The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

  “What I want from you? What you want from me? I have nothing. I want my brother, that I can bury him like man.”

  “Have you been approached by any of your distinguished coreligionists? Have they discussed any funeral arrangements with you?”

  “No,” Olga says. “They stay away from me. Maybe they think I have some disease.”

  She regards offers of help and support from others with utmost disdain, Miller writes.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Miller,” Hammond says. “I have some damn good light here. Could she move closer to the window?”

  The floor in the bedroom creaks and Olga resists an impulse to turn and look. Hammond looks toward the bedroom, but Miller does not seem to have noticed, or does not care.

  “Did any of your anarchist comrades come by?”

  “Go away, Mr. Miller. Leave me.”

  Upon hearing the news, the Jewess wept: “Leave me alone to die with my grief. All I had in the world was my brother Lazarus and now he is lost forever—I cannot even talk to his grave. I am alone for eternity.”

  “I can’t do nothing from this far,” Hammond says. “And the light here is perfect. Can you come over here, Miss Averbuch?”

  Our room in the hotel—unimaginatively called Chisinau—overlooked a humongous square with a couple of bronze Soviet soldiers cast in victorious eternity. A twenty-four-hour supermarket flashed its lights from across the square. Attracted by the neon blaze like a moth, I ventured in that direction to get us some food and drinks as soon as we arrived. There was everything there, everything being the brand whatchamacallits you could find in American and Western European supermarkets: Bounty candy bars and nutritious Tropicana juices, Johnnie Walker and Duracell, whitening Vademecum toothpaste and liquid Dial soap, Wrigley and Marlboro. I bought plenty of toilet paper and some Moldovan wine with the word blood in its name. Behind the young cashier, there stood a stately bruiser with a large pendant ID pouch on his chest and a black piece of gun on his hip. He glared at me, while the cashier, all in virgin white, like an angel, avoided my gaze, said nothing, and just pointed at the total on the cash register screen—she had identified me as a foreigner. If I had walked out of that store in Chisinau and into oblivion, loaded with toilet paper and a bottle of blood wine, if I had been subsequently swallowed by the ubiquitous, ever-looming nothingness, neither the virgin nor the bruiser would ever have devoted another thought to me, their lives would have stayed exactly the same. Home is where someone might notice your absence.

  Back in the hotel room, we found out that we had no glasses for the wine, so I called the reception desk and made the dumb mistake of speaking in English. “Could we have some glasses?” I asked. “What?” the lady said. Her voice was surprisingly pleasant.

  “Glasses, for drinking,” I said.

  “Girls, yes. Want girls?”

  “No, not girls. Glasses.”

  “What number of girls?”

  “I want glasses. Two glasses.”

  “Want blonde?”

  Finally, I came to my senses and retrieved the Russian word for glass—stakan—from my dictionary, whereupon she informed me there were no stakani, but we could get dyevushki. I hung up.

  Did you want some girls? I asked Rora. All aspiring members of the national underwater hockey team.

  Not right now, he said. Did you get any glasses?

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING we set out to explore the landscapes of Chisinau, rather strikingly different from the depopulated countryside. We walked down Stefan Cel Mare, the wide main boulevard lined with ancient chestnut trees and store windows promising glittery cell phones and Kodak instant memories. There were stores selling bonbons, chocolate, and Moldovan wine, formerly the most popular wine in the U.S.S.R., which now nobody in the world would drink—not even the two of us after the previous night’s bottle of acrid blood. There were, naturally, currency-exchange booths, each stuffed with a clod-headed money-laundering thug in an Italian tracksuit. People strolled on their way to the rest of the day, the birds in the trees collaborated with the reasonably good morning: sun, warmth, quietude. I experienced a sneeze of profound joy at the sight of a young couple holding hands, sprightly and supple in garish red tracksuits. For some reason I thought they might be on their way to play table tennis with each other; what elated me was the thought that their souls were Ping-Pong balls levitating at their respective centers. O the levity of young love! Mary and I had gone bowling every once in a while, with her hospital friends; the young doctors rolled the balls as though they were Ping-Pong balls, while I dropped them on my toes.

