabella will be very happy to administer the experiment.

For that you’ll need to consult Mr. Gottlieb, said Bloom. My time belongs to him.

Please, said Gottlieb, use him in whatever manner you like. For however long you like. He’s yours for the taking.

No, said Isabella to Dr. Straight. It’s asking too much.

Nonsense, said the doctor. I promise you, Joseph, you’ll benefit from the experience in ways you can’t imagine.

To Isabella, Bloom said he’d be more than happy to participate.

You shouldn’t indulge him, she said. He’s indulged enough. Between me and his wife, he’s spoiled to the core.

Dr. Straight ignored Isabella and began to speak of the work Bloom and Mr. Gottlieb were engaged in. He believed the art nearest to re-creating life—not as men experienced it, per se, but how they remembered it—was the motion picture. What are they, the pictures you make, if they’re not a way to dream collectively? The experience, he argued, goes well beyond the solitary act of, say, reading a novel. It’s somehow more real in its aftermath than recalling what happened between characters on a stage. He was fascinated with the way the moving images lived inside those viewing them, as if they were memories generated by the very minds they touched. I don’t know about you, Joseph, but I’ve found myself on more than several occasions dreaming of pictures I’ve seen, as if the characters in those scenarios were men and women I knew from life. The question becomes, therefore, how can one use such a dream to most effectively evoke an inhibition response in the individual who’s confronting the prospect of war? Dr. Straight believed it was imperative to bring to life for this individual, who would otherwise be seduced by glory and honor, the horrors of war in their entirety. He proposed that photographers should be sent out onto battlefields wherever war was being waged, to film its atrocities and present them to the public unadorned. He thought it imperative that artists like Bloom and Mr. Gottlieb feel an obligation to construct mimetic events in which the human spirit was shown—through the most uncompromising images—to be crushed by war’s barbarity. Damn society’s sense of propriety, he said. Damn its precious composure. Whether it should be incidental footage or artifice made real, Dr. Straight desired to introduce an innate hesitation, an instinctual pause, a deeply felt revulsion, that went beyond the hesitation of primal fear and the impulse to preserve oneself. These very rational fears had proven to be too easily overcome by tribal and national concerns. Beyond natural instinct, he argued, there was the need to root within the culture a third hesitation, a hesitation influenced by the artificial memory of violence and its haunting aftermath. On the eve of war, men should not only be reminded of the noble warriors among them, but also the monsters living in those same warriors. Only then would a new morality, a new consciousness, be born. There is no other way, said Dr. Straight, to demythologize the war hero.

*   *   *

When they had all explored Dr. Straight’s various ideas at length, and found they had exhausted all aspects of the subject, Gottlieb rose to his feet and said to Bloom and Isabella that they should get acquainted. I’ll take Dr. Straight to the library.

Dr. Straight said to Isabella, Take your time, my dear.

As the two men walked into the villa through the courtyard door, Isabella said of the doctor, There’s nothing he says, he doesn’t believe. And there is nothing more he enjoys than to play the gadfly.

Don’t you believe in what he advocates?

On the contrary, I believe in it all. Her father, Carlos Reyes, she told Bloom, died fighting alongside Dr. Straight in the Philippines. Her father had been an astronomer, and it was he, she said, and her mother, Anna Sorenson, a cultural anthropologist, who influenced Dr. Straight’s thinking. When the doctor returned from the war, he often visited Isabella and her mother, and during those visits, she recalled, the two of them would sit together in the garden, and she would eavesdrop on them talking about how they might promote the practice of a pacifist ideal. So, you see, Joseph, it’s deeply ingrained in me. It’s as much my mother speaking as it is Dr. Straight. In many ways, it’s all I have left of either of my parents.

Why is that?

A few years after the doctor’s return from the war, she told him, her mother left her in the care of Dr. Straight and his wife, and went on an expedition in the mountains of Central America, where she contracted malaria and died before she made the return journey home.

I’m so sorry, said Bloom.

Thank you, said Isabella. I know you understand what it is to be alone in the world.

Yes, said Bloom, I do.

*   *   *

Over dinner that evening, the passion of their afternoon conversation turned to Jacob Rosenbloom’s remarkable collection of optical devices. All three of Bloom’s dinner companions were well versed in the medieval world of scryers and the writings of John Dee. Dr. Straight was particularly impressed with the two items Gottlieb had pointed out to Bloom the first day he was introduced to the elder Rosenbloom’s collection. Bloom would learn for the first time that evening that the device he had used to project the slides of Death, Forlorn for his father was a seventeenth-century thaumaturgic lantern designed and forged by an optician named Walgensten, which was known to the world from an illustration drawn by an optics enthusiast and Jesuit priest, Athanasius Kircher, who, in the year 1646, began publishing the journal Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, all of whose editions were collected in the other item Gottlieb had pointed out. They really are remarkable companion pieces, said Isabella. What’s more, they discovered when examining the journal, Jacob was also in possession of Kircher’s magia catoptrica, a spin wheel with a peephole for viewing images on interchangeable disks. They discovered several boxes of slides specifically designed for the catoptrica—The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Son of God; The Ascent of Icarus; The Descent of Icarus; Orpheus in the Underworld; and Original Sin: The Fall of Man. They were intrigued by the Visionary Phantasmagorias of Etienne-Gaspard, and spent time viewing Apparitions, Spectres, Phantoms, and Shadows; The Drum of Eumenides; His Satanic Majesty; Medusa’s Head; Doctor Young Interring His Daughter: The Head with the Revolving Glory; The Head of the Departed Hero. They tried to imagine how he conducted his hydraulic experiments: The Turkish Smoker; The Lantern of Diogenes; The Pneumatic Pump; The Ascending Egg Upon the Point of a Waterspout; Illuminated Lustre, Upon the Jet d’Eau. Isabella, it turned out, had seen many of the modern projection devices—the phenakistoscope disk, the zoetrope, the choreutoscope, but she had never before seen a zoopraxiscope, an electrotachyscope, or a photographic gun.

Dr. Straight explained to Bloom how meaningful it was to him to see Kircher’s journals, as it was an article on the Jesuit priest that Isabella’s father kept in his files at home that had inspired his conversations with Isabella’s mother. He, too, said Straight on the subject of Kircher, was a man who dedicated himself to a life of seeing the world anew after having wandered the battlefields of the Thirty Years’ War. Like Bloom’s father, Straight drew inspiration from Dee’s postulate that light was the exuberance of God’s great goodness and truth, that mirrors were the divine means to reflect that truth. He, too, believed in the limitless magic of the mind. You must take some time with the journal, he said to Bloom. If only to see the sketches of his magnetic oracle and botanical clock, his diagrams on magnets and sunspots, the stuffed crocodiles and skeletons, geodes, and ostrich eggs. With your permission, Dr. Straight said to Bloom, Isabella and I would very much like to stay for as long as it takes to document the collection. To which Bloom said with his eyes on Isabella, Yes, please do.

*   *   *

Maybe one day, Joseph, you’ll recall the experience Isabella and I are about to give you and apply it to one of your pictures. Maybe one day in the future, you’ll recall what it is I’m about to say to you now. Which is this: out of the depths of the mind, new powers are always emerging. And with that said, Dr. Straight and Isabella strapped onto Bloom a shoulder harness, which was attached to a device Isabella had invented and named the invertiscope, an elegant contraption consisting of a series of angled mirrors that rose up in a shaft whose design resembled a periscope’s. At its highest point, its neck bent forward and then down; it could be manipulated with a system of pulleys whose cords dangled from rings just above his ears. If he pulled on the cord above his right ear, he could elevate the scope’s angle upward and turn it a full 180 degrees around to his back; if he pulled on the cord above his left ear, he could rotate his perception back around and downward. The scope, therefore, provided Bloom a field of vision extending from the front of his body, to the sky, to his back. When the invertiscope had been fully secured to his head, he could now fully appreciate Dr. Straight’s short speech in the courtyard, as he clearly understood, quite literally, the doctor’s notion of heightened consciousness. He felt himself made strangely tall and elongated, and detached. It was as if he’d stepped out of his skin altogether, released—as Straight said—from his containment to become an invisible interloper looking down on his own life.

It took the better part of the day to learn how to maneuver with the invertiscope towering over him, but the material Isabella had used to manufacture the device, and the shoulder harness she’d designed, were remarkably well engineered, so well, in fact, that before the morning had finished Bloom had grown accustomed to its weight and was able to adjust his balance and gait. As a precaution, however, Isabella remained at his side, her arm entwined in his, advising him along the way when to make small adjustments to the scope with the pulleys. They spent the day walking the grounds, first through the mazes of the front gardens, next through the open field to the promontory, where Isabella held him with her chest pressed against his back, her hands gripping his shoulders, as Bloom stood at the headland’s edge. There, he looked down, and saw himself looking down, and he described to Isabella the state in which he discovered his father at the bottom of the ravine. She guided him through the grove, around low-lying limbs, walked him under the canopy of trees jeweled in ripe summer fruit, and there in the shade he looked down on himself and Isabella as a bird might.

And here, when Bloom had begun to question his ability to love, he found this was the perspective he needed. He reached out with the hand nearest Isabella’s shoulder and said to her, This space between us, this narrow space separating our shoulders, reminds me of a passage I read in Leonardo’s notebooks. He advised painters who lacked inspiration to contemplate with a reflective eye a crack in an old wall, and there the painter, he advised, would find what was lacking. When Bloom said this, he could see from his vantage point Isabella look at his hand and tenderly take hold of it. She then leaned into him to close the gap between them. They next walked with great care up the stairwell to the tower’s pavilion, where Bloom introduced her to his birds and demonstrated the various lines of repartee he had developed with Elijah. Here he could see the muscles in Isabella’s face relax in appreciation of his aviary; and, later, when he observed with what ease she adjusted the gauges of the telescope to suit her eye, he couldn’t help but think how naturally she fit into his private world above the tree line.

Before they entered the dining room for dinner that evening, Isabella said to Bloom, I should warn you, Dr. Straight will want you to carry on wearing the invertiscope for the remainder of the week. If you’d prefer not to, you should say so. He’ll grumble a little, but he won’t keep it up.

Why a week?

We’ve discovered it takes at least that long to fully alter your perception.

Meaning?

In that time you’ll have adapted to your new point of view. Your orientation will have changed. You’ll have grown accustomed to using your hands, for instance, by observing them from above instead of directly before you. But more important, you’ll have observed yourself and the world around you long enough to fully comprehend in what ways you’re an active participant in your own life. When I remove the invertiscope at that point of separation, you will, in theory, retain a more vivid memory of the divided self. The longer you experience the invertiscope’s perspective, the longer it takes to reorient yourself when you shift back to your normal perspective. The process reinforces Dr. Straight’s hypothesis, that perception isn’t absolute, that the mind and body are capable of adapting to new associations.

In other words, said Bloom, we are not fixed.

Yes, said Isabella, looking up to the eye of the scope. We are not fixed.

When Bloom saw Isabella look at him directly and he thought of the intimacy they had shared without exchanging glances in the traditional sense, he said he was eager to continue on. I’d like very much to experience what that change feels like.

In that case, I recommend I feed you your dinner.

Why?

Handling small objects, she cautioned, will be the last motor skill you perfect.

Bloom found this arrangement agreeable. In the company of Gottlieb and Dr. Straight, Isabella sat beside him at the table and thoughtfully fed him and then fed herself. He related to the doctor and Gottlieb the strange and remarkable sensations he had felt throughout the day. He described them as one would describe a dream. And when he saw Isabella take the last bite from his plate, he confessed to feeling fatigued, which Dr. Straight said was common on the first day when wearing the invertiscope. Your body and mind haven’t been as challenged, he said, since the time you were a small child. Isabella took him by the arm and led him up the stairs to his room, where, once inside, she ordered Bloom to shut his eyes, and when his eyes were shut, she removed the scope from its harness, the harness from his shoulders, then proceeded to place a pad of cotton over each eyelid and blindfold him. In the dark, he changed into his nightshirt and lay down in bed. From what point of view are you seeing in the dark? Isabella asked.

I seem to be switching back and forth.

Before the end of the week, you should see only from the eye of the invertiscope.

Will I dream from the invertiscope’s point of view?

It’s been known to happen. We’ll see, won’t we?… I have a book in hand, she said. Shall I read to you?

If you don’t mind.

Not at all. And on Isabella went to read from the pages of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

*   *   *

In the seven days Bloom wore the invertiscope, he adapted to his altered perception. He successfully managed to help Meralda prepare a meal in the kitchen, handled a deck of cards and played out several hands of rummy with Gus, navigated his way through the grove to the stand of eucalyptus trees, where, with his back to the plateau, he watched Simon conduct the morning orchestration of the studio lot. When Isabella blindfolded him on the third night and asked him what he saw in the dark, he saw only from the invertiscope’s perspective. And that night, he dreamed he was flying, following Isabella through the labyrinths of his father’s gardens. When, at the end of the seventh day, Isabella and Dr. Straight removed the scope and harness from Bloom’s body, he expected to feel some profound change take place within him, but aside from his equilibrium having been set off balance, and his lines of sight feeling somehow limited and inadequate, the most powerful sensation he experienced was a feeling of ennui. He described his melancholy to Isabella before bed that night. She assured Bloom this had been a recurring theme among their subjects.

