The Gospel According to Lazarus

by Richard Zimler

  Early the next morning, while Yeshua, Yirmi and I are passing the stalls of our marketplace, we spot some two hundred followers of my old friend already gathered at the western boundary stone of our town, and Yehudah of Kerioth is one of them. He carries his pack over his shoulder and shades his eyes from the just-risen sun. He stands between Andreas and Yeshua’s younger brother Yaaqov.

  Yeshua does not pause in his step, but I do.

  Yirmi comes to me and asks if I’m all right. ‘I’m fine,’ I reply. ‘Now go to Lucius like we agreed and tell him that I’ll be late to work today, and then head straight to Rabbi Elad’s home. And listen, if Lucius replies angrily, just apologize and do your best to look contrite. If you can summon tears, then do so – he’ll be very pleased to think that he’s ruined your day.’

  My small witticism earns me a bursting laugh from my son, which makes saying goodbye to him a little easier. Yeshua is twenty paces ahead of me by then, so I start after him, preparing the smile with which I shall greet Yehudah.

  23

  Anyone familiar with the story of Ezra the Scribe knows that he led several thousand of our brethren back from exile in Babylon to Judaea, at a time when all of Zion was under Persian rule. Will the men and women of future days have a chance to read of Yeshua and those of us who followed him from our long exile of spirit into Yerushalayim on this bright morning in Nissan, in the ninety-fifth year of the Roman conquest?

  My old friend strides out of Bethany beside Yehudah, Loukas and Mattiyahu. I walk several paces behind them, my watchful shadow at their heels. I lag behind because I discovered long ago that I wish to be Yeshua’s refuge and not his disciple.

  Do you see that figure near the southern horizon, standing at the top of a lookout tower rising from a great and populous city where there is neither hunger nor poverty and from which all tyrants have been banished? That figure is me, for when I consider the true destination to which we are all walking, I journey in my thoughts to a time when we shall finally be able to live the lives we were meant to have.

  A quarter of a mile beyond Bethany, Philippus – another of Yeshua’s followers – comes walking towards us from a side road, accompanied by a sturdy brown donkey with long splayed ears, a sagging belly and what seems to be an expression of satisfied humour in his eyes. Is he a well-fed old sage transformed into a beast? When Maryam of Magdala whispers that speculation to me, our nervousness gives way to complicit laughter.

  Maryam’s excitement about our mission makes her sensitive dark eyes seem to sparkle, and, as we speculate about the words with which Yeshua will address us at the Synagogue of the Woodworkers, I come to understand that she has finally begun to trust me. I was with Yeshua seven years earlier when he pulled a ruthless demon from her, and because I had seen her naked, bloody and tormented – and heard her brethren repudiate her with curses – she has nearly always limited herself to shameful silence in my presence.

  Yeshua uses his cape as his saddle. He turns for me once he is settled on his mount, anxious to make sure I have not lagged too far behind, and I join my hands above my head to show him that I shall stay with him as long as he needs me.

  His eyes linger on me, and they are grateful, but I sense a question in him as well, and here is what I hear him tell me in my mind: Do you wish to know if I have envisaged this moment since we were eight years old? If I were to say yes, you would believe that we’re more different than we are, but I can tell you this … If I weren’t listening to the Lord at this very moment, my mind would also be racing to that tower above your perfect city of justice and compassion. But you have made one error, Lazar, for the world to come is here with us now, and even this forgotten Judaean byway we walk on – like all the roads you and I follow – leads to the Lighthouse and Library of your ideal Alexandria, as surely as it leads to the Temple, so do not let yourself fall any further behind me!

  Here is the prayer I whisper to myself as we start off again towards Yerushalayim:

  Let all of us find freedom this Passover – Yeshua, Mia and Marta, Nahara and Yirmi, even Yehudah and our other enemies. Let no one remain in slavery.

  No sinners or orphans.

  No paupers, lepers or heretics.

  No Samaritan, Greek, Nabataean, Egyptian, Phoenician or Essene.

  No Pharisee or Sadducee.

  No priest or scribe.

