Mount Terminus: A Novel

by Grand, David

  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. No
t 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.