The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

  Do you know the joke, Rora said, where Mujo goes to America, settles there, and then starts inviting Suljo to come, too? But Suljo’s reluctant. He doesn’t want to leave his kafana, his friends, his daily routines. Mujo is persistent, writes to him all the time. Come, he says, it’s all milk and honey here. Suljo writes back and says, That’s all well and nice, but I like my life in Bosnia; I don’t have to work much; I have plenty of time to drink coffee, read newspapers, take walks, whatever I want whenever I want it. In America, I would have to slave all the time. I am good here, Suljo says. You wouldn’t have to work much here, Mujo writes. The streets are lined with money, all you have to do is bend over and pick it up. All right then, Suljo says, I’m coming. So he comes to America, Mujo shows him his house, they eat, drink coffee, talk about the old times, and Suljo says, I am going out for a walk to see a little bit of your America. He goes out for a walk, comes back. Mujo asks him, How was it? Well, Suljo says, you were telling the truth. I was walking down the street and there was a sack full of money, it looked like at least a million dollars. A million dollars? Mujo’s flabbergasted. Did you pick it up? Did you? he asks him.

  Of course I did not, Suljo says. You don’t expect me to work on my first day here.

  WE WENT UP NORTH THEN, to Lincoln Park, to Chief Shippy’s former neighborhood. The rich still lived there, but the address where Shippy’s house used to be was no longer in existence. Ludwig’s store was long gone, too, as was the Halsted Street streetcar line which took Lazarus to Lincoln Park. The streets were now named after German poets, presently not widely read in the neighborhood; old ladies with blown-dry remnants of hair walked toy dogs; slim blondes strode in pursuit of physiological happiness. There was no particle of the Lazarus story to be photographed, nothing, and Rora took no pictures. So many things had vanished that it was impossible to know what was missing. Girls in heavenly-blue and sun-yellow shirts were playing soccer on the Parker High School field. We parked the car and watched them.

  You should go back where he came from, Rora said. There is always a before and an after.

  The tallest girl on the blue team leapt and scored a goal with her head; her teammates huddled around her for a while, then scattered around the field to their original positions. She might remember the goal she scored on this cold day for many years, I imagined. She might be able to recall all the lilting names of the huddle girls: Jennifer and Jan and Gloria and Zoe. But there would always be the one whose name she could not remember; and she would call Jennifer and Jan and Gloria and Zoe, twenty years from now, and ask them about the name of the sweet, scrawny girl with bony knees and hopeless braces who played at the fullback position. No one would ever remember: Jan would think that her name could be Candy, Zoe would corroborate it, but Jennifer and Gloria would strenuously disagree. Every once in a while, she would see someone on the street who would remind her of the hypothetical Candy. She would never approach the scrawny woman; she would never see her again, never remember her true name, but she would never forget Candy.

  Rora was right: I needed to follow Lazarus all the way back to the pogrom in Kishinev, to the time before America. I needed to reimagine what I could not retrieve; I needed to see what I could not imagine. I needed to step outside my life in Chicago and spend time deep in the wilderness of elsewhere. But that method of writing a book would be entirely different from what Mary had expected, or what I had planned to do, with or without the Susie grant. Mary would not like me going away, particularly because she had suggested that it would do us good—especially her—to go on a vacation; possible dates had floated on the surface of our dinner conversations, then sunk into the after-dinner stupor. And I certainly didn’t want to beg her for money, again, and go through the whole debasing process of proving that my plans, hopes, dreams are not overly indulgent. I realized that I had fantasized myself into a corner with the Susie grant. Everything depended on it all of a sudden though there was no reason to believe that it could work out, even if I had spent some sleepless nights rewriting it to dubious perfection. Many times, I had called the offices of the Glory Foundation—instead of calling Susie, as I had initially planned—to ask when the decision might be made, and every time I called it was clearer to me that my chances were slim.

  All I conceded to Rora, however, was that now would not be a good time for me to go. It would be too expensive, I would like Mary to come with me, and she could take no time off. I don’t think I should go, I said. I had plenty more research to do in the libraries, many more books to read about Lazarus and anarchists and the sumptuous palette of American fears. Maybe in two, three years, there was no rush; nobody was waiting for my book to arrive. The world would be exactly the same with my book as it was without it. Rora did not argue; I drove him home. The Lake Shore high-rises cast long, mawkish shadows into the oncoming waves; he said nothing.