  And no Roman.

  Are you surprised that I would ask the Lord of the Armies of Zion to grant the Romans freedom? No, my hatred of the torments they inflict on us and their bellicose ways has not diminished one iota, but there is a lesson of Yeshua’s that I struggle with every day – to love and respect my enemies – and it would be miserly of me to forget it on the day we shall cross to the Promised Land.

  Know this: when the Passover of Passovers descends in the west, the angels will glow red and gold and white, which are the colours of divine mercy and justice, and their radiance will enable the Romans to see with fresh eyes, and the illusions that have misted their minds will be burned away, and it will be as obvious to them as their own reflection in the waters of memory that we are all of us made in God’s image, and that there that can be no conqueror above the conquered, and they will know that we are – and have always been – but one people.

  Two young men are assigned to watch over me that morning, and they permit only one person at a time to come to me for blessings.

  The older of the boys guarding me is so proud of his first beard that he reaches up to stroke it whenever he talks to me, which brings back memories of my own laughable vanity at his age. His name is Shaul, and he is from Natzeret, which was undoubtedly why he was chosen to watch over me. His great-uncle is the surgeon Hanoch ben Levi, who performed my circumcision.

  The younger boy who keeps watch over me – doe-eyed and slender, with a dusting of whiskers on his upper lip – is a Samaritan by birth by the name of Uriyah ben Avram. His tunic is too long and large for him, and I conclude that it must be an inheritance from his father or an elder brother, but I shall soon learn that I am wrong.

  This handsome Samaritan youth is a ferocious nail-biter, so I try to ease his mind with conversation. After I bless a moribund old woman carried to me in her son’s arms, I toss him harmless questions about the landmarks of his homeland. Unfortunately, they only serve to make him withdraw under a mantle of shame.

  Perhaps a secret confided by an elder will lead him out of himself, I think, and I whisper to him that I once prayed on Mount Gerizim.

  He shows me a disbelieving look – as I expected – since the Jews regard the mountaintop, home to the Samaritan temple, as a place of sin.

  ‘To the Holy Spirit’, I assure him, ‘one gateway to the Palace is as good as another.’

  He gazes away from me. Does he think I am a madman? Taking him aside, I whisper, ‘On Mount Gerizim, Yeshua and I kneeled at the spot where a guardian angel appeared to Avraham and saved Isaac from certain death. The Lord spoke to Yeshua there.’

  What did He say?

  Uriyah keeps his lips sealed to silence but asks that question with his eyes.

  ‘The Lord told him, “Remember the greatness of He who also preserved your life and the lives of everyone you know!”’

  The boy arches his eyebrows, plainly confused, so I pat his shoulder encouragingly. ‘You see, Uriyah, the angel who saved Isaac drew an end to the age of human sacrifice. He changed the world for ever!’

  The boy looks at me as if I were an enigma, and I sense that my scholarly tone has made me seem pompous – or perhaps even sinister.

  ‘I apologize if I have made you uncomfortable,’ I tell him. ‘All I mean to say is that if you look underneath the surface of the stories in the Torah, you may come upon a guide who has waited all your life to meet you.’

  He smiles weakly, clearly wishing that the old fool whom he has been forced to guard will allow him to return to the sanctity of his own thoughts. And it is a wish I grant him, of course.

  I name Yeshua’s donkey Ias
on, the leader of the Argonauts. Is it an odd choice? Very likely. But he is about to turn Yeshua into the fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy, and he deserves a name that we shall all remember.

  In the Book of Numbers we read, ‘A star will come out of Yaaqov, and a sceptre will rise out of Israel.’

  Today, Yeshua is our star and sceptre. Just as we, his friends and followers, are the rivers of Paradise – every stream, tributary and rivulet – for we are flowing onwards with a single purpose. Our names are Euphrates, Pison, Gihon and Hiddekel.

  I remember that it was through a cloudless morning that we flowed behind Yeshua and Iason. A grey haze hovered over the eastern horizon, however, and it was a red sun – coloured by desert sands drawn skywards – that kept watch over us.