  At the far end of Stefan Cel Mare, within sight of an atrociously Soviet-looking building, there arose an unreal McDonald’s, shiny and sovereign and structurally optimistic. It was a fantastically recognizable sight, therefore exceedingly heartening.

  What I like about America, I said, is that there is no space left for useless metaphysical questions. There are no parallel universes there. Everything is what it is, it’s easy to see and understand everything.

  What? It’s not a river? Rora said.

  Fuck you, I said.

  I am not your wife. I don’t have to listen to you, Rora said. It was rather uncalled for, his mean attitude. Perhaps it was the blood-wine hangover.

  I seldom talked to Mary (or anyone else, for that matter) about such things, about the metaphysics, the existential loneliness, the ways of being. She was a lifesaver; she worked on life, the way people work on their cars—she was a life mechanic. I would embark upon ponderous monologues about, say, the ineluctable finitude of existence and her eyes would acquire a sheen of remoteness; she had no philosophical bone in her body, so I avoided boring her.

  But she liked it when I read to her. Often, before sleep, I would read aloud from our book on our chest or, rarely, from one of my immigrant columns. Tired from opening up skulls and digging through the gray matter, she would pass out, but when I tried to quit reading, she would wake up and implore me to read more. I enjoyed the calm on her face, the revolving ceiling fan, the hum of the distant traffic, our neighbor’s malamute howling, the serene logic of it all, completing my universe for a moment. Yet when I turned off the light and listened to her breathing, a coven of tormentful thoughts and doubts would descend upon my heart. I could not embark upon my recollections; I could not count on my dreams to erase the pain. And she would be elsewhere, beyond my reach, leagues upon leagues of distance between us I could never tell her about. For if I did, it would have belied all that we had together and called love.

  Let’s go and eat, Rora said. That is the only existential problem I am interested in right now.

  I used to have a blind uncle called Mikhal. Whenever we took group photos at family gatherings, he was in the central position— he sat or stood in the middle, the kids in the front row, his brother and sisters and their spouses standing behind him or flanking him—as though his blindness made him the head of the family. When we passed those photos around, he would always say, Let me see. He would flip through the photos, while someone described them to him: And here is Aunt Olga, smiling . . . And that’s you . . . And there is me. He always looked at the photos, nobody ever found it strange. Once I abruptly realized that we could give him any batch of photos and describe whatever it was he was willing to see.

  Sometimes I read to Uncle Mikhal; he enjoyed stories about explorers and great scientific discoveries, about great naval battles and failed invasions. I would occasionally simply add things: there would be a new ship sinking in the Battle of Guadalcanal; there would be a fourth explorer trudging through the Arctic ice and snow; there would be newly discovered subatomic particles that changed our thinking about the universe. I would experience a beautiful high because I was constructing a particular, custom-made world for him, because he was in my power for as long as he listened to me. I thought I could always claim misunderstanding if he busted me changing history or dissembling false scientific facts. I dreaded that possibility, however, for I understood that had I been
caught in a single lie—if he found out that there was no subatomic particle named pronek, or that the 375 sailors of the U.S.S. Chicago had never died—the whole edifice of the reality I had built would have crumbled and nothing I had ever read to him would have been true. It had never crossed my mind that my uncle might have been aware of my deception, that he might have been complicit in my edifice-building, until I found myself confessing it all to Rora in line at the Chisinau McDonald’s. It presented itself as the clearest of possibilities. Had I been able to imagine Uncle Mikhal as complicit in my fabrications, we would have arranged more gigantic battles, explored more nonexistent continents, and built stranger universes from the strangest particles. That had taken place a long time ago, when I was a boy.

  Could you possibly shut up while we eat? Rora said.

