The Gospel According to Lazarus

by Richard Zimler

  ‘… And no sorcerer from the Galilee or Judaea or any other land, no matter how well versed in the curious arts, no matter whether he is under the guidance of David and Shelomoh or Lilith and Asmodeus, will be able to rescue you,’ he ends. As he lowers his hand, he says, ‘Are we clear, Eliezer?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ I reply. ‘And I swear that I shall not …’

  Before I can finish my oath, Annas spreads apart two of the panels of my curtains and limps through the opening. Mia meets him at my front door and tries to assuage his fury by offering him more wine. A mistake; cursing all women as reka – empty-headed – he knocks the cup out of her hands, splashing her tunic.

  How is it that my fury can overtake me so swiftly and completely, even when I know that voicing it might be a fatal mistake?

  ‘Reka is the guest who disrespects a woman in her own home!’ I remind him gruffly.

  Mia shows me a fearful look and shakes her head, meaning, Don’t say another word! Annas replies with a disbelieving stare that soon turns deadly. And that is when I hear him tell me in my mind what he has refused to admit: I should have been granted a miracle, not Yeshua!

  Why did it take me so long to grasp that his hate is born of envy?

  ‘I want you to tell your heretical companion something for me,’ he says, seething so bitterly that his words come out with spittle. ‘Should he speak of this false miracle at his gatherings, my son-in-law will have him dragged away in chains to Machaerus – like that filthy old friend of yours, Yohanon ben Zebediah.’ He traces a fingertip across his neck with slow delight to indicate the fate that awaited our mentor. ‘I should not be surprised if Yeshua also ends up with his head fed to the palace mastiffs as their afternoon snack,’ he says, grinning at what must pass for wit in the inner courts of the Temple. As he turns the handle on the front door, he thinks of a parting gift for me. Smiling so broadly that I can see the brown stumps he has for teeth, he recites, ‘“And that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in such a way as to turn you away from the Lord your God.”’

  10

  Dearest Yaphiel, before you read any further, the time has come to tell you of the most important lesson that Yeshua ever taught me and his disciples. To do so, I must write briefly of the event that turned my fealty to Temple priests to ash.

  After you read it, I think you will understand more fully why I was about to take risks with myself and my children that most other men would have avoided at all costs.

  Yeshua and I were then twenty-six years of age. It was the Eighteenth of Tishri.

  Several days earlier, my sisters and I had constructed our tabernacle for the festival of Sukkot in the modest plot of land we rent outside Bethany. For the previous two days, Yeshua and I had remained under its palm-leaf roof, fasting, chanting and weeping – and often deep in derash ha-Torah.

  Spirit dreaming that it is matter …

  That was what I imagined myself to be as I walked with Leah and Yeshua through the bustling streets of Yerushalayim. And perhaps there are truths so timid that they will only show themselves to us after we have withdrawn from our usual existence and spent a day or two in contemplation, for every surface I could see – every rooftop and wall and paving stone – was glowing with a subtle and mysterious radiance.

  I carried my sleeping son in my arms, and, as we descended from the Upper Town, I was the first to see a bedraggled and bleeding young woman being led by bailiffs down the Temple steps. She was barefoot, and three silver anklets circled her right leg. Her hair – shoulder-length – was ragged and soiled. Her robe was ripped at her hip.

  We were a hundred paces away from her, but I could already see that she was probably no more than eighteen years old, which was my wife’s age at the time. Her wrists were bound, and a small elderly bailiff kept jerking her forward – and with such spiteful impatience that she soon stumbled and fell, bruising her arm.

  She comes from the southern desert, I told myself, because her skeletal brown arms spoke of years of hunger and hardship lived beneath a burning sun, though my guess would later prove incorrect. In fact, I was soon able to discover that her mother was a Judaean and her father a Nabataean and that she lived in the warren of gloom-darkened streets behind Yerushalayim’s hippodrome.

  ‘She must be an adulteress,’ Leah whispered to me.

  I reached out for her hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Probably so,’ I replied.

