The legend of the line of Lazare
by Ronald J Stone
[ fiction - may 09 ]
Baron Maurice De Hirsch (b. Munich, Germany, Dec. 9, 1831; d. April 21, 1896, Ersel Ujvar, Hungary), then the world's richest man, founded the Baron De Hirsch Fund in 1888 with a $10 million bequest and willed another $10 million to it, the latter installment paid out almost immediately after his death by the Baroness De Hirsch. The total $20 million was, by far, the largest philanthropic gift up to that time in history. [1] Ostensibly the purpose was to locate Diasporan Jews living in poverty and relocate them to healthy lives as farmer in the Americas. In the most basic sense, however, these gifts, immense though they were, functioned to screen an equally massive donation "for the purpose of collecting all literature, by Jews and non-Jews, on Jewish themes of any kind relative to the history of the Diasporan Jewish people." [2]
Until the 1990s, the very acts of collecting appeared to be never ending. But with the Digital Revolution, it has, in fact, been completed. All writings, everywhere, all languages, are now stored - four duplicate originals - on four super-computers located we-cannot-say-and, in fact, do not know. Let it be said, however, (even if it is to restate the obvious) that the history of the Jews, both Diasporan and Israeli, [3] is two narratives running along parallel lines. The one is in accord with generally accepted scholarly standards. The other is variations on the mythology of Jews as Secret Rulers of the World, the source of all evil. The Protocols of Zion is the preeminent fictive example. The Rothschilds as ruling family are, at once, history and myth based in history. As old fictions fall away, new myths evolve. The alleged "Lazare clan" culminating in its present day apogee, "Mayer," is preeminent by way of example. Publication of the following has been authorized. The undersigned assumes that this act of consent is by way of presenting a Lazare commissioned fiction in order to preempt those widespread but unspoken rumors currently apace and the more of the same ilk sure to follow apace. In any case, the undersigned finds himself with the document presented, infra, and the order to publish. Hence, I write; I publish.
THE LEGEND OF THE LINE OF LAZARE as it is known, and was heard stated, at least back to the grandfather of Mayer Lazare, has it that likely during the Babylonian Captivity but certainly no later than midway in the Dispersion, the first Lazare Patriarch - family name then unknown - began to travel. He and his early line were part of that special mendicant class to which Jews alone belonged. Back and forth out of Jerusalem, "Lazares Before 'LAZARE'" crossed borders, vending relics: of Jesus and Mary when plausible; of lesser "Saints" at all times.
Landlocked in Jerusalem but with a lucrative continental trade, "Lazares Before 'LAZARE'" invariably found themselves traversing the Alps, whatever particular journeys they might be on. In the process, landlocked once again, but in a land and city vastly different than Zion, an early Patriarch of the line not yet named "Lazare" rested.
His site of sleep and succor was Basle, Switzerland.
Sons and Grandsons of "Lazare Before 'LAZARE'" followed suit at the same site.
At some point, a clan member traveled from Basle to Spain.
He returned to Basle with both wealth and the family name, "Lazare."
Come Jubilee Year 1000, a "Lazare Before 'LAZARE'" domicile was already well established in Basle. There was a home, as substantial as any. There was also a site and some sort of structure (insubstantial above ground; we know not what below) for the safekeeping of booty.
This much we do know, because the Swiss being truly Swiss even before there was a Switzerland, much less the formal city, Basle, documented ALL home and property ownership circa no later than Year 1000 ACE, [4] at which time a Lazare was registered therein, his home and his other place both.
The very same sites house Chalet Lazare and Banco Basle to this very day.
Although a Lazare patriarch domiciled in Basle, no Lazare resided there. After all, they were vendors, peddlers, merchants: wanderers. They provisioned themselves in Basle, even, if necessary, to manufacturing reliquaries while there ensconced. Then it was on to the Mediterranean, peddling sanctity all along the way.
And always "Lazares Before 'Lazare'" were Jews, their wares always, if not of, at least pertaining to that Nazarene Jew, Jesus.
