THE SEVENTH GAME

THE SEVENTH GAME

  A Play in Three Acts

 "The worst thing that can happen to a man

 is not to die once,

 but to keep waking up."

 — Fragment, author unknown

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

 * ARMIN:   Fifteen years old. Cannot sleep. The wound at the centre of the play.

* RAMZI:   Sharp-minded, skeptical, proud. He explains everything because he fears what cannot be explained.

* NAVID:  Dreamlike, perceptive, unsettlingly calm. He remembers things that have not yet happened.

* Note on Ramzi and Navid:  They are not friends who accompany Armin. They are the two irreconcilable halves of his interior life — his reason and his intuition — given bodies and voices. They cannot touch each other. Whenever they are about to agree, something in the play breaks.*

* THE OLD MAN:  A nocturnal wanderer. He speaks with the weariness of someone who has run out of deaths.

* THE BLIND MAN:  Present in every scene. He never speaks. He does not move unless the universe requires it. Whatever he would have said is spoken instead by others — by the Chorus, by characters who do not know they are speaking his words. He is the oldest form of witness.

* THE CHORUS OF THE SLEEPLESS: They do not act. They do not comment. They speak only what cannot otherwise be said, which is to say, they speak the Blind Man's silence. They should appear as ordinary people who simply cannot sleep: a woman in a housecoat, a man in work clothes, a child holding a glass of water.

* MOTHER:  Offstage. A voice that belongs to another world.

* THE GRAVEDIGGER:  He appears once. He knows exactly where he is.

* MARTHA OF BETHANY:  Sister of Lazarus. She has grown old trying to explain her brother to others.

* A PRIEST OF CYPRUS:  A man who needs Lazarus to be a symbol.

* A MONK OF PROVENCE:  A man who needs Lazarus to be a miracle.

* LAZARUS:  He speaks very little. He has learned that speech belongs to the living.

  A NOTE ON THE STAGING

This play does not occur in sequence. It occurs the way memory occurs: all at once, in layers, with the most recent things buried deepest.

The three parallel histories of Lazarus — Bethany, Cyprus, Provence — are not flashbacks. They are the same moment seen from different centuries. The chess game does not pause for them. The chess game continues underneath them, always.

The Blind Man should be visible in every scene, including the Lazarus tableaux. He was there too.

When the Chorus speaks, they speak together but not in unison — they stagger their words slightly, as if each of them arrived at the same thought by a different road.

The play should feel, by its end, as though it has always been happening.

 

ACT I

The Geography of Insomnia

 Scene I — The Window

A teenage bedroom. Every object slightly wrong in the way of dreams: the clock ticks too loudly, the moonlight enters at an impossible angle, the shadows do not correspond to anything visible.

ARMIN lies awake in bed, eyes open. He has the look of someone listening for a sound that stopped just before he entered the room.

RAMZI sits at a desk reading a physics textbook. He reads with aggressive confidence, as if daring the book to surprise him.

NAVID stands at the window. He is not looking outside. He is watching the window itself.

THE BLIND MAN stands downstage left. He will stand here, or somewhere equally impossible to ignore, for the rest of the play. His white cane rests against his palm. He does not move. 

THE CHORUS OF THE SLEEPLESS stands in a thin line upstage, barely visible. They breathe. 

RAMZI:  You sleep too much during the day. That's why.

ARMIN:  I don't sleep during the day.

 

RAMZI:  Then stop thinking. That's why.

NAVID:  Thinking is not the problem.

RAMZI:  Then what is?

NAVID:  Something keeps calling him.

RAMZI:  That sentence means nothing.

NAVID:  Most true sentences don't. At first.

 Silence. The clock. Then: 

 CHORUS:  Some people stop sleeping because they fear death.

A breath. Then: 

CHORUS:   Others stop sleeping because they suspect they have already died and no one has told them.

Armin sits up. He looks at the Chorus, but they have already gone still. 

MOTHER:    (offstage, from very far away)  Armin. Sleep.

ARMIN:   I'm trying.