  ‘And that must her husband beside her.’

  The man had a brawny chest and arms and short bristly hair.

  Behind him walked a young man who reminded me of a locust – he was loose-limbed and slender, with bushy hair and fleshy lips. He leaned far forward as he walked, as though burdened by a leaden weight around his neck.

  He and the young woman were both hollow-cheeked and unusually tall, which led me to believe that they were very likely brother and sister.

  Three priests, dressed in white robes and turbans, walked behind the prisoner and the bailiffs. The eldest amongst them shuffled ahead with his hands joined together over his ample belly and his lips pressed tightly together, as though on a sacred mission. I later learned that his name was Eitan ben Itzhak and that he was a cousin of Yosef Caiaphas.

  The woman moaned now and again as she was led towards the Eastern Huldah Gate and the place of stoning outside the city. Her laboured, limping gait made me believe that she might have been so badly brutalized that she was not completely aware of what was happening to her. Or was that simply my most fervent hope at that moment?

  When the young woman set her dazed and perplexed eyes on me, here is what I heard her tell me: My husband never wanted me, and he hurt me whenever possible, and he always told me I belonged to him, and, without knowing the risk I was taking, I sought affection from a man whom I have known since we were children and whom I had wished to marry, though my parents would not hear of it. He was good and kind to me, as I had hoped, though he was also ashamed of our conduct, since he, too, is married. And yet I do not regret having gone to him for solace, though I wish I had not been caught, because my children will now be shunned by one and all, and they will grow up hearing that I was a Jezebel who betrayed their father. To you who wonder why I did what I did, I ask this: what laws and customs would you break to prove you belonged to no one but yourself?

  When Yeshua began rushing towards her, Leah and I followed behind him.

  I soon noticed that the back of young woman’s hair was matted with mud and her right cheek badly bruised. Blood was smeared from her mouth to her chin, and her nose was twisted at an angle that made me wince. Flies were swarming over her bloody lips.

  After I handed my son to Leah, I took Yeshua’s arm. ‘You’d best not try to save her,’ I whispered.

  ‘If an angel had not come to Isaac’s rescue, the boy would have perished,’ he told me.

  ‘But you’re a mortal man – and the priests can have you arrested.’

  ‘All who do the Lord’s bidding are His angels.’

  Yeshua stopped before the lead bailiff and held up both his hands. You shall not pass this way while I have the strength to stop you, was the message he conveyed.

  Did the tiny rancorous bailiff jerk hard on his rope at that moment to show Yeshua that he was in control here?

  Women’s laughter cackled behind me when she fell to the ground and again when she tried and failed to raise herself up. I saw then that a large crowd had gathered.

  Yeshua went to the woman and reached for her arm to help her to her feet, but she slapped at his face with taut, outraged hands and caught him on his cheek with so fierce a blow that his eyes teared up.

  Was it while wiping away his tears that Yeshua gave up all hope that the priesthood could be reformed? I cannot say for sure, but I do know that he never again spoke to me of how he would rebuild the Temple as a sanctuary of racham – tender compassion.

  ‘You have shamed the God of Mercy!’ Yeshua shouted at the lead bailiff after stopping the processi
on.

  As I felt for the vine-knife I nearly always keep in my pouch, the head priest, Eitan ben Itzhak, ordered Yeshua to let justice be served, but my friend replied that he had a right to know the nature of the woman’s crime.

  ‘Who are you to ask?’ ben Itzhak demanded.

  ‘I’m a traveller who knows where he came from and where he’s going. But I appear to be addressing a man who has lost his way.’

  ‘What I’ve lost is all interest in you self-righteous young fools!’ the priest snarled, and, with a cutting gesture of his hand, he ordered Yeshua to let them pass.

  ‘Do you intend to end this woman’s life?’ my old friend demanded.

  Her husband stepped forward. ‘I’ll stone her myself if I have to!’

  Yeshua stepped up to the young woman, took hold of her hands and asked her name.

  She shook her head and moaned as if his kindness were only deepening her misery.