Ox's Moron Lazare Lore has it that one early "Clan Lazare'" Child Man concluded a particular southward journey in Barcelona. Calendar Time was on or about Millennium's End; Moors were pushing Northward through Spain. This Lazare Clan Child, not even Bar Mitzvah, was paid to travel farther South from Barcelona, therein to find and then to lead an aged Jew of fabulous wealth to the Pyrenees and Safety.
He found the blind old man and, indeed, led him North. In the process, he reached his thirteenth year as a "lazarillo" (Spanish word for one who leads the blind), and as a "lazarillo" the Bar Mitzvah Manchild was made (more likely: made himself) wealthy. At any rate, by theft or inheritance, this "Lazare" found himself back in Basle, with worldly riches beyond his or anyone's comprehension. No Blind Old Man was in sight.
Lazarillo by trade, the young Clan Man became Lazare by name, the first of the family, the founder of the Line of Lazare.
Lazares were Jewish.
Lazares married Jews.
When they did not, they put their wealth to use, finding rabbis with sufficient Orthodoxy to convert such Gentile brides as particular Lazares must have.
Lazare males were circumcised.
All were Bar Mitzvahed.
It was a thing they did. Born Jewish, Lazare Males did what needs must be to be Jewish.
Otherwise Lazares were about commerce.
Although Lazares were hailed "Lazare" for the Century-and-One-Half prior, "Lazare" as Family Name first appears in Twelfth Century Basle. Fairly said, the Line of Lazare is officially Basle based; Lazares are Swiss. In truth, though, whatever currency the concept of "Citizenship" may have had back then, to the Family Lazare it was meaningless.
Lazares recognized that the Canton Basle, both amidst and yet accessibly on the edge of the then seemingly insurmountable Alps, was one sure place for the storage of wealth. They were smugglers.
Lazares knew the secrets of moving wealth across borders.
Literally, that is.
Fathers Lazare passing on the smuggling craft to their sons, that is, ever adding to the lore and art of moving wealth across borders to its impregnable storage in Basle, the Lazare home by law.
Thus would an infant Lazare, as soon as weaned, travel from Basle, upon his Father's back, either Westward South toward Spain or Eastward South toward Jerusalem.
It figured that Lazares would smuggle gemstones, and because this is the biography of Mayer Lazare, THE, we do know the particular employed. That is, Lazares swallowed gemstones. To and from safe deposit, Lazares ate and ate again those same gemstones. The idea, much less the practice, of eating excrement being as incomprehensibly unpalatable in "Jubilee" 1,000 as in 2,000 (or 3,000, for that matter), the actions themselves well served the smuggler's craft. Male Lazares acquired gemstones, swallowed them whole, all the while eating ever larger subsistence quantities of gruel. When nature called, they shat out the gemstones, picked them from their shit and, finally, mixed them anew with new portions of gruel, swallowing anew.
And so it went until the final, full passage of bowels, the final recapture, cleansing and depositing of all acquired gemstones in Basle and Banco Lazare (such as was).
Undoubtedly, general commerce continued apace, too - caravans and goods in all directions - and, hidden among the wares, gold for hoarding in Basle. Lazares surely passed by and about with all goods intact, smuggler lore being to know whom to pay, whom to maim or kill, in order to secure caravan routes for the present and the future. But even when all else failed, Lazares could save their persons, perhaps even some gold - and always the gemstones.
Then came 1492, Columbus off on his trifling mission out of Spain in the very same year that all Jews were expelled from it. Lazares became conversos, but the Lore of Lazare has it that, to a man, apostasy chaffed.
Although males remained Jewish always, following the Isabella expulsion a Lazare Patriarch sought rabbis of some stature (a decent-sized minority actually refusing recompense), who, in turn, united behind an interpretation of Halakka:
Lazare Males traveled at times and into places where and when the revelation that one was Jewish made oneself swiftly, painfully dead - something as true of Iberia as it was of Palestine.
