Bruce Wagner - Memorial

They landed. They walked a mile or so, passing the lean-to of a sculptor Lew had befriended, a Robinson Jeffers type who famously worked with wood and was allowed to lease a parcel of land out here. He wasn’t home. They poked around his frontyard, if you could call the stupefying cauldron of the Pacific a yard. Lew said the guy’s work reminded him of “Andy” (she’d heard enough of Mr Goldsworthy, thanks very much). As they hiked, conversation segued to the furniture of Nakashima and Noguchi — Lew had just bought a little postwar table for $800,000, at auction — Strange, Houshmand, and Walsh. He spoke of the sundari where the body of his sister-in-law was found, without mentioning Samuel; she wondered about that, and remembered what Pradeep had told her about the “spirit tree.” Maybe the topic of his brother was just too painful. They talked about the tidal wave catastrophe in general, which proved amenable enough to an ocean that seemed to roar, hiss, wallop, and sting for its supper. Lew shook his head and laughed about the shrinks who’d flown to Banda Aceh as grief counselors. It was so loud that he had to shout. He asked Joan if she knew about the supplies sent over in bulk: shipping containers with hair conditioners and gel, bikinis and disposable pink razors. Another riff on the obscenity of corporate America’s largesse. (His phrase.)

He told her how “Sam and Esthie” were in Kerala and Kochi — he had all the emails and digital photos his brother sent from the trip (there weren’t too many) — how they’d visited a place called Jew Town with an amazing 16th century synagogue, “the Paradesi,” its roof strung with dangling oil lamps and crystal chandeliers. Sam said that most of the Jews had gone to Israel, and only a few were left: “ ‘black Jews’ and ‘white Jews’ (orthodox) but today we saw a deeply taciturn woman sewing who went by the unlikely name, or likely, if you wish, of Mrs Cohen.” Deeply taciturn. His brother was a good writer, with a droll, subtle way. Lew had culled from the computer correspondence to make a booklet for the family service.

He recounted by rote how the couple were in Chennai before heading south to Mahabalipuram, where they perished. When the waters receded at the place their lives ended, ancient carved elephant heads and long-buried running horses were miraculously uncovered. Not many died there besides Sam and Esther. They were among “the lucky ones,” said Lew sardonically — of ¼ million, only a few hundred Americans were killed. He’d come to believe it was their fate, their appointment in Samarra. With a doff of the cap to his Buddhist sister-in-law, Lew wittily amended: appointment in samsara.

(A conjuration of Buddhist stuff had been on Joan’s mind from day one and she envisioned a sand mandala Mem, with a nod to Kyotan Zen gardens. A walking labyrinth, like that September 11th installation in Battery Park — something akin to Roy Staab’s arrangement of reeds and knotweed in the Hudson River would, like a mandala, be obliterated in mere days’ time, but she dismissed its transitoriness as too “Andy.” Damn him. {As Jon Stewart might say.} She dredged further from her mental file: the 93 WTC granite shrine, and small stubborn chunk that still remained after 9/11—a memorial of a memorial. She thought of all these things and it was excruciating to realize that her “sappy” frisson had been spurious and she didn’t have an original idea in her semen-filled head. Zaha wasn’t Zaha for nothin. )

Then he said something heavy that she hadn’t been aware of.

The body of his brother had been recovered then misplaced by authorities. Only the cremains of his pain-in-the-ass sister-in-law — that said with a smirk not devoid of warmth — would be buried on Napa grounds.

“You know,” said Lew, philosophically. “Memorials are hilarious. I mean, the idea of them. A grave is a grave. But…everything we do is a memorial. Eating ’s a memorial. Shitting ’s a memorial. Fucking ’s a memorial. Do you know about Malcolm Forbes?”

“He rode in balloons and laid Fabergé eggs. He took Liz Taylor on a Harley and threw Brokeback chopper parties.”

“Right! And he’s buried on an island in Fiji — only a few people know this. Mel Gibson wound up buying in the same neighborhood. He just had an 8 lane bowling alley shipped over, by the way: not Malcolm, Mel. A man has to bowl…the passion of the Mel! Gotta hand it to the guy — I mean you better hand it over, or he’ll take it. Mel’s crazy, but I like him; I’ve been to his father’s church. Been to Mago too. But the Forbes place — the most beautiful place on Earth. (Aside from where we are now.) The Forbes family actually had a written contract that said when they sold the island, they would come pick up the body. Exhume ol Talcum’d Malcolm, Fabergé balls and all! What if Malcolm- Ex thought he was going to be spending an eternity under white Fijian sands — oops! Sorry! You’re in purgatory now — Malcolm in the Middle.

“Remember that Jap who bought a Van Gogh? What’d he spend, a hundred million? For a Dr Gachet? And that was back in the 80s. Or 90s. I think he was a ‘department-store king.’ Super Salaryman. Did you know that when he died, he was gonna have the painting cremated along with his body? I’m serious! Never happened. I think he was in debt and the banks took it back. Poor little slope. Hell, I’d pay good money to watch a Gachet burn. Nothin lasts forever. My brother sure didn’t.

“So much for memorials and the wishes of the dead.”

BY the time she got back to LA, Joan had a name for the Freiberg Mem, even if she couldn’t quite summon the thing itself.

She went to ARK and rushed to her portfolio — this time scanning the Esther/Buddhist section. She reread the sutta, Buddha’s words to a god who had tried in vain, by ceaselessly running, to reach the end of the world. (Maybe Joan would just wind up forging a great and beautiful prayer wheel, to signify “mindful” running, or turning. It could also signify spinning my wheels. ) Samuel was a marathon runner, so it was a good thematic fit:

Thus have I heard: The end of the world can never be reached by walking. However, without having reached the world’s end, there is no release from suffering…

I declare that it is in this fathom-long carcass, with its perceptions and thoughts, that there is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world.

How beautiful — that this tireless, needless runner should be covered over by waters, turbulent then still. Receding…. It reminded her of Lew’s “running horses,” freed at last from the Great Wheel of Rebirth.

That’s what she would call it, and she couldn’t wait to tell Barbet: Full Fathom Five.

SHE told Raymond — most of the time she called him “Raj” or “Bapu,” but it was Raymond whenever something weighed heavily on her mind that she had trouble giving voice to — she told him she’d awakened with the smell of monsoon in her nose.

Ghulpa often wore a fragrance called ittar that smelled like the 1st monsoon wetness of parched earth. The old man lasciviously said he felt a bit parched, and could do with a little “moisture”; her overbite twisted and she called him a lunk. He was only joking.

Her mood grew dark and he didn’t understand. She wept and padded around the house in Target flip-flops then took to her bed. Ray guessed she was hormonal, or sensing the ebb of womanhood, because she was that age. He prided himself on the sudden insight, feeling more worldly and knowing than he’d been accustomed.