  ‘My name is Yeshua ben Yosef,’ he told her.

  She yanked her hands free of his and shouted, ‘Leave me be!’

  He reached to her lips and with the fresh blood that came off on his fingertip, he traced the word on his brow. He turned then in a slow circle to show all of us that he had created mercy from her wounds.

  A host of onlookers gasped, but others shouted that she was a whore who deserved to be stoned.

  Eitan ben Itzhak – speaking with the authority of an elder – told Yeshua that the time for mercy and a great deal else, as he put it, had passed. His abrupt tone made it evident that his patience was coming to an end.

  ‘Please tell me your name,’ Yeshua again urged the woman.

  She mouthed her answer to him; perhaps she believed she had forfeited the right to speak it aloud.

  ‘Rachel, we are all of us broken and blemished,’ he told her.

  Eitan ben Itzhak ordered bailiffs to start off again. ‘And if this young sinner tries to stop you,’ he told them, ‘slice him in two!’

  ‘Two witnesses are needed to condemn this woman to death,’ Yeshua called out. ‘One is clearly her husband. We have the right to know who the other is.’

  ‘The Lord already knows who the witness is!’ the priest shouted back.

  ‘Then He will not mind my knowing as well.’

  Many in the throng laughed at Yeshua’s witticism, but others hooted their disapproval and aimed insults at him. With renewed resolve, he strode up to the loose-limbed youth, who was nearly two palms taller than him. ‘What is your relation to Rachel?’ he demanded.

  The boy – was he any older than seventeen? – looked at ben Itzhak for permission to speak.

  Yeshua gripped his arm. ‘Forget the priest. Answer for yourself, young man!’

  ‘I’m her brother,’ he replied.

  ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘David ben Reuben,’ he said, gazing down as if he wished for a hole to open in the street and swallow him.

  ‘Did you truly witness your sister’s crime?’ Yeshua asked him.

  The youth held tight to what seemed to me a silence born of guilt. Yeshua kneeled down, took his knife out of his pack and made a quick cut in his left thumb. With his blood, he wrote on a flagstone. I stepped closer. The sign he had scripted looked to be a letter yod inside a circle.

  I assumed that it was a symbol meant to defend Rachel and keep her safe. Later that day, when I asked Yeshua what it meant, he told me cryptically that it was the written form of the cry he needed to make in order to bring the warrior-angel Raphael to us. I believe now that his design of a yod – the first letter of his name – probably alluded to the meaning of yeshua in Aramaic: a cry for help.

  ‘Yeshua ben Yosef, I’m asking you one last time to step out of the way,’ Eitan ben Itzhak said gruffly.

  At the time, I was so upset and infuriated that I was unable to understand that the old priest evinced admirable patience that day, for he might have already had Yeshua arrested and lashed.

  My old friend raised his bleeding thumb high above his head and faced the multitude. ‘Let he who is without blemish or who has never lost his way cast the first stone!’

  ‘I’ve heard enough!’ the woman’s husband announced. He rushed at Yeshua while his back was turned and pushed him so hard that he fell forward on to the dusty street and skinned both his hands.

  I ran up to the lout with my knife in my fist. He was standing over Yeshua, taunting him. I was trembling with rage. ‘If you lay a hand on him again,’ I shouted, ‘I’ll kill you!’

  Very likely Rachel’s husband sensed that he was facing a man who had lost all fear of either heavenly or earth-bound judgement, since after hurling a quick insult at me – to save face – he backed off.

  A bailiff came forward at the same moment, his sword drawn, and ordered me to put down my blade.

  Yeshua took my knife from me and tossed it to the ground. He stepped then to the woman’s brother and pressed his bleeding thumb to his brow, leaving a red shadow behind. All those present surely knew that this was a way of creating a bond between them, but I had an inkling that it was something more – a way of drawing grace or courage to the boy.

  Might it have been a second attempt to bring Raphael to us? Unless – is it possible? – the angel had already joined us.

