I invite my funerary urn sculptor Olivier over for a consultation.
“What can you tell me about your pet donkey?”
“He was a dog.”
“In what sense?” he says, taking notes.
“The canine sense. In the sense that he was a dog.”
“And yet you name him after the most famous donkey in all of France? Pourquoi?”
“It is the third-best film of all time, the best French film of all time, the best animal film of all time, the sixth-best film about the Seven Deadly Sins, the fourth-best film of the sixties—”
“How can it be the third-best film of all time and the fourth-best film of the sixties?”
“I don’t tell you how to design funerary urns, Olivier.”
“Well, I found it très fastidieux.”
“Your cinema rankings are of little interest to me. I’d prefer to discuss my dog’s funerary urn.”
“Let me see … how best to pay tribute to a donkey who is a dog?”
I understand Olivier is mocking me, but I scan the urns on the shelf behind him and they are exquisite: a pewter wishing well, a bronze Adonis, a tiled men’s room complete with urinals, the cookie jar one, a magnificent crystal snowstorm that houses my uncle the meteorologist, the found-object pterodactyl, which is also a functioning fountain, each reflecting, with precision and grace, the personality of its occupant. My eyes come to rest on the singed donkey puppet from Ingo’s film and I am struck by a notion. Why not pay tribute to the ashes of Balthazar and those of Ingo’s film, both of indomitable spirit, both destroyed (some might say) by my actions. My daily reminder will be my penance. I propose to Olivier that the donkey puppet be incorporated into the urn. He studies the donkey, plays with it, moves its articulated limbs.
“I thought you don’t tell me how to design funerary urns,” he says, finally.
“Olivier, please don’t be difficult. I am grieving. Cannot you see that?”
He is silent for a long time, then:
“With a small motor in the base of the urn, I can make your donkey toy move.”
“What could it be made to do?” I ask.
“Dance, perhaps. March. Hang its head in grief. Supplicate.”
“Can it do all four?”
“That won’t be cheap.”
“Money is no object,” I say and call my sister.
I AM VISITING my editor Arvide in his office.
“I think I am still able to write the piece,” I tell him.
“For a film that no one can ever see,” he says.
“Yes. But I can re-create it.”
“A novelization?”
“Well, no. That’s offensive to me. I wouldn’t call it that.”
“I would.”
“Fine. I feel certain I could write it, Arvide, so ineradicable was the experience. If I can remember it.”
“I’ll be frank with you, B.—”
“Don’t be frank.”
“I do not believe there ever was a film.”
“There was. And it was the single most important film in the history of cinema.”
“See, that’s the part where I begin to doubt the veracity of—”
“Look,” I say and hold up my extant frame.
“What’s that?”
“An extant frame.”
Arvide takes it from me.
“Careful,” I say.
He studies it for a long while, then:
“I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“A pivotal moment in the film. I’m guessing it’s when the lighting grid falls and fractures Molloy’s skull, sending him into a life-changing coma. I still don’t remember that part.”
“That makes no sense. And besides, I don’t see anything like what you just said.”
“Well, it’s obscured by the cloud of smoke from the cigarette of the best boy in the catwalk, from whose point of view (POV) the shot originates.”
“So I’m looking at cigarette smoke.”
“No! That’s the thing! Amazingly, it’s cotton wool. The effect was created with common cotton wool. The very type of cotton wool one might easily purchase at a chemist’s or the cotton wool store down the street.”
“The moment is obscured, is my point.”
“Intentionally so. What you don’t see in a film is as important as what you do see. Ask anyone.”
“Don’t lecture me. You’re not helping your cause.”
“Look at this,” I say, pulling the donkey urn from my man bag.
“Horse doll mounted on a box,” he says.
“It’s a donkey puppet. From the movie. He lived in the Giant’s house with the Giant, I believe. I believe there was a Giant. I might be confusing it with Shrek. Was there a Giant in Shrek?”
“Where’s his tail?”
“What? That’s neither here nor there. Look at the craftsmanship. The tail burned off. OK?”
“It’s a nice doll, but it does not get you what you want.”
“Then let me have Enchantment back.”
“That would not be fair to Dinsmore.”
“He’s utilizing my research.”
“You offered it to them to use.”
“Thon.”
“In any event—”
“If I can’t have Enchantment back, which I deserve, then let me write the Ingo piece. A novelization, as you said! It’s all in my head,” I say, tapping it. “A novelization it shall be!”
“I don’t know what the audience would be for a book outlining a nonexistent film.”
“Not only outlining it. Critiquing it. Explaining it. And it’s not nonexistent. It’s destroyed.”
“Who would want to read that? It’s not like you were the only person to see a lost Hitchcock film.”
“Hitchcock isn’t fit to suck Ingo’s dick.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m just … frustrated. Come on, Arvide, remember Harvard? Roomies forever!”
“That doesn’t apply here.”
“You owe me!”
“I