We came upon the train station unexpectedly. Seryozha tried to hustle us, claiming that the charge was a hundred euros per person—a cheeky, brazen bastard he was—but I just ignored the demand, while Rora audibly scoffed; we survived the drive and he could scare us no longer. We took our luggage from the trunk: Elena was still in her seat, forlorn, not moving or looking up at us, let alone bidding us good-bye. What are we going to do? I asked Rora. Relax, Rora said, and be quiet.
We walked away, but before we entered the ramshackle station, Rora lit a cigarette and assumed a position behind a pillar from which he could monitor Seryozha. Our friend was rummaging through the car, digging through the glove compartment, raking under the seat, barking at Elena. He got out and climbed waist deep into the trunk; he slammed it down and had her move to the front, pushing her head down as she crouched to get into the seat. She sat there, looking ahead. The way her body slumped, the way her hair hung like a veil over her cheek apples, her visible despair—it was all making me angry, I wanted to disappear. Seryozha locked the car door and, leaving Elena in the car, headed toward the other end of the station.
Come with me, Rora said. We followed Seryozha at a distance.
The bathroom walls were daubed over with various venereal diseases; the lines between the tiles brimmed with unspeakable ecosystems. The moment we entered the bathroom, Rora dropped his duffel bag and zeroed in on the stall where Seryozha was—to this day, I do not know how he knew which one it was. He kicked open the foolishly unlocked door and there was our chauffeur with his pantaloons halfway down. Rora socked him instantly, stepped in, and closed the door. I remained outside like an experienced accomplice and bodyguard (except for my Samsonite on wheels) and listened, with acute, indecent pleasure, to the sounds of smacking and whimpering and toilet flushing. There was no one in the bathroom; it lasted but a minute, for Rora was good at such things. He stepped out; Seryozha was sitting on the toilet seat, wheezing, his forehead against the wall. Rora was washing his hands as I stepped in and slugged Seryozha in the jaw; he flinched, and I pummeled him again, gashing his cheek. I felt the bones cracking under my knuckles, but I kept punching until his jaw was crushed, until my hand was finally and thoroughly broken. I wished Mary could have seen me at that moment, the lethal combination of wrath and good intentions. I wished she could have held my crushed hand in hers, put it in a splint of unconditional love. Seryozha slid off the toilet seat; blood gushed down his sweatshirt front, soaking into New York. One of his eyes was glass, for it slid out of the socket and tumbled to the gory floor. Life is full of surprises.
I hope you didn’t kill him, Rora said, as we strode through the station hall. I think I broke my hand, I said. Put it in your pocket, he said. And stop grimacing. I had no idea where we were going, I just limped behind him and we emerged from the station right in front of Seryozha’s car. As Elena watched him in disbelief, Rora unlocked her door, whisked her out without a word. She retracted her head, cowering from anticipated slaps, but Rora shoved her passport and a bundle of money in her hand, while I watched nervously for Seryozha, implausibly running toward us with a broken-up bloody face, dropped pants, and a piece of gun in his hand. My hand was throbbing with beastly, thrilling pain. Rora shook her, gripping her forearms. Idi, he said. Bježi. She understood, but was hesitating. What if she wanted to come with us? What if we took her along? There were so many lives she could live.
But then she slipped out of Rora’s grasp, slowly, and grabbed her purse out of the car, stuffed the passport and the money in it, and, much too slowly, strode away. As she was crossing the street without looking back, I saw that she wore silvery soccer shoes and white tube socks. Rora took a picture of her walking away.
LAZARUS STEPPED OFF the New York train into the crowd, enveloped in a cloud of steam; he pushed his way through it; they pulled and pushed him and thrust him aside. This was America; this passion of the mob; this struggle to protect your soul from the voracious mass. Someone tried to rip his suitcase out of his hand and he swung it forward, slammed himself in the knee as it swung back. He rose on the tip of his toes to look for Olga over the sea of heads. She stood under a large moonlike clock, pale and small, his big sister. He picked up his pace, scurrying forward, but tripped and nearly fell flat on his nose. Olga was scanning the crowd for him when she saw him coming—tall, scrawny, hair unruly—but did not fully recognize him until he stumbled. The fear that he might get hurt gave him the shape of her little brother, love fluttering up her bosom. Lazarus, she called him, Lazarus, I am over here. Lazarus.