  He produced a particular kind of silence: it was not heavy, not accusing, not demanding. I imagined that was the same kind of silence as when he waited for a picture to appear on the photographic paper sunk in emulsion. I was learning that I liked such silence, as I liked his sounds and stories. And from such silence an improbable memory emerged: he and I in kindergarten; we are straddling our enchanted pillows, our brawny mustangs; we are Indians, chased by cowboys, riding west. All the other kids are asleep, curled into backbreaking shapes, their mouths angelically agape. We spur our downy beasts on toward the painted sunset on the dormitory door, behind which our careless caretakers are smoking, sipping coffee, and gossiping.

  There are moments in life when it is all turned inside out—what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible, and all your levelheaded efforts to keep a tight ontological control are rendered silly and indulgent. Imagine Candy showing up at your door and she is nothing like what you remember; she is angry because you could not remember her, although you were asking around about her. You wonder how she got here, how you reached this uncanny moment; you realize you have no idea who she is but she is as familiar to you as your own soul. You cannot comprehend her journey to your door because it is not a story she or anybody can tell but a nightmare of random events. I had no reason to believe that Rora and I shared any early-childhood experience; for all intents and purposes, I might have been remembering a dream. That was beside the point: I recognized the false memory as something that bound us now, and I understood that not only did I have to find a way to go to Kishinev as soon as possible, but that Rora had to come along. It seemed to me that if he didn’t come along I would never see him again, and I needed him around, for his silence, for his stories, for his camera.

  All night I tossed and turned, racing and stumbling through thoughts and dreams, replaying and revising my many-times-imagined schmooze-lunch with Susie, occasionally becoming conscious enough to listen to Mary’s breathing. She threw her arm across my chest once, asked me if everything was all right. It was, I said. Her arm lay heavy on me for a long time and I could not breathe but I did nothing about it. Ismet and Lazarus and Rora, and ducks and mosques and Jesus and Susie and the runner with the lemon in his mouth, and Shippy and Bush and the crazy with the UNITED WE STAND sticker on his forehead—they all left their somnial traces in my feverish mind. As it dawned, I began rehearsing my ultimate speech to Susie: I decided to drop the charming shtick and level with her, to tell her that I needed the grant money desperately; in my dizzy head I tabulated the expenses of the now-imperative journey to Kishinev, all the things the writing of the book required, how I would always be grateful for her support. I had not informed Mary about the Susie grant, for I did not want her to know that I failed, if I failed, but before I fell asleep again, I decided that telling her everything would somehow make the grant approval more likely.

  And at the breakfast table, as I was telling her that I wanted to go to Eastern Europe to sort out what I wanted to do with Lazarus, to figure out how to do it, Mary was called away to take a bullet out of someone’s brain. When Mary left for the hospital, I sat paraly
zed with despair in the living room, the Schuettlers’ number on a piece of paper in my hand, until I inhaled deeply, dialed the number, and closed my eyes as their phone was ringing. Bill picked up the phone; it took a few degrading repetitions before he could hear my name properly. Once he did, I introduced myself and asked for Susie; she was not in; she was with her book club; she would be back in the afternoon. I said I would call later and was about to hang up, when he exclaimed: “Brik! Yes! You are Vladimir Brik! Of course! We were just talking about you at the board meeting yesterday,” whereupon he told me that they had approved my grant proposal unanimously and that someone would be calling me today to deliver the news. I actually said, “I love you!” to him, which, I am happy to say, he completely ignored.

  After I hung up, I sat down on the floor and spent a considerable amount of time rubbing my sweaty palms against my pajamas. Thick apprehension descended upon me, for now it was clear, there was no way back, no excuses, no escape from writing the book. I could not think of what I was going to do, and I was frighteningly alone with it. I sat there, waiting for the molasses of fear to thin out so I could call Mary and share the happy news. But instead, without thinking, I called Rora and told him I might go to Ukraine and Moldova to do some more research on Lazarus. I was just granted funds for my Lazarus project and I could use the money for the trip. I would love it if he came along with me. I would pay for his ticket and expenses. He could take photos. I didn’t know how he would use them, but I could put some of them in my book when I wrote it. And I said, to my own surprise, we could maybe go to Sarajevo, too, see what’s happening at home.

