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Turkish rugs with opalescent borders, a wingback chair and a threadbare footstool erupting with fluff. Most comforting of all to him was the gallery in which Aphrodite reclined in relief above the mantelshelf of the fireplace. In this room, at the level of the goddess’s eyes, his father had hung the Woodhaven landscapes Bloom’s mother had painted, and under them arranged a chaise longue and two wooden chairs with clawed arms and clawed feet. One chair was slightly smaller than the other, and etched in Hebrew into the backside of the smaller one was the name of the boy’s mother, and into the larger one, the name of his father. Whenever Bloom asked about the sadness he had observed in his mother’s face in the days before her death, Jacob said to him, There is no need for you to dwell in darkness, my dear Bloom. When he asked about the fog consuming his mother’s paintings, he said the same. My dear Bloom, there is no need for you to dwell in darkness. It was this room Bloom often visited in the middle of the night when he had difficulty sleeping. He wrapped himself in his mother’s shawl and looked at her heavy brushwork, at Woodhaven as perceived through her studio window, its view of the lake, the placid cobalt water reflecting the slopes of the valley, the summits of its fern green hills bridged by gray mists. On the glare of the window’s glass shimmered a ghostly portrait of his mother’s profile, the elegant slope of her brow, her bold, aquiline nose, one of her otherworldly eyes whose gaze appeared to simultaneously stare onto the landscape below, and at him, her observer. While listening to the hum and groan of vapors expanding through the pipes behind the walls, while looking at the iridescent image of his mother, and breathing in what remained of her dying scent, Bloom was able to recall the days he spent in her company, copying images from her collection of lithographs. She would set before him the paintings of Tiepolo, The Prophet Isaiah , Rachel Hiding the Idols , Jacob’s Dream ; Rembrandt’s Joseph Tells His Dream to Jacob ; Gelder’s Judah and Joseph , and she would say, One day the sun and the moon will bow to you, my dear Bloom. Like his mother, she would tell him, he possessed a steady hand and enjoyed a strange talent for seeing shapes within shapes. Like her, she said, he needed only to look at an object once before he could retain all its aspects in his mind. On several occasions, Bloom overheard her say to his father, In his eyes, I can see the face of God; in the lines he draws, I can hear His voice; when I watch his hand move, I can sense His presence. To these assertions, Jacob said to her, Please, my love, please don’t. Please settle your mind. And he would take her by the hand and escort her to bed, or sit her before the fire in the parlor, where, wrapped in paisley, she stared into the blaze with a daemonic gaze. This memory of her still and quiet eyes filled with flames, and this memory alone, delivered Bloom into unshakable slumbers.
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    On the sixth day of Yamim Noraim, in the month of Tishri, on the third day before the sun descended onto Yom Kippur, one year and two months after their arrival, Bloom, now a boy of ten, gathered at Jacob’s request a collection of trimmings pruned from the garden topiary and bound them in twine. When he completed this task, he helped his father unearth two fledgling juniper trees. That morning Bloom gathered candles and lanterns, filled several jugs of water, packed loaves of bread and jam, dried fruit, salted meat, a sack of oats, a bunch of carrots. He rolled up blankets and pillows into a tarp, and retrieved from the library a miniature book titled Death, Forlorn , which he tucked into the pocket of his father’s jacket. When Jacob finished harnessing their mare to the buckboard, Bloom loaded the cargo he’d collected throughout the day. In the kitchen that evening, they