The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Author:Aleksandar Hemon [Hemon, Aleksandar]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780330478786
Google: 738ntUXBtOMC
Amazon: B001QFZLOS
Goodreads: 2574860
Publisher: Riverhead
Published: 2008-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

2. large mouth;

3. receding chin;

4. prominent cheekbones;

5. large simian ears.

Olga wheezes in disbelief; as nimbly as a magician, Taube pulls a white handkerchief out of his inside breast pocket and offers it to her. She declines at first, but he silently insists and she takes it. He picks up the Tribune and flips through it as she wipes her nose.

“The anarchist vermin that infest Chicago and our nation are to be exterminated to the last vile individual,” Taube reads in his German-inflected English. “Every power at the command of local authorities will be invoked, every loyal citizen will be called upon, to achieve this job of housecleaning. The authors of seditious utterances will be prosecuted. Undesirable foreigners will be deported. Street gatherings of malcontents will be absolutely prohibited. Municipal authorities will deal summarily with unlawful disturbances. No pity will be shown.”

Olga does not understand everything Taube reads, but she can sense the agitation beyond his declaratory voice. He flips another page, searches up and down until he finds what he is looking for.

She caressed Lazarus’s chin, touched the bullet hole, black as a birthmark. His forehead tasted like some mortuary chemical.

“The methods of anarchists have changed materially in the last twenty years. In the days before the Haymarket riot the anarchists were preaching violence against a class as a whole. They went in for wholesale violence. Their leaders were English and German. But now the Italian and Russian Jewish elements have come to the fore. Their leaders are of a lower, degenerate, more despicable criminal type, but their methods are more dangerous. They preach the murder of the individual. They believe in nihilistic ideas of suicide and assassination.”

Why are you reading this to me, Herr Taube? What am I to understand? What do you want?

Taube now speaks in a Viennese German that contains no trace of Yiddish; he lowers his voice, raises his chin.

“I mourn the death of your brother with you, Fräulein Averbuch. I was brought up to believe that if we lose one Jew, we lose the world. And I suffer your loss not only as a Jew but also as one who believes in the rule of righteous law.”

Olga becomes aware of the smell her body exudes—she scrubbed herself time and again last night but still feels beshitten.

“There are men in this city, Fräulein Averbuch, all well-established members of society, who are duly apprehensive about the current atmosphere, as it could easily lead to uncontrollable violence. Such a development would endanger what they have been working for for a long time and would likely impede the further progress of their less-fortunate brethren. Being of Semitic origin, they are outsiders themselves in their circles, so they do not wish to emphasize their kinship connections with alleged anarchists. At the same time, they are not impervious to the travails of the poor and the innocent.”

Olga blows her nose mightily into his handkerchief to punish him for his opacity.

“Well do we all know things have been changing: what blood libel was in Russia, anarchism could become in America.

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