  Why not, he said. I’ve got nothing else to do.

  Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Schuettler’s best men, Detectives Fitzgerald and Fitzpatrick—known all over town as the Fitzes— canvass the neighborhood around Lincoln Place. Soon they learn that an outlandish young man ran into the Nicholas Brothers real estate office, a block away from Chief Shippy’s residence, and inquired with a clerk there what had happened at Chief Shippy’s and whether the gunman was known. The outlandish stranger was five feet eight inches tall; twenty-three or so years old; weighing about 145 pounds. He had a flat forehead and alien hair; he wore a black overcoat of the kind that anarchists favor. The man was, without a doubt, a foreigner.

  That same afternoon, the assassin is identified by Gregor Heller, a fellow employee at the South Water Street Commission House, where they both worked as egg packers for W. H. Eichgreen, a commission merchant. Heller had noticed his absence from work and once he heard about the terrible crime, he went straight to the police. He positively identifies the body as belonging to Lazarus Averbuch. Heller is also able to provide the address of Averbuch’s residence: 218 Washburn Avenue, a second-story flat. Although there is no reward promised, Assistant Chief Schuettler assures Heller that he can reasonably expect a few dollars from Chief Shippy himself for helping to crush the snake’s head. Heller walks back home, already spending the money in his head: a scarf for Mary, new socks for himself.

  The Fitzes, with William P. Miller exclusively in tow, break into the second-story room at 218 Washburn and seize a curly-haired foreigner, who confesses instantly that his name is Isaac Lubel. But they need and demand more than that, so Fitzgerald begins interrogating him vigorously, throwing him to the floor, pounding the man in the face, kneeing him in the kidneys, roaring at him all along, which frightens Lubel’s wife nearly into hysterics and sends their children into convulsions of screams. Between the punches and kicks, through his bloody teeth, Lubel manages to tell them that the Averbuchs live across the hallway.

  Fitzpatrick flings the door across the hallway open and startles a woman setting the table for supper. With a plate in each hand, as if about to juggle them, she identifies herself as Olga Averbuch. “What is Lazarus Averbuch to you?” Fitzpatrick asks. “My brother,” she says, her voice trembling, the left plate sliding out of her grip and smashing against the floor. “Lazarus is my brother. What he do?” Fitzpatrick sucks at his teeth and says nothing. Through the open door she can see Lubel curled up on the floor, a finger-shaped trail of blood coming down his neck. Fitzgerald shakes his head as if to suggest that the problem is too complicated to explain. “What he do?” she asks again. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Fitzgerald says. “We shall sort it all out.”

  The place is furnished with only the bare necessities. The kitchen contains a stove with a moribund fire and a small kitchen cabinet: an odd cup, a solitary pot, a tiny, slender vase. On the table there are cold leftovers of a meat dish, a hardened loaf of rye bread, and a pot of coffee—Fitzgerald takes a sip, then spits it out; Fitzpatrick smashes the vase against the floor. The bedroom has a small table with a cheap violet-blue covering, two common chairs, a bed and a narrow cot, a well-oiled sewing machine, a mirror and a washbasin, and a wardrobe with a litter of clothing reeking of naphthalene and the stove smoke. The only article of tawdry finery Olga Averbuch possessed, William P. Miller will write, is an old a purple velvet skirt.

  The detectives ransack the place with the passion of soldiers fighting a just war. The plate in her hands, Olga watches them impassively. They dig up things from under the bed: books, bundles of rags, and a cardboard suitcase from which they shake out a manuscript and a batch of letters in Russian; they confiscate it all. They flip through the subversive books; Fitzpatrick reads the titles aloud: The Story of a Bad King, In the Land of the Free, Saving Your Mind and Body, What the Constitution Teaches, etc.

  “Never met a kike before who could read English,” Fitzgerald says.