NAVID:   No you aren't. You're waiting.

ARMIN:  or what?

NAVID: You'll know when it arrives. That's the only way to know.

RAMZI:  Ignore him.

 Armin rises. Opens the window. Cold air enters — visible, almost, the way cold air is in old paintings 

RAMZI:  You'll wake them.

NAVID:   He'll go anyway.

RAMZI:   I know. That's what I'm afraid of.

Armin climbs out. Ramzi does not follow. Navid follows without stepping — he is simply, suddenly, elsewhere.

The Blind Man lifts his cane one inch and sets it back down. This is the only acknowledgment. 

Blackout. 

 

Scene II — The Park

A neighborhood park under a single dying streetlight. A rusted swing moves in no wind. There is a stone bench that looks as if it has been waiting a long time for something specific.

THE OLD MAN walks in a slow, deliberate circle. He has been doing this for a long time. His path is worn into the earth, though this is not visible.

THE BLIND MAN sits on the stone bench. He is already here. 

ARMIN:   There. You see.

RAMZI:   An old man with insomnia. Possibly dementia.

NAVID:   No.

RAMZI:   You always say no before knowing anything.

NAVID:   And you always explain before understanding anything. It's a different problem.

RAMZI:   Those are the same problem.

NAVID: No. Explanation kills the thing it touches. Understanding leaves it alive.

  

The Old Man pauses. He places his hand on the bark of a tree. He holds it there — not to feel the tree, but to remember something the tree is keeping for him. 

ARMIN:   Why does he come every night?

RAMZI:   Habit. Habit is the scaffolding of the elderly.

NAVID:   Punishment.

ARMIN:   Punishment for what?

NAVID:   For surviving something that shouldn't have been survived.

The Chorus stirs, as if woken: 

CHORUS:   The dead do not haunt the living.

Pause. As if remembering more:

CHORUS:   What haunts the living are unfinished meanings. A word left out of a sentence. A door that was never opened. A death that did not stay.

The Old Man resumes walking. He passes close to Armin without seeing him, or without choosing to see him. He exits.

ARMIN:   I'll follow him again tomorrow.

RAMZI:   You've already decided.

ARMIN:  Yes.

RAMZI:   Then why do you tell us?

NAVID:   Because he's afraid. And fear wants a witness.

The Blind Man sits perfectly still. The swing has stopped moving.

Blackout 

---

 Scene III — The Cemetery

A moonlit cemetery. The gravestones do not look like stone — they look like people who have been standing very still for a very long time. The effect is not supernatural. It is simply accurate.

THE OLD MAN walks among them. He knows this place the way a man knows his own house in the dark.

He stops before a grave that has no name on it. The stone is not worn — it was always unmarked. This is a distinction

THE BLIND MAN stands near the cemetery gate, as if he were the gatekeeper, or the gate itself.

RAMZI:   This is unhinged behavior.

NAVID:   No. This is ritual. Ritual and unhinged behavior are opposites.

RAMZI:  Tell me the difference.

NAVID:   Ritual is repeated because it must be. Unhinged behavior is repeated because the person cannot stop.

RAMZI:   And which is this?

NAVID:   I don't know yet. That's why we're here.

The Old Man kneels before the unmarked grave. He does not pray. He simply kneels, as if gravity were stronger here. 

After a long moment: 

THE OLD MAN:   Not yet.

He is answering something no one else can hear. 

ARMIN:  (whispering) Whose grave is it?

RAMZI:   A wife, perhaps. A child.

NAVID:   Himself.

RAMZI:   That's impossible.

NAVID:  Is it?

A church bell. Distant. Striking an indeterminate hour — too many strokes to count, or not enough.

CHORUS:   There is a man who visits his own grave.

CHORUS:  He does it to remember the only moment in his life when time completely stopped and the world, briefly, made sense.

CHORUS:   He does it because he has been alive too long, and the grave is the last honest thing left.

The Old Man stands. He does not look toward Armin. He exits.

THE GRAVEDIGGER enters from the opposite side, carrying nothing, going nowhere in particular.

