The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

  It thundered above, the growling stomach of the void. As we reached the foot of the hill, the oily, isolated drops hit us painfully, then multiplied into a deluge. Rora and Iuliana charged toward a restaurant veranda across the square, while I philosophically kept my slow pace. They leapt over the fast-forming puddles, sprinted across the street, avoiding a bus and a streetcar; as they found cover under the eaves of the veranda, it appeared to me they were holding hands. I reached the cover soaked to the brain; Iuliana was in the bathroom; Rora was painstakingly wiping his lens, drying his camera. There was nobody at the restaurant, no waitstaff or patrons in sight. The sky opened up; rivers poured off the roof; the eaves burst with waves, the street gray with the heaving water. Iuliana walked out and stood on the veranda, watching the deluge, pensively, calmly, as though she had always known it was coming. I could see myself standing next to her, my hand touching the nape of her neck. But of course I did not move. I remembered the joke Rora had told me:

  Mujo left Sarajevo and went to America, to Chicago. He wrote regularly to Suljo, trying to convince him to come, but Suljo did not want to, reluctant to leave his friends and his kafana. Finally, after a few years, Mujo convinces him and Suljo flies over the ocean and Mujo waits for him at the airport with a huge Cadillac. They drive downtown from the airport and Mujo says, See that building, a hundred stories high?

  I see it, Suljo says.

  Well, that’s my building.

  Nice, Suljo says.

  And see that bank at the bottom floor?

  I see it.

  That’s my bank. And see that silver Rolls-Royce parked in front?

  I see it.

  That’s my Rolls-Royce.

  Congratulations, Suljo says. You’ve done well for yourself.

  They drive to the suburbs and Mujo points at the house, as big and white as a hospital.

  See that house? That’s my house, Mujo says. And see the pool, Olympic size, by the house? That’s my pool.

  There is a gorgeous, curvaceous woman sunbathing by the pool, and there are three healthy children happily swimming in it.

  See that woman? That’s my wife. And those children are my children.

  Very nice, Suljo says. But who is that brawny, suntanned young man massaging your wife?

  Well, Mujo says, that’s me.

  They ripped out Mr. Mandelbaum’s beard, tore all of it out, Lazarus said, mewling and trembling in my arms. Seryozhka Shipkin held up a blood-dripping tuft of Mr. Mandelbaum’s beard in his hand. They beat Mr. Mandelbaum with canes and crowbars. He begged them for mercy. I heard his bones breaking. Seryozhka stepped on his face with a boot, cracked Mr. Mandelbaum’s skull. I heard the sound, Lazarus said. Mr. Mandelbaum’s left foot flapped around like a carp the whole time, his shoe fell off. He had a hole in his sock. He is dead. I saw it.

  Chaia was biting her knuckles as she listened, tears abseiling down her cheeks to gather at her chin.

  Roza sat at the table, apparently waiting for her lunch, an empty plate before her. Always hungry, she was.

  Mother was busying herself at the stove, banging the pots, stirring the kasha, boiling the eggs, but we could see that she did not know what she was doing.

  We were all thinking, Maybe they will pass our house. But we knew they would not. Fear leavened in my stomach.

  They ransacked Mr. Mandelbaum’s store, Lazarus said. They stole everything. They turned over the barrels with potatoes. They smashed the jars of sardines. There was candy all over the floor, potatoes, too. They carried off the scale and the ladder. They nearly caught me. Two politsyanten were watching everything. One of them took a cookie box. I was hiding behind the counter, then I darted out. There was a lot of blood, all over the floor. A pogromchik ran after me but slipped on a puddle of blood and fell. I was very scared. I ran straight here.

  Papa was stroking his beard, soughing heavily. Nobody said anything.

  His sobs dying down, Lazarus pulled a little paper bag out of his pocket and put a piece of candy in his mouth, rewarding himself for telling the story. Sniffling, he sucked on it, as though everything had happened to someone else. Such a boy he always was. He had skidded across a puddle of blood for his life.

  They are coming this way, Papa said. They shall come, no doubt.

