The headlines girdle the world in black and in bright lights with telepictures of my winding-sheets unwinding from my face, my swaddling-clothes unswaddling from my birthmark. The man who died laughing cries out at the world. The man who came back won’t come out. The man who didn’t cry mocks the world. Read the human story in the Daily Sphere. See the superhuman drama on your screens tonight. Tonight Lazarus dies for you again, exclusive interview by Tell-Star, Tonight, Yesterday, Tomorrow in World Without End.
I sit in my wheel-chair and watch myself sitting in my wheel-chair. My wife waits on me hand and foot, wearing her lover’s kisses on her lips and passing them to me in her emotion at my death and amazing recovery. She brings me grapes and oranges. The grapes I suck the pulp of, leaving the deflated skin. The oranges she peels for me in segments and it hurts to watch Tell-Star, smooth as a blade, peel me apart into an empty hole. No, I remember nothing.
— You died you know, the staff-nurse says the sister says the doctor says the surgeon says, speaking in strip-cartoon, each in a square room with accusing remarks attached to their smiles like gall-bladders, to be continued in our next. Darling, you can tell me, your wife, your own. I want to understand. Didn’t you have any dreams at least?
— No. I never dream.
On the monitor the world cocks its giant radio telescope and I watch myself watching the psychotic handwriting of distant nebulae on the round screen. It comes from way beyond the visual range, in which the layers of atmosphere distort the light-waves and upset the definition. But I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another.
— Quite. Yes, indeed. So you do actually, remember moving through a kind of space, doctor?
— No. I remember nothing.
— So you would say, in fact, that we can expect only total darkness?
— Darkness? Well … no. Darkness implies light.
— Annihilation then?
— Nihil obstat nihilum.
— Quite so. For the benefit of our viewers, perhaps you could translate?
— No. I lost the equations. I must have left them in the pocket of the seat in front in the first vehicle. I must have left them in the coffin, in the upper parietal lobe of my brain.
— For the benefit of –
— The Save the Appearances Fund, certainly. How much do you want?
— Er … doctor, one of the newspaper reports that you opened your eyes for a second when they removed the coffin-lid. Do you remember anything of that?
— I remember … Something.
— Something. Er, what exactly? Fear, dazzling light, relief, astonishment, pain?
The scalpel scrapes into my pain. My wife’s lover and his wife watch the operation through dull eyes in my drawing-room, hers hypnotized by the never-never land of other people’s pain, his veiled with knowledgeable labels at my poor performance. He would have done much better, given the circumstances, but then, circumstances do not touch everyone with the same meridians. He has one stance to adopt, and with it he lassoes my wife and no doubt others and they come like mares. My wife likes one-stance men, she reads them from afar, and having deciphered their one stance feels humiliated and angry at her own limitations. My wife peels me an orange and dies with me vicariously.
The world drains me of atoms. I find it very tiring. Lazarus finds the world tiring goes round the world in black and in bright lights as a startling discovery.
Tell-Star persists with his verbal pedantry under which the worms in my head squirm and he sharpens his beak. What exactly do you mean by something, Dr Lazarus, or as a scientist at least could you define your terms?
Tell-Star picks his nose and masturbates in his unscreened existence but I remember nothing.
— Surely the nails, doctor, you must remember the lifting of the nails.
— The silence creaks. I collect silences, you know, one needs silence in which to read the nervous handwriting of the invisible coronas to distant galaxies. Couldn’t you give me a little silence?
— I understand, of course, but for the benefit of our viewers who can’t bear silence, couldn’t you hit a nail or two on the head for them to read in the sayings of the week? Could you define at least the nothing you remember?
I can’t remember my wife’s name or my wife’s lover’s name. He calls her nothing except you in the private banality of their untender story, and she calls him of course darling, so how can I remember? Of-course-darling retains his atmospheric density with that name, and he calls my wife nothing as he makes love to her but names, what do names matter? I shall call him Stance or something. I remember … oh yes? What, for instance? The silence in which he makes love to her, this one will add to my collection with his grunts, grimaces, snorts and body-odours, say something nice, she begs at the quick afterwards unsatisfied, you make love well, she bargains. It takes two to make love, he concedes a back-handed compliment with a slap on her buttock to his own satisfaction only and I remember Something. Yes, what, for instance, could you define your terms?
The world cocks its giant ear, twisting and swivelling it about. I remember, yes, what, a flash, a name, yes doctor, what name? Total darkness. Jonas. Black Jonas and his trumpet.
Lazarus says he saw Black Jonas delete check Ole Black Joe check must mean Joshua at Jericho flashes round the world and the walls come tumbling down. The walls around the crater grin like asses’ jaws and crumble.
— My dear chap, says Stance, I don’t blame you in the least. After an experience like that you should rest, get away from it all. Why don’t you take a trip? I can fix it for you in a jiffy.
— How do you know, says my wife on the quick verbal uptake for lack of deeper satisfaction, that he wants to travel in a jiffy?
Laugh, I thought I’d died.
— So you saw Joshua, says Stance in his best interested voice which amounts to a casual shrug.
— How very odd, says his wife. I can’t remember her name either. What did he do?
— He played on his trumpet.
— Really?
— No, not Really.
— Don’t laugh at us, darling, we really want to know. I mean, in time of course. When you’ve rested, it will all come back to you. Things do.
Lazarus mocks the world with Joshua and his trumpet goes round the world in black and in bright lights. I watch myself in my wheel-chair watching the world through a rounded screen. Fifteen thousand for my exclusive story.
Fifteen thousand million miles of no story in the psychotic handwriting of diffuse turbulent gas and ionized hydrogen on a small screen.
— I’ll fix it in a trice. How do you know, says my wife repeat performance. I wish I could remember her name. Everyone has a name although he calls her nothing in the private banality of their untender story. I have a name and no story. I only want a little silence.
— And you shall have it, darling. I’ll take you to Bermuda. Fifteen thousand! Or — you can go by yourself if you prefer.
— Where the remote Bermudas ride, Stance quips happily and he rides my wife already in the nearby remoteness of his ulterior motive which I read like the distant stars.
His wife can’t hope for an eternal quadrangle from me. I suppose she also has a name, everyone has, but I feel sick so please don’t bombard me with your particles of anxiety and you kindly stop puffing your cigar-shape at me.