THE GRAVEDIGGER:   You're following him.

ARMIN:   Yes.

THE GRAVEDIGGER:   Don't follow a man to his grave and then be surprised by what you find.

He continues on. He exits. 

RAMZI:  What did that mean?

NAVID:   Everything it sounded like.

 Blackout 

ACT II

The Seven-Day Game

Scene I — The Fifth Night

The cemetery again. Armin stands before the Old Man — finally, after five nights of following, he has allowed himself to be seen

THE BLIND MAN stands between them. He is not in anyone's way. He is simply there, in the way that certain absences are there.

ARMIN:   Hello.

The Old Man turns. He turns the way mountains turn: slowly, with great internal shifting.

THE OLD MAN   You have followed me for five nights.

RAMZI:   Deny it.

NAVID:   Don't.

ARMIN:  Yes.

The Old Man studies him. It is the study of someone who has had a great deal of time to learn how to look at people.

THE OLD MAN:  Most stop after the second night.

ARMIN:   Why?

THE OLD MAN:   Because curiosity begins as an appetite. By the second night it has become an obligation. Obligations are easier to abandon.

ARMIN:   I don't abandon things.

THE OLD MAN:  No. You carry them until they become part of your body. I recognize the posture.

A pause. The swing, faintly, from somewhere.

ARMIN:   Do you play chess?

THE OLD MAN:   Badly.

RAMZI:   (to Armin)  That's a lie.

THE OLD MAN:   *(as if hearing Ramzi)* Tomorrow night. Bring a board.

He goes.

CHORUS:   Chess is the only game where both players begin with perfect equality and one of them must be destroyed.

CHORUS:  It is, in this way, the most honest description of any relationship.

Blackout.

Scene II — The Opening

The stone table in the park. A chessboard. It has been set up with great precision — the kind of precision that knows what it is doing. 

THE OLD MAN sits on one side. ARMIN on the other. RAMZI stands directly behind Armin, reading the board with narrowed eyes. NAVID stands slightly apart, watching the players rather than the pieces.

THE BLIND MAN stands at the edge of the lamplight. He is visible, and not. This is his natural condition.

THE OLD MAN:  White or black?

ARMIN:   White.

THE OLD MAN:   Everyone chooses white when they are young.

ARMIN:  Because white moves first.

THE OLD MAN:   Because white is the color of people who believe they are the ones who begin things.

The Old Man opens with a move that Ramzi does not recognize. This is, for Ramzi, a kind of violence.

RAMZI:   That opening is irrational. It violates every principle of center control.

NAVID:   Ancient things often appear irrational. That's how you know they predate our explanations.

ARMIN:  I've never seen that move.

THE OLD MAN:   Not many openings survive two thousand years.

RAMZI:   No opening is two thousand years old. Chess in its modern form—

THE OLD MAN:   (calmly) The game is older than its rules.

Silence. Ramzi closes his mouth. 

ARMIN:   Why do you come to the cemetery every night?

THE OLD MAN:   Your move.

Armin moves a pawn. 

THE OLD MAN:  I come because memory requires maintenance. Like a garden.

ARMIN:   But whose grave is it?

THE OLD MAN:  (moving a piece) There are questions I will answer after I have beaten you. To give you something to look forward to.

RAMZI:  Arrogance.

NAVID:   Honesty. The difference matters.

The Chorus, quietly, as the game continues:

CHORUS:   Every chess game is secretly a conversation about time. The opening is youth: full of theory, full of hope. The middle game is life: plans collide with other plans, and something entirely unplanned emerges. The endgame is what remains when everything unessential has been captured.

The lights dim slightly. The chess game continues beneath the following scenes — it does not stop. It never stops.

Blackout.

Scene III — The Three Testimonies

What follows is not a sequence. It is a simultaneity. All three of the following tableaux exist at the same time, in different parts of the stage — or in the same part, layered. The chess game is visible beneath all of them, a ghost of movement. The Blind Man is present in all of them. 

When Lazarus speaks, he speaks with the Old Man's voice. This is not an accident. 