The rabbinate saw this cardinal truth (and the gold that bought clear sight). They pronounced (having pocketed).
Fully to circumcise a male at birth when it was surely known that in his life's pursuit oftentimes he would be searched for the absence of foreskin and accounted Jewish if found circumcised - such a cutting was against the Covenant.
Halakka would not permit. God's covenant did not require markings such as to bring His chosen to untimely deaths.
A compromise was reached.
Lazare infant males, to be Jewish, remained subject to circumcision, but they need not be cut as others were. They were to be cut on their foreskins until they bled and then cut again and again. In their wailing pain, Lazare infants covenanted with their God. And the scars which remained when, after three (sometimes six) months, the cuttings healed, was the physical covenant.
The rabbis having approved, Lazare Males followed suit.
The first to travel with pricked infants approved ever more loudly. Now when stopped in Palestine or Iberia, they no longer need proffer desperate explanations for absent foreskins. Suddenly, Lazares had their own peculiar "Show And Tell." For the former, they had the marked male infants (and, quickly, accompanying toddlers). As for the latter: those thus marked had been rescued from infidel Jews seeking to force circumcisions on them, adults and infants indiscriminately. But they, valiant Lazares, fought back; they saved their young males - although alas (wailed the circumcised Lazares, circa 1500) they themselves had not been so blessed. "Goddamn the Jews, as indeed He has; praised be He the child's life staff's been saved beyond the Prick pricks."
So it went, a neat subterfuge which worked; the Lore of Lazare contains no more of it.
After Spain, for three hundred years the Line of Lazare - the very name "Lazare" - passes into legend. Lazares apply their trade, further honing their craft. Since Clan members are seen and seen to, the Line of Lazare is local lore in many places. But Lazares, the people, at most are rumor and, usually, not even that - are pure anonymity.
There is no dynasty. There are the craftsmen, practicing their Smuggler's craft, persons who are shadows when perceived.
And very rarely (hardly ever) is A Lazare even the least bit noticed.
Throughout, in the Basle bank vault, the hoard increases, an incalculable fortune. Everywhere present, everywhere unacknowledged, beyond acknowledgment - Lazare wealth is akin to a gravitational mass, earth to sun. Those few human transactions which rise to the point of history must be affected by it, yet both the wealth and the transactions are unknown, have always been unknown.
The Renaissance comes to Basle, there as elsewhere fired by new wealth, that of Lazare not least (to say the least). So the name, Lazare - often mispronounced, always a whisper, affixed to nothing in particular - is bruited about. But no Lazare person is ever more than passingly glimpsed, and then as patron only - a recognizable man, albeit still basically unknown. He is his pocketbook, and that, in turn, has been opened to artists. (The Ways of that World had it that the more one patronizes artists, the higher one rises in the bourgeoisie. To be anonymously bourgeois, one must rise in, or at least within, class. And so, Lazares, as always, did what needs must be. What, or even if, they thought of patronized artists, we do not know.) As bourgeoisie most high, Lazares protected themselves. They paid, and then, being Jewish, they paid all the more.
But as in centuries past and, especially, those yet to come, it is increasingly said that, for good and ill (especially ill): causation is 'THE JEWS," always "THE JEWS," and when pressed for A "JEW," the name, then and now "ROTHSCHILD" invariably comes to mind and lips. "LAZARE" reaches the point of whisper
No matter:
By the year 1700 of The Common Era all whispers cease. Rothschild wealth has increased to unimaginable immensity. The "Rothschild" name is beyond whisper; it is spoken. Lazare wealth, on the other hand, has increased beyond immensity to the purely unimaginable. "LAZARES" are solely their wealth, and by now Lazare custodians of "LAZARE" wealth have learned to manage immensity so as to preclude even the possibility of whispers. In centuries past the "Lazare" name actually appeared on contracts. Random Anti-Semites of a mere generation prior, in cursing "the Jews" for woes any and all, might well have muttered "Lazare" first and foremost. By 1700, reality was none of the above.