I believe, she said, it has something to do with the loss of the elevated perspective, with the diminution of feeling one experiences from loftier heights. You’ve grown accustomed to seeing yourself play a role in your own life from a position of remove—it’s as if a character in a story has disappeared.

This made good sense to Bloom, and he was certain all this played some part in the onset of his malaise; but he knew, too, when he looked into Isabella’s eyes as she searched for further theories to explain his altered mood, his sadness had as much to do with the fact that she and Dr. Straight would one day depart from Mount Terminus and return to the university. The only comfort Bloom took from the connection he had formed with Isabella was that she appeared to have grown equally connected to him, and perhaps, he thought, she would consider remaining behind.

*   *   *

In the coming days, they separated after breakfast—Bloom went off to work in his studio, Isabella to the library—and they returned to each other for a walk up the trails after lunch. When her work was through for the day, Isabella joined Bloom in his studio and sat with him as he continued the tedious work of constructing the cathedral within Death’s fortress. They left Dr. Straight to Gottlieb’s company after dinners and lounged together in the gallery, where they read to each other and shared with each other more details about their pasts. Bloom told her the story of his father and mother, his aunt and brother, and when Isabella had heard the entire tale, she expressed an interest in meeting Simon. She wanted to see, she said, what she could expect Bloom to look like in ten years’ time. Bloom was moved to relate to her what had transpired between him and Simon in the months before her arrival, the dull ache he continued to feel in the aftermath of Simon’s deception, but he couldn’t see how to do this without betraying Stern’s confidence, or casting a pall over Simon’s character. He didn’t want to elicit pity or suggest in any way that he was a cynic on the subject of love, whether it brotherly or otherwise. And because he couldn’t invent a good-enough excuse to keep Isabella from meeting Simon, he walked her down to the plateau one afternoon to make the introduction, when, to his relief and good fortune, he learned from Murray Abrams that his brother had departed for an extended leave, to the north, to the Bay Area, where he was consulting with his architects and engineers. I know he intended to see you before he left, said Abrams.

It must have slipped his mind.

He has been overwhelmed.

Bloom sounded a false note of regret and apologized to Isabella for Simon’s absence.

Abrams, who Bloom could see was as entranced as Bloom had been when he first set eyes on Isabella, insisted he be allowed to tour Bloom’s new friend around the studio. Bloom rather enjoyed the privilege of watching Abrams lord over the lot as if it belonged to him. He told them old show-business stories from his vaudeville days, and grew nostalgic for a time before he involved himself in the novelty act of making pictures. He missed proper show people. He missed the desperate wretches who couldn’t survive without the adulation—the laughs, the groans—of a living, breathing, coughing, talking, abusive, overly enthusiastic audience. The applause, Abrams said to Isabella, it filled us up with what was lacking inside. Here, he said as they walked among the hanging strips of film in the editing suite, we are little more than ghosts of the men and women we used to be.

They parted company with Bloom’s old mentor, and the young Rosenbloom took the liberty of taking Isabella into Simon’s home. He showed her the white parlor and the memorabilia of Simon’s past glory on the stage. He showed off photographs of Simon standing in the company of his stars, and from these images Isabella could see one possible outcome of Bloom’s physical future. As she turned her head between Bloom and the photograph, Isabella said—as everyone said—There really is quite an uncanny resemblance. To provide her greater context, he led Isabella to the room in which Simon maintained his shrine to his mother, and there she was impressed by the devotion his brother had shown his mother, and she was equally intrigued with the rather forward images of Leah, the boldness of her sexuality, the unapologetic manner in which she presented herself to the world, and what that unfettered spirit inspired in the artists she came in contact with. She marveled for some more time over the raised relief map depicting Simon’s vision, and she loved the screening room, where she and Bloom spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting side by side, watching pictures he’d helped make, including Mephisto’s Affinity.

*   *   *

When Bloom completed the construction of Death’s cathedral, he returned to the wall, aged it with sulfuric acid, adhered vines to its crevices, and began painting moss and lichen. Isabella had taken to sitting by him in the evenings, reading while he worked, asking him an occasional question about a poem or a story, a point of philosophy. After one such night some weeks into Isabella and Dr. Straight’s stay, Bloom awoke to find a note from Roya pinned to the chest of his nightshirt. It read, Take her to the chamber. When you have seen all you have seen before, I’ll reveal to you two items yet to be discovered.

Upon reading this, Bloom wanted to rush outside to Isabella’s cottage and steal her away, but he knew she was expected in the library at any moment. He chose to wait until lunchtime, when she wouldn’t be missed. And all the better, as after he dressed and walked downstairs he found Stern waiting for him in the parlor. His attorney’s health appeared to be in decline. He had lost a considerable amount of weight; the flesh under his eyes sagged and looked bruised. His body effervesced a sweet odor from too much drink, his suit jacket and pants looked slept in, but most untidy of all, the hair about his horseshoe of baldness had grown out into uneven tufts that made him look like a madman escaped from an asylum. When Bloom asked Mr. Stern if he had been unwell, Stern said in a voice entirely depleted of his former self, I’ve been drinking.

Perhaps you’d like to lie down for a little while?

No, I wouldn’t. The news I have to deliver is unpleasant. I’d prefer to get on with it.

What’s happened?

Stern’s eyes drifted from Bloom for a moment, then returned. Losses, he said. I’m here to report we’ve experienced substantial losses. Given Stern’s conservative nature with regard to Bloom’s financial holdings, perhaps, Bloom thought, his use of the word substantial wasn’t quite as substantial as Stern was making out. Perhaps substantial to Stern meant a small shortfall. Bloom knew nothing about the rise and fall of fortunes, but he intuitively understood a fortune as large as his couldn’t be easily dissolved.

How substantial?

Quite substantial … I’m afraid Simon’s demands on us, on you, have grown excessive.

What does that mean, Mr. Stern? Am I ruined?

No. Well … not quite. But your holdings outside your brother’s concerns have been significantly diminished. The short of it is, Joseph, if Simon fails to deliver the water to the property he’s developing in the next year, at the latest, you will be ruined. For the better part of the next half hour, Bloom made a concerted effort to listen to his drunk and disheveled advocate erratically advocate a method to hide some of his assets from his brother. He proposed he fictionalize the premature purchase of such and such a property, inventing several risky capitalizations that failed to pay off. He concocted stories about an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease at two of Bloom’s ranches, a devastating explosion in the oil fields, something about poor crop yields in the tropics, a host of margin calls by the market. The poor man, thought Bloom, was losing his mind. Perhaps he already had. Stern could think of no other way to stanch the bleeding and reassert Bloom’s position …

What was Bloom to say?

Stern had never solicited his opinion before. He had only informed and advised and acted on his behalf, and Bloom literally knew nothing of what was being asked of him. You must do whatever you think best, Mr. Stern, Bloom said in the end. I trust you to do what’s best for us both.

Stern, half-composed, said, Yes, all right. All right.

Meanwhile, Bloom proposed again, perhaps you should have a rest before you begin your journey down the mountain?

Stern ignored Bloom’s offer and instead took hold of his shoulder and looked him in the eye. You do realize, Joseph, it’s in your power to do with me as you see fit. You should consider the possibility you might better benefit by letting Simon act on his threat against me. You would be free of him at that point. You could take legal action against him. I wouldn’t blame you. In some ways, it would be a relief.

No, said Bloom. We are in this together, Mr. Stern. We must have faith in Simon and his project if we’re to get through this.

But all that money, said Stern with widening eyes. A lifetime of your father’s work. Don’t be foolish. My cousin, Saul, will happily help you find someone else to conduct your business. Given the way I’ve failed you, I’d consider it a reasonable course of action if you decided to dispossess me of that privilege.

Bloom was now confused. Do you want me to release you from your responsibility, Mr. Stern? Do you want me to inform Mr. Geller? Is that what you’re saying?

Stern looked down to his feet for a moment. When he looked up, he shook his head and said, No. No. My entire life …

I know, said Bloom, I know. Mr. Stern, I do know something of life’s disenchantments, and this, said Bloom as he pointed to Stern’s overstuffed attaché, doesn’t trouble me nearly as much as I think it troubles you. That you’re so upset by what’s happened only inspires my faith in you. I have every reason to believe you’ll do everything you can to see us through this. Please, don’t make yourself ill over it. You have loved ones relying on you. Feel blessed you have that, if nothing else.

Stern nodded at this sentiment. I do. Of course I do.

Then all is well so far as I’m concerned. As long as I’m able to continue living here, as long as I can sustain the estate and its staff, continue to work on my pictures, I’m very content.

In which case, you have nothing to worry about.

Then I’m not worried.

Very well, then, said Stern, who appeared relatively calmed. That puts me at ease.

I’m happy for that.

Thank you. You’ve been very kind, Joseph. Too kind. And with that said, off Stern went with his fat attaché weighing down one side of his skinny frame.

*   *   *

Isabella entered the parlor just after Stern departed. Who was that sorry-looking man?

That was Stern.

He looks unwell.

I know. He’s deeply troubled.

He doesn’t look fit to be on his feet.

I said to him as much. But I couldn’t persuade him to lie down.

What’s happened to him?

He’s had a shock. A personal matter.

Isabella pressed her fingers to her lips as if she were trying to hold something in, and then out of her mouth erupted a small burst of laughter. I’m sorry, she said through her laugh.

What is it?

She apologized again and said, He honked his nose at me when he greeted me hello.

Who did?

Your Mr. Stern.

Did he? Maybe you excited him?

You mean to say I excited him with a simple hello?

I’ve read of such things. About men whose septums work at cross-purposes with their breathing when aroused.

I’ve never heard of such a thing.

No, said Bloom with a smile. Neither have I.

Isabella tapped Bloom’s arm with her fist, then took hold of it. Together, they walked to the dining room and had made their way through half their lunch when Bloom—who could no longer restrain his excitement—said, I can’t wait any longer. I can’t pretend today is like any other day. Come with me. Now.

What’s gotten into you?

Come. Please.

But I haven’t finished my lunch.

You won’t need to finish when you see what I have to show you. Bloom took Isabella by the hand and dragged her away from the table. He walked her through the kitchen to the cellar door, where he handed her a flashlight.

What is this for?

Don’t ask questions. Just follow me.

Bloom led Isabella down the stairs. He walked her through the butterfly buttresses that formed the underground vaults, and when they reached the entrance to the chamber, Bloom stood before Isabella and said, You must promise me something before you go in.

Isabella shone her flashlight about the darkness, and said, Go in where, Joseph?

Ignoring her, Bloom persisted. You’ll want more than anything to tell Dr. Straight about what I’m about to show you, but you must promise me you won’t. I’ve never shown anyone this place, not Father, not Simon, not Gottlieb. You’ll be the only one, so, please, you must promise me this will remain ours, and ours alone.

Isabella once again shone the flashlight around the darkened vault, and when she stopped, she shone the light onto Bloom’s face and examined it.

Trust me, Bloom said into the gleam of the light, and make me your promise.

All right, said Isabella, I give you my promise. Whatever it is you make appear in the darkness will belong to us.

And with that, Bloom took Isabella’s hand and walked her to the column of bricks. He set her palm against it and said, Push. Isabella pushed, and in the door swung to reveal the chamber and its ladder. In the darkness, Bloom could see her eyes widen. Do you trust me? Bloom asked.

Yes, said Isabella.

Then start climbing. Climb all the way to the top and come meet me in the gallery when you have seen what’s there.

Isabella took hold of a rung and paused, then, taking Bloom by surprise, she turned around and embraced him. She held him for some time, the shapeliness of her form snug against him, and when she eased herself away, she returned and pressed her lips to his mouth, hard at first, but then softer, with affection; and when she removed her lips from his, she continued to hold Bloom for a moment longer, and then, without looking him in the eye, she quickly turned back to the ladder and started up. And as she did so, Bloom ran through the vaults, through the kitchen, up the stairs to his mother’s gallery, and there he sat on the chaise staring into the pinholes of Aphrodite’s eyes, through the wall, to Isabella.

*   *   *

Bloom reclined on the chaise and waited, and knowing he was present with Isabella in Manuel Salazar’s room, he found himself relaxed, and he drifted off to sleep. He slept for some time, and was awakened when Isabella snuggled up against him. It’s a camera obscura, she whispered in his ear. It must be hundreds of years old. She sounded giddy.

Yes, I know.

But how? she said, looking to the surface of the wall.

Aphrodite’s eyes. See the pinholes?

How incredible.

And Bloom noticed now Isabella was holding Salazar’s journal in her hand. From those pages, he explained as he touched the book, I learned how to draw.

Have you never read what’s written here?

No. I don’t read Spanish.

Isabella opened the journal and said she had read it through to the end while Bloom napped.

Please, tell me, who’s the woman he pines for in all the drawings?

Miranda. The wife of Don Fernando Miguel Estrella.

And what did he write about them?