Unsettling dreams have been swarming in Isador’s head, but when he snaps out of slumber he cannot remember them. The suitcase corner is poking his kidney; rags are covering his face and even when he uncovers it, the wardrobe is airless and lightless. His body is too uncomfortable to allow him to reenter his dream. He has run out of things to think about: he has thought about Olga, contemplated Lazarus’s death, dwelt on the game at Stadlwelser’s, when he should have waited for Stadlwelser to bet, about the debt he would have to pay back. He ought to leave Chicago without a trace. He refuses to think about the possibility of being arrested. If he does not imagine the politsey, the politsey don’t exist. He has gone back and forth through reveries about Olga’s slim body and the book he used to think he would write, a novel about the adventures of a clever immigrant called The Adventures of a Clever Immigrant. He envisions himself as rich; throwing parties, riding in a car driven by his own chauffeur. He twists his body, looking for a comfortable position, presses his ribs against the suitcase corner. The seats would be made of soft leather, you would be able to hear the sighs of slaughtered calves when you leaned back. He would sit in the back and tell the driver through the horn where to go. “Hippodrome,” he would say. “And fast.”
The wardrobe door is flung open, the rags are pulled apart, and before Isador can think or say anything, a hand grabs him by the scruff of his neck, another quickly covers his mouth, and he is whisked out. The light blinds him; two men hoist him by the armpits and drag him toward the door, his toes dragging across the floor. Their hands are big; the palm on his face spreads from ear to ear. Isador is terrified; he wants to scream, writhe out of their grip, but everything is happening fast. Nothing is said; they lift him higher so his feet are in the air now. One of the men tells him in German:
“Be quiet. We are going to get you out of here.”
Isador wiggles and the other man knees him in the thigh.
“Keep still or we’ll knock you out.”
There is a large casket before him in the center of the room; out of mortal fear Isador stops fidgeting.
“We’ll let go of you. But if you make a sound, we’ll knock you out cold.”
Isador relaxes his body to signal he will obey them. The hand is removed from his face—it nearly tore out his jaw. They release their grip and put him down on the floor, but his knees tremble and they have to hold him up. The men are large, wearing suits and bowler hats. One of them has a neatly trimmed mustache. They are speaking without excitement or urgency.
“Get in,” he says and points at the casket.
“You go first,” Isador whimpers. The men exchange quick glances, whereupon the mustached one socks Isador in the jaw, knocking him out.
When he comes to, his jaw is pulsing with pain; he knows he is in the casket: it smells like pinewood and cadaver. There is something on top of him, heavy and hefty. The casket is being carried; when it dips every now and then, Isador tightens, frightened to the point of thinking that this might all be a dream. His heart is beating fast; he can hear it; he can feel it throbbing inside him. The weight on him is clothed; his cheek is chafed by felt. There is a dead body on top of him, he realizes, a corpse. He recognizes its rigid coldness, its stiffening joints cracking; what is pressing his cheek is someone’s ankle. They are going to bury him alive. Alive. He is going to die in airless darkness. And his skin tingles with the pricks of fear, his head empties; he is breathless and paralyzed. Maybe
he is dead already; perhaps this is it. Yet the pain in his hips, the strain of his ribs under the weight—it still feels like life.
The casket stops undulating, then dips abruptly one more time, before he senses it being slid onto a surface—scraping, a car engine starting, indistinct words. They are taking him to a cemetery to bury him alive. He fidgets but there is no space; he screams but there is no sound. The car moves and keeps going. Death just comes and takes you away and there is nothing you can do.
WHAT STRENGTH IT takes not to break down, not to rave and wail, not to claw out Schuettler’s serpentine eyes, not to push the rabbi into the grave, Rabbi Klopstock, who knows perfectly well what is in the coffin. It takes strength; she stands there at the edge, Olga Averbuch, the bereaved sister, because without her the whole edifice of closure and unity would collapse and crumble into Lazarus’s grave, much like the sods on which Rabbi Klopstock slips and nearly tumbles into the hole. The pain is grinding inside her head; perhaps grief causes brain inflammation.
