The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

  It’s a funny thing, marriage, what keeps it together, what rents it asunder. Mary and I had a desultory, hurtful fight over the Abu Ghraib pictures, for example. All the random insults and unsupportable accusations aside, the gist of it was that what she saw was essentially decent American kids acting upon a misguided belief they were protecting freedom, their good intentions going astray. What I saw was young Americans expressing their unlimited joy of the unlimited power over someone else’s life and death. They loved being alive and righteous by virtue of having good American intentions; indeed, it turned them on; they liked looking at the pictures of themselves sticking a baton up some Arab ass. Eventually, I flipped and turned crazy; I smashed the family china set we inherited from George and Rachel—what set me off was Mary saying that I would understand America better if I went to work every day and met normal people. I told her I hated the normal people and the land of the fucking free and the home of the asshole brave, and I hated God and George and all and everything. I told her that to be American you have to know nothing and understand even less, and that I did not want to be American. Never, I said. She screamed that once I got a job I would feel free to be whatever I wished to be. I told her she was no different from any of those angelic American kids who plug curly-haired people into an electric current after a relaxing waterboarding session. It took us weeks to make up, but our marriage was harder thereafter. The baggage I dragged around the eastern lands contained the tortured corpses of our good intentions.

  Rambo particularly liked me to take pictures with the dead and then look at them later, Rora said. It turned him on—that was his big dick, his absolute power: being alive in the middle of death. That was all that it boiled down to: the dead were wrong, the living were right. The thing is, everybody who has ever been photographed is either dead or will die. That’s why nobody photographs me. I want to stay on this side of the picture.

  Isador, Olga whispers. Isador, are you there?

  Isador is under a pile of rags, in the airless wardrobe, his limbs benumbed and aching. He listened to her restlessness all night: the creaking of the bed frame, the cracking of the mattress, the crinkling of her writhing body, the music of her nightmare. He had been in the wardrobe all day yesterday while Olga was away: he was looking forward to the sounds of her presence. He cannot feel his own body; he has been afraid to move and his body is as rigid as a corpse. After something had scurried across his feet, he considered getting out, or at least pushing the rags and the valise aside, cracking the door ajar to let some light in, but then the politsyant sneaked into the flat and crept around, snooping. Isador felt his weight shifting along the floor, moving toward the wardrobe to open it and pick through Olga’s things on the shelves, chuckling and mumbling to himself. Isador was afraid to breathe or even think about moving a muscle. The politsyant stole something and left, failing to close the door completely. When Olga returned, Isador could see her small heels and frail ankles as she took off her shoes, sitting on the bed.

  Isador, say something. Are you there?

  She can still smell the shit he was coated in. The room absorbs his presence; there is another breath touching things in here, another life, as when Lazarus was alive—being alone is hearing yourself breathe and then not. It is incomprehensible how the politsyant managed not to sense Isador; perhaps he was too busy rummaging through her undergarments, stealing a pair of her drawers. You can always count on the slimy stupidity of the law and order, and for once she is thankful for it. The politsey, like time, exists indifferent to the world and its suffering. Here comes another day marked by her brother’s mortal absence, another day when everything will be the same for everybody else, for nobody else can notice his absence. Outside, the gray dawn is breaking.

  I am dying, Olga, Isador whispers. What do you want me to say? I love your wardrobe?

  Talk to me about Lazarus. Tell me something I don’t know. What he loved, what he hated, what made him laugh. You knew him better than I did.

  He groans; she can sense him move. He must be in pain, he must be desperate and hungry. His voice is muffled, disembodied, the voice of a ghost. He says:

  We used to walk by the lake. It was like wilderness to us, its vastness. We could turn our backs to the filth and the grime and the slums. We looked at the waves and the horizon, sometimes we could see the other shore. He wanted to write a poem about what he saw.

  What did he see?

  He saw a lot of water, maybe Indiana, maybe nothing. How do I know? Can I come out?

  Did you read the poem?

  He never showed it to me, if he ever wrote it. He never showed me any of his writing. Let me come out. I cannot feel my body, and I am cold.

  You have to tell me what he was doing at Shippy’s door. Why was he there? Why wasn’t he with me? Why did you get him involved in that anarchist madness?

  I did nothing of the kind. I did nothing. We went to hear Ben Reitman once. We went to one or two Edelstadt lectures on literature, but it was because we wanted to write. And they also talked about, you know, unemployment, injustice, and poverty. Look at where we live, for God’s sake. Can I come out?

  You are lying to me, Isador. You must tell me the truth. I have to know. I can accept it. I am aware I did not know everything about him. But I cannot understand what he was doing with George Shippy.

  I don’t know. Maybe he was looking for a letter of recommendation. He was talking about going to Valparaiso University. Maybe he wanted to get an exclusive interview with Shippy so he could get into the reporting business. Or maybe he wanted to discuss injustice with him. How in the world can I know? I was not there. Either let me come out or turn me in.

  Where were you that morning? Olga asks.

  I was with a friend.

  What friend?

  A friend of mine.