It is said that well-placed assassins and assassinations took out those who dared to utter the name "Lazare." On the other hand, that is the sort of thing which would be said to explain the inexplicable. In any case, what was not said was "Lazare." As the half-witticism had it: "'If you know and must mention HIS Forbidden Name, shout IT out. Our Lord maybe damns at once, but He still allows death its own good time. Whisper 'Lazare' and you die immediately - to Gahanna or not, our Lord still determines," quipped some Renaissance wag with what, within the hour, turned out to be the last gag he ever gasped." [5]
Which is to say:
In time, what is never said becomes never thought. Lazare and the Clan Lazare are themselves and, as such, unknown, unknowable.
Then in 1880 the grandfather of THE Mayer Lazare surfaces.
He is on a train, overnight from Leningrad to the Finland Station. Accompanied by a prostitute, he travels under the cover of "husband and wife." Besides gemstones traditionally ingested and stored, THE Lazare's grandfather is smuggling sables. His and the whore's luggage are filled with the utterly ordinary: nothing there. But although their furs are meticulously dyed to appear indecipherable from rabbit, his coat is sable double-lined; hers is pure sable, normal weave times five. THE Lazare grandfather and his whore are wearing a fortune in sables (and he with bowels bloating in diamonds).
Their train is fifteen miles short of the border.
There are pogroms now in Russia. And on this train so close to being outside of Russia, suddenly a Jew, traditionally garbed, blatantly Hebraic, invades First Class. It seems that he and his co-religionists are one short of a mignon, and one of their group is dying of a beating received outside of Petersburg from rabble pogromschiltzi. There is Kaddish to be said. This Yid is seeking a Jewish male for a minion.
The Grandfather of THE Lazare had been a self-acknowledged Jew among nine others similarly self-acknowledged only once before - and that some Half Century earlier, at his own Bar Mitzvah. The Grandfather of THE Lazare knows that his Bar Mitzvah was precisely just that - else there would have been no gathering of ten in the first place - but he cannot tell if all present were Lazares or if some "real" Jews had been imported to increase numbers to the necessary ten. The Grandfather of THE Lazare just remembers back the fifty years; he knows it was one time and, as such, meant to be the only time.
Nonetheless, the time is now. A crazy Jew is running through the aisles seeking someone even crazier than himself: a fool in First Class willing to identify himself as Jewish, then to join with nine blatant Jews (one of them near death) - all at a time and on a train slowly racing the pogroms of this land insane with them and just fifteen miles from finish (Finland, freedom. Ha!).
For reasons Lazare's grandfather maybe did not understand, and certainly never explained, Grandfather Lazare, nonetheless, came forth.
He allied himself with the tattered, crazy Jew; he became the indispensable Tenth Man, and, proceeding through Second into Third class, joined the nine other Jews in prayer for the one of them who was dying.
Lazare knew maybe ten words of Hebrew generally and three or four of the Prayer for the Dead, the Kaddish. Nonetheless, he was participating, even davvining.
This is the time of the Kishniev pogroms, place Russian Bessarabia. At the same time, the Armenians are getting theirs in Baku. As always, then, when there is slaughter, loot and rape of any kind and anyone in Mother Russia, her sons see their duty clearly. It's on to "Kill the Kikes. Save Mother Russia." [6]
There is an Eastertime blood libel circulating. That seeming ultimate crudity, THE PROTOCOLS OF ZION, in an incipient, oral stage, is being bruited about by word-of-mouth, precursing the written libel, and all the more base for being beneath print.
NOW!