 Tableau I — Bethany

MARTHA stands in bright light. She is old now — older than she expected to become. Beside her, partially visible: LAZARUS. He is looking at something slightly above and to the left of wherever anyone is standing.

Villagers crowd the edges. Their faces are afraid in the particular way of people who have witnessed something they did not ask to witness.

MARTHA:   (to the villagers, practiced, tired)  He was dead. He was dead four days. You saw him. I don't know how to say it more plainly than that.

VILLAGER 1:   What did it look like? Death?

LAZARUS:   (not looking at them)  Quiet.

VILLAGER 2:  Did you see God?

LAZARUS:  No.

VILLAGER 2:   Did you see anything?

Long pause.

LAZARUS:   I remember—

He stops.

No.

VILLAGER 1:  Then why are you afraid? You should be joyful. You should be—

LAZARUS:  Because returning was worse.

MARTHA:  (quietly, to herself)  He hasn't been right since. I mean — he is alive. But some part of him argues with it constantly.

VILLAGER 3:  What does he want?

MARTHA:   To be allowed to be ordinary. They won't let him.

She looks at Lazarus. He is somewhere else.

CHORUS:   Miracles do not end. They compound. The man who is raised from the dead must spend the rest of his life being the man who was raised from the dead. He becomes the evidence of his own miracle. He is not permitted to age, to fail, to doubt, to be simply tired.

 Tableau II — Cyprus

A Byzantine chapel. The PRIEST stands with elaborate vestments, holding robes out toward LAZARUS, who stands before him in plain clothes, looking as though he would prefer the plain clothes.

PRIEST:   The people of Kition need a bishop. God has preserved you for a purpose.

LAZARUS:   I was a man who was dead. I'm still not certain what I am now.

PRIEST:   You are proof that death is not final. The people need that. Especially now.

LAZARUS:   People always need that. Especially now. In every century, it is especially now.

PRIEST:   Then you understand why—

 LAZARUS:   I understand that you need me to be a symbol. I am asking whether that is what I am.

PRIEST:   What else would you be?

LAZARUS:   (very quietly)  A man who cannot sleep. Who wakes at three in the morning certain that something is wrong, though he cannot say what. Who has lived long enough to know that certainty and truth have almost no relationship to each other.

He takes the robes.

LAZARUS:   But yes. I'll be your bishop. I have nothing else to do with the time.

CHORUS:  After the miracle, the man was no longer permitted to be uncertain. Uncertainty is human. He had been declared something more. The robes were beautiful. He wore them for thirty years and they never felt like his.

 Tableau III — Provence

A storm. Or the memory of a storm. A small boat, no oars, no sails, too full of people. The MONK stands apart, narrating, as if the story is already over and he is the one charged with remembering it.

MONK: They put him in a boat. His sisters with him. No oars. This was the Romans' refinement: not execution, but abandonment. Let the sea decide.

LAZARUS stands in the boat. He looks at the water with an expression that is difficult to read — not fear, not peace. Something that has no common name.

MONK:   The sea brought them to shore. In the south of what would become France. Scholars argue about the harbor. They always argue about the harbor and never about what it means that the sea refused to take him.

LAZARUS:    (to the water)  Again.

It is not a complaint. It is simply an observation.

MONK:  Some men survive because heaven protects them.

He pauses. Then:

MONK:   Others survive because even death has grown tired of the argument.

CHORUS:   He lived thirty years as bishop. He died — the second time, the last time, the ordinary time — quietly, of age, in a city that did not know what to do with him while he was alive and knew exactly what to do with him once he was safely dead.

CHORUS:   They built churches. They created pilgrimage routes. They declared him a saint.

CHORUS:   None of this would have been possible if he had simply stayed dead.

The three tableaux dissolve. The chess game reasserts itself, solid and present.

Blackout.

Scene IV — The Middle Game

The chess game. Several nights have passed — there is a sense of compressed time, of many moves having occurred in a space that held only a few.

The Old Man and Armin play. Ramzi is agitated. Navid is very still.