  I had squatted on my heels to catch my breath, and, when I next looked up at Yeshua, the sun was directly behind him. Light-shafts – striated and dazzling – were issuing from his head and chest towards Rachel, and, as I turned in a slow circle, I understood – I know not how – that my old friend had confronted the bailiffs not only to rescue the adulteress but also to save her brother David and the rest of us – because, if she were stoned, everyone gathered here on this day would all be complicit in that crime.

  Was I seeing the primordial light that had connected us all since the sixth day? Did Yeshua see it all the time?

  The moment he placed his hand on the brother’s chest, the radiance faded. ‘If you do not judge, you shall not be judged,’ he told the young man. ‘And if you do not condemn, you shall not be condemned. And if you forgive, dearest David – if you forgive – then you shall be forgiven.’

  The boy’s eyes gushed with tears.

  Very rarely do we recognize a turning point in our lives as it is happening, but I believe that he saw clearly that he was standing before the Gate of Righteousness, and he had been brought there by a man greater than any he had met before, and that this chance for redemption and justice would never come again.

  ‘I did not see her commit any crime,’ David said to Yeshua, and, when my old friend asked him to tell that to the priests, he faced them and repeated his words.

  It took considerable bravery for him to speak this confession, since he might have been arrested as a false witness, though, in the end, he and his sister were both set free.

  We shall never know if what David ben Reuben, brother of Rachel, said that day was true, but we shall always know that his voice prevented a grievous affront to all of creation, and that is all I need to know.

  Yaphiel, all who have ever heard this story believe they know the lesson that Yeshua wished to teach us. It is contained in these words: ‘Let he who is without blemish or who has never lost his way cast the first stone.’

  But, while that is an important lesson, it is only the one we see at first glance, written across the polished surface of his actions.

  If you gaze below this level of meaning, dear boy, you may glimpse the second – and, some would say, more life-changing – lesson that Yeshua intended for us that day, and it is this: The only hands and eyes that the Lord has to right injustice in our world are our own.

  11

  ‘“And that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in such a way as to turn you away from the Lord your God.”’

  Annas makes that thinly veiled threat against me just before leaving my home. I sit in my workroom and listen to his words again, over and over, as though they are the blows of a hammer against the roof o
f the secure edifice I have tried to build for myself and my family.

  Nahara lies asleep in her bed, but Yirmi is not home yet. It was hours ago that I asked him to find out about Kurush, the Persian who treated my tertian fever with decoctions. I know he is a clever boy, with a detailed map of Yerushalayim in his feet, but, if any evil should befall him while on my errand, I could never live out the rest of my life.

  At length, a bard playing the lute begins entertaining the pilgrims bedded down on my street with the tale of Daniel, Bel and the Dragon: ‘The beast was a horned serpent, a colossus the height of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, with the feet of a lion and golden wings. He had only one weakness, though only the Lord of Heaven knew what it was …’

  Is our storyteller an old man? His singing voice is simple and affecting, though it belies a certain weariness of the flesh when he is forced to intone a long phrase on a single breath. His repetitive melodies make me think of a dry wind blowing over sunbaked stones, but it is how he trembles on the high notes that makes me lean my head against the shutters so that I might hear him more clearly.

  I know I ought to surrender to my drowsiness of spirit and join Nahara and Gephen on her mat, where they have curled into a single knot of slumber, but I want to wait up for Yeshua. Also, my apprehension about Yirmi’s whereabouts has begun chasing its tail just below my need for rest, around and around and around, without any end in sight, and I know from experience that I shall not be able to find sleep until he has returned to me.

  Through the cracks in my shutters, I see pilgrims seated around their campfires, listening with rapt faces to the bard, and, although I would like to join them, some of them would surely recognize me as the man who was resurrected. I limp instead into the courtyard and build a nest for myself beside the mosaic peacocks with which I long ago decorated the floor.

  A little while later, Grandfather Shimon eases down beside me and rests his arm on my leg and talks to me of what he calls ‘the patterned beauty of a star-filled sky’.