  The Fitzes load all the confiscated books, along with Olga, into the car. Fitzgerald drives to the central police station, while Fitzpatrick and Miller cheerfully take a streetcar. They discuss baseball and observe the passengers, Miller fertilizing their acquaintance with casual flattering, hoping he can harvest a scoop. By the time the two get to the station, Assistant Chief Schuettler is already interrogating Olga with the help of Fitzgerald, who keeps smoking, his sleeves rolled. She occasionally coughs, politely putting her small hand over her mouth. “We already know everything,” Assistant Chief tells her, “so feel free to tell us everything.” Olga implores him to let her speak to her brother, and Assistant Chief promises that she will see him later. “Everything will be sorted out. We all have our common interests in mind.” Olga is convinced that, whatever it may be, it is all a regrettable mistake, and that if she answers the questions sincerely everything will be cleared up. Fitzgerald’s forearms are hairy—the hair stretches outward, even on his knuckles, as if he combed it.

  Schuettler lets Olga talk—he appreciates babbling suspects—interrupting her occasionally, carefully, with a reasonable question. Miller speedily takes notes, hunched over his notebook in the corner, still sucking this morning’s cigar. This is good stuff.

  She claims Lazarus is a good boy, always kind to everybody.

  She can speak four languages, but her brother can speak all these and French and Polish besides. He studied English at a night school at 12th Street and Jefferson.

  English, Yiddish, German, Russian.

  He has never mentioned Chief Shippy’s name in her presence. She’s never heard him talk about anarchism.

  Many of their friends are curly-haired.

  Their father was a merchant in Kishinev, Russia. She insists he was not a revolutionary nor did he belong to any secret society. He was a religious man.

  They survived the Easter pogrom in Kishinev, in 1903.

  There was another one in 1905.

  She is convinced there will be many more. It is a custom there to kill Jews.

  They were the only Jewish family in four blocks. Their neighbors gathered outside their house and yelled: “Kill the Yids!” They banged and threw stones through the windows. There were policemen among them. They beat them, broke Father’s ribs. He nearly died. He died later.

  Schuettler looks at Miller, who looks at Fitzgerald, who looks at Fitzpatrick. “Policemen,” Schuettler says
. Olga looks at her wringing hands.

  Bitter tears are streaming down the Jewess’s cheeks, William P. Miller writes, and underlines bitter tears, twice.

  “Take her to see her brother,” Schuettler orders.

  The Fitzes escort Olga to Bentley’s morgue. Miller and Hammond, a Tribune photographer Miller urgently summoned, scurry behind them. They walk down the street from the police station, she between the Fitzes, asking every few steps: “Where is he? Where is it we going?” “He is in a better place,” Fitzpatrick says, and Fitzgerald chuckles. The walls in the morose rooms are adorned with solemn paintings: a mother praying over the body of her son; a family of four having dinner at a table, the fifth chair empty; a dark forest at sunset. The news has already spread around town, and hundreds have come by to view Lazarus’s body that afternoon. Many are still there: common citizens with their hats pushed high on their heads, scruffy idlers and pomaded socialites, weeping churchwomen, off-duty firemen and mail carriers with bags full of undelivered mail, policemen of every rank, some of whom have angrily struck the body or spat on it; several citizens bribed Georgie, the lame morgue attendant, to take a look at the Jew’s member; a demented woman had to be escorted out because she claimed the corpse opened his eyes and looked at her. Now the onlookers stand lined up in the long morgue hall, anticipating Olga’s shock and pain, watching her with gloating curiosity. Oblivious to the surroundings, she walks slowly. She moves quietly between the detectives, her dress too sweat-damp to rustle. It is only when they open the door of the room that she begins to hold back. Men are gathered around the chair where Lazarus sits, and she is relieved to see he is alive. She sighs and grips Fitzpatrick’s forearm. But one of the men is holding Lazarus’s head; her brother’s eyes are closed, his face ashen; her heart stops, frozen. Fitzgerald urges her on; Fitzpatrick says, as if delivering a punch line: “Happy to see him? Give him a kiss . . .” The crowd titters, transfixed by Olga stepping toward Lazarus, as if she were mounted on cothurni: a short, reluctant step back, then two awkward steps forward to touch his lifeless cheek, whereupon she collapses, unconscious. The crowd gasps.