ARMIN:   You knew what I would do.

THE OLD MAN:   I have played many people.

ARMIN:   You knew before I did.

THE OLD MAN:  The young play toward hope. They move their pieces forward. They believe the center can be held.

RAMZI:  The center can be held. Positionally—

THE OLD MAN:   (as if Ramzi had not spoken)  In life as in chess, the center is an illusion that sustains you long enough to learn that it was an illusion. By then you have developed your pieces.

ARMIN:   And then what?

THE OLD MAN:   Then you stop needing the center.

He moves a piece. Ramzi looks at it. His expression shifts — something between admiration and distress.

RAMZI:   (very quietly, to Navid)  He's been preparing that for four games.

NAVID:   Yes.

RAMZI   That's—

NAVID:   Patience.

RAMZI:  Inhuman patience.

NAVID:   Or simply the patience of someone who has had more time than he needed.

Armin looks at the Old Man. Something is changing — some boundary is becoming permeable.

ARMIN:   Who are you?

THE OLD MAN:  (studying the board)  A man who outlived his category.

ARMIN:   What does that mean?

THE OLD MAN:  There are categories for the living. Categories for the dead. But I lived too long in the wrong one, and now neither claims me.

He looks up from the board. For the first time, directly at Armin.

THE OLD MAN:   You know who I am.

ARMIN:   I don't.

THE OLD MAN:   You have known for several nights. You simply haven't let yourself finish the thought.

Silence. The Blind Man shifts — almost imperceptibly. The Chorus: 

CHORUS:   The worst thing about a miracle is that it cannot be undone. A mistake can be corrected. A wound can heal. But a miracle — a miracle is permanent. It establishes a new law. And the man at the center of it must live inside that law forever.

Blackout.

ACT III

 Lazarus

Scene I — The Seventh Night

The chess game. The board has been devastated. Most pieces have been taken. What remains is a late endgame — each remaining piece carries enormous weight.

Dawn is beginning — not visible yet, but audible. A change in the silence.

THE OLD MAN and THE BLIND MAN are both present. In this scene, for the first time, the Blind Man seems to be listening.

ARMIN:  Check.

THE OLD MAN:  (without looking up)  No.

He moves a piece.

THE OLD MAN:  Checkmate.

Ramzi stares at the board. He goes through every option. There are none.

RAMZI:  That's—

He stops. 

NAVID:   We lost when we chose the opening.

RAMZI:   That's not possible. You can't know the outcome from—

NAVID:   He can. Seven games. Every one.

Armin doesn't look at the board. He is looking at the Old Man.

ARMIN:   Have you read the Gospel of John?

THE OLD MAN:   (a very small smile) I am familiar with it.

ARMIN:   In the eleventh chapter—

THE OLD MAN:  Yes.

ARMIN:   It says he was raised. But it doesn't say what happened after.

THE OLD MAN:   Scripture is selective about its silences.

ARMIN:   What happened after?

A long pause. The Old Man sets down the piece he has been holding.

THE OLD MAN:   I came out of the cave. The sun was very bright. People were weeping, but they were weeping differently than before — from joy, not grief. Someone removed my burial cloths. I remember the smell of the linen.

ARMIN:   And then?

THE OLD MAN:   And then I had to figure out what to do with Tuesday.

A silence. Then Navid, very quietly, almost to himself:

NAVID:   And every Tuesday after that.

THE OLD MAN:   For two thousand years. Yes.

RAMZI:   (struggling) This is — you're telling us you are—

THE OLD MAN:   I'm telling you what I am. Whether you can categorize it is your concern, not mine. I have learned not to need to be categorized.

ARMIN:   What is the tragedy? If it isn't death?

THE OLD MAN:   Continuation.

He looks at the boy with great clarity.

THE OLD MAN:   I was mourned. Properly. The world had adjusted to my absence. My sisters had begun to understand their grief. And then I returned, and all of that — all of that careful accommodation — had to be undone. The grief couldn't be finished. The adjustment couldn't complete itself. I was alive again, which meant the wound had to stay open.