  What friend?

  Can I come out, Olga? I beg you.

  What friend?

  I have friends.

  What friend?

  I was playing cards at Stadlwelser’s, all night, through the morning. Can I come out?

  Stadlwelser. I know him. I know who he is.

  He is a friend.

  Good friends you have.

  A good friend is a treasure in your chest.

  You fool, Olga says. Come out.

  He wiggles through the rags, as if hatching out: she sees his head first, then his scrawny torso in a long-sleeved undershirt; he stretches out of the wardrobe. On his knees, he crosses to the bed, moaning; she lifts the blanket and he slides in with her. She is still in her dress and wool stockings, having slept in them, but she can feel how cold his feet are. He is wearing Lazarus’s undershirt, with holes on the elbows. She cried as she went through pair after pair of threadbare socks: Lazarus died with his feet cold; the politsey exhibited him, and everybody saw him with his socks torn. Mother would never forgive her that, if she ever found out. Isador is shivering next to her and she draws closer.

  What are we going to do, Olga? They are going to catch me. I will never see the light of day again. Even my own people want me apprehended. You are everything I have.

  We will think of something, Olga says and strokes his cheek. Something will happen. There was never a time when nothing happened.

  She does not believe in what she is saying. He puts his hand on her thigh and presses his pelvis against hers.

  Stop that, she says, or I will turn you in.

  Ever a doltish scoundrel. He retracts his groin, but leaves his hand on her thigh; she feels the cold through the cloth.

  I have to ask, Olga says. Was he a true anarchist? Did you turn him into an anarchist?

  God, Olga, will you stop asking questions? You know as much as I do. He could be angry just like any of us. Packing eggs was not his life’s dream, you know.

  What did he want?

  He wanted to write. He wanted to meet girls, have some fun. He wanted to be liked. He wanted to be like everybody else. He wanted to buy you new shoes. I thought you could use
a little hat.

  Why a hat?

  I like hats.

  You are a fool, Isador.

  They hear a scraping sound in the wall. The rats are up and running. May they feast on the politsyant for breakfast, Olga thinks.

  It kills me, she says, that I don’t know what he was doing there, at Shippy’s doorstep. The newspapers say he had a knife and a gun. I used to protect him from other boys; he didn’t even know how to use a stick to beat them off. Where did he get a knife and a gun? Did you get him a gun?

  I did nothing of the kind, Olga. They are lying. Shippy killed him because he was there. Now they are going to arrest whoever they don’t like. They are going to clean up what they see as filth. Those they don’t arrest will be grateful and grovel and slobber at their feet.

  When you went to Edelstadt meetings, to those lectures, did you talk to others there, to some real anarchists? Did they talk to you?

  What do you mean, a real anarchist? The rich are sucking our blood. The politsyant came in and went through your things as if they belonged to him. The only way they know how to talk to us is by force. People are angry. Everybody is an anarchist.

  I am not an anarchist. People who have a job and work, they don’t get so angry. Normal people have no time to be anarchists.

  I was normal, too, not so long ago. It was not my fault I got fired. I stole no eggs. I don’t need their eggs. Heller lied about me to Eichgreen. I was as good at packing eggs as anyone, but it is a stupid, demeaning job. Who could expect me to be happy about it?

  Who are these people? Do I know any anarchists? Is Mr. Eichgreen an anarchist? Is Kaplan an anarchist?

  Who’s Kaplan? Your lover?

  No.

  I don’t know any Kaplans. Who is he? Is he your lover?

  Never mind Kaplan. Is Isaac Lubel an anarchist?

  Isaac would be an anarchist only if Pinya were the Red Queen.

  Did you talk to anybody from Edelstadt? Did Emma Goldman talk to you?

  Handsome though I may be, Olga, Emma Goldman would never talk to me. And the Edelstadt boys are haughty and windy because they think they are so smart.

  I thought he was going to work that morning. He said he was going to work. He kissed me good-bye. He lied to me. Are you lying to me, Isador?

  About what?

  About anything.

  No.

  Everything just crumbled. I know nothing now. I feel dead.

  You cannot feel dead. If you can feel anything, you are not dead. I can feel you are alive. You are too warm to be dead.

  I am dead, Isador. I am dead. And you are not telling me the truth. You played cards at Stadlwelser’s all night. You want me to believe that?

  Isador says nothing. He snuggles up to wedge his face into the curve of her shoulder. His breath whirs up and down her neck.

  Isador, she says. What are we going to do?

  I don’t know, Isador says. Let’s just sleep now, we’ll dream something up.

  I cannot sleep.

  You have to sleep.

  Isaac Lubel is dying, she says.

  I know, he says. I heard Pinya cursing him.

  What are we going to do?

  He says nothing, just sighs and smacks his lips. His stench is turning sour. She squeezes him closer to her bosom. If you want me, he says, why don’t you just say so?

  What a fool you are, Isador, Olga says.