A great deal. Mostly about how they came to live on Mount Terminus and how they established themselves when they arrived. At the beginning, he recounts the time just after Fernando and Miranda were married. While they attended a ball in honor of King Philip of Spain, Fernando had a dispute with a member of the royal court over an insult directed at Miranda. The insult led to a challenge, the challenge led to a duel, the duel resulted in Fernando’s favor. Unknown to Fernando, however, the king considered the slain man an ally and a dear friend. And for not having acted with the king’s consent, Fernando found himself in his disfavor. As a punishment, he was pressed into service. Philip appointed him viceroy of this territory, a position many would have found desirable, but to Fernando, who was content with his life in Spain, the king’s order was tantamount to a prison sentence. He considered this place the end of the world. The end of his world. Which is why he named the estate Mount Terminus.

I see, said Bloom.

Manuel, Isabella said, was Fernando’s cousin. Poor. Without family. But a trained architect and builder. When Fernando was sent away, his father, also a Don Fernando, commissioned Manuel to build a proper villa for his son. In return for his work, he would receive the Estrellas’ patronage. Fernando and Manuel scouted for the land, and when they saw the mountain with the spring, Fernando sent for the priests at the mission.

The priests, they arrived with every intention of reasoning with the people who lived on the land, but Fernando ordered them and his garrison of soldiers to gain control of the mountain and its spring by force, and clear the land of its people. When the natives had been subdued, Don Fernando ordered all men over the age of twelve massacred. A sight, Manuel wrote, that should have blinded him. An event for which he would never forgive his cousin or God. He thought of returning to Spain in the aftermath of the atrocity, but on their long journey to Mount Terminus, he had grown so enraptured by Miranda’s beauty and her way of being, he felt compelled to remain near her. He was convinced the love Fernando felt for his wife couldn’t compare with his. And although Miranda hardly recognized Manuel’s existence—she considered him little more than a servant—he was intent to prove the extent to which he loved her. He was determined to build, over the graveyard of Fernando’s savagery, a cathedral worthy of Miranda’s beauty.

Isabella became silent for a moment. She turned to Aphrodite’s eyes and said, He must have constructed the camera obscura to be near her, to see her, here, in secret. She now turned back to Joseph and touched the curls of hair that hung over his forehead. The shape of her lips suggested to Bloom she was about to say something more, but she instead drew her mouth to his and kissed him again.

*   *   *

The morning after he and Isabella had visited Manuel Salazar’s chamber together, Bloom awoke to find on his nightstand a small skeleton key and a note that read, The key fits the lock at the base of the clock in your father’s room. The clock Roya referenced Bloom knew to be the one built into the wall, the one that hadn’t kept time for as long as he had lived on the estate. With the key in hand, he walked down the landing and entered the room in which his father rarely slept; there he stood at the foot of the bed, searching the exterior of the clock’s base for a lock into which he could insert the key, but he found none. He next searched under the pendulum, and here, too, he couldn’t see where it belonged. He was about to give up looking when he noticed overlying the wood behind the face a tarnished metal disk held in place by a pin. He bent down and pushed it around its axis, and there, underneath, he discovered the lock. Into it he slipped the key and gave it a turn, and when he had rotated it all the way around, a plank of wood that formed the clock’s bottom dislodged, and when it did, Bloom lifted it up to find resting on the floorboards a metal box, which he removed and opened, and there inside saw a notebook identical to the one in the chamber.

Before he turned open the cover, Bloom returned to his room and dressed, and with the notebook in hand walked down and out into the courtyard to Isabella’s cottage. He gently tapped on the door, and when he heard her voice ask who was there, he answered her. Come in, she said, and he let himself in to find her reading in bed, wearing little more than a slip. When he saw what state she was in, he turned to face the window.

Joseph?

Yes?

Don’t be childish. Come, she insisted, sit by me. When Bloom turned, she said, It’s all right. I’m not ashamed.

No?

No. Not with you.

In an attempt to control himself, Bloom shut his eyes and took a deep breath, then took another. I wanted to share this, he said, offering her the book.

What is it?

I think it’s the second volume of Manuel’s journals. Bloom removed his shoes and reclined his back against the headboard of the bed and stretched out his legs. Isabella turned to him and pressed the back of her head into his lap. She then lifted her knees so the material of the slip fell into the open space between her thighs. I was hoping, Bloom said with a small catch in his throat, you’d read this one as well?

Isabella had already opened the cover to the first page, from which she read the title, The Bathing Habits of Doña Miranda Celeste Estrella. She then glanced up at Bloom. There’s no author cited, but it’s in Manuel’s hand. Together they looked for the first time at what was depicted in the journal’s pages, and here was revealed the most intimate details of any woman’s life. All variations of the same image: Miranda lounging in the bath, her attendant participating in one fashion or another in the cleansing of her body.

It’s a little naughty, Isabella said to Bloom.

Do you mind?

She hesitated a moment as she read ahead. No, she said, once again glancing up to Bloom. But, in fact, it’s very naughty.

But if we’re to know?

Then, I suppose, it’s necessary. Isabella now returned to the opening and concentrated on the pages. The writing isn’t like the last. It’s more … authorial. Here, you see, she said as she ran her finger over a phrase, he describes the tropical length of her arms. Her appendages were so long and flexible, it seems, she said with a laugh, she was able to remove her corset without the aid of her chambermaid, Adora. The household servants, men and women alike, Isabella translated, paraded in steaming buckets of water past Miranda, who stood naked before the tall mirrors inside her boudoir. The servants poured the hot water into a tub Manuel had especially cast for the uncommon length of her body. And there she is before the mirrors, Isabella said as she turned the page, and there are the servants, the men and women alike, carrying their scuttles. And as we see here on the page that follows, Miranda did not stand idly by as they passed, but rather, stretched one of her arms high over her head while she used the other to stroke her forearm and underarm, down and up, up and down, alternating limbs until the tub was filled. Isabella paused for a moment and pressed her head back against Bloom’s lap, and said, rather playfully, Would you like me to continue?

Would you like to continue?

She smiled at him and flipped several pages ahead. Ah, she said, here he lists the perfumes and oils and tonics, the flora and fauna Adora added to the steaming water, and then goes on at great length …

Yes?

Isabella took in a breath and let it out through her nose. He goes on at great length about a scrub brush whose handle was made of a finely polished glass. An instrument, he writes, she submerged through the rose petals floating over the water’s surface, and with it, she formed small eddies that whirled about between the archways of her knees.

Hmm, said Bloom.

Yes, said Isabella. When she emerged from the tub, he continues, the flowers held to her body leechfully. And for some paragraphs here, she said, pointing to those paragraphs, he describes the patterns shaped by the cascades of water running down her back, around her shoulder blades, through the valley of her breasts, all converging, he writes, on the triangle of a sparkling pubis. Here, she said, he describes Adora in her maid’s uniform, her hair covered in lace. She would hold hand mirrors up to the naked Miranda for the purpose of self-examination. He wrote of the care with which this same attendant applied talc to Miranda’s chest, in what manner she cupped the weight of each breast with one hand and with the other padded the underside of its heft with a fine brush made from the tail of a horse. He wrote of how Adora parted Miranda’s long legs and dabbed at her inner thighs with this same brush, then turned her over so that she presented her ass, into whose crease she sprinkled the powder, and then ran her fingers into its seam.

He describes here, said Isabella, whose legs had begun to embrace the material between them, the hundred strokes the attendant ran through Miranda’s hair with a hard marble comb, and he writes in meticulous detail about the application of her face cream, in particular, the white face paint applied to Miranda’s skin with a blunt knife and a dry cloth.

Isabella now became quiet. She was reading ahead, and as she did so, the openness of her face began to close. The entirety of this last section, she said with the concerned expression remaining fixed, charts the effects Manuel observed on Miranda’s health over several years. The young woman with the pink pallor, the vital woman he adored, turned lethargic and pallid with hollow cheeks and wobbly legs. She is plumbed around the ankles and wrists, he writes. Suffers from what he calls Saturnism? Isabella now looked to Bloom, but Bloom could only shake his head. Miranda, Isabella said as she reached the end, grew so hopelessly ill, Manuel could no longer observe her. The sight of her, he wrote, saddened him too much to set his eyes on her.

And there, said Isabella, this volume ends. Isabella shut the cover and held it to her chest. What, she asked Bloom, would motivate her to do such a thing? She must have known what the application of the paint was doing to her. It appeared as if she were doing it deliberately.

I couldn’t say.

If it’s true, said Isabella. If what he depicts here has any truth to it, it would seem she intentionally destroyed herself. Destroyed her beauty.

Bloom tried to remove the journal from Isabella’s hands, but she refused to let him take it. Please, she said, leave it with me.

Of course, said Bloom.

Is there more?

Bloom knew Roya would reveal the third part soon, so he said, Yes. Later. I’ll show it to you later.

Isabella rolled onto her side, and when she did she allowed herself to feel Bloom’s erection on her cheek. I think I’m going to draw myself a bath.

I think, perhaps, I’ll do the same.

I’ll see you at lunch?

Yes, said Bloom. At lunch.

Isabella dragged her cheek away from his lap. She withdrew slowly, watching Bloom’s pants rise.

*   *   *

When Bloom had stepped outside Isabella’s cottage, he looked up to the tower’s pavilion, where he saw Roya looking down on him, calling him to her with a wave of her arm. He walked inside and made his way to the tower stairs and there found her standing beside the cellar door. Why, he asked her, are you choosing to show this to me now? Roya placed a finger to his lips, then reached for his hand and led him down into the cellar. She pulled him along through the empty vaults, and when they reached the chamber door, she pushed it open and pointed Bloom to the ladder. Why? he asked. Why now? Roya responded to his question by pressing her weight against his body. She pushed Bloom in, set his hand on one of the ladder’s rungs, then pointed up into the darkness. Following Roya’s command, he climbed, and when he reached the top, he opened the door to Manuel Salazar’s room, where he saw the projection table leaning against the shelves opposite the door. Where the table had rested all these years, Bloom now saw a wooden hatch open in the floor, and at the edge of the hatch, a message from Roya written in charcoal. Follow the silver thread. Where these words were punctuated sat a lantern and box of matches. Bloom lit the lantern and held it over the opening where the table had been, and found there a ladder leading down some ten feet or so. With the lantern in hand he climbed to the bottom, and there he discovered a narrow passage and was reminded of the floor plans Roya had shared with him moments before he first entered the chamber those many years ago. On the wall of the passage just a few steps away, he encountered a fresco of a nymph draped in white robes. Cinched around her hips was a purple sash, crowning her head, a purple laurel. She stood in profile with her arm outstretched and she held in her hand the limp end of a silver thread that wilted to her feet and wound into a coil. A single mercuric strand looped into oblong circles, then stretched taut down the corridor. Bloom followed the line into the darkness. He turned left and then right, right and then left, until he reached the thread’s end, which was woven into a tunic worn by a young warrior loping forward, taking flight, a dagger clutched in his hand. The silver stitching formed on the tunic’s back an image of a grand kingdom at whose center stood the nymph and the warrior in miniature, the two of them locked in embrace. Towers rose above them, up to the warrior’s shoulders. Turreted walls secured them, their stones hugging at the young man’s waist. Held in the grip of these structures’ stitching were the straps of a golden breastplate imprinted with a labyrinth so intricately plotted, its multitude of warrens appeared to Bloom as if they were changing shape before his eyes. At the point of the warrior’s dagger was an open doorway, through which Bloom stepped, and there he found a room aglow with an image of the library reflecting off a mirror onto a projection table, the lens in this case shining through the eye of a Minotaur. Here, there was no chair, no shelves, only a motley heap of blankets, next to which he saw a decanter and an empty wineglass whose stem had snapped. Beside these items sat a flat box with an inkwell, a quill, and a candleholder. Bloom placed the lantern next to the decanter and carefully touched each of the items near it. When he arrived at the blankets, he pulled back the corner to see dark strands of human hair mingling with the blankets’ worsted threads. Bloom considered if he really wanted to pull the blanket back any farther, to see what horrific sight was there. Knowing this was what Roya intended him to see, he shut his eyes for a moment and took a breath, and once he had gathered his courage, he pulled the woolen cover away altogether.

Revealed to him were the mummified remains of a woman wearing the very uniform he had seen Miranda’s attendant, Adora, wearing in Manuel Salazar’s journal. He reached for his lantern and hung it over her face to find an image he had seen before only in photographs, of the unwrapped remains found in Egyptian tombs. She looked like a doll whittled from mahogany, brown and varnished, with no nose or lips or eyes to speak of. She appeared to be wearing a fright mask too large for her face. Her mouth was agape, her teeth discolored and bucked, all her soft tissue long ago shriveled or decomposed. Bloom sat beside her for some time, long enough to grow accustomed to the sight, and soon he lost his fear to touch her. He touched first her hair and found upon contact it turned to dust. Her skin was a petrified shell, brittle in texture, and when he jabbed at her fingers, which were clasped together over her chest, the digits clattered. He spoke to her now. Promised her that one day he would return to give her a proper burial in the gardens. But for the time being, he covered her over once again, and turned to the box. In it, he found wrapped in cloth, a stack of parchment, each page filled with writing.

*   *   *

Bloom waited until after dinner to show Isabella these papers. When they had finished eating, he escorted her to the gallery, and as they had done that morning, they reclined together, and Isabella translated the testimony Adora had written after she had been entombed alive.