ARMIN:   You came back and disrupted the mourning.

THE OLD MAN:   I disrupted everything. That is what miracles do. They are interruptions. The world builds around an absence, and then the miracle fills it, and suddenly there is too much in the space.

Blackout.

 Scene II — Fractures

The atmosphere changes. Not dreamlike, exactly — more like the moment before waking, when the logic of dreams begins to thin but has not yet dissolved.

THE BLIND MAN moves to the centre of the stage. This is the only time he moves with intention. He stands equidistant between ARMIN, RAMZI, and NAVID.

The Chorus assembles, closer now, more visible.

CHORUS:   A human being is not one voice.

The Blind Man turns slightly toward Ramzi.

CHORUS:  One part explains. It builds systems. It draws the map and names every street and is confused when the territory refuses to cooperate.

Toward Navid.

CHORUS:   One part remembers things it has not yet experienced. It speaks in images rather than arguments. It is often right and cannot say why. This frightens the first part.

Toward Armin

CHORUS:   And one part simply lives between them. It is the wound and the bandage simultaneously. It cannot sleep because it is always negotiating.

RAMZI:   (to Navid, for the first time addressing him directly, with something like desperation)  Tell me what it is. Tell me what's happening.

NAVID:  (and this is also unusual, because Navid has no desperation — but now, something) I don't know.

A silence. For the first time in the play, RAMZI and NAVID look at each other and find no ground to fight on.

RAMZI:   Armin—

NAVID:   Don't.

RAMZI:   He should know—

NAVID:   He already knows. That's the problem. He's known since the first night and he's been carrying it alone because neither of us would hold it with him.

Ramzi looks at Armin. Something shifts in him — not collapse, but opening.

RAMZI:   Is that true?

ARMIN:  (quietly)  Yes.

RAMZI:   Why didn't you say—

ARMIN:   Because you would have explained it. And explaining it would have meant I had to believe you.

The Old Man, from across the stage, watching all of this:

THE OLD MAN:  Resurrection divides a man. Not in two. Into all his possible selves, simultaneously. The one that died, the one that returned, the one that should have been allowed to stay dead, the one that is still in the cave.

ARMIN:   Which one are you?

THE OLD MAN:  All of them. That's what I'm telling you. That is the continuation.

Blackout. 

 Scene III — The Grave

The cemetery. The unmarked grave. The Old Man stands before it.

Armin stands beside him. Ramzi and Navid stand behind, close together — not reconciled, but temporarily sharing the same silence.

THE BLIND MAN stands at the edge of the light. He will remain here until the very end.

ARMIN:   Whose grave is this?

The Old Man places his hand on the stone.

THE OLD MAN:   Mine.

RAMZI:  You can't have a grave. You're standing here.

THE OLD MAN:   Yes. Both things are true. I've had two thousand years to grow comfortable with that.

ARMIN:   Why do you come back to it?

THE OLD MAN:  To remember the only moment when I was entirely singular. One thing. No contradiction. I was dead. There was no debate about what I was.

NAVID:   And now?

THE OLD MAN:  Now I contain too many things. Lazarus the dead. Lazarus the returned. Lazarus the bishop, the exile, the saint, the impossibility. Every century adds a new category. The grave is the last place where I was simply what I was.

ARMIN:   Then why keep living?

The Old Man turns and looks at Armin with an expression that is very old and very tired and also — underneath — something that is not quite peace but is adjacent to it.

THE OLD MAN:   Because after a miracle, the people who love you need you to. They need the living version. The dead version, they could mourn and finish. But the living version—

ARMIN: —the living version keeps the wound open.

THE OLD MAN:   Yes. And wounds, in the end, are how the living know they are alive.

A long silence. The first light of morning — not dawn exactly, but the moment when night begins to doubt itself.

ARMIN:  Will I see you again?

THE OLD MAN:   You will see me every time you cannot sleep. Every time the night becomes larger than the room.

He walks into the fog. He does not look back. He becomes part of the distance slowly, the way a true disappearance happens.