  I remember, too, that after taking a misstep on the road, the grinding pains in my leg grew worse, and I was forced to limp.

  Do other men and women taste the bitter absence of friends in every small happiness? I keep telling myself that Yeshua’s mentor, Yohanon ben Zechariah, ought to be with us. For it was he who first imagined how we would one day become a river and how our hopes would flow into the future. It was he who baptized Yeshua and me in the knowledge of where to find the sea that is our eternal home.

  Halfway to Yerushalayim, where the road bends south, is an apricot orchard belonging to my distant cousins Eliav and Levi. Yeshua chooses to turn Iason around by one of the pink-blossomed trees and reaches up to a particularly resplendent branch as though grasping a staff of kingship. He calls out to the five hundred or more now following him with a rephrasing of words once spoken by Mosheh: ‘How shall we be able to know we have found grace in the sight of the Lord unless you walk with me?’

  He means this question to be a reminder, I think, that our destiny is not fixed – and that all who hear him must decide for themselves where they stand this day.

  A young woman is the first to reply to Yeshua’s question. ‘We are with you!’ she shouts exultantly.

  Other voices join hers, but when a group of youths calls for death to the Romans, violent voices surge amongst the crowd, describing the tortures and indignities we ought to inflict on our conquerors.

  Yeshua dismounts from Iason and runs to an elderly one-legged man balancing on crutches who has called for the blood of our conquerors to water all of the Promised Land. ‘We shall meet our enemies with open arms,’ he tells the man, then all of us.

  The cripple glares at him. ‘And when they come at us with swords?’ he asks.

  ‘We’ll turn their swords to staffs. And we’ll walk together towards El Elyon and the light that never ceases.’

  ‘You’re a fool!’ the old man shouts, and he shoves Yeshua away.

  My old friend whispers to him, and the cripple replies with a shake of his head and a frown – as though declining an offer. Yeshua takes his shoulder and confides something in his ear that makes his eyes grow moist.

  Come with me, I beseech you, for the Lord’s eyes, hands and feet are yours, was what he first whispered. And then, I would ask you to walk with me today, even if you are certain I am wrong, for I shall not leave this spot until you are with me. You see, I intend to leave no one behind – not even those who take me for a fool.

  This, I will later learn, was what he told the angry cripple, and, although the man still refused to walk behind us, he hobbled along from the side of the road the rest of the way to Yerushalayim, his eyes fixed on Yeshua as if he were trying to fathom a great mystery.

  Twelve men come forward as we start off again and gather around Yeshua and those nearest him. I have positioned myself just to the right of Iason – a hand’s width beyond his whisking tail – and find myself inside their protective enclosure. My face must reveal my astonishment, for Maryam of Magdala takes my arm and says, ‘All this has been planned, Eli. Don’t worry.’

  Yehudah of Kerioth starts to walk on the other side of Iason from me. Has Annas asked him to do so? I watch him furtively, but there is nothing in his expression that reveals consternation or conflict. He has beautiful lynx-like eyes – tender and aware – and, when he gazes over at me, I see that in another time or place, he might be leading us. The priests must have also recognized that he was a special soul, I think. And they turned him against us because they feared him.

  Yehudah, my old friend, I remember that you told me that you once had a vision of rain falling out of a perfectly blue sky, and, when you awoke to yourself, you realized – laughing – that the impossible happens all the time. ‘Everything is a miracle,’ you said to me, picking up a blade of grass and holding it between us, and for a few moments, seeing the radiance in your eyes illuminate that tiny filament of creation, I understood you were right.

  You may think it silly, but here is what I most valued in you: how you would become so caught up in your interpretations of Torah that your hands would begin to dance.

  I never met anyone with more expressive hands or who spoke more articulately.

  Now, when he catches me staring at him, he smiles at me with complicity, as though to say, It gratifies me that you have never forgotten what I told you about the rain.

  If such a steadfast and trustworthy man as Yehudah can be made to betray his closest friends, then who amongst us is safe?