She writes here at the beginning, said Isabella, she’s been made a prisoner to keep her from telling anyone what she’s seen. Here, Isabella said, she expresses her love for Miranda, and asks God’s forgiveness for having transgressed in ways for which she should feel shame, but can’t, because the sins she’s committed were bound by the love she felt for her mistress.

What had she done? asked Bloom.

She writes that Fernando was a savage and a monster, who from the moment he married Miranda suffocated her with an affection she couldn’t return. She recounts the circumstances of their exile. Explains here that the incident between Fernando and the king’s man wasn’t the honorable confrontation Fernando claimed it to be, but rather an act of murder, a spontaneous assault committed against the man for doing little more than make a passing gesture to Miranda in a corridor, a simple greeting directed in his and his wife’s direction. He saw something that wasn’t there, she writes, and he grew so impassioned with rage, he dashed the poor man’s head in with the silver handle of his walking stick. It was for this they were sent away from everyone and everything they knew. And for this, for having solicited the man’s attention, for creating a circumstance in which he was forced to defend her honor, Fernando punished Miranda. He locked her away. Behind the closed doors of the ship’s cabin when they made their passage, behind closed doors here in this house. Her only authority, said Isabella, was over her servants, so she took great liberties with them as a form of rebellion against Fernando.

To spite him, she dispensed with decorum. To humiliate him, she paraded herself around as she pleased within the confines of her chambers. Every day she prayed Fernando would tire of her antics and return her to Spain. When this appeared unlikely, she changed her tactic and began to pursue Manuel, whom she knew loved her. One day, not very long after the villa had been completed, Fernando rode out into the valley to inspect his cattle, when, on Miranda’s order, Adora carried a message to Manuel. Miranda invited him into this room, Isabella said, and she and Adora together seduced him and made love to him. They repeated this experience for some months until Manuel had grown accustomed to their affections. The women then began withdrawing their warmth, and soon grew cold. He begged them, she writes, to accept his love and devotion. Miranda offered to be his if he could arrange their escape. She said if he returned with her and Adora to Spain, she would devote herself to him entirely. Manuel agreed, and one morning, not long afterward, he sent word with Adora that he’d organized safe passage to the port; the two women, he said, should be prepared to leave that evening. That night, however, passed into morning, and Manuel never came. Miranda sent Adora to him, and Adora found him sitting in his studio on the hill in an agitated state. His work, he told her, his position, was more important to him than he had realized, more important to him than the love he felt for them. He couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice Fernando’s patronage. To have done what Miranda had asked of him, he explained, would mean the end of his dreams. I am a coward, he said to Adora. You chose your hero poorly. Miranda, Adora writes, now grew despondent. Nothing she could do for her would lift her from her despair. And here, Isabella said, is the answer I was searching for earlier today. Miranda decided she would no longer allow these men to enjoy her as their object of desire. She would show them how she truly felt by manifesting her sorrow in her appearance. So she began poisoning herself in the manner we saw in the notebook. It took only months, Adora writes, before she became thin and frail, and a few months more before she was gravely ill, so ill and so ugly to behold, both Fernando and Manuel were grief-stricken at the sight of her. They diverted their eyes away from her when she passed, wept at the mere mention of her name. And when Fernando began to see how her condition affected Manuel, he began to suspect his sadness derived not from a cousinly concern, but from a deeper affection. Unknown to him, Fernando ordered his man, Roberto, to keep a watchful eye on Manuel, and it was at this time Roberto discovered Manuel’s secret chamber. Roberto told Fernando, and Fernando, one morning while Manuel was away at work, climbed the ladder to see his wife take her morning bath, and saw in what manner Adora attended to her, and he saw the poison she had been applying to her face. At the sight of this, Fernando descended the shaft’s ladder and charged upstairs to his wife’s room, and in front of Adora, he brutalized Miranda, who, as she was being beaten, courageously expressed her contempt for him, encouraged him to beat her harder. And he did just that. And the harder he beat her, the more she insulted him, swore to him that any love she ever felt for him was false. As she bled from her nose and mouth, she bragged of her affair with Manuel, told him what great comfort she had taken in his body. She needn’t have said any more than this, Adora writes. She could have saved herself the beating had she only said this at the start, as Fernando in that instant threw Miranda over his shoulder and carried her to the tub, where he submerged her in the bath. With one hand he held her under the water by the throat, with the other he fended off Adora. Miranda struggled for several minutes, kicked and scratched at her husband, but she eventually grew still. Adora, at this point, ran off to hide, but when she entered the courtyard, she saw Manuel descending the steps from the studio. She ran to him and told him what Fernando had done. She told him Fernando knew of their attachment and begged him to run away and hide with her. Manuel, instead, charged off in a rage. Adora, intent to stop him, followed him to the boudoir, where he discovered Miranda on the bed, her body … Isabella lifted her hand to her mouth.

What is it? asked Bloom. On Isabella’s face was an expression of profound disgust.

He defiled her, she said. It wasn’t enough to brutalize her and drown her. He went so far as to …

What?

He lodged a candle inside her, she said, and lit the wick. When Adora and Manuel walked in, it had just begun to singe the bedspread. Adora blew out the flame and covered her over, and Manuel, he was now in an even greater rage. He called out Fernando’s name. In response, Fernando called his, from somewhere below. And down Manuel went, Adora writes. From the landing she watched Fernando and Roberto drag him out to the courtyard, where Roberto restrained his arms and Fernando drove over and over again the blade of a knife into his chest. They then let him go, to stumble away and fall face-first into the reflecting pool. It was then Roberto turned away from Manuel’s corpse to her. He walked upstairs and grabbed hold of her by the hair, dragged her into the cellar, where he struck her on the head. When she awoke, she found herself entombed, trapped in the void of the villa, where she was left with a pen and some paper, three candles, and one decanter of water. God forgive me, she writes here at the bottom. And then at the end, Miranda, my love, I am coming to you.

*   *   *

Neither Bloom nor Isabella could have anticipated that this funereal night in which they lay together quietly contemplating the fates of Miranda, Adora, and Manuel Salazar would be their last for the foreseeable future. The following day, Isabella stood in the doorway of Bloom’s studio some hours before they were to meet for lunch to tell him Dr. Straight had received a telegram informing him that his wife, Julia, had fallen gravely ill. Bloom followed her out to her cottage and helped gather her things. When the packing was finished, they paused long enough for Bloom to say, You will come back to me, won’t you?

She leaned into Bloom and, without saying a word, kissed him.

Please, said Bloom, tell me you’ll come back.

Yes, she said, I will.

As soon as you’re able.

Yes, said Isabella. As soon as I’m able.

And that was all. In an hour’s time of hearing the news, Bloom stood at the top of the drive with Gottlieb beside him, and they watched them motor away.

Do you feel the despair? Gottlieb asked as the sedan dipped down onto the mountain road.

Yes, said Bloom.

Good! Now go use it! The small man reached up and turned Bloom’s shoulders, pulled down his chin so they faced each other. I will not tolerate idleness. Not for a moment. There is much too much to do. If you must be forlorn, be forlorn with Death. He awaits you. Gottlieb now turned Bloom in the direction of the door, walked him through to the courtyard, and pointed him in the direction of the studio.

*   *   *

Bloom returned to his work that day, but as much as Gottlieb willed him not to allow his emotions to interfere with his work, but to make it better, Bloom felt such a profound absence of spirit, he wanted nothing more than to take to his bed. He somehow managed to continue his preparations for the production of Death, Forlorn, stopping every now and again to draw for Isabella a small sketch. He posted in the mail two, sometimes three drawings a day, each a small detail of the villa. If accumulated and arranged at the point of delivery, they would have been a taxonomy of his small world’s margins. For some time, he drew objects that hung on walls and in doorways: Oriental cloths, strings of Turkish beads, a Japanese lantern suspended from a silk cord. At other times, he drew bouquets of chrysanthemums, pink, orange, and white. Cushions of Japanese silk. Chinese vases. Elijah in his cage. The view of the courtyard from the windows of his studio.

He received letters from Isabella not quite as frequently as he sent them, but frequently enough that he didn’t feel neglected or forgotten. He learned, through the month of desert gales following their departure, that Dr. Straight had been made bereft by his wife’s illness, and when she died some weeks after the autumnal gales had ceased, he grew inconsolable. Since his time on Mount Terminus, Isabella wrote, the congenial man who stood with such granite stature had withdrawn from his colleagues and responsibilities and had taken to drinking himself to sleep at night. Isabella wanted nothing more than to comfort him in some way, but found the only way to care for him was to let him be. Bloom considered abandoning his work and leaving Mount Terminus to be with Isabella and Dr. Straight, to help see them through their difficult time. He did know something about loss and its aftermath, after all. But this notion occurred to him too late. Before he could gather the courage to act on his noble idea, he received a letter from Isabella, telling him she and Dr. Straight would soon be departing on a long journey. They had been invited by the Institut de France to conduct their invertiscope experiments in field hospitals at and around the front beyond Paris. The psychologist and philosopher Pierre Janet, who was well known for his studies on hysteria and his experiments in brainwave entrainment, believed the invertiscope could prove a beneficial tool in treating soldiers suffering the effects of shell shock and could, perhaps, be used as an effective therapy to rehabilitate the wounded. I can’t tell you, wrote Isabella, Dr. Straight’s transformation since he received the invitation. He has rediscovered his reason for being. Not only would they be able to put their experiments to work in the field, but also they could very well serve a beneficial purpose. And, what’s more, they would be in close proximity to the battlefield, where they planned to document the war on film. They would collect footage they could one day apply to Dr. Straight’s aversion trials.

Upon reading this, Bloom wrote a response in which he pleaded with her not to put herself in peril. Should something happen to you, look to Dr. Straight to see what you will make of me.

I know you understand, Isabella replied. I know you wouldn’t want to dissuade me, or the doctor, from doing our work.

Aren’t you afraid? he wrote.

Of course I’m afraid, she replied.

I’m afraid for you.

I want to embrace my fear.

When will you return?

I don’t know.

But when we return, she promised, I will return to you.

I’m diminished.

Be proud of me. And wish me all the best. Tell me to be brave.

In his last exchange with Isabella before she departed, he wrote just that. I am proud of you. I wish you all the best and more. Be brave. And he then expressed his love for her not with words, but in a miniature drawing of Cupid and Psyche. Take this with you, he wrote on the back, and think of me always.

She allowed him the final word.

*   *   *

Bloom would receive no letters or telegrams after this. He would hear nothing about Isabella or Dr. Straight from Gottlieb. Nothing of her whereabouts or what she was doing. She would, nevertheless, inhabit him completely, not unlike the way a series of images inhabited his thoughts when he began to contemplate a scenario for a picture. The images, when they manifested themselves, grew inside him, larger and larger, and spread out widely and clearly until they were complete and ever present in his mind. From here he could survey the entire picture at one glance. Wie gleich alles zusammen, Mozart said of this moment when he was composing symphonies. Right away, all together—Wie gleich alles zusammen. In this period of Bloom’s manhood, this was precisely how his moods were composed when Isabella’s image arrived in his mind. He saw her in all her permutations, inside his deepest thoughts, felt her in the innermost regions of his body. Wie gleich alles zusammen. To heighten this experience, he often went to the library, where Isabella and the doctor did their work. In their hasty departure, they had left everything exactly as it was the moment they received the news about Dr. Straight’s wife. They left a crate beside a table on top of which was a light cabinet, beside this, Walgensten’s thaumaturgic lantern, still assembled, its candleholder submerged in rivulets of cooled wax. And hung from the bookshelves before the lantern was a white sheet on which they revived the phantasmagorias they discovered in the wooden boxes. Bloom told Meralda and Roya to leave all these objects just so. They were not to be moved until Isabella returned. Until then, he said to them, I want to be able to look upon everything as it is, to look upon the white sheet, to see Isabella as she was.

*   *   *

In the months that followed the last of Isabella’s correspondence, Bloom found in his deepest solitude the ache of longing. He no longer took comfort in his most solitary moments. Instead he was agitated by his solitude, and for not having been more forceful with her, he was ripe with regret. Had he only fought for her harder, he wondered. Had he traveled to the university to remove her from Dr. Straight’s influence, he thought, perhaps, then, she would be with him now. As he completed his work on Death, Forlorn and began to review the work he had done, he better understood the husband’s obsession and despair. He now knew what motivated him to walk into the apothecary’s shop to drink down the bottle of poison, to take on Death’s challenges, to sacrifice his life for the life of his lover. He better understood why, when he was a child, his father made him swear that he should protect his love when he found it. He knew now that the failed promises of love weighed down the human heart more so than any of love’s hardships. He better understood the wounds that festered within Samuel Freed. He could empathize with his irrational need to torment the one he believed responsible for the loss of all his future affections. He better understood the lengths to which Manuel went to watch Miranda, the impulse that drove his father to his gardens every day. He knew now why Simon, it seemed, never pursued love, why he was suspicious of it, avoided it altogether. For the first time, Bloom knew the hollow nature of loneliness. Before Isabella, he felt whole in his solitude. After Isabella, he knew that feeling to be an illusion.