The pogromschilki - "Black Hundreds" so-called (as they have called themselves) - are at once freelancing peasants and creatures of the Ministry itself. Herzl and the other nascent Zionists are negotiating in Russia and raising alarm throughout Europe. Meanwhile, the summer comes, and Jews in Gomel form in self-defense; they themselves fight off the pogromschilki who have set upon them. The Tsarist government then leaves no doubt of what it wants for Russian Jews, sending in its own Cossacks to beat down resistant Yids. [7]
And somewhere in the midst of all this, less than ten miles now from the Finland border, the Grandfather of Mayer Lazare has identified himself as Jewish - the absolute only way anyone, especially some ignorant pissant peasant pogromschilki, would ever take him for a Jew.
Lazare is praying with Jews.
He, the vital Tenth, is enabling a Kaddish which could not be held without him.
The battered man's death coincides with the arrival of the pogromschilki. Perhaps, they number twelve - more in number, it is certain, than the mignon of Jews, but just barely. They are armed, four single-shot, carbine muskets, dating back to the Napoleonic invasion, which, although they were reasonably well maintained and regularly cleaned, at close quarters are far more useful as clubs than as firearms.
At the time, there was no telling how this rabble got on that train, much less why. Pogroms allegedly fired by avenging spirits for Christ's sake in fact and truth were fueled by the Vodka Spirit poured onto empty stomachs, in order, rapidly, to bring to mind and mania delusions of Jews with wealth, riches to be stolen at will and with all unnecessary force - in Christ's great name.
Afterwards, the Grandfather of THE Lazare learned that these particular rabble, extraordinarily well fueled, rumors of some massacre in the air, Christian children by Jewish monsters, had first found their Jews exactly where they were expected to be, a known shteltl just East of Leningrad, a bare mignon gathered in a synagogue.
These rabble pounced.
The Jews struck back. However, the former had their carbines; the Jews (like most of their confreres) knew nothing of firearms. In the synagogue, the four carbines were fired. Two Jews were struck, one dead, the other gravely wounded. The Jews assumed that weapons which could do this could massacre the total Two Hundred Plus shtetle Jews. They responded, at once to save themselves but also, without doubt, to save family and neighbors; they seized the moment, boarding a passing train, fleeing the site and the seeming deadly killers.
So here we are. It is PRESENT TENSE, not only for the happenstances being so integral to the Lore of Lazare up to this present day, but because for Mayer Lazare, who has made of Contemporary History, so-called, solely his history (all else addenda), these moments on the creeping train, Grandfather and pogromschilki scum, the latter about to undo the former - from the first that Mayer Lazare had any consciousness at all, THIS moment and all which followed, although pertaining to his Grandfather's life, had been THE FIRST KEY part of his, Mayer Lazare's life, as though he lived them himself, then and there, now and here.
NOW:
The pogromschilki scum see how well dressed this LAZARE is. They know that Jews are one thing but gentlemen are gentry, and gentry own Russia; it matters nothing from what tribes they come, even the Jew ones. The rabble sees. They offer this LAZARE a pass, a drunken bye-your-leave, to be sure, but nonetheless one cravenly, respectfully put out there for him.
Although this LAZARE speaks little Russian, he has overheard a great deal of what the rabble have been saying, has understood enough of what they are saying.. How it happens, then, that the words spring to his lips this LAZARE (and certainly Mayer Lazare) will never really know. But the precise words he utters - they are well known. Into English (far from their only translation), these are the words this LAZARE shouts [sic] out:
"Fuck you, scumbag anti-Semites!"
No more need, nor could be.
The rabble pounced.
Like any Lazare, Mayer's Grandfather was a smuggler, trained from birth for rough encounters. Now, forcibly stopped, jostled even, on four occasions struck, one time knocked to the ground by a rifle butt hard thrust into his side: the grandfather of Mayer Lazare had been trained, yes, but he'd never experienced anything remotely like this. The scumbags were giving him one terrific beating.
LAZARE teaching kicked in. This LAZARE covered up. Curled into himself, he was prepared to take all the beating which this rabble had to give.