  And as if on a cue, a brick crashed through the garden window. Then another one from the street. It landed on Roza’s plate, smashing it. She yelped but did not move. The rest of us were on the floor already, shrieking. That sound, shrieking. You wanted to talk, you wanted to hear others talk, but all that came out of your mouth was shrieking. We shrieked.

  The pogromchiks pounded at the door, screaming our names, blood thirst in their hoarse voices. How did they know our names?

  I thought, This is our home. They cannot come in. This is not their home. They are outside.

  Chaia was blubbering.

  Mother sat down on the floor with her back to the stove. I was afraid that her dress would catch fire.

  Papa was stretching on the floor to reach his yarmulke, as though something depended on it.

  I held Lazarus tightly, his face in my bosom. I could not feel his breathing. Oh, don’t go, I thought. Please don’t go. But then he sniffled again. Such a boy he was.

  Roza was still sitting at the table, now holding her fork and knife, looking furious. She must be very hungry. She was at that age. Always hungry.

  The pogromchiks burst in, abruptly filling up the room. They set out to break everything: the lamps, the vases, the vitrine with the china. They swept the books off the shelf. Our life was blowing up, the shrapnel flying around the room.

  With his sleeves rolled up for hard work, one pogromchik grabbed Roza’s hair and pulled her off the chair. She held on to the table edges, dragging, as she fell, the tablecloth, all the cups and the plates and the fruit and the flowers cascading down, smashing against the floor.

  I saw his face. A young, feverish face, with whisker shades, his ears ruddy. He had a glass eye that stayed unexcited as he threw Roza down on the floor. He pressed himself against Roza on her back. She was shielding her face with her hands.

  Papa leapt off the floor like a frog, grabbed the man’s neck. He started choking the man, the redness spreading from the ears to the cheeks. A politsyant came out of nowhere and punched Papa behind the ear, blood spurting forward out of his mouth. The politsyant pulled the man off Roza and slapped his face. I wanted him to kill him. I wanted to see blood.

  Someone plucked Lazarus out of my arms and threw himself on top of me. The swine pulled up my dress all the way to cover my face. He was groping for my undergarments. His breath stank of kvass and garlic.

  Lazarus jumped on his back and dug his nails into his cheeks. The swine stood up and screamed, thrashing. Lazarus clung on to the swine’s face, his feet flying around. The swine grasped Lazarus’s hands. He turned around and punched him, once, then twice. Blood streamed out of Lazarus’s nose. He held Lazarus by the throat, bashing his face with the other hand, over and over again.

  I shrieked. Lazarus went limp, but the swine kept punching him. He stopped only after he hurt his hand. He let Lazarus drop to the floor, kicked him in the stomach in fury. He was about to step on his face, when the politsyant pushed him aside and away from Lazarus. The swine recoiled. He glared at the politsyant, deliberating whether to assault him. But then he thrust Lazarus, unconscious, off the carpet, rolled it up with one hand, and took it under his arm.

  Lazarus used to pretend that was a magic carpet; he sat on it in the middle of the room and imagined flying to far-off places: Moscow, Paris, Greece, America. Such a boy he was.

  The politsyant kicked Lazarus in the head to show the swine panting with bloodlust and rage that they were on the same side. The swine spat on the floor and took off.

  Someone sat on my chest. I blacked out. When I came to, all the pogromchiks were gone. The politsyant was carrying out the red velvet-upholstered armchair. He had difficulty getting it through the door, making two s
teps back until he found the right angle. He said to someone outside: “The job is finished here. They are all dead. Go over to Rozenberg’s house.”

  Then there was silence. The electricity of violence and fear in the room. The down from torn pillows floating, like souls, through the fog of what had just happened. The air reeking of sweat and blood, of smashed furniture and shards of glass, of spilled food and fear. There was a black leather glove in the puddle of kasha on the floor.

  Mother hiccupped and started sobbing; Papa moaned.

  Manicheyev was the politsyant’s name. He used to patrol the New Marketplace, took bribes from the vendors, always smiled and tipped his hat to greet the ladies.

  A horse whinnied outside. The wind came in through the windows, but nothing inside moved.

  No one moved: Papa’s face pressed against the floor in a puddle of blood; Mother lying on her side, facing the wall next to the kitchen door; Chaia curled up, her knees to her chest, the hem of her dress touching her ear; Roza on her back still; rivulets of blood spreading away from Lazarus’s nose and eye sockets, across his cheeks and mouth, down to his neck.

  He is dead; they are all dead, I thought. The horrible fear rushed from my stomach to my head. They killed them all. Here it is, then.

  But then Roza rose, brushed off strands of hair from her cheeks, pulled her skirt down, and, still sitting, started picking up the forks and knives and unbroken cups and saucers. She set the table with what she had collected, straightened up her chair to seat herself at the empty table.

  I could not comprehend what Roza was doing. Why was she doing it? Why was she moving at all? It was like a dream, everything taking place outside any sense, and slowly.

  Roza looked toward the kitchen, as though to see whether the breakfast was coming.

  Nothing would ever be the way it used to be. It was impossible to remember what it used to be like at all.

  On the stove, the kasha pot lay on its side, the kasha steadily, determinedly dripping on the hot plate, burning, the smoke spreading across the room.

  Thus we were winnowed.

  “OLGA,” TAUBE SAYS. “Say something.”

  She looks at him as though surprised that she can hear him at all, that he can speak.

  “Allow me to get you another glass of water,” Taube says and stands up. “You look pale.”

  You don’t talk to me about pogroms, Herr Taube, Olga says in Yiddish. You have your Viennese diploma, your rich friends, your good intentions, your perfect German, your charming English. What can you ever know about what a pogrom is? What do you know about life and death?

  “Indeed,” Taube says, “I don’t wish to learn about death.” His cheeks are radiating consumption. Olga can see he is going to die.

  You know nothing, Olga says.

  “I do not wish to learn, Olga. I assure you.”

  Taube sits back down to face her and grabs her hands. She pulls them back, but not far enough to get out of his grip.

  “Please. I beg you. We would do anything you ask us to do.”

  Would you?

  “We would,” Taube says. “Anything within our power.”

  Iuliana helped me find a driver to take us from Chisinau to Bucharest, where we could get a train to Belgrade, from where we could reach Sarajevo. At the bus station, we picked through a mob of taxi drivers loitering, smoking, drinking, sleeping in their cars, wishing for an odd ride. I selected the most honest-looking one: a hoary, fat little man he was, with thick glasses suggesting that, before he regained his freedom and Moldova her independence, he might have been a respected literary critic. He asked for a hundred euros and I would have brutally bargained if Iuliana had not been there. The fat little man’s name was Vasiliy; he seemed sufficiently grateful and was going to pick us up at six a.m.

  It was early evening; the sun was sunk below the treetops; the smell of linden managed to override the reek of dust and diesel; Chisinau appeared a pleasant place to be. The cemetery-roaming had created an odd intimacy between Iuliana and me, so we went to a coffee shop, in front of which the same gangstermobile as in front of the McDonald’s was parked, but no businessman in sight. I told Iuliana about the businessman-and-bimbo spectacle I had witnessed; she seemed to be listening with interest but said nothing. I liked the way she was comfortable and confident in nothing being said. She was like Rora in that regard—his statements were completed, his sentences did not spill into each other. Like Rora, she was sovereign when silent; her silence was not an absence of words, it was a thing unto itself, shaped by her. How did they do that? Silence terrified me—whenever I stopped talking, the possibility of never saying anything again was horribly present. Therefore, I asked:

  “Do you like Chisinau?”

  “It is okay.”

  “Have you ever thought of leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you leave?”

  “Where would I go?”

  “America.”

  “I need a visa for that.”

  “Maybe I can help you get a visa.”

  “My family is here, all of them. My husband has a job.”

  She sipped her coffee; she had a husband; she bent the tiny plastic spoon in and out of shape. I strived to complete myself with words; it was a hopeless project.

  “How do you feel about the pogrom?” I asked.

  “How do I feel about the pogrom?”

  “Yes. How do you feel about the pogrom?”

  Silence. Then she said:

  “That outburst of bestial anti-Semitism is indelibly stamped upon our national consciousness.”

  I chortled, but she was not kidding. I said:

  “No, really. How do you—you, Iuliana—feel about it? What do you feel when you think about it? Anger? Despair? Hatred?”

  She wagged her head to show she did not like the question.

  “See, I am actually Bosnian,” I said. She did not react to the news. “And when I think about what happened in Bosnia, I feel this filthy fury, this rage at the world. Sometimes, I fantasize about breaking the kneecaps of Karadžić, the war criminal. Or I see myself smashing someone’s jaw with a hammer.”

  I had no idea whether she knew what happened in Bosnia. Mary did not like to listen about the war and genocide and mass graves or about my accumulated sense of guilt in relation to all that. Iuliana stopped shaking her head, though, and was listening to me. In retrospect, I can see I may have frightened her.

  “I imagine him writhing in pain, on the floor, then I hammer his elbows, too,” I said. “Do you ever want to break someone’s jaw?”

  “You are strange,” she said. “I thought you are from America.”

  “Yeah, I am now from America, too. There are a lot of jaws there I would like to break.”

  The businessman walked out of the next-door mobile-phone store; he strode, throwing his shoulders back. This time I could see his eyes: they were washed-out blue. If I had a hammer, I could smack him between his porn eyes, crack his forehead, disfigure his nose. And then, in the same moment, I thought: That’s me. I could be him. I could smash in my own forehead. That would be fun.

  “My grandfather,” Iuliana said, “was in the Red Army. He was in the platoon that raised the Soviet flag on the Reichstag. He was the only Jew in his battalion.”

  She said nothing else—apparently that was a fully completed statement. The gangster leapt into the driver’s seat of his gangstermobile and sped away. There go I but for the grace of God.

  “When I think about the pogrom,” Iuliana said, “I feel love for those people. When I think about my grandfather, I think about how hard it must have been for him, how lonely and happy he was on top of the Reichstag. When I think about those things, I love him.”

  “I see,” I said.

  Once Mary lost a patient on the surgical table. He was a gang member taken down in a drive-by shooting. The bullet was lodged in his frontal lobe; somehow he was conscious when they brought him in. He talked to her; he asked her for her name; he
told her his—it was, unbelievably, Lincoln. But there was nothing she could do; he died under the knife. That night she sat in the living-room armchair as on a throne, staring at the same page of a People magazine for fifteen minutes before she passed out, her cheek on her shoulder, only to wake up and confront my relentless questions: “How did you feel after he died? What were your thoughts?” Whereupon Mary got up, dragged her blanket to the bedroom like a gown train, and pushed the door in my inquisitorial face. I was enraged; I banged at the door and eventually slammed it open, as though I was breaking in, to find her in bed, turned to the wall, the blanket pulled up to her temple. “Don’t you ever get angry?” I shouted. “You must get angry. You must hate somebody. What makes you so goddamn different?” Later on I apologized halfheartedly, and so did she. “When a patient dies,” she explained, rather unhelpfully, “I feel that he is dead.”

  AS IULIANA AND I parted for good, I kissed her cheek; it was as soft as an inside of a thigh. Afterward, in the Chisinau Hotel room, Rora asked me, Did you bang her? She has a husband, I said. You have a wife, Rora said. I ignored his remark and reported on tomorrow’s transportation arrangements. I turned and faced the wall, stared at the cracks before I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Rora was flipping through the silent channels. I could hear a rare car circling the bronze heroes in the square.

  Aren’t you worried that Rambo might come after you in Sarajevo? I finally asked.

  Rora kept flipping the channels.

  Do you have pictures of Miller dead stashed away somewhere? Is that your insurance?

  Don’t you worry about me, he said. I’ll be all right. Nobody cares anymore. I just want to see Azra and then I’ll be gone.