  LAZARUS WALKS TOWARD Olga swaddled in cloth, grinning shamelessly as though wearing smart new clothes on his way to a rendezvous. Through the holes in his socks she sees eggs instead of toes. Walking by, he tips his brow in greeting, as though flirting with her, and says, No tsar, no king, no president, no police, no landlord, but I love you. Then he is swimming the backstroke through a field of sunflowers in bloom, as vast as a lake, the way he used to in the Dniester. Isador is on the shore, naked and aroused, about to jump in, Lazarus is beckoning him from below. A moment later Isador is falling, and he keeps falling; she is watching his fall from high above, and he is just about to hit the sandy bottom, for the sunflowers have disappeared, when she is startled out of sleep by the banging on the door.

  The day has long broken, but she has no idea what time it is. For an instant she wonders why she is not at work but cannot recall what her job is; she looks around and cannot recognize anything: the extinguished lamp, the disheveled dresser, a pair of heelless, mud-coated shoes, side by side. But Isador fidgets in his sleep and she knows who he is—he is the not-Lazarus, just like everybody else.

  The thudding at the door is stronger and faster.

  “Miss Averbuch, open the door.”

  Barefoot, her feet sticking to the chilly floor, she rushes to the door before it is taken down, but then rushes back to wake up Isador—she now fully recalls his body and presence. Isador, dim as ever, has sat up in bed, his hair somehow still unruffled and parted, and is presently pressing knuckles into his eye sockets. She waves absurdly, wordlessly, at him, so as to implore him to hide under the bed, but he just sits there, his face ablaze with idiotic innocence.

  “Miss Averbuch, this is William P. Miller, of the Tribune,” a deep voice calls out. Isador finally slides out of sight, under the bed, and she returns to the door to unlock it. She opens it slowly, as though to impede the flow of time. William P. Miller steps in with a broad grin, followed by Hammond the photographer and the unshaven politsyant.

  “Good morning, Miss Averbuch,” Miller says. “You will forgive me the impertinence.” The photographer strides toward the window and immediately begins to set up his camera. The politsyant circles around the table, picks up a fork, and drops it into a tin bowl to hear it clang. He goes to the bedroom (Olga’s heart stops), opens the wardrobe and leaves it open, lifts the veil covering the mirror to look into it, touching his chin.

  “There is nothing there,” Olga says. “You already dug through that.”

  The politsyant returns to stand by her side. She embraces her shoulders; a strain of uncoiled hair is curling around her neck. She is squinting at Miller, because her glasses are on the floor by the bed, next to Isador. The politsyant is panting like a hound dog, knocking on the table a couple of times, as though to see it if is real. William P. Miller is neatly dressed in a dark suit, an impeccably starched white shirt, and a navy-blue tie with a tiny-star pattern. The photographer is wrestling with the tripod, cursing under his breath.

  Miller looks at the politsyant with a warm smile and says: “Would you kindly excuse us, Mr. Patterson?”

  “As you wish, sir,” says the politsyant. “I’ll be in the hallway if you need me.”

  He does not close the door as he leaves, so they can hear his heavy, graceless footfalls in the hallway, then the chair screeching under his weight.

  “May I presume that you are not hiding your brother’s body here?” Miller says, taking off his bowler hat.

  “My brother’s body? They take my brother’s body and throw him in hole. Why can I have my brother’s body?”

  “I’m ready,” the photographer says, his left hand petting the camera.

  “Last night I received a tip suggesting that your brother’s body was not where it ought to be,” Miller says. “So I checked the burial location and indeed the body is absent. I came to you before I divulged this to anyone else, for I believe you ought to know first.”

  Olga’s knees give way and she slumps into the chair.

  “It is obviously a flagrant desecration, a grievous sin. Perhaps your brother’s anarchist friends, led by the fugitive Maron, stole him from the grave.”

  Olga is out of breath, gasping. A throe climbs from her heels to her spine to lodge itself in her skull. The camera flash goes off, a cloudlet of acrid smoke drifts toward the bedroom.

  “Goddamn it,” Hammond says. “This one is messed up. Can we move her closer to the window?”

  “Or perhaps agents employed by the Red Queen, Emma Goldman herself, have spirited it away,” Miller goes on. “What is your opinion, Miss Averbuch?”


  The pain is burrowing deeper into her head, but in the middle of it all, she recalls Isador sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. William P. Miller drops his chin on his tie’s knot and is looking at her avuncularly. She closes her eyes, as though to make Miller disappear.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where Maron is?”

  “Below my bed,” she snaps. “And my brother in my dresser. Ask your man in the hall.”

  Miller chortles and pulls a pen and notebook out of his pocket. Her indomitable spirit was not intimidated by the presence of the law, he writes.

  “There is another thing,” Miller says. “Are you aware that there are some devout Christians for whom your brother’s resurrection is an uplifting possibility? Have any of them talked to you? They are praying for your soul, too.”

  “You have pity?” Olga whimpers.

  “I wish eternal peace for your brother as much as you do, Miss Averbuch. I would like you to understand that we have a common purpose in the present circumstances. We both want to know what happened. If you help me get the truth about your brother out to the people, I will help you get what you want.”