The day before his bar mitzvah they went for a walk, Lazarus and Olga. He wanted to talk about life, he said. Things always weighed heavily on him. He wanted to discuss the mysteries of the Torah, his studies, the theme of his address to the congregation: “Why Does the Jewish Day Begin at Sunset?” But they strolled together, talking about nothing; it was the last day of his childhood.
They stopped by Mr. Mandelbaum’s store so she could buy him sweets, but Mr. Mandelbaum gave him a swirling-candy stick for free. They sat outside on the bench, and he licked it seriously and strenuously, as if disposing of it quickly was the first task of his manhood.
Tears burst into her eyes, down her cheeks, a sob heaves out of her body. She drops to her left knee for a moment; it leaves an indentation in the clay. Taube holds her up; she feels his hands on her shoulder and back and nothing is real anymore. All she can see is Lazarus licking the swirling-candy stick, the faint mustache over his lip, and she begins ululating incessantly: Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus Lazarus . . . as though the word could recall him into existence. Still, he is not rising.
With her head bowed, the bereaved Jewess wept over her brother’s grave. Finally, he was coming into peace. Finally, he has reached the land beyond the malignant reaches of anarchism and the inflammatory ideas of remedying so-called social injustices. And to bid him good-bye with her, there were many distinguished Jews of Chicago: here was the good Rabbi Klopstock; there the wealthy merchant Mendel; tall stood Eichgreen and Liss, leaders among their tribesmen. And there were scores of their anonymous co-religionists, who nevertheless chose the way of patriotism and loyalty over the blood-soaked paths of anarchism and lawlessness. They were there to bid farewell not only to the misguided Lazarus but just as surely to the troubles that threatened to separate them from their American co-citizens. But behind their backs, as though to remind them of the insidious permanence of peril, there stood the dark-faced mourners of black discontent, those who have not given up on the hope that the young Lazarus could become a martyr for their murderous causes. There was Ben Reitman, the dean of the College of Hobos and the notorious consort of the Red Queen, Emma Goldman; there were the young anarchists of Edelstadt, their Semitic eyes murked by ire. And alongside the infamous there was many an unsavory character, bristling with devious schemes.
After the Kaddish is said, after the sods of earth start crumbling and falling on the coffin, after more condolences are offered, after Olga’s knees buckle again with anger and exhaustion, Taube protectively walks her to the car. Schuettler, catching up so as to appear friendly and caring, walks on her other side. William P. Miller scurries up behind them, red in the face, notebook in hand, his new cuff links sparkling.
The very presence of Assistant Chief Schuettler at the recondite, solemn Jewish ritual vouchsafed the dominion of law and order. Because he was there, dispensing necessary orders by a mere shifting of his gaze, the interment of the unfortunate Lazarus was a dignified affair, devoid of outrageous anarchist excesses. Be it loudly said that the assistant chief’s merciless struggle against the evil of foreign anarchism did not deprive him of compassion nor did it inure him to the suffering of others. Ever a gentleman, he offered his arm to the bereaved Jewess, and she, doubtless in need of fatherly strength, walked with him back into her life, away from her younger brother’s eternal home. “Thank you, Assistant Chief Schuettler, for your kindness and your help,” she said to him, her tenebrous eyes deluged with tears. “Let us return to peace now,” he said to her, though the words could well have been said to all the citizens of Chicago.
THE CASKET LID is pried open; the corpse is lifted off Isador. The light blinds him again, but when his eyes get used to it, he can see the two men and a few more, standing around, staring into the casket in silence, as though contemplating their own mortal existence. He sits up, looks around. “Am I dead?” he asks in German. The men laugh at him, then help him hatch out. He cannot feel his legs, so they carry him to the table and sit him on the chair. It is some kind of a cellar; it smells of clay and mold; it is hard to see into the dark corners. The corpse is on the floor by the casket; his face is white as flour, splattered with dark spots, bloated like a bladder; his eyes are black patches—it takes a while for Isador to recognize Isaac Lubel. The two men lift Isaac—he is straight and solid as a board—and put him back in the casket.
