Book of Numbers: A Novel (80 page)

I can only assume that the Indian authorities wouldn’t ordinarily bother with a floater, but he was white, or what was left of him was white, apparently. Other or the same Indian authorities, evincing impressive operational prerogative, ordered an autopsy that determined the COD as accidental/suicide, ordered a DNA test and copied both the results and report to the US State Department, which matched the genetic markers as being Principal’s. Sari Apt Le Vay petitioned for the body’s return, but it was in such a bitten crocodilian or ultimately imaginary condition that it was cremated, not at the Manikarnika but in a facility. No pics or vids of the body exist or have—like a missing pancreas—leaked yet.

It was Moe all over again—but because I switched off the TV after PBS had on Seth without Lisabeth, I can only piece this together from scrap bits of the
Asbury Park Press,
the
NJ Jewish News,
and whatever general interest nonpotting rags Moms still subscribes to, though delivery’s been iffy. And the house modem, which has been broken since I got here—Moms doesn’t even remember it breaking.

I couldn’t go to Wawa and couldn’t have Moms go for me, so I quit drinking, quit smoking, I guess. I made myself useful in the attic department, heirloom rearrangements. Suddenly everything heavy in the house had to be moved. The coverage didn’t leave the lawn until purdah season’s winter storm advisory.

Cal called and left a msg, and I still haven’t gotten back to him. Finn called and left a msg saying he’d consider a reprint of my book, be sure to be in touch.

I haven’t been. I never made a statement—I wrote.

Consider this: A dozen Moes crashed Principal’s “medimorial”
(meditation memorial) held at the Tetplex, four of them legally named Vishnu, and one even named Vishnu Fernandes. Cullen de Groeve and Owmar O’Quinn read a selection from the Tibetan Book of the Dead: “Void cannot injure void, the qualityless cannot injure the qualityless.”

Kori Dienerowitz did not attend due to a prior commitment in Bermuda, a premature retirement with prosecutorial immunity.

A Pew Research poll, of around this date, queried a responsible sampling of Americans as to whether their government’s online surveillance initiatives were justified (62%)? or unjustified (28%)? with only 10% undecided.

Into December, another whitish body washed up in a drainage culvert at the Verna Industrial Estate, Goa, and the boy who found it, shockingly recognizing his find, posted the pics and vids online, which were reasonably convincing, according to the convinced: Principal, already decaying. Anyway, something happened next like the boy’s father without contacting anyone, perhaps without even being privy to his son’s exploits, tried selling the body. But he was caught. Or the guy who’d bought it from him and contacted Sari Apt Le Vay was caught, the body taken into custody or whatever, but lost before tests, according to the tabloids. Subsequent corpses turned up in Cairo, Lisbon, Kifl Haris outside Nablus (Palestinian Territories). The great wheel turned and memed. Live in the flesh spottings in Brazil were a thing. Principal was a wayfarer in a Finnish disco. The wheel was turning me 40. A child was born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, whose soul was recognized as his.

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J
OSHUA
C
OHEN
was born in 1980 in Atlantic City. He has written novels (
Witz
), short fiction (
Four New Messages
), and nonfiction for
The New York Times, London Review of Books, Bookforum, The Forward,
and others. He is a critic for
Harper’s Magazine
and lives in New York City.

Book of Numbers

Four New Messages

Witz

A Heaven of Others

Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto