The Gospel According to Lazarus

by Richard Zimler

  I have always admired Mattiyahu for his knowledge of scripture, and yet the strain we are under now draws him into a wilderness. After shouting down Yohanon, he points a damning finger at him. ‘And I tell you this – if anything bad should befall Yeshua, his blood shall be on all the Jews!’

  The Jews … ? He speaks as if he is not one of us.

  Imagine you are guarding a room filled with devils and nightshades you must keep confined as long as you can, even though you know that they will escape and destroy you in the end. All that day I feel those forces of chaos – of ruthless and destructive impulses – clamouring deep inside me, and it is all I can do to keep from charging up to Mattiyahu and demanding that he apologize to Yohanon and the rest of us.

  The question I dare not ask in this constrained atmosphere is this: How can you not see that Pilatus will overrule the priests if he sees it is in his best interests to do so?

  Philippus and some of the others pick up on Mattiyahu’s arguments and begin to assign blame to the differing political forces amongst the Judaeans, most of all to the Pharisees and Sadducees. Loukas must see the outrage and frustration in my eyes and takes me aside. ‘All Mattiyahu means’, he whispers pleadingly, ‘is that we must reject those amongst us who are putting obstacles in our way.’

  Is he implying that I shall be ostracized unless I agree with him? Perhaps he and Mattiyahu already have plans to found a secret fellowship or to merge with the Essenes.

  I make no reply to Loukas, for I have broken out into the cold sweat of those who discover too late that they are headed in exactly the wrong direction.

  Soon Andreas rushes in and announces that two bailiffs accompanied by Roman soldiers have taken Yeshua from Annas’ house to the home of Caiaphas, where the members of the Sanhedrin are gathering. ‘Yeshua’s hands and feet were bound with rope!’ he says with a groan.

  Calls for vengeance cut through the air, and my long-suppressed mistrust for some of the men rises in me as they brandish their eagerness to start an armed rebellion against the Romans. I know that they are virtuous souls and courageous, but they seem to understand even less about our conquerors than I do.

  Only years later does it occur to me that a part of me felt relieved to be given this chance to distance myself from them, since I always regarded myself as an outsider in their midst.

  I lead my son out of the room, hoping no one will call me back. Yohanon runs to me outside the barn, however. ‘I need you with me,’ he tells me in a despairing voice.

  ‘I can’t go back in. I’m sorry,’ I reply. ‘I know you’re right in what you’ve proposed, which means that every second I remain here is time I’m wasting.’

  After Yohanon returns inside, I imagine Yeshua standing behind me – and about to tell me what to do – but when I turn around there is no one there.

  ‘Are you all right?’ my son asks.

  ‘Yes. Give me a moment.’

  In my thoughts, I ask Yeshua to show himself, but I do not see any sign at the tops of the pines, or in the stars, or on the trail leading to the road to Yerushalayim or anywhere else, so I close my eyes to look for him in the only place he might be.

  An afterimage of the moon drifts through the darkness inside me, and it is blue and violet, the colours of kingship. I start to chant the Book of Names because Yeshua needs to know that I, too, shall be a prisoner for as long as he remains in captivity: These are the names of Israel’s sons who came to Egypt with Yaaqov …

  I recite as quickly as I can, as I have been taught, and after a time the blue-and-violet moon fades to darkness, dispelled by my cascade of words, and I dare not pause for breath now that I am moving deeper, but no vision or voice comes to me, so I shout a Psalm inside my mind in order to summon him, ‘May those who wish to harm you be covered in scorn and disgrace’, and I repeat this entreaty as quickly as I can, and the moment I lose myself in the cascade of words, I bring my breathing to a halt and I feel the ground giving way beneath me, and I reach for my son to keep from falling, but it is my father’s hand who reaches out for me, and he lifts me up and smiles at me, and I am a small boy again, and he speaks a single word to me as if it is meant to save us both from years of suffering.

  When I come to myself, I am seated on the ground outside the barn. Yirmi’s hand eases on to my back as I draw the air deeply into my chest.

  ‘How long was I away?’ I ask.

  ‘Long enough for me to get worried about you,’ he replies.

  ‘It seemed like just a few seconds.’

  ‘No, it was much more than that. Will you tell me what happened?’

  ‘My father came to me. And he spoke one word to me.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Pharaoh.’

  ‘Why did he speak of Pharaoh?’

  ‘He meant, I believe, that my instincts are correct – I must seek an audience with the great tyrant’s representative in Yerushalayim.’

  ‘But we are no longer subjects of Pharaoh.’

  ‘Indeed we are, though he goes by a different title today – and rules us from his palace in Rome.’

  More and more, Yaphiel, I believe that we receive messages from beings deep inside ourselves, who speak in a language all their own – and what they tell me as Yirmi and I walk through the streets of Yerushalayim is that every dream I have had is still inside me and telling me which road to take, and everything I have ever done has taken me to this very spot, and that I must not fail or all I have learned will be for naught.

  ‘Where are we going?’ my son asks as we start up the stone staircase through the weavers’ quarter towards the Upper Town.

  ‘To wake a friend who has access to Pharaoh and his allies,’ I tell him.

  Abibaal comes to the door of his master’s villa still in his sleeping robe. When I explain what has happened, he leaves us in the atrium and goes off to wake Lucius. My son and I pull two folding chairs up close to the hearth and its red-glowing embers.

  ‘Will Yeshua … will he be all right?’ he asks, and the break in his voice tells me that I must be careful not to reveal my fears to him.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I pat his leg. ‘Yeshua will soon be free, and we’ll insist that he come tomorrow to our Seder!’

  When I smile, he lays his head on my lap. I caress my fingers through his hair, and we say nothing more, because we both know that hope is a timid and hesitant guest in our thoughts at the moment and might be easily chased away.

  Lucius rushes in behind two lantern-bearers, who light the candles in the tall, alabaster candelabra at the four corners of the room. He wears a dark sleeping cap and woollen robe.

  My son and I jump up to greet him.

  ‘Abibaal has given me the dreadful news,’ he says, coming to us.

  ‘For now, Yeshua is a prisoner in Caiaphas’ home,’ I reply.

  After we embrace, I bend to kiss his hands, for I shall need him to risk his reputation for my old friend, but he lifts me up and leans close to my ear. ‘Don’t ask for my help,’ he whispers, ‘because I’ll only have to refuse you.’

  My heart seems to stop, and a moan issues forth from somewhere deep inside me. When we separate, I am unable to raise my eyes to look at him. And yet, as I turn towards the wall, a breeze – like an unseen hand – brushes across the back of my neck, raising gooseflesh and reminding me that there is much that I cannot see but that is real nevertheless – and that may be of help to me even now.

  Has Yeshua touched me? Several times that night I sensed him sustaining me and summoning me forward. And yet he never showed himself or instructed me where to go for help.

  Lucius, Yirmi and I sit at a low marble table in the family dining room. The air is soft and warm thanks to the hypocaust heating the floor. I have no appetite, but Lucius insists on feeding us. ‘Dawn will soon be with us,’ he says, ‘and you’ll need to eat.’

  I request only barley broth. My son asks for the same.

  I risk a furtive look at Lucius as he gives orders to Abibaal about how
his eggs are to be prepared. Is it possible that his allegiance to Yeshua is but an actor’s pretence?

  I start to speak of what must be done to free Yeshua, but our host – showing me an expression of warning – jumps up and exclaims, ‘Eli, for God’s sake,’ he snaps, ‘give me a minute to wake up!’

  I am terrified, his furtive looks tell me as he paces the room. If I help you now, I may lose the villa and all I’ve worked for these past decades, and I’ll become an outcast.

  ‘Lucius, I wish we had more time, but we don’t,’ I tell him. ‘There may be …’

  I cut myself short when a Nubian slavewoman carries in a platter of dried fruit, cheese and matzoh. Lucius sits again and reclines on his sofa, and his patrician pose seems his way of drawing a border between us – to convince me that he cannot reconsider his refusal to help.

  And yet the moment the slavewoman leaves, he says, ‘Eli, it’s not what you think.’ He shifts a plate of dried fruit closer to my son and smiles. ‘Have some figs, Yirmi. Healthy bowels are a blessing.’

  ‘Lucius, if you speak again of my son’s bowels or anything else that’s of no importance, I shall strangle you!’ I warn.

  He turns to me and takes a deep breath. ‘Don’t you see, Eli? I want to help, but, if I show my support for Yeshua in public, I’m finished. I lose all my usefulness to him.’

  I nod my understanding, but I am not convinced. I take a long sip of my barley broth to prevent myself from saying something offensive again. Lucius nibbles on a knot of cheese and drinks his broth. With an ugly frown, he says, ‘Eli, that look you’re giving me … I can’t bear it any longer. Tell me exactly what’s transpired, and we’ll think of a way I can help while standing backstage, so to speak.’

  I hesitate to reply, since he seems to shift so easily – one moment he is terrified, the next inviting and avuncular. He might be any of a hundred men he has played.

  At that moment, he also proves a capable mind-reader. ‘You’re just going to have to trust me even if you don’t want to,’ he says.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I say defiantly.

  ‘We both know that if there was anyone else you could’ve gone to you would have.’

  I am reminded that he is a deeply intelligent man – though often far too eager to play an empty-headed patrician.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he says.

  I speak first of Yeshua’s arrest and move on to the meeting of his friends I attended.

  Today, all these years later, when I recall my explanation to him, I imagine having fallen into a deep well. I see myself standing at the bottom and shouting up to the rim without ever knowing which of the many Luciuses I might be addressing.

  I pause only when Abibaal brings our host his boiled eggs.

  After I tell Lucius that I wish to plead our case to the Roman Prefect, and that I shall need his help to secure an audience with him, he wipes his mouth, gets to his feet and, after loosening the drape of his toga, begins a flowery speech in Greek, complete with quotations from Aristophanes and a handful of other renowned dramatists.

  Lucius is a gifted orator. But down where I am, at the bottom of my small and circular world, surrounded by mossy walls and the ghosts of drowned men, I cannot grasp the point of all his complex rhetoric.

  At length, I think, If only he were speaking Aramaic, for it is a language that values simplicity and modesty, and his grandiloquent speech – his delight in circumlocution – would seem laughable to us both.

  ‘I’ll go to Pilatus,’ I interrupt, sensing that my only hope of detouring around his performance is to tell him my plan.

  ‘What was that?’ Lucius asks, scowling as if I have offended him.

  ‘Either you help me or I’m going to have to leave. We’re losing valuable time.’

  ‘My God, man, have you heard nothing I’ve said?’ he asks me in a furious voice. ‘I’ve been trying to help you!’

  ‘I’ve no time for philosophy.’

  ‘Without philosophy to guide us, how do you plan on reaching a civilized end to this conflict?’

  ‘Lucius, perhaps one day, if we are very fortunate, civilization will reach us here in Judaea. For now, I need a way out of the trap that’s been laid for us.’

  Lucius glowers as though I am the most impetuous pupil he has ever had. Still, he manages to stifle his rage and sit down on his sofa again. ‘What I’ve been trying to explain to you, dear Eli, is why Pilatus will never permit you an audience.’

  ‘Tell me why – and without flourishes!’

  ‘The Romans have nothing but contempt for labourers and craftsmen. As for Galileans, they regard them as mules who have – through sorcery, perhaps – learned to balance on two feet, almost as if they were men.’

  ‘I’ll speak only Greek to him,’ I reply.

  ‘Eli, I’m sorry, but your chipped fingernails and calluses give your status away immediately. Even if I lent you my finest silken toga, Pilatus would refuse to sit in the same room with you.’

  ‘A curse on the Romans!’ I cry, and – on an impulse I can no longer control – I hurl my bowl of barley broth past Lucius’ head.

  It crashes into the wall. Ceramic shards scatter around the room, and one large, triangular piece slides across the floor to his feet. He picks it up with a grunt. ‘I was wondering how long it would take for you to start breaking my expensive crockery,’ he says sadly, but a moment later he grins at me as if we have shared a jest.

  I do not smile back because my affection for him is flowering again, and I am not certain he deserves it.

  ‘I swear to you that I’ll find a way to see Pilatus,’ I tell him, though I have no idea how. ‘And I’ll manage it with or without your help.’

  ‘If you were to see him, what would you say?’ he asks, and his forward-leaning posture indicates that I may have tempted him to choose another more helpful role.

  ‘I’ll tell Pilatus that trade in all of Zion will be