“Isaac,” he says to the choir of men. “That is Isaac Lubel.”
“That was Isaac Lubel,” the mustached man says. “Now he is dead.”
TAUBE OPENS THE car door for her and she steps in, the driver stirring out of sleep and sitting up erect, fixing his hands on the wheel. She ignores Schuettler and Miller, who are not leaving, pretending to be talking to her for the sake of the crowd. Schuettler raises his hat to her, the shvants. Miller is brandishing an idiotic, optimistic smile. Taube speaks into the horn to give the order and off they drive, Miller actually waving good-bye. Vines of hair are creeping up the driver’s neck toward a bowler hat. The acceleration presses Olga’s vacuous stomach in and she grabs the seat in horror. The speed frightens her; the world is pasted against the window as a terrible blur; everything is disappearing.
Dear Mother,
You must forgive me for what I have done, but I chose life over death. God will take care of the dead. We have to take care of the living.
“Thank you, Fräulein Averbuch,” Taube says and sighs. “That was eminently heroic. We will be eternally grateful for your sacrifice.”
For Assistant Chief Schuettler knows that this city has suffered enough. It has endured the contaminating presence of the foreign elements who landed on these welcoming shores with no intention to contribute to the commonwealth but to hate and violate. See they not the greatness of our country? Can they not feed their families with the bread, crusty though it may be, earned in the workshops and foundries of Chicago? Have they not come here to escape the madness of murder, the persistence of persecution in their old lands? Have they not found here previously unimaginable freedoms, not least the freedom to go back to wherever they came from if they so desired? Can they not share in our noble intentions? See they not that they have a singular opportunity to be a part of a people who naturally strive toward liberty and excellence, toward the greatness that would dwarf all the sanguine accomplishments of the past empires?
This welcoming city has suffered much, but all lives lost will have been lost in vain if we do not redeem them and find value in their demise. From the bones of the dead, magnificence will rise. Sleep now, beloved Chicago, for your enemies are at bay and your citizens can now thrive in the garden of law and order.
Olga’s stomach is churning and she would vomit if there were anything in it to disgorge. The car is skidding over the mud puddles, never too far from the cemetery wall. Taube’s
hat is bouncing on the seat between them, as though there were a rabbit inside. She lifts it, but there is nothing there.
“As per our agreement, your friend Maron is well protected in a safe house. We hope we can get him to disappear without a trace in Canada, in a day or two, after things calm down. He is probably eating and bathing right now. My men will take good care of him. You’ll never see him again. To tell you the truth, I would have liked to have seen him imprisoned, or at least taught a punitive lesson. He is one of those young men who could never see the great future this country offers us. All he could see was now, nothing but now. In their blindness, such young men are incapable of imagining a communal future.”
“Herr Taube,” Olga whimpers. “Please stop talking. You make me sick. Please be silent.”
Taube falls silent. His cheeks are aflame, his knee is hopping in excitement—yet another job well done. He looks out at the small patch of prairie, the dispirited weeds enclosed in meaningless fences; a flock of birds is flapping in disarray across the sky toward the vacant horizon.
The car will take her all the way to the ghetto, but she will ask Taube to let her out a block away from her home, so she can inconspicuously find her way back. The sun will be setting and she will notice for the first time that dusk obscures the shapes of things for her. The politsyant will be gone. The Lubel residence will be deserted. Her home will be cold and empty. Night will be falling, dense and boundless. She will not light the lantern, blind to the shadows. She will sit at the table, say nothing to no one, let nothing settle all around her like falling snow.
Before we reached Sarajevo, I had to pass through a world of pain: all night long my hand had been throbbing, and I could feel it getting doughier until it felt like it belonged to someone else. Most of the train ride to Belgrade, Rora smoked outside the sleeping compartment we were sharing. Then he slept on the bus to Sarajevo. It was as though he had said to me everything that could have been said, all of his statements completed. Only as the bus was descending into the gray Sarajevo valley, the city tucked under thick morning fog, did I dare ask him:
The Lazarus Project Page 23