As he had done for Mephisto’s Affinity, Bloom drew the storyboard for Death, Forlorn. He redrew the images he had spent almost a year composing for his father, made additions, included even more detail. And when he finished his panels, which amounted to more than two hundred, he proceeded to chart out for Gottlieb every aspect of the production. He mapped out frame by frame, scene by scene, every camera angle, point of view shift, approach and retreat. He inserted cutaways and diagrammed lighting arrangements, what lamps belonged where on the battens, in what order they were to be turned on and off. He choreographed each actor’s movement to and from their marks, sketched costume patterns for the seamstresses, made notes for makeup changes that coincided with the lighting changes. He went so far as to design an outdoor set constructed from concrete. It would be fitted with copper tubes through which they could run kerosene to stage a controlled fire for the climax, when the husband entered Death’s embrace. When it came time to build the sets, Bloom oversaw the work until he was satisfied with every detail. He checked and rechecked the lights. Set out the actors’ marks. Laid the rails himself for the tracking shots. They would film the live action first, and then move on to the filming of the miniatures, for which he devised a special track all its own, one that circled the entire fortress wall, so it would appear as if it were being observed by the young couple from their carriage. And for the moment when the wall dematerialized before the husband, he would achieve this through stop-motion animation, by methodically removing one brick after the next. Death would then walk through the opening of a small portion of an identical fragment of wall he would build on the lot. He would then animate the closing of the wall by reversing the process. One by one, he’d replace the bricks in the order they were removed. And on he would move to filming Death’s cathedral in miniature, which Bloom built in such a way he could dismantle it into several pieces. Fit together, he could film its exterior. He would then dismantle it, fill it with lit candles, reassemble it, and hoist it up to the ceiling of his studio, where he would set the camera beneath it and there capture Death’s captive souls.

Some days before filming was to begin, he reviewed his notes with Gottlieb, who said to Bloom, You are most impressive, Rosenbloom.

Am I?

Yes, said Gottlieb. Be a man and direct this picture yourself.

No, said Bloom.

But it’s all here. The entire vision is already directed. You only need to step behind the camera and describe to the actors what they must do.

But it’s there, said Bloom, I’ll fail. I’m no good with the actors. I haven’t the slightest idea how to talk to them.

There is your problem. You think of them as some form of human being. They’re not people. They’re dogs. Treat them like dogs and they obey.

I’ve never owned a dog.

Ach, said Gottlieb, you’re impossible. All right, then. We do it together as we did before. Only this time as equals. You be the eyes, the technician. We follow your plans to the image. And I’ll make the dogs chase their tails.

To this, Bloom agreed. And together they met on the lot and brought to life Death, Forlorn. And when Bloom had fit the last of its many pieces together in the editing room and ran it through the projector, he saw what lived in his mind the day his father handed him the story and asked him to draw it for him. And on this day, he missed Jacob Rosenbloom as much as he had in the days following his death.

*   *   *

For some reason, Bloom began to find in the mail letters from war widows who identified with the husband in the story. All expressed a similar sentiment. If they could do for their men what he did for his wife, they wrote, they would. They expressed the solace they had taken from the story’s theme of inescapable destinies, and many of them identified with the moment the husband discovered his love was gone, taken from him without warning. They recalled days of limbo, in which they waited for news, for letters, and they described how they shared the dread expressed on the actor’s face the moment he realized his love had been taken from him. Letter after letter Bloom received was a compendium of suffering and heartache. He wanted to set them aside, but found he couldn’t stop pouring through them, and the more he did so, the more precipitously his mood began to decline.

You must stop this at once, said Gottlieb. You have a successful picture on your hands and what do you do with it? You wallow. It’s time to push on. Gus said the same. For the time being, however, Bloom wouldn’t push on. He would continue to wallow. The world around him, as it had done on so many occasions in his past, began to fill with darkness. One night after he made certain Meralda was asleep in her room, he went to the stable and retrieved a pick and shovel. He walked into the rose garden, at whose entrance Roya was standing. She accompanied him into the connecting circles, and when he reached Cupid and Psyche, he began swinging the pick into the hard earth. He dug and he dug late into the night, and when he had dug his way down to where the crown of his head poked out of the ground, he climbed out of the hole and walked into the villa through the service entrance. He took from the kitchen a ball of twine, then down he went into the cellar and up he went into Manuel’s chamber. He followed the silver thread of Ariadne and moved past Theseus to the eye of the Minotaur, and there he collected Adora’s remains. He wrapped her in her blankets, bound them together, then bound her to him.

Roya had remained in the rose garden, and when Bloom returned she sat kneeling beside the hole he had dug. With the twine he had wound around his waist, he lowered Adora into the grave just as the thinnest line of magenta began to line the top of Mount Terminus. When he had finished shoveling the earth over Adora’s body, Roya took him by the hand. Bloom wanted to do nothing more than to bathe and sleep, but Roya pulled him in the direction of the trailhead. Please, Bloom said, later we can walk, after I’ve slept. But Roya wouldn’t let go. She dragged him along, up to Mount Terminus’s peak, and there she pointed out into the valley in the direction of the sunrise.

Yes, said Bloom. It is beautiful and glorious, but I want nothing more than to sleep. Roya stepped behind Bloom, thrust her arms out on either side of his head, and focused his attention on the sun casting its light on the silver line running at a declining grade along the edge of the northern range. She held him there as the sun continued to rise, and there he began to see the taut thread shimmer.

Yes, I know. Bloom turned back to Roya. She lifted her finger and waved it across the panorama of the basin. She was trying to tell him something. She was in a panic to show him. What is it? he asked. I don’t understand. She now took Bloom by the hand again and dragged him back down the trail, and when they reached its bottom, she guided him to the service entrance, and once there, pulled him up to the top of the tower. There she set his eye against his telescope, and there Bloom watched sheets of dust licking across the land, dust originating from large swaths of earth on which the orange and lemon trees had been cut away. In their place were parked trucks and piles of lumber. When her face turned back to his, Bloom said again, Yes, I know. It’s beginning.

Roya shook her head in anger. She pointed an accusatory finger at Bloom. She thrust it at him. Eyes wide and feverish. Lips tight.

No, said Bloom. Not me. Simon.

She thrust her finger at him again.

No. You’re wrong. As he was about to ask what had gotten into her, she turned away from him and ran downstairs.

*   *   *

From atop his tower Bloom witnessed in the months ahead the basin teem with men in the thousands. They dug and poured foundations into the shape of a grid, and across the grid they dug trenches into which they laid pipe, and alongside the trenches they dug holes in which they erected power and telephone poles, and to complete the reticulation, they began running, parallel to the trenches and the high tension wires, a system of interconnected roadways. Every now and then, Simon met him at the edge of the promontory, where they stood together in an awkward silence, and they looked across the panorama, and his brother appeared to Bloom to be growing brighter with light, stronger and more powerful, larger than life. On these occasions, Bloom wondered if what he witnessed was evidence of Simon’s better nature shining forth. Or was it the dybbuk strengthening his pride?

The dust generated from below swelled into the air. It blocked Bloom’s view of the sea. Ballooned into a red-and-orange holocaust. For months on end the vista that had brought his mother and father to Mount Terminus, the vista to which his father longed to return, the vista onto which Bloom first looked when he arrived here, was no more, and every day now he felt as if a small part of him was dying, and when the news arrived about Isabella, he couldn’t help but perceive the horrible image spread across the landscape of the shore as a harbinger.

*   *   *

The small packet arrived a little over a year after Isabella had departed. Five weeks before the anniversary of his father’s death. Five weeks before the Day of Atonement. Twenty-five days before the start of the Days of Awe. The only letters Bloom had ever received from anyone at his home address were from Isabella, and so, when at lunchtime he saw the packet sitting beside his place setting at the table, his spirit was immeasurably uplifted, but an instant later he saw in what condition the paper was in—it was dirty and frayed at its corners, the area under the postage appeared singed—he sat down and stared at it, looked at it with apprehension. He lifted it and felt its weight. It was thicker and heavier than he thought it would be. Its surface felt gritty. He brought it to his nose, and took in its scent. Gunpowder. It smelled of something incendiary and something else, something noxious, like the smells he associated with the chemical baths of the darkroom. And once again he looked at the singe under the postage, and stood up and walked out to the courtyard, and he walked into the cottage where Isabella had slept, and he smelled the sheets and tried to sense her scent. He lay down on the bed and carefully fitted a finger into the fray of the corner. He knew as he had known with his father. He knew the foreboding he felt was meaningful. He pulled apart the paper’s seam and out onto his chest fell the images he had drawn for her during those months they corresponded. The chrysanthemums. Elijah. Cupid and Psyche. He arranged them on the bed and then looked into the packet, where he found a single slip of paper. He pulled it out, his fingers forceps extracting a foreign substance from a body, and he laid out the message next to his drawings.

My dear Joseph,

I’ve carried this letter and its contents everywhere as a way to keep you close to me. If you’re reading this, my love, the news isn’t good. If you’re reading this, the sad truth of it is I’m no longer with you.

Just know this: you are my love.

I’ve had no other.

Here, in this madness, I’ve thought of our friendship, your tenderness, more than ever. I’m often sitting quietly by your side in the gardens. I am there now. So, please, don’t be afraid for me.

If I have met my end, I have only one wish. I only ask you not to be angry with me for having been reckless. So many of the people you’ve loved have departed this world, and I know you may not be able to forgive me for doing the same, but I beg you, Joseph, to think of me fondly from time to time, with love and affection always …

Yours,
Isabella.

*   *   *

It wasn’t possible.

Did God find it amusing to take everyone away from him in this manner? What more was there to do than laugh at this cosmic injustice? And so Bloom laughed and laughed. He lay in the cottage and laughed until he could laugh no more, and then he lay there paralyzed until he was discovered by Gus, who pried open his fist and read his letter. The big man gathered all the papers together and carefully fit them back into their package, and he said to Bloom, Let’s go.

Gus lifted Bloom in his arms and carried him into the villa, to his bed, and he sent for Meralda, who on this occasion could find no words to comfort Bloom. On this occasion, Roya’s touch would not comfort him. Simon’s Panglossian positivism, his bromides and platitudes, wouldn’t comfort him. Nothing would comfort Bloom. Silence and solitude would not comfort Bloom. He remained in bed. Didn’t speak. Didn’t think. Didn’t see. He disappeared into sleep, into a dark sleep without dreams. For weeks he was like this. For a month he was like this. At which point, Gottlieb said, Enough!

Enough! he cried out. He walked into Bloom’s room, climbed on top of him, and smacked him across the face. When he didn’t react, Gottlieb slapped him harder. When Bloom didn’t react, Gottlieb walked to Bloom’s washbasin, placed it beside his bed, and said, Fine! You no longer want to live? Fine! And he took Bloom by the scruff of his neck and submerged his face in the water, and he held him there until Bloom began to struggle. Gottlieb lifted his head. Are you prepared to live? Bloom said nothing, and so Gottlieb submerged his face again. And again Bloom began to struggle, this time with greater spirit. What will it be? Life or death? Gottlieb this time didn’t relent. He kept Bloom’s face submerged. Well? Bloom began to breathe water, to cough, and finally he threw Gottlieb off him, sending the dwarfish man back against the wall.

Bloom’s eyes were now open and, when he turned to see where Gottlieb had gone, he saw the man reaching for his throat. His little hands grabbed hold, and once again Bloom found himself in Gottlieb’s clutches. Are you ready to live yet? Gottlieb released one hand from his throat and punched Bloom square in the cheek. We-e-e-e-ll? Bloom threw Gottlieb off a second time and started back to his bed. Gottlieb now jumped on his back and forced Bloom to the floor so he was lying on his chest. He pinned Bloom down at the back of his neck, pulled at the hair on the top of his head, and stuck two of his fingers into Bloom’s nose and pulled. The pain Bloom felt was extraordinary. You’re going to pull my nose off! Bloom screamed.

Aha! screamed Gottlieb. It speaks! He pulled harder and, with the hand pulling Bloom’s hair, he boxed his ear. How do you like that? And he did it again.

Goddammit! Bloom bellowed.

It speaks again! Gottlieb leaped off Bloom’s back now. He was on his feet. Get up! he insisted. Fight me!

No!

Get up! I’m only just getting started.

No!

Have it your way. Gottlieb pulled his leg back and kicked Bloom right between the legs. Bloom clutched ahold of himself down there, raising his ass into the air. The breath had been knocked out of him. Get up! screamed Gottlieb. Or so help me God, I’m going to kill you! Bloom rose to his knees, too slowly for Gottlieb’s taste, and so Gottlieb once again boxed Bloom on the ears, both of them.

Enough! screamed Bloom, who was now holding his groin and an ear.

No! Gottlieb screamed back. Get up! And fight! You piece of shit faygala!

Bloom now rose to his feet and turned around to find Gottlieb approaching again, only this time Bloom cocked back his fist and landed a punch directly on the point of Gottlieb’s chin, landing the little man on his back. Twitching. Twitching. Then nothing. Unmoving. He’d knocked him out cold? He tried to rouse him, but couldn’t. He slapped his face, but nothing. Meralda! Bloom cried out. Gus! He ran out onto the landing and called for them again. Help! he cried. He walked back into his room, and there was Gottlieb sitting up on Bloom’s bed.

So, he said, there is someone you care about other than yourself.

You little bastard! Bloom said with clenched teeth. He approached Gottlieb again and punched him so hard this time, he did, indeed, knock him out. His small body flipped back off the bed, and he was out, facedown, for quite some time.