  I was having a Big Mac, large fries, and a large Coke. Rora got McEggs and a milk shake. We sat outside and ate quickly, greedily. This was no comfort food; it was food that implied that there had never been and would never be any need for comfort. Passersby looked at us with undue interest: an elderly couple, each carrying a checkered tote bag, actually stopped and watched us eat. It wasn’t clear to me whether they were hoping we would offer them some or they had recognized us as foreigners. What may have revealed our foreignness was Rora’s camera at the center of our table: large and black and shapely. I slowed down the chewing and had trouble swallowing until the elderly couple moved on.

  I imagined Lazarus eating eggs all the time, every day—he hated eggs. He had to buy from Mr. Eichgreen all the eggs he cracked in packing; the first few weeks at work, Olga and he ate nothing but eggs: fried eggs, boiled eggs, raw eggs, beaten eggs with sugar.

  Isador did not have to buy eggs, because he was good at packing them, but he stole and sold them, until he was caught and fired.

  An unshaven portly father watched over two girls blowing their straws—all they seemed to be having were Cokes. A professorial-looking middle-aged woman munched her fries. A very un-Eastern European blond man with Lennon spectacles held the hand of a gorgeous, definitely local, brunette, who looked around, oblivious to his loving touch. By the time we were drinking our McCoffees, I could not keep my mouth shut any longer.

  When I went to Sarajevo a couple of years ago, I said, I found out that if I looked into the faces of the people, I saw what they used to look like—I saw their old faces, not their new faces. And when I walked among the prettied-up ruins and bullet-riddled façades, I saw what they used to be, not what they were now. I X-rayed through the visible and what I saw was the original past version. I couldn’t see the now, only the before. And I had the feeling that if I could see what it really looked like now, I would forget what it was before.

  Goddamn it, Brik, you like to listen to yourself. How does your wife put up with it?

  I went to Sarajevo without Mary last time, I continued, unfazed. So I had a crazy, liberating feeling that my life was neatly divided: all of my now in America, all of my past in Sarajevo. Because there is no now in Sarajevo, no McDonald’s.

  But that’s not true, Rora said.

  What’s not true? I asked. I was expecting his silence at the end of my discourse.

  What you’re saying is not true. If you can’t see it, it does not mean it is not there.

  What is not there? Mary? I asked. I have to confess that I could not exactly remember what my argument was.

  What you see is what you see, but that is never everything. Sarajevo is Sarajevo whatever you see or don’t see. America is America. The past and the future exist without you. And what you don’t know about me is still my life. What I don’t know about you is your life. Nothing at all depends on you seeing it or not seeing it. I mean, who are you? You don’t have to see or know everything.

  But what do I get to see, then? How do I get to know? I need to know some things.

  Know what? Everybody knows some things. You don’t need to know everything. What you need to do is shut up and stop asking so many questions. You need to relax.

  Whereupon a gigantic Toyota Cherokee, or Toyota Apache, or Toyota Some Other Exterminated People, drove up on the pavement, the tinted windows throbbing with concussive fuck-music. The rear doors flew open and there emerged a pair of legs stretched long between the high heels and the flashing groin, over which a pair of bejeweled hands pulled an insufficient skirt. Somewhere up above the legs there appeared a pair of bulbous silicone protuberances, and then a head with a lot of dark, shampoo-commercial hair. The little girls stared at her, their mouths lasciviously tight around their straws; the middle-aged lady shimmied in her plastic chair; only the blond man paid no attention. A businessman came out of the Toyota, with the body and the mien of a porn star, complete with pointy boots, a tenderloin breaking out of his tight jeans, and a triangular torso partially covered with an unbuttoned shirt. The businessman paraded with the bimbo through the outdoor seating area and entered the McDonald’s. The driver stepped out of the Toyota and looked, predictably, like a second-rate version of the boss. They must have all been made in the same factory, in a converted wine cellar where they line-assembled independent individuals designed for the challenges of the free market and democracy. Maybe I could take some Susie money and buy myself a cheap Moldovan bodyguard; his duties would include listening to my metaphysical abuse. The bodyguard stood with his legs apart—a smaller pubic bulge—and scanned the crowd, his hands wedged in his armpits: should we decide to fuck with the king or disrespect the courtesan, blasts of death should come from his sweaty corners. These people were all about now, no traces of the past, no interest in it. Rora, perhaps making his point, took a picture of the two little girls and their father.