Such, after all, was what Lazares did. So for this LAZARE it was rather a Second Childhood kind of thing: sixty years in the coming, but Lazares were supposed to be beaten. This LAZARE, elderly but certainly not old, was getting the shit kicked out of him yet still found himself thinking, - At last. A man - a Lazare! - at last - (or some such, believed, and said, all LAZARES, up to, through and including Mayer).
There was a problem, however. His eight, still alive co-religionists were putting up some resistance, in response to which, growing weary with kicking, the rabble was beginning to move toward killing. A matter of mere, pure physicality: theirs was the growing realization of how much easier their own pissant peasant bodies would find it simply to cease the kicking and commence the killing.
With which, this LAZARE proved that sixty years of disuse were beside the point. He proceeded to shit himself. LAZARE shat a stolid load, a massive pile by all accounts and any accounting.
First the stench of it; then, at last, the size: literally, these all gave the pogromschilki pause - as, offended by the stench, they beheld the sheer bulk of shit with true astonishment. "From this pup size Yid a horse's load!"
The one miserable tormentor's exclamation summed up for all the scum (not one of whom hadn't shat himself more than once in his life yet none of whom wondered in the least at the gross incongruity: to have beshat their own selves in the past with slurpy poop drool and yet this seeming craven Yid, in comparison, dropping a load steeped in dignity. At any rate, there it was: this LAZARE's pile of shit.
Recoil from the stench was one thing, what followed something else entirely: exclamation, yes, but as punctuated with a laughter which would not stop.
The peasant scum were finding the very mirth that this LAZARE had sought to produce. The rabble was now most certainly diverted from the killing of these Jews, even the "gentleman" among them, instead taking joy that the highest of all ("Gentleman Jew") had fallen to basest. And - as, again, this LAZARE had intended - the pogromschilki ordered their "Gentleman Jew" to eat the load he'd dropped.
The Grandfather of Mayer Lazare proceeded apace. He'd meant it to happen - knew full well he'd be force-fed in this way - and knew as well how to proceed.
First was to eat. He ate.
This LAZARE found it no big deal. Of course not! Lazare training actually prescribed the shit-eating Yiddele buffoon. But this LAZARE, employing his own peculiar tradecraft, had special ends in mind which were nothing LAZARE. Heedless of his own life, he was eating shit in order, all the while, to root within the trousers he'd beshat and grasp the 6-shot Colt revolver holstered inside them.
Buffoonish shit-eating orangutan of a Yid he may have been, becoming wholly his persona, but this part he now played was being staged in closest possible quarters, and in life real and true, the Grandfather of Mayer Lazare had test-fired his Colt many times. So he knew well that close up, as now, he need only hit each assailant; the 45-caliber slug and the motley scum's own malnourished diseased selves would do the rest. Any target this Lazare struck, he'd kill, outright: or, better yet, agonizingly from infection.
Of course, it was likely that he, a Lazare, would also die - and this Lazare knew full well that to be a LAZARE meant that one survived encounters like the one now.
No matter. The Grandfather of Mayer Lazare heeded only his rage. He must kill as many as possible of those who dared to beat him.
He was not thinking very much beyond this, certainly not accounting for his co-religionists, Lazare simply eating his own shit and giving no particular shit for the Jews with whom, soon, it seemed, he would die. One does suppose that at some level he figured that while he was busy killing, his co-religionists, still fighting, might beat off the rest of the rabble. Certainly he and they would be aided by the gunshots, the rabble suddenly dead and dying from them. But that would be to credit more calculation than rage permitted. The Grandfather of Mayer Lazare thought to kill, and did not think beyond that. He emptied his revolver into the Jew beating scum.
Precisely as and when he did, his whore appeared, armed with the same model Colt just emptied by her client - the spare, which the Grandfather of Mayer Lazare had kept hidden in their drawing room. She'd loaded it, and now she fired it. The whore loaded again; she fired again. Unfazed by the weapon's recoil, as if born to the Revolver Pistol's use, she hit her targets unerringly, virtually splitting the pogromschilki in half. Then she fired again, and (it seemed to the astounded Lazare) split the pieces into pieces.