*   *   *

The bruised and battered men limped along the trails later that afternoon. They walked in silence until they reached Mount Terminus’s summit. They continued in silence as they watched the dust rise up from the basin. And then Gottlieb spoke. Work, he said. Let us work.

I don’t know if I can, said Bloom.

What’s so difficult? Tell me a story, and we go from there.

I’m only able to think of her. I need to know what happened.

It will become clear in time.

In time, yes, I know, in time. I’m cursed by the passage of time.

Pitiful. She believed in something. She followed that belief to a dangerous place. Like her mother and her father, like her adopted father, she lived pursuing her ideals. Do you really think she would want you to give up your reason for being on this Earth? Do you really believe she would want you to sacrifice what life and talent remains within you for the sake of her memory?

No. But I don’t understand. Why, Gottlieb, why have I been made to feel this way over and over again? I can’t see the point.

I will put you out of your misery now, Rosenbloom. I meant it before. I mean it now. If your wish is to be dead, I will kill you.

I don’t think I can bear the thought of your face being the last I would see on this Earth.

Then live your life and tell me a good story. Tell me a story you told to Isabella.

Bloom recalled the final day he and Isabella spent together. And without revealing from where the story was derived, he told Gottlieb over the course of the afternoon the story of Miranda and Fernando, of Adora and Manuel Salazar, and the telling of the story gave him pleasure.

It’s an epic! said Gottlieb when Bloom reached the conclusion. I can see its enormity.

Bloom turned away from the unpleasant sight of the basin and turned his attention to the farms and ranches that had begun to spread throughout the valley.

What do you say, Rosenbloom? Do we work?

For her. For her, I’ll make one final picture.

What is this nonsense? One final picture? You are made for pictures. Your soul was born for pictures.

I’ll make one final picture for Isabella.

And then?

And then you can kill me, said Bloom.

It’s a deal! said Gottlieb. What’s the title?

The Death of Paradise.

Gottlieb thought it over. He threw a rock down the rocky slope toward the valley. He then threw another. But before we make this picture, before I have the pleasure of killing you, you must understand what it is to be set apart from this place.

Why?

Because you’re a grown man, Rosenbloom. Because you need to see something of the world. As it was time for you to have your heart ripped out of your chest to make Death, Forlorn, it’s time for you to take a journey.

I don’t want to go anywhere, Gottlieb.

Well, you are going. You’ll go and then you’ll return. But you must go.

Why must I go?

To understand Fernando’s rage, you must go. To understand Miranda’s desire to return home, you must go. To know what Manuel Salazar saw on his journey to Mount Terminus, you must go, and discover for yourself what it means to be in motion. I hereby send you into exile.

No.

Yes. If need be, I’ll have you forcibly removed.

*   *   *

You must go, said Simon after having eaten dinner at his house. They sat on the white settee facing the white window frames and looked out onto the disturbed stretch of land leading to the sea. Gottlieb is right. It’s time you saw something of the world. All on your own.

But where shall I go?

Wherever you like.

When?

It will have to be in three days. No sooner.

Why three days?

Because Gus has arranged for us to take a short journey tomorrow.

Gus hadn’t mentioned his plans to Bloom. Where? he asked.

I don’t know. All I know is that I’m to meet you at the estate first thing in the morning, and that we’ll be gone until the following evening. The day after that, you can set out on your own adventure.

It had been some time since Bloom sat down to talk with his brother, and it had been equally as long since he’d found him to be so charming and congenial in Bloom’s company. In no small part because the waterworks had been completed: the dam had been finished, its reservoir filled, its spillways feeding the completed aqueduct. Construction in the basin was proceeding at pace, and according to Simon, every plot of land, every home he would build on it, had been sold. Soon tracks would be laid from here to the city center. They would carry families to and from town.

You’ll see, said Simon, it will be as fertile and green as Mount Terminus, as ripe as its groves, as bright as its gardens. It’ll be a wonder to behold. Bloom’s brother spoke as if he had climbed to the summit of a great monument. Soon, he said, all the money he had taken from Bloom would be repaid, at which time, he promised, he would make amends with Mr. Stern.

Over the course of this lazy evening, an acceptance of his brother grew within Bloom. He couldn’t fully comprehend Simon’s opportunistic nature, but he recognized that Simon’s passion for progress was on a footing with his affection and concern for Bloom. Although Simon wouldn’t be ceding the property of the plateau back to his brother, Simon explained his plans to make it his domain, his sanctuary. He would be relocating all of the studio’s production to a large plot of land at the foot of Mount Terminus, and leave the current lot in the hands of Bloom and Gottlieb, to cultivate artists like themselves, artists they thought worthy of their attention. They could do as they pleased, with no interference from Simon. Should they ever need it, of course, they would have access to the expanded grounds at the bottom of the mountain. Simon walked Bloom to the room in which Leah’s memory was preserved and there, next to the raised map of Simon’s waterworks and the grid of development, was a new table on top of which was an architect’s rendering of the new, sprawling lot. It will be a small city within the city, he told Bloom, a walled fortress in which permanent façades would reside, entire small towns, Gothic towers, medieval castles, Broadways, Parisian cafés, London squares, row houses, African jungles, anything and everything you can possibly imagine. The entire world, said Simon, will fit here. Its art and architecture, its greatest monuments, its wildest nature. Imagine, he said, everything you can possibly need at your disposal for an epic picture like The Death of Paradise. Simon now turned to the other table and stared at it for a good long while. This, he said, what I’ve built here, Joseph, I’ve thought through every need, every desire, every small convenience and inconvenience. The people who arrive here from now on, they’ll make a life all their own, on my stage. Every day they’ll breathe new life into it for who knows how many generations, for who knows how many centuries. Like your pictures, Joseph, my stage, it will last well beyond either one of us. This, he said. This is my one great work of art, one I will never surpass again in my lifetime.

You’re still a young man, said Bloom.

No, said Simon, not any longer. Not after this. There will be small triumphs, perhaps. But nothing quite so great as this. Simon looked at Bloom and Bloom looked into his brother’s face, and he could see it now. He could see written into the lines of his brother’s face the toll this project had taken on him; the lines around his eyes, on his brow, had deepened and grown longer, in every way Bloom had imagined they would. And Bloom now cast his gaze away from his brother’s face, back to the map, and while looking over the rows and rows and rows of red tiled roofs, at the repeating architectural forms, over the roadways and boulevards, tramways and tall office buildings his brother had pinned to its surface, Bloom was coming to realize, it wasn’t the beauty of the landscape he would miss when Simon’s plans were complete. He realized, at this very moment, what it was that had so upset Roya that night they buried Adora in the rose garden. How could he not have seen it? She feared losing the emptiness. The loneliness derived from it, the serenity one felt in it, the solitude one endured in it. She couldn’t bear the thought of the open space closing in around them. Where would their minds wander if they had to peer down onto so many restless souls? The noise, he thought. There would be such overwhelming noise and distraction. And, oh, how the mere thought of it frightened Bloom.

*   *   *

Come, said Simon, interrupting Bloom’s thought, I have a gift for you. To get you where you’re going. Simon walked Bloom out to the cul-de-sac and there parked at the front of the house was a white roadster similar to the roadster Simon drove. It’s yours, said Simon as he handed Bloom the keys. In three days’ time, you need only choose a direction.

But I don’t know how to drive.

It’s easy enough. Here, get in.

I don’t know …

Just get in. We’ll practice all night if need be.

But they didn’t need the night. Bloom took to it rather easily. He liked the feel of the gears in his hand, coordinating the clutch with the accelerator and the brake. He drove in circles at first and then motored off the studio and up to the estate, and there, circled about outside the front entrance of the villa. And when he had mastered that much, Simon said to him, I will see you in the morning.

*   *   *

In the morning, Bloom awoke to the sight of Gus standing over his bed. It’s time, he said. Let’s go.

Where are we going?

Tomorrow is the High Holiday. Tomorrow, you, Simon, and I will be written into the Book of Life.

It’s been so long.

I know, said Gus.

Everything was prepared. Gus had spoken with Meralda and she told him what to collect. He uprooted three juniper trees that had been growing since the time Jacob Rosenbloom planted them for his final trip to Pacheta Lake. He gathered lanterns, the yahrzeit candle, the camping gear, a hearty meal they would eat when they arrived, a hearty meal they would eat to break the fast, and trimmings from the estate’s gardens and groves. All was loaded into the back of a truck.

When Bloom and Gus stepped out onto the drive, Simon was there waiting, and the three men set off on their long drive down the switchback to the boulevard, up through a canyon pass, to a mountain road, on which they followed the line of the aqueduct, its sluiceways and spillways, past its smaller reserve ponds and catchments. They drove parallel to the stream, against the current of water. Bloom was mesmerized by the way the aqueduct dipped and turned to create the optical illusion of an invisible wavelength. For hours they drove until they arrived at a vista, where Gus parked, and the three of them stepped out of the car and walked up to a rail, and there Bloom saw himself standing over the massive pour of concrete whose arc filled the natural boundaries of the canyon pass he had ridden through with Jacob on their buckboard; now held back by the enormous barrier was a great mass of water. Simon pointed out its outlets to the aqueduct, and Bloom, upon seeing this incredible sight, felt proud of his brother for having performed this godly feat. It’s sublime, he told Simon. It was truly sublime and wondrous. The sheer enormity of it.

They continued on the road, and he admitted to Simon when they arrived at the confluence of the river and the lake, and Bloom saw how little seemed to have been altered in the graben of the rift valley, that he had expected to find the land more disturbed, the farms and ranches in the distance laid to waste on the order of the basin. And Simon pointed to the green fields and the irrigation ducts in the distance, and he asked Bloom if he could recall what had changed since he was last here. Perhaps the lake’s water table was lower than it had been. The juniper trees Jacob had planted had certainly grown out and produced more berries. Otherwise there was no discernible difference. Except, of course, for the sound of the manned pumping station, its combustion, its gears, turning over at regular intervals, to push water into the channel that led to the reservoir. The sound started and stopped throughout the night. It echoed and reverberated against the cliffs and the escarpment. It was present at the shore when Gus and then Simon and then Bloom recited the kaddish. Gus for his mother and his baby sister. Simon for his mother and for Sam. Bloom for his mother and Jacob. And a special recitation for Isabella. In the morning, they climbed to the junipers Jacob had planted, and there they sat staring up and over the current of the river, to the mountains, and there they sat in the heat under the heraldic poses of the buzzards, and there Bloom imagined the ice melt and the ice floe, the cascading waters falling through the maw of volcanic craters, and he grew weak and weary, and he slept and he woke and he slept again and awoke again, until the sun kissed the top of the mountain range, and only then did he and his brother and Gus stand up and walk to the lakeshore, where they opened the meal packed by Gus’s beloved Meralda, and they ate and they drank, and Simon placed his hand on Bloom’s shoulder, and he placed his hand on Gus’s shoulder, and he promised he would try to be a better man. And you, Joseph, you, go be a man of the world. The motion will heal you. You’ll see.

*   *   *

The following morning, Bloom packed a small bag, bid all the birds in his aviary farewell, and asked Meralda if she would prepare a picnic for him. When she asked what he was doing with the bag, he said he was going off on his own to become a man of the world. Hearing this, Meralda disappeared for quite a long time, and when she returned, she had Gus on one arm and Gottlieb on the other.

So, said Gottlieb, you are heeding my advice, after all.

I am, said Bloom.

Excellent. Have you decided where to go?

No.

An impromptu journey, then.

Yes.

Ah, I’ve been on many of those.

For how long will you be away? asked Meralda.

I haven’t decided.

You want I should go with you? asked Gus with his eyes on Meralda. There’s no reason you need to be a man of the world all on your own.

No, said Bloom. I’m going alone. Somewhere. And I don’t know when I’ll return.

The right frame of mind when starting out for the first time, said Gottlieb.

Please … You must stop speaking, Gottlieb, otherwise I’ll turn around and walk back to my room.

I’ll say no more, said Gottlieb. He mimed the buttoning of his lips.

It’s time I knew what was out there, said Bloom to Meralda, who Bloom could see was in distress over his departure.

As you should, said Gus.

Meralda struck the big man on the arm.

He’s a man, said Gus. He should go where he pleases.

I have to do this, Bloom said. You know I must.

And hearing this, Meralda started off to the kitchen in a state.

She notices your moods more than you know, Gus said of her. She’s concerned you’ve grown despondent. She fears you might harm yourself.

Gottlieb unbuttoned his lips at this point and said, He is a malignant despondent.

Thank you, Gottlieb. But I have no plans to do myself in. Not at the moment.

I have first dibs at that, said Gottlieb.

Stop speaking, Gottlieb.

I will say no more.

Here, said Meralda as she returned with a picnic basket. It’s enough to get you through the day and the night if need be.

I’m sure it’ll suffice, said Bloom. He gave Meralda a kiss and a tight hug, and with that, Bloom set out to the drive. He placed the picnic basket in the roadster’s passenger seat and turned over the engine. Gottlieb, Gus, and Meralda lined up before the front entrance of the villa, and as he drove off, he saw Meralda bury her face in Gus’s chest.