  So, how did you find Miller? I asked him.

  Good motherfucking God, Rora said. Will you shut up and let me eat?

  I just need to know, what is the problem?

  Let me tell you what the problem is, Brik. Even if you knew what you want to know, you would still know nothing. You ask questions, you want to know more, but no matter how much more I tell you, you will never know anything. That’s the problem.

  He stood up and left, disappearing rapidly down the street. I angrily chalked it up to his war trauma, this kind of erratic behavior, clearly another symptom of his PTSD, on top of an inability to communicate emotion (never talking about his relationship with his sister); insomnia (whenever I woke up he was always already awake); compulsive behavior (his constant photographing); anger with others because they had not gone through the same trauma (me). Conclusion: his head problems were not my problem.

  I finished my McMeal and subsequently wandered lonely as a cloud through a street market, abundant with ugly underwear and plastic guns and clothes hangers, Chinese screwdrivers, pliers, and backscratchers, crockery and deodorants and soaps and wedding gowns, caged birds which did not sing and rabbits and T-rags picturing Michael Jordan and the Terminator, mysterious liquids in small bottles and myriad nameless flowers. One person’s garbage is another person’s commodity. Stray dogs slept on their sides under the stalls. Men loitered at the street corners, offering sotto voce to sell me something very cheaply, which I refused even though I had no idea what it was. I walked through it all as through a dream, ending up on a leafy street with lace curtains and icons in the windows of the houses.

  Eventually, I sat down on a bench in a park domed with high tree crowns reaching for one another. Beyond the unkempt lawn, on a paved, cracked, sunlit tennis court, there was a group of people in what looked like nineteenth-century costumes; the women wore long, conical dresses and bonnets; the men were in long coats, with wide-brimmed tall hats and ribbon ties. It looked like they were rehearsing a play: while others watched, two of the men moved erratically around the court only to face each other, deliver their lines, then part again. They argued and ranted; their high voices rang around the park; they spoke Russian. The shorter man delivered a long, incensed speech; though I could not hear what he was saying, it was clear that this was an importa
nt moment in the play, for he flung his hands and wagged his finger while the other listened, motionless and passive. When the taller man finished, everyone applauded. It seemed that the argument was won.

  Lazarus and Isador sat in the back of the room, listening to the incalescent Edelstadt speaker, flinging his arms, shaking his curly red hair in increasing fury, pointing his finger at the innocent ceiling. “The exteriors of prisons, churches, homes,” he ranted in Russian, “show that that is where the body and soul are subdued. Family and marriage prepare man for them. They deliver him up to the State handcuffed and blindfolded, yet his cuff links are sparkling. Force, force—that is all that is. The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, shadows of truth which they can hold as truths.”

  Suddenly I noticed Rora shooting the actors, leaning on a tree beyond the court, his white shirt glinting in the sunlight. The two men performing paid no attention, but the three bonneted women were looking at him with flirtatious interest. They walked over to him, said something, and laughed; a moment later they assumed their graceful poses and he pointed his Canon at them. The two men finally quit their playacting to observe Rora circling around the women. I imagined them jealous and angry; I hoped they would assail Rora, punch him in the face, so I would have to run and save him and he would owe me and never be an asshole to me again. But they stepped up to him and shook his hand. I watched the dumb show with no desire to cross over and be part of the mutual amusement and negotiations that seemed to be taking place among the new friends. The two men threw their arms across each other’s shoulders and faced Rora smiling. Rora was a whore, nobody mattered to him, not me, not his sister; he never mentioned any friends, no family; he seemed to need nobody. I itched to get up and leave, to go on without him—I needed him no longer. Far from all and everything, I no longer needed anybody. Rora took a series of photos, stepping away from the two men. I did not want to be seen sitting here, yet I could not get up.