  Just before we reach the gates of Yerushalayim, Uriyah, my callow Samaritan guardian, tells me that he saw Yeshua perform miracles in a long-abandoned field near his home. A young man’s courage to finally address an elder must not be wasted, so I ask him which town he is from.

  ‘Shalem,’ he replies.

  ‘Wasn’t that where Yaaqov, son of Isaac and Rebekah, once camped?’

  I ask my question because I know it will please him that I know of the significance of his home town.

  ‘Have … have you been to Shalem?’ he asks excitedly.

  If I were speaking to him in Greek, I might risk telling him that the smile he is now showing me is that of a flower overcoming its timidity and greeting the day, but in Aramaic such poetry seems so forced that it always makes me cringe.

  ‘No, but perhaps some day you will show me around, and we shall pray together on Mount Gerizim,’ I tell him.

  His eyes show astonishment. He must not have believed me when I told him that I had prayed with Yeshua on his holy mountain.

  After I minister to the requests of several people who have been waiting for my words of healing, I turn again to Uriyah. ‘I’d be interested in knowing what miracles Yeshua performed in that abandoned field near your town.’

  ‘You … you really want to know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘First, the Most Honourable Rabbi Yeshua banished a night-demon who’d possessed a wretched old woman. And then he gave back a voice to a man whose neck … it had been stepped on by an old mule. And then … one other thing,’ he adds, his black eyes shining with so ardent an admiration that he has trouble putting his words together, ‘but I … I must ask you … to keep it a secret.’

  ‘You have my word,’ I assure him.

  ‘Rabbi Yeshua removed the iron anklets from a runaway slave.’

  ‘Did he pull them apart with his hands alone?’ I ask, for once, in a village an hour’s walk from Natzeret, I saw him do just that.

  ‘No, he used a hammer and a chisel,’ Uriyah replies.

  ‘Then I am afraid it was something less than a miracle,’ I say, laughing.

  ‘No, you’ve missed the point!’ he whispers conspiratorially. ‘The miracle was that he removed the anklets even though he was not supposed to.’

  ‘Not supposed to? What does that mean?’

  ‘The slave asked him not to remove them.’

  ‘But why would he want to remain in fetters?’

  ‘Because he’d had them on since he was five years old. He said that taking them off was like removing his feet.’

  That reply hits me like a punch in the gut. This boy is sensitive and well spoken, I think, and I surprise myself by wondering if he might be skilful w
ith his hands as well. ‘Tell me what you are trained to do?’ I ask.

  ‘Bricklaying.’

  ‘And are you good at it?’

  ‘My master never told me otherwise,’ he says proudly. ‘But why do you want to hear of my work?’ he asks, and I see in his expression that I have become an enigma once again.

  I tell him that I am a mosaicist. ‘And I’ve long been in need of an apprentice,’ I confess. ‘Though I’ve no idea if such work would interest you.’

  ‘You would consider me for an apprenticeship?’ he asks in disbelief.

  I show him my hands. ‘Yes, but I warn you – you’ll end up with these unsightly beasts as companions if you start work with me.’

  He turns over his right hand, which has a deep scar across its back. ‘Made by my last employer,’ he tells me.

  ‘I’d never hurt you. You have my word on that.’

  He fights to smile, but I can see that, once again, he does not believe me. If this boy joins me in my work, I’ll have to vanquish the ghosts who have scarred and wounded him, I think.

  A great swell of shouting turns us both towards Yerushalayim, where a jostling crowd awaits Yeshua inside the high arch of the Eastern Huldah Gate. Uriyah and I have no chance to talk further. And who could ever have predicted that I would soon regret the few words I’d already addressed to him?

  24

  Iason swats at the persistent flies of Judaea with his tail and veers to the right whenever he drops one of his grassy turds to the ground, as though his desires at that delicate moment are curved. Will anyone remember that he was real a hundred years from now – that he had a past and future?

  If you who hold this scroll in your hands have received it from Yaphiel or one of his descendants, I want you to know that my today was as real to me as yours is to you and that what Yeshua did for me is what made me memorable, perhaps, but is not who I am.