When Bloom drove through the gates and moved beyond them, he began to enjoy this sensation of being alone and in motion. For the first time since reading Isabella’s letter, he felt alive in his solitude. And the more alive he felt, the faster he took the turns on the mountain road. He raced his way into the canyon, and when he reached the bottom, he accelerated into the eyesore of the construction zone, appreciating for the first time in what ways forward motion was a form of escape, and he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him sooner that the landscapes portrayed to him in his reading of other’s solitary travels wouldn’t echo through his own experience of motion. As he hurtled past one open foundation after the next, he became a simplification of himself, a small quantity of immaterial parts whose image, if he were to paint it, would consist of the impressionistic streaks of his mother’s brush. To prolong this ascension of spirit, Bloom considered if, perhaps, he should remain in motion indefinitely, if he shouldn’t turn up the coastal road and continue driving north, at the very least until he tired of the thrill. But when he reached the shore and saw across the channel the mountain peaks of Santa Ynez Island, he saw in the island’s barely visible contours the mirror image of Mount Terminus, and, without wanting it to happen, the euphoria he felt only a moment earlier reversed to melancholy. And while Bloom urged himself to ignore this reversal, it appeared as if his body and not his mind were in control of his actions, as he slowed to a halt. And sat. And stared. Thinking of Isabella. Of her body warm and alive beside him. Of her dead body mutilated in a trench.

He spent what remained of the morning doing what he might have done had he never left his tower’s pavilion. He sat and watched. From the seat of his car, he observed vessels small and large moor at and unmoor from the docks. They arrived and departed at a leisurely pace, a pace that intimately appealed to Bloom’s sense of time. The more he saw of their comings and goings, the more he felt compelled to unmoor himself from his seat and take a stroll. He carried with him a tablet and a fistful of charcoals, and with the same impetus he felt to explore the docks, he felt a need to stop and sketch the watermarks and rust patterns he discovered on the nearby hulls of ships. Over and over again, he found himself rubbing into the paper the same shape. The very same blemish, he only realized later, as the mark on Isabella’s letter.

When a group of merchant mariners saw him, they gathered around to watch, and seeing how skilled Bloom was, they asked if he would sketch them. Bloom spent the remainder of the afternoon deciphering the lines and forms of these men’s figures, hoping in the process to divine some inspiration that would set him on his way in one direction or another. And after some time of standing face to face with these men, he confided he was aimless and looking for a destination. They were bound for the vanilla plantations of Madagascar. That, Bloom said, was perhaps a little too far. The largest, most doltish of the men, screwed up his muscular face and said, Leave it to me. At the insistence of this man who reminded Bloom of Gus, he took several puffs from a pipe containing in its bowl a black, tacky substance, which, when lit, smelled edible. Sweet. And as soon as Bloom inhaled the rich smoke into his lungs, his head tingled, then turned pleasantly numb, and soon thereafter his limbs grew weary and his mind began to pattern the world into sequences of incongruous images and sounds. The seamen sat before him, their faces indifferent and still. They each pointed at him, but their eyes stared into the sun. Although their lips were shut tight, Bloom heard originating from inside their chests hearty guffaws of laughter. Each of them, one in succession of the other, then shut his eyes. And as each set of eyes closed, the sound of the laughter—as thunder from a lightning storm sounds as it passes into the distance—quieted into whispers. And then there was silence. Then darkness. Then a dream, in which Bloom was levitating over the surface of the ocean.

Bloom woke up to the sway of water beneath him and felt running through his body the vibrations of an accelerating motor. He recognized the sensation of being in motion, and when his vision cleared he found himself in his car. It was parked on the deck of a ferry, and gathered around his windows was a menagerie of children costumed as swabbies, the group of them volubly discussing their disappointment with the fact that Bloom wasn’t dead. He opened the car door and stepped onto the deck, where he saw the port behind them had flattened into two dimensions. The definition of the coastline grew soft, and with the basin and the distant mountain range spreading out before him as would an eroding sandcastle, he had a difficult time locating Mount Terminus.

Watching the coastline slip farther and farther away, Bloom turned to the nearest ferryman—a man with a topographical map of acne scars—and asked him when the next ferry would run back to the port. But this is the last ferry of the day, he told Bloom. All of us, he said, turning his head to Santa Ynez, we now all go home. The soonest Bloom could return would be first thing in the morning. Upon hearing this news he must have looked like a lost little boy, because at that moment, this unfortunate-looking man, who the others unkindly called Guapo, smiled sympathetically and patted Bloom on the back.

He introduced himself as Eduardo and told Bloom not to worry, that there were very nice accommodations on the island. Because Bloom liked the way Eduardo spoke and thought his eyes understanding, he said to him, Have you ever met a grown man who has never spent a night alone away from home? Eduardo shook his head. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, said Bloom, but I’ll miss waking up to my birds in the morning. When Bloom mentioned his birds, Eduardo’s entire presence brightened. And then he asked if, like him, Bloom had a great love of birds. Bloom told him he loved his birds very much. Then come, he said, I show you a trick I no show many people.

Eduardo led Bloom to the ferry’s stern, where from a compartment he pulled out a metal tub filled with minnows. He rolled up the sleeve on his right arm and in one deft motion sunk his hand into the water and pulled out a sparkling fish. He held on to it by the tail and asked Bloom, You are no’ very delicate, are you? Bloom wasn’t certain he understood what Eduardo meant, but he shook his head no. Eduardo, in turn, lifted his other hand to the struggling fish, placed his thumb and forefinger over its bulbous eyes and squeezed until the fish stilled. He wiped the pink ooze that had gushed onto his fingers on the legs of his yellow uniform, and now, with a hearty smile that revealed a mouthful of chipped teeth, he pointed the fish up to a flock of gulls trailing in the sky at the back of the boat.

Pick one, he said to Bloom.

What for?

You pick one, any one, I make it come for a visit. Bloom now must have looked at him with disbelief because Eduardo said, You like birds, yes?

Yes, said Bloom.

You no afraid of birds, no?

No.

Then pick one. I make it come for a visit.

To make it easy for him to know which of the birds, Bloom pointed into the shadowy underbelly of the anarchic flock and said, That one, the one farthest to our right.

No pro’lem. And then Eduardo, most certainly the ugliest man on all the seas, showed Bloom the most beautiful display of man controlling the natural world he had ever seen. With the panache of a magician who worked at sleight of hand, this unassuming ferryman striped his palm with the silver minnow, and using its glimmering surface reflected the sun into the eye of the very gull Bloom had pointed to. By casting the light just so, he lured the bird away from the flock to the rail of the ship, where, as if it were hung on an invisible string, it gracefully hovered with its wings outstretched on the headwind. Bloom laughed with delight. He could feel his smile fill his face. And Eduardo, seeing him smile for the first time, again shared with Bloom his broken teeth. Now you know why it is we call him Guapo! Bloom heard from over his shoulder. When he turned, he found one of the other ferrymen, a fat pink man with a strawberry nose, who added, The birds! They find Guapo irresistible! Bloom turned back to Eduardo then, when, at just the right angle for the gull to catch the fish in its crooked beak, he lobbed the minnow into the air. The bird snatched it up and with Eduardo’s spell now broken it lifted away beyond the flock and flew into the blinding glow of the sun.

*   *   *

They motored into a marina in which small sailboats and yachts bobbed in their slips. The town on the eastern side of the island was composed of colorful cottages terraced onto steep hills. A levee of boulders blasted from the side of the mountain buttressed a winding road from the channel waters. To the south was a small patch of sandy beach on which Bloom could see orderly lines of lounge chairs and folded umbrellas. As Eduardo had told him, the town of Santa Ynez was becoming and clean, very dull, very quiet.

At Eduardo’s insistence, Bloom was to go home with him. They drove on a dirt road to the other side of the island, to the lodging house owned and run by his sister, Estella Maria Tourneur. Her husband, Eduardo told him, a famous acrobat, no longer lived. The Great Guillaume one year earlier fell to his death from the trapeze, and ever since then, to make her life less lonely, Estella rented her many rooms to vacationers. She calls the house after her name on the stage, said Eduardo, La Reina del Fuego, the Queen of Fire. This was how his sister was known across all the deserts and the prairies and the greatest of the cities when she traveled with the Grand Versailles Circus, for whom Estella dressed in a bloodred leotard and ate and blew fire, and walked over hot coals with bare feet, and fearlessly hung and spun over bright orange flames with only her teeth biting down on a thin leather strap.

It is empty now, Eduardo said of the house, but because you are a lover of birds, instead of sleeping in one of the rooms meant for the strangers, I would be honored if you would stay in my room.

But where will you sleep? Bloom asked him.

I sleep where I prefer to sleep. On the water, in my boat, where I can better hear and feel the sea. After many thousands of years, Eduardo explained to Bloom, he and his sister were the only Chumash people left on Santa Ynez. The others, he said, had either died from disease or had been collected like pieces of pottery and gold by the missionaries. It is in my blood, he told Bloom, to want the sea near me when I dream. Tonight, my friend, you keep my birds company and care for them since you no’ with your own. All right?

They turned off the seaside road circling the island and drove onto an unpaved incline lined with pairs of braided ficus trees. Their tops formed a clattering canopy through which the late-afternoon sun broke and dappled yellow light onto the hood of Bloom’s roadster. When they emerged through this tunnel of foliage, they reached the level ground of a cul-de-sac paved in cobblestone and bordered with a vibrant ring of strawberry lupine and amethyst blazing stars whose soft spikes stood nearly as tall as Bloom. The white-and-crimson façade of La Reina del Fuego sat at the edge of a bluff.

It was Queen Anne in style, three stories tall, with a sheltered porch running the length of the house. A turret rose up on one side, and on the other stood a tall chimney slightly taller than the turret’s point. Beyond the plantings around the cul-de-sac was a well-kept lawn at the border of which rose an enormous oak, one of whose limbs nearly spanned the entirety of the yard, and had hanging from it the bar of a trapeze. That, Eduardo said when he saw Bloom mystified by the silver rod swaying in the ocean breeze, is where Guillaume lies dead and buried.

Bloom followed Eduardo into the house, and he could see why a rugged man such as himself wouldn’t feel at home here. The furnishings were as ornate as they were delicate, and although the Great Guillaume lay dead and buried under the lawn of the garden, this was still very much his house. His likeness was everywhere, enshrined on the walls of the foyer and sitting rooms, in posters and paintings, the Great Guillaume fearlessly tumbling and spinning through the air. On the mantelpiece and on pedestals were planted heroic busts. And covering a grand piano with elephantine legs were standing photographs of the great trapeze artist shaking hands with European royals and American dignitaries, in palace gardens and ballrooms, on the fields of fairgrounds.

Less prominent, but certainly well represented, was also La Reina del Fuego, depicted in images performing all the stunts Eduardo described on the drive to the house. As startling as it was for Bloom to see such a beautiful woman spit brilliant orange flames ten feet into the air or to see her hanging by her teeth over a crown of fire, it was more shocking to discover two siblings could look any more different than Eduardo and his sister. In these images in which she was costumed as a savage, with her face colorfully painted and her hair decorated with feathers and charms, he could sense that beneath the artifice of exaggerated beauty was the symmetry and form and style only the smallest numbers among us are graced with.

There she is, Eduardo said from the dining room at the back of the house. Bloom walked to Eduardo’s side and looked with him out a large window down onto the rocky coastline at the bottom of the cliff, where he found a woman with long black hair dressed in a white gown. She stood with her arms extended, balancing herself on the spine of an oblong rock as she looked off at the descending sun. His finger tapping on the glass, Eduardo said of his sister’s outstretched arms, Like the wings of the great heron, no?

Yes, Bloom agreed.

He then pointed down the beach. That way, around the jetty, is Willow Cove. This is where I keep my boat. This is where I will go now.

But what shall I tell Estella? asked Bloom.

I will talk with her on the beach. I will tell her you are here as my guest. She will be happy to know you are in my room tonight. The birds are no’ as loud when they see in my bed the shape of a man. Eduardo turned to go, but before he left Bloom in this unfamiliar place, he said, I will return early in the morning to collect you. Eduardo exited a side door and walked down a staircase built onto the side of the bluff. He disappeared for some time and then reappeared on the beach, where he called to Estella. From a distance, they spoke briefly, and then Eduardo turned away from her and continued on, stepping with youthful agility over the shore toward the cove as if he knew intimately the surface of each rock on which his feet fell.

Bloom was pleased to find a small library in the sitting room. Most of the books were in French and Spanish, but many were in English. He saw titles he had never seen or heard of before and wanted to browse through them. However, because he didn’t feel at home, because the books were so pristine and tidily arranged, he was too timid to remove any of them from their shelves. Instead, he stared at their bindings and he began to imagine Calypso’s cave, where Odysseus was held captive, where all the time he was left to his solitude, he wept with thoughts of Penelope. In his mind, Bloom imagined from the images he saw of her in her posters, Estella, as Calypso, who stood with the posture of a powerful being, but who possessed eyes as vulnerable as the love she so deeply felt for the soul of her mortal prisoner. Bloom imagined himself as Odysseus, his will weakened by the nymph’s never-ending loneliness and beauty. And thus, he saw himself lying with her on a slab of stone with his arms wrapped around her waist and his cheek pressed against her midriff.