RAMZI:    (very quietly) I couldn't explain it.

NAVID:   No.

RAMZI:   I tried. Throughout.

NAVID:   I know.

RAMZI:   Does that mean I was wrong to try?

Navid considers this genuinely.

NAVID: It means trying was your way of staying close to him. Which is the same reason I stayed quiet.

They do not touch. But something between them has shifted — not resolved, but acknowledged.

Armin looks at the unmarked grave for a long moment.

ARMIN: Why doesn't it have a name?

No one answers. The Blind Man tilts his head slightly.

Blackout.

 Epilogue

Only THE BLIND MAN remains on stage.

Morning fills the space — not warmly. Honestly.

He stands centre stage. He has always been centre stage. We are only now looking at him properly.

The CHORUS gathers around him. They speak for him. They have always spoken for him. They speak slowly, as if the words are objects being carried from a great distance.

CHORUS:  People believe that miracles create faith.

A pause.

CHORUS:  They do not. Miracles create witnesses. And the task of the witness is unbearable: to have seen something that cannot be translated into any common language, and to be expected, for the rest of one's life, to testify to it.

CHORUS: Witnesses are not believers. They are people for whom belief is no longer possible — because they know. And knowing is a different country from believing. There is no road back.

The Blind Man lifts his cane. Not to walk. To point — vaguely, in no specific direction, which is to say, in every direction.

CHORUS:   A blind man understands early that the world is not withholding its sight from him. The world is simply indifferent to whether he can see it. This is not cruelty. It is the world's nature.

CHORUS:    Human beings do not fear death most deeply.

A breath.

CHORUS:   They fear fragmentation. To be divided against themselves. To have one part remain in the cave while the other walks into the morning. To know that the person they were before a certain moment is someone they will never be again.

CHORUS:   To die before death. To be resurrected before resurrection.

CHORUS:   This is insomnia. This is what the boy could not sleep through.

CHORUS:   Not the fear of death. The fear of being unable to finish dying. The fear that some part of him has already been somewhere else, and returned, and will not tell him what it found there.

The Blind Man lowers his cane. He stands still.

The morning light holds.

Then 

CHORUS:   The grave had no name because a name would have implied that what was buried there was finished.

The Blind Man taps his cane once. 

Blackout.

 END

Note on lazrus:

• Who he was: A resident of the village of Bethany (near Jerusalem), and the brother of Mary and Martha. Jesus deeply loved this family and frequently visited their home.
• The Miracle: After Lazarus fell severely ill and died, his sisters sent for Jesus. By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been buried for four days. In one of his most dramatic miracles, Jesus wept, commanded the stone to be rolled away, and called Lazarus out of the tomb.
• No Bible version states that Lazarus died a second time. The New Testament record is completely silent about the end of his life. [1, 2, 3] The text details the following timeline regarding his final mentions in scripture: 
• Last Appearance: The final time Lazarus appears in scripture is in John 12:1-2, where he is reclining at a dinner table with Jesus in Bethany. 
•  The Biblical and traditional accounts detail the following about his life after the resurrection: 
• Target of the Chief Priests: Because Lazarus's return from the dead was so undeniable, it caused a surge in people following Jesus. 
• According to the Gospel of John, the chief priests plotted to kill Lazarus as well, to destroy the evidence of the miracle. 
• Total Silence: After these verses, Lazarus vanishes from the New Testament entirely. [1, 2, 3] 
• Fleeing to Cyprus (Eastern Tradition): According to Orthodox tradition, facing persecution, Lazarus fled to Cyprus. There, he was ordained by the Apostles Paul and Barnabas and became the first Bishop of Kition (modern-day Larnaca). He is said to have lived another 30 years there before dying of natural causes around the age of 60. 
• Exile in France (Western Tradition): According to an alternate Western Catholic legend, Lazarus, along with his sisters Mary and Martha, were placed in a boat by angry opponents and cast out to sea without sails or oars. They miraculously washed ashore in Provence, France, where Lazarus is said to have become the first Bishop of Marseilles. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]