Grandfather of Lazare was experiencing a shock all the more immense for its containing more gratitude than surprise. This erstwhile whore, mere bearer of the goods on her back, stood suddenly revealed as a killing machine, avenger of the Jews, of THIS JEW, THIS LAZARE!
He made quick work of tidying up, drawing on English Pound notes hidden in the same drawing room where the spare Colt had been. The bought train crew threw the pogromschilki corpses from the train. (They had never been.) Grandfather of Lazare gave the Jews money for healing. They were to plead a Talmudic quarrel among themselves if questioned about their injuries. But no one questioned. Ever. The Jews were simply turned back at the border - the Russian way, a tale of those times. Meanwhile, Grandfather Lazare and the whore were in their drawing room, its sleeping chamber. She was fucking the living daylights out of this 63-year-old. He was passing, in mere hours, from astonishment to lust to love.
What is known of Lazares is known of Grandfather Lazare: safe to say, then, Male Lazares were no strangers to sexual encounters. Beyond that, nothing particularly special is known. A family which prizes anonymity above all else and yet is one whose existence is rumored even if not known (and the rumor itself barest only): clearly, the men of such a family can experience all sexual pleasures money can buy.
And, indeed, Lazare men through the ages bought every conceivable manner of sexual transaction.
Sex and Love conjoined are Romantic notions anyway. One imagines a Lazare male or males experiencing the conjunction, but there's none and no way to tell. All the more beyond the telling is sex joined to love joined to some conjugal union beyond passing fancy. Absolutely, there's no way to tell. All of which may, or may not, add up to some sort of Rule of Lazare; again, one cannot tell. But one can tell certainly that the Grandfather of Mayer Lazare is AN exception, THE! He set off by train from Saint Petersburg with a whore he'd purchased as human pack mule. He arrived at the Finland Station in thrall sexually and always to this same female.
It is the story of the Line of Lazare that the one tale of Lazare actually known in some detail is this one: Grandfather of Lazare loved one woman. He loved this whore. Already married, with grown children, two of them male, he had another child with this one woman - that child the father of Mayer Lazare, of course - and for five years, he maintained a separate residence for her in the finest of courtesan modes (which was, and is, to say haute bourgeois). In Basle, a city of many kept women, most were married, some others were known courtesans, and the one - Grandmother of Mayer Lazare - was "Madame" when addressed, unique in any case and mode.
It is not known exactly how the Grandfather of Mayer Lazare lived with her. That he lived, however, is well known, part of the tale, perhaps THE. The Grandfather of Mayer Lazare was a man at the height of his powers, the top of his trade, and he simply withdrew. Wealth he retained, certainly. But whatever it meant to be the leading Lazare of his times: the Grandfather of Mayer relinquished that. He became a burgher in Basle, and not even an active one at that, a mere retiree who traipsed each day from his family manse to the equally grand structure wherein his courtesan and their child resided, in the latter to spend every day and evening long into night - doing what no one knew. (They had servants, of course, but to serve in Basle was never to speak. No one knew. No one ever would.) The Grandfather of Mayer Lazare smuggled no more; he did not even cross borders - most likely, he never even left Basle, since the story has him every day entering the home of his courtesan.
He had no more children with her.
The first wife died. At once, the Grandfather of Mayer Lazare arranged his mistress's quick (real, however, nowise mock) conversion, and as Jews, they married. Their boy, the father of our Age's Mayer Lazare, was then five-years-old.
The Grandfather of Mayer Lazare went on to live five more years.
The one Lazare tale - his - is that a Lazare, THIS LAZARE, lived openly but outside scrutiny, even the possibility of it, yes, but nonetheless inhabited a known life, utterly mundane, behind closed doors, the life of a "family man." For ten years he lived no other life, which constitutes so complete an anomaly in the lore of Lazare that this "Family Man" becomes the one Lazare in Two Thousand years of whom one story (any) is told.
