Free Mount Terminus by David Grand

with a purple sash. While his thick arms and chest were matted with wiry hair, the crown of his head was bald and browned, and what hair remained above the ear and around the pate was white and cropped close to the scalp. His face belonged to that of a caricature. Wide nostrils. Fat lips. Heavy jowls. Hooded eyes. It belonged to a man who had inflicted, who had been afflicted by, pain.
    At the first sight of Bloom, the steely eyes of the reclining brute softened and became those of a moody, quizzical child. His cigar fell limp between his thick fingers as he said in a voice deep and graveled and full of bent foreign syllables, Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. Without breaking his open gaze, he told Bloom to come closer, to sit with him. The young Rosenbloom looked at his father, who nodded his assurance. And with that, Bloom left his father’s side and sat at the man’s hip.
    Your papa has said who I am?
    Bloom shook his head.
    No, of course he hasn’t. The old man set his cigar in his lap and rested a coarse palm on Bloom’s cheek. You’re a fortunate young man to have such a sensible papa. With his brow raised, he drew his chin to his chest. He has done good today. For you, young man, he has done good. He searched Bloom’s eyes again, this time as if he were hunting for evidence of something intimate they shared. He now withdrew his hand from Bloom’s cheek and turned his attention to Jacob. The air. The sound of the salted sea. These men of God here, they say it will do miracles for me. But they say in the same breath, I don’t help myself because I don’t believe. What do you say, Mr. Rosenbloom? Do I suffer from a lack of faith? Bloom’s father stepped forward without replying and presented the attaché to the sickly man, who lifted it into the waiting hands of the nearest member of the triumvirate. He then reached into a pocket stitched onto his robe and removed a silver pendant, half of a coin embossed with a full moon, bright and shiny on one side, dark with tarnish on the other. Give me your hand, malchik . It is for this I’ve asked your father to bring you here today. Bloom lifted his hand and in it the man placed his gift. One day soon, he said as he looked at Bloom’s father, as if he were speaking to him as much as to his son, you will know its other half. He then smiled as he closed Bloom’s fist. This world of ours, young Rosenbloom, it is a world of wondrous surprises, is it not? Bloom nodded in agreement. One never knows what astonishments await us. Isn’t that so, Papa? The old man lifted his heavy lids and once again directed his eyes at the elder Rosenbloom. Jacob didn’t answer the man. He instead tugged on Bloom’s collar, and when the young man looked up he saw his father’s chin motioning him away. At that moment, he could see in the hollows of his father’s eyes the malignant influence these dark figures held over his will. For the first time, he could see in the tightening folds of his father’s face how terrified he was of these men. As they walked off in the direction from which they had come, rather than upset Jacob’s pride by asking where these brutes derived their power, or what the significance of the pendant was, Bloom took hold of his hand and said, When we return home, shall we climb to the top of the tower and look at the sea?
    *   *   *
    Neither Bloom nor his father mentioned in the following days and weeks anything about their journey to the sea or the identity of the man who had set his hand on the younger Rosenbloom’s cheek. Bloom asked no questions about what the attaché case contained or what might have been the meaning of the pendant. He was deeply curious, of course, and at times was tempted to breach the darkness his father had forbidden him to enter all his life, but Bloom sensed the questions he was keeping to himself would be answered soon enough. He intuited from the