Dedication
To
You
Opening Introductory Page
May 1, 1850
Dear Richard:
I am halfway through the work…
It will be a strange sort of book tho’ I fear; blubber is blubber you know; though you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; and to cool the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of whales themselves.
Ta
Mel
(Letter from Herman Melville to Richard Henry Dana)
Chapter 1
Etiology. While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851
The Truth?
The truth is that it came from Davy Jones locker. It was a gift from the sky god. It is undoubtedly, as Tolkien would say, a mamthom.
All kidding aside, it was from Jim.
I had been fired from one of the largest investment banks in the world over a year prior and was awaiting the slowest response in history, or so it appeared at the time, from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to my case.
I had no money.
Rent was due, and New York, it seems, no matter when you choose to live here, or where, or with whom, or under what circumstances, is expensive.
So Jim told me I could have it and go sell it for some quick cash.
IT.
I wasn’t really sure what it was at first except that it was definitely old, obviously of mammalian descent, and that the original owner died a bloody and very painful death.
Murder, most foul.
I was also positive that its descendents were endangered now.
Call it female intuition.
It was sitting in a box, wrapped in dusty newspaper and I approached it rather gingerly.
Bertha, the office secretary didn’t like touching it either.
“Its bad luck,” she says every time she sees it. She doesn’t cross herself, but I know what she means.
I don’t think the hunter asked Mother Nature for permission before slaughtering the pig.
I made sure to do my own prayers for forgiveness before I began the exhumation. I didn’t have any sage, but I burned a few handy herbs I had in my apartment and hoped that the substitution would pass muster with all those who count.
This was a matter of extreme urgency. I had never trafficked in animal remains before and didn’t plan on making a habit of it.
On first inspection, I think perhaps that it might be an elephant tusk. Elephants were the first animal I identified as my “favorite” when I visited them at the New York Zoo as a toddler. I nicknamed them “The Nose” for obvious reasons. I understood with stunning clarity why Hannibal was able to conquer the Alps as soon as I visited Mary McCleod Bethune’s house at her school in Georgia. She loved elephants because “they nurture their young.” A friend of mine emailed me an infrared image of an elephant embryo not too long ago. It was one of the most delicate pictures I have ever seen.
Up close and personal to my IT, you notice things you don’t see otherwise. This has a slight indentation at the tip, like a fingernail.
IT is like a sarcophagus.
First challenge.
Identification.
This is not as easy as it may sound.
Despite the handy proximity of the Natural History Museum, where the entrepid archeologist wanna-be could have gone to do my research (and yes I did grow up in the annals and byways of many of London’s finest museums, rare book stores, and second hand shops, although not necessarily in that order, frequency or with such proximity), the more tony address on the Upper West Side charges admission.
I had to do it on the cheap.
I asked my attorney. He’s on Fifth Avenue with a view of the Park.
Being a good, New York bloodletting shark, he was the right man to go to.
“That’s walrus,” he said. “And a big one at that.”
Actually Jonathan is as fascinated by this as I am, as much as he is suspicious. Anything without a chain of title might as well be flying a skull and cross bones.
“That’s called ‘scrimshaw’” he says, upon closer inspection.
We look it up on the internet.
We find my piece of scrimshaw, right away, on E-Bay, for $99.
So much for next month’s rent.
“There’s no way that this is fake,” I tell him. “This is a museum piece.”
I know Jim. I mean, he used to work in a job where he practically had to get his DNA tested. This didn’t come from E-Bay.
“You might be right,” Jonathan says deliberately, in his most lawyerly fashion. I know he wants to be wrong, but that’s not why we work together.
He looks at the root of the tooth.
I had already looked at it.
The truth is that it is hard to tell.
Like many good Victorian pieces, it is well finished. I remember many of the pieces in my father’s collection being like this.
“The root doesn’t have to go all the way through” Jonathan says thoughtfully now. “In fact the nerves could easily have stopped growing so the root cavity could be small, but the tusk could have continued to grow.”
I wonder if Jews have a certain fascination with teeth. Particularly German Jews. Jonathan’s family immigrated here in the 1800’s. When I traced my family tree, I found many descendents who came here in that massive German immigrant wave, but my father, who was from Frankfurt, by way of Mainz, did not leave Germany until 1933.
My IT is heavy. Jonathan likes to hold it.
It feels like buried treasure.
“I don’t think this is fake,” he says. He sounds quite hopeful. He has a good eye for antiques and, like any good collector, is not squeamish about his travels for them which have ranged from rummaging through strangers’ backyard junk collections (read garbage) to Sothebie’s. Well, actually, Jonathan has never scrounged through anything more disreputable than a flea market. The most outrageous garbage raiding escapades would be credited to my family.
I’m the one with the Southern bloodline.
I do think that perhaps one of the reasons Jonathan and I have always been friends is that I have openly admitted to having relatives who have ventured into completely questionable and certainly socially unacceptable venues, although I’m not going to name any names.
Yet.
I dubbed Jonathan ‘the Jewish Redneck’ within our first or second meeting. I’m Jewish Plymouth Rock.
When I tell people that I am actually half Yid (the part that doesn’t count) and half Cracker, people ask me how this possibly could have happened.
I tell them, “Only in New York.”
There are many things that separate Jonathan and myself, but what has brought us together is so fundamental that neither one of us has questioned our friendship or our business relationship, right from the beginning.
And such is the way with the IT.
Although I would never condone walrus murder, I am secretly relieved that IT is not a Nose.
“Koo Koo Ka Choo,” I sing.
“I am the Walrus,” Jonathan responds.
I never thought about it, but perhaps he is. In a previous lifetime, he represented half of classic rock and roll.
They’re all dead now, or have at least one foot in the grave, but the fact of the matter is that there’s no glamour in rock and roll. And celebrity ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. The hidden story behind the glitz is that rock stars and other famous people of all stripes too often treat their lawyers (and everyone else in their retinue) like servants. If not slaves. Jonathan learned that the hard way. So did I. Particularly when there are other issues involved.
Of course, it’s not likely that my IT will get any airs. And it can’t do drugs or get drunk. It’s mystery and cause celebre is tattooed right onto its skin.
Come to think of it, there might be justice in the world after all.
number of view: 491