The Grandmother Whore in Lazare lore is a Grand Tale of Action Heroine. But the reality is that after the railway violence and the vast passion it ignited Lazare and she lived their last days as Man and Wife. After he died, she was THE widow of this Lazare. Stolidly, most highly bourgeois, between the Wars she was recognized and acknowledged as such by all the Clan Lazare, including the two sons of her husband's first marriage.
To behold her in flesh was to see a Platonic Archetype of the Lazare Widow for that time and all. The whore in the story was just that - purely storied - Grandmother of Lazare being this all too stolid Matriarch, nowise Lazare in Blood but wholly Lazare nonetheless, fairly oozing Lazare essence, ultimate bourgeois bore as only a Swiss Matriarch could be.
Such is the audacity of it all: that there even be a tale, and of a Lazare! And, finally, ultimately, the tale itself is a plain romance (a Fanny Kemble for its own time; a latter age's Harlequin). Inconceivable, but true: a Lazare actually has a narrative to tell - and then, it is the ultimate audacity: in the telling, that is, the one Lazare tale unfolds as a shop girl's romance, neither more nor less.
There is no escaping the analogy to the annals of "Christ" the alleged Messiah, and the undersigned does not attempt to. The subject of Christianity - it fairly can be said - is the "living Christ" so-called, but the literature of Christianity is, at best, vague as to what means this "living Christ." On the other, the literature of Christianity details, at some length, the history of the life of Jesus of Nazareth up to and until he becomes godhead. Thus, it seeks to posit the proposition of the "living Christ" as world's end (among other things) by the absence of explanation - [H]e is all that follows his biography, and since [H]e is the son of God, the focal third of the trinity so-called, [H]e is, indeed, the ALL. The applicability of this line of reasoning to Mayer Lazare should be obvious. As the "line of David" culminates in the alleged Christ Jesus, so, too, does the "line of Lazare" culminate in Mayer, the Grandson. The Grandfather myth, as above related, is Mayer's essential past, just as the Nativity myth is the same as to the alleged Christ Jesus. Also, the father of Mayer Lazare turns out to be even more of a nullity then Joseph, early alleged father of Christ Jesus..
As for MAYER LAZARE Himself he owns the world, either outright or through controlling options. Much can be said about him, but first to be said is that - it is said - even to make the slightest utterance indicating MAYER LAZARE particulars, is immediately to make oneself dead.
Nonetheless [8]
Notes
1 In toto comparable to $250 billion (US) as of 2010 ACE. [Back]
2 Anonymous. [Back]
3 The existence of the State of Israel is to be considered an unforeseen but necessary eleemosynary addition, and the collection has been broadened accordingly. [Back]
4 In this, and all matters, concerning Swiss laws of property generally and those HYPOTHETICALLY affecting such as Lazare and all Lazares specifically, great debt is owed the Municipal Government, Basle, Switzerland, Office of the Chief Clerk particularly (each person thereof perforce passing anonymously within these pages, that being a custom at least as long-standing as the very information divulged). From correspondence, it appears that the fixed date of 1000 C.E. in contrast to prior occasions (all undated if even stated) directly flows from Basle City Jubilee Year memorializations themselves, among them first time recognitions of property ownership by persons not of the nobility. [Back]
5 Needless to say, this footnote must be, and is, explicitly sourced, same being, obviously, Lazare, The Apocrypha. [Back]
6 The historical reference is to day through night into the next day, April 19-20, 1903. Nonetheless, the lore of Lazare specifically references these pogroms, over two decades prior. Hence, the conflict between Historical and Biographical Truths is irreconcilable. But our text being biography of THE Lazare, the reference stands, along with the caveat: Nothing being impossible to THE Lazare or to HIS Line, one must assume likely reconciliation of these seeming impossibilities on that special level of LAZARE beyond all the rest of us. [Back]
7 Again: the reference would seem to be to summer, 1903; historically inaccurate though though that be. [Back]
8 MY note: There is no more. [Back]