He gathered his sketchbook from his bag and quickly drew in pencil these images he saw in his mind. He added an image of Athena, whose face and body he modeled from memory on the young woman who was first delivered by Gus to his studio. He drew her into a panel with an arm outstretched to the heavens, and in another panel with her arm outstretched to Calypso, threatening her with the power of Zeus if she didn’t release him to start his journey home. In the next panel, Calypso’s shoulders fell with her head turned in profile, her eyes focused on a broken seashell resting in the sand beside her foot. And, in the last panel, as he was about to venture into the hands of Poseidon, Bloom had fallen on his knees before Calypso, and he saw in his mind Isabella, his Penelope, but he nevertheless had reached out to Calypso. She had already turned away from him, dejected, moving toward the dark hollow of her cave.

This activity kept Bloom so preoccupied he hadn’t noticed Estella had long since entered from the side door and had been silently standing over his shoulder watching him sketch for some time. He was made aware of her presence only when she said in a voice that wasn’t quite sure how it wanted to sound, You must be the lover of birds my brother spoke of. Bloom looked up to find her neck and arms bare. She wore a gown whose diaphanous material revealed the curves of her figure and hinted at the lines of her breasts. He could see from the dispassionate expression on her face—not unlike many of the actresses on the lot—she was accustomed to being stared at in a state of near undress. Given how weathered and old Eduardo looked to Bloom, she was much younger than he expected her to be. She couldn’t be older than twenty-five. Otherwise, she was very much the way he had imagined her, and, to Bloom’s satisfaction, very much the way he had drawn her.

She sat down beside him and without speaking she took from him his sketchbook. I should explain, Bloom said to her as she sorted through the pages and lingered over the panels in which she and he were naked and entwined inside the cave walls. She was quiet for some time, tracing her finger around the curves of their figures.

She then looked up and smiled. There is nothing to explain.

But, Bloom insisted, these drawings, they aren’t what they appear to be.

Obviously amused at Bloom’s need to explain himself, she said, I know what these are drawings of. She then pointed to the image Bloom had drawn of himself, and, suppressing a smile, said, Odysseus? Bloom nodded, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. But, she asked, now enjoying this power she held over him, who, I want to know, is your Penelope? When she asked him this question, Bloom saw what couldn’t be gleaned from an image drawn by a second-rate artist promoting a circus act. He saw in her face the one characteristic she shared with her brother, the same incisive and compassionate eyes.

Isabella, said Bloom.

She nodded and then asked if Isabella was very far away.

No. She’s dead.

When?

Recently.

I’m sorry for you. And then Estella said as she looked one more time at his drawings, You have a vivid style. She shut the sketchbook and placed it back in his lap.

She offered Bloom her hand, which he took hold of, and she said to him as she turned his hand over and studied his fingers, I’ll show you to Eduardo’s room.

Bloom trailed behind the long gown of Estella Maria Tourneur as they walked up the stairs inside the house’s turret. She led him to the door of her brother’s room, where, hanging in its many windows, Bloom found cages shaped like lampshades, nearly a dozen of them, holding giant macaws and cockatoos and exotic birds he couldn’t have imagined existed until he saw these; they were vibrant and colorful, with tall crests and headdresses, with all varieties of decorative plumage. Bloom surveyed the cages and when he was through he turned back to Estella, who was standing in the doorway, backlit from the sun shining through a window across the hall. They’re magnificent, Bloom said. Bloom saw in the shadow the tip of Estella’s chin lower, then rise. He continued to move from cage to cage and looked more carefully at Eduardo’s treasures, and asked Estella where they all came from. Estella told him over the birds’ cacophonous squawks and songs that most of them Eduardo had collected in tropical ports when he worked the cargo ships across the channel. Will you be comfortable here? she asked.

Yes, said Bloom, of course. Eduardo’s room may have been spartan, as the only furnishings were a twin bed and a rather drab throw rug, but with the birds jumping and shuffling back and forth on their perches, and with views of the shoreline and the garden out the turret’s windows, he was reminded of the tower’s pavilion. I feel very much at home, he told Estella. More than you can possibly know.

Appearing neither pleased nor displeased that he found the room to his liking, she said he should join her for some dinner as soon as he settled in. She then excused herself and shut the door behind her. The birds quieted and grew still upon her departure. The sun had set and was warming the sky with a blood-orange glow.

*   *   *

To dinner, Estella wore her hair pinned up and a long strand of pearls wrapped once around her throat, leaving the rest to hang loosely over her naked breastbone. They sat across from each other in an intimate silence, and ate a simple meal of Garibaldi, which smelled of citrus, and thin slices of avocado, and a small mound of rice. And together they looked out to the approaching swells. They didn’t speak very much; rather, they listened to the powerful waves crash onto the rocks below, sometimes with so much force the dining room window would quaver inside its frame. When they had finished eating, Estella told Bloom to leave the table as it was and invited him into the sitting room, where, without asking, she poured for him a tall glass of whiskey and asked him to sit on the end of the couch where he could best see her sitting at the piano, and then all the time looking at him and never for a moment at her hands, she played for him a slow, ponderous piece of music he didn’t know, and when she was through with this, with only a brief pause, she played another. Bloom felt himself too sensitive to the intensity of her eyes to want to look away from them, so he looked to her as she looked to him. It was only after he took his last sip of whiskey that she stopped, and he realized then she had been playing all this time for his pleasure. As soon as he had finished, Estella told him to leave his glass on the table, and then she wished him good night, and walked out the side door she had earlier entered.

When Bloom had returned to Eduardo’s room, he saw her through the window, on the lawn kneeling under the bar of Guillaume’s trapeze, which was twisting about in the wind. He watched her talk to her dead and buried husband for some time before he felt the whiskey and the smoke and the excitement of the day take its toll. He prepared for bed, and the instant he set his head on Eduardo’s pillow, he joined the birds in their slumber.

Bloom wasn’t quite sure how long he was asleep when he felt the touch of Estella’s hand on his cheek. She placed a finger over his lips when he opened his eyes, tilted her head slightly, observed his face, as if awaiting Bloom’s reaction to her uninvited presence at his bedside. Bloom, who was no stranger to a nocturnal intrusion, remained passively reclined. He merely looked at Estella’s moonlit face and said nothing when she removed her finger from his mouth and slipped this same hand under his shirt, pressed her palm against his chest. Did you make love to Isabella? she asked.

No, said Bloom.

As if both stating a fact and asking a question at the same time, she said, But you’ve made love to women before.

No, said Bloom, shaking his head. Not in the biblical sense. No.

And then she said in the same tone, Well, you’ll make love to me.

Bloom told her he was still in love with Isabella.

Estella said she was still in love with Guillaume.

But, said Bloom, Guillaume is dead.

As is Isabella. Trust me, she said. You’ll see. I know your sadness. I intend to help you. As a mother would assist a child, Estella lifted Bloom’s shirt over his head, and as he lay naked before her, she ran her fingers down his throat and along the length of his body. Now, said Estella, don’t move. She stood up and pulled the straps of her gown over her shoulders and let it fall to her feet, revealing to Bloom in the moonlight a scar from a burn running under her left arm to the curve of her hip. She now returned to him, straddled his waist, and took hold of his hand, ran it over the scar’s marbled surface. Next time you draw me, she told him, you can make me complete. When Bloom felt her scar, whatever resistance remained within him, whatever little tug of conscience he felt, faded. He sat up and kissed the burned flesh, tasted with his tongue its uneven texture.

No, she said, pushing his head back onto the pillow. No, she repeated as she lowered his hands to her hips. Now shut your eyes, she said, and dream of Isabella.

Why?

To keep her memory alive.

Bloom shut his eyes and did as Estella said. He searched for a memory of Isabella. He recalled those many times he held her in the gallery, when he touched the soft flesh of her stomach through the seam of her blouse, lifted the material of her dresses to caress the back of her thighs. The memory was interrupted as Estella began to move. Her movement awakened the birds. They began to sing and squawk and shuffle and jump about in their cages, and Bloom recalled the first time he and Isabella stood in the pavilion, before his aviary with the invertiscope harnessed to his shoulders. Estella shifted her weight, and taking Bloom by surprise, her body swallowed him. Bloom had been touched by Roya’s hand, by his own hand, he had been taken into the lush paradise of a woman’s mouth, but he had never sensed so complete a pleasure as he felt now. Estella bore down on him, her ass rising and falling athletically, steadily, rhythmically. Her hands pressed against his chest to form a beautiful arch in her back, over which her long mane of black hair fell into the darkness behind her. When she rose to her full height over him, she was a Dionysian mystery, the goddess of everything, so far as Bloom was concerned, Ecstasy herself. Bloom braced his arms and set his hands against the attenuated slope of her small breasts. Now say her name, said Estella, as she rose. Say her name and see her face, she said, as she fell. No, said Bloom.

It’s all right, said Estella, say her name. Say it, she said as she clenched her thighs tightly against his hips, tightened her grip on his penis, bore her ass down between his thighs. Isabella, said Bloom quietly and clumsily. Louder, said Estella. Clearer. Isabella, said Bloom, louder this time. Again, Estella exhaled. And again, Bloom said Isabella’s name, this time with less pause and inhibition, with more feeling, and he could see her face, as clear in his mind as he could see Estella. Isabella, he said, Isabella. Over and over he said her name, and with each mention of it, Estella said, panting now, Yes, good, good, yes. And after several more mentions of Bloom’s lost love, a final Yes! arrived most suddenly, and Bloom felt something indescribable. He felt Estella’s body temperature rise, her skin hot to the touch; he felt her entire musculature expand and contract around him. He felt her tremble and tremble and tremble. She dug her fingers into his chest and she trembled some more, and then she said, Ready? and with only the slightest movement of her hips, she pressed her stomach against Bloom’s, and the moment she did this Bloom was compelled to lower his hand from her breast and grab hold of her scar, which he squeezed with all his might, and now trembling himself, his eyes feeling as if they were about to combust into flames, he began to fill her, and as he did so, he could feel himself crying, in small jags, like a small child in the aftermath of a tantrum.

There now, said Estella as she lowered her weight onto his chest. There, there, that’s good. She didn’t move. The birds stilled in their cages. She continued to hold him inside her, squeezing every last drop from him. And with her warm breath on his ear, she lulled him back to sleep, still whispering, There now, there, there, that’s what you needed.

And it was true. It was what Bloom needed. More than he knew.

In the morning, when the birds first began to stir and make noise, Eduardo gently shook Bloom awake and said it was time to go. When he had dressed, Bloom asked him if he should wake Estella to say goodbye. He said she wasn’t in the house. She had left him in the middle of the night and had gone to his boat in the cove. She was now there, asleep. She says, said Eduardo, you may return should you feel the need to see her again.

*   *   *

And he would. Each time Bloom felt the memory of Isabella begin to fade from his mind, he returned to Estella. Each time he felt himself consumed by bitterness and self-pity, he drove to the port and rode with Eduardo on the last ferry of the day to Santa Ynez, and each time he visited Estella, he was able to bear his fate. They would quietly dine and watch the ocean crash against the rocks. She would play music for him as he drank his whiskey, and she would make her exit to visit Guillaume’s grave. As she had done before, she would visit Bloom in the middle of the night, and he would shut his eyes and see Isabella. In time, Bloom found himself wanting to take an earlier and earlier ferry, and wanted to stay on Santa Ynez longer than the one night, for days, sometimes weeks. The island was calm and peaceful, unpopulated, and he discovered how clear his mind became when he was there. It reminded him of Mount Terminus before the arrival of his brother. It reminded him of his childhood in Woodhaven. He and Estella took long, quiet walks together, and as they grew more accustomed to each other, she told him stories of the ceaseless days traveling with the circus, on land, on sea, through the biggest and oldest of cities, into the middle of nowhere, to the smallest of prairie towns and villages, always on the move, wandering farther and farther from home. Eduardo, too, told him stories of his endless sea adventures. He had lost count of the number of times he had circumnavigated the Earth. More times than any one man should, he said. Eduardo taught Bloom how to fish off a boat. He taught him how to spear fish in the shallows. They paddled on swells into sea caves and sat under their natural cupolas at low tide, eating lunches Estella had prepared for them. They fed the seals and watched the dolphins play. They caught pigs escaped from the few ranches on the far side of the island and returned them home to be slaughtered, and they took a share of the meat home to be cured. And one night Estella took Bloom by the hand after dinner and led him to her room, to the large bed she had shared with Guillaume, and they enjoyed each other without mentioning the dead, and they held each other close through the night and into the morning, and Estella that day emptied a room whose window looked off to the sea, and Bloom looked off to the sea, and he could see in its empty expanse The Death of Paradise.

He could see his work taking shape in his mind, and sometimes for weeks at a time, he would spend the better part of his days in this room doing no other work than thinking through the picture in his mind, and Estella never bothered him, and Eduardo never bothered him. They left him to himself. To the quiet. To the pleasures of his prolonged silences. To his most natural state of being. They all shared this in common. He loved it here, and there were times Bloom thought of never leaving. And perhaps he would have had Estella asked him to stay. He might have left Mount Terminus behind had she made the subtlest of gestures, but she didn’t, so he didn’t. He came and went as he pleased. Each time he returned he was warmly welcomed and embraced. Each time he left, they bid him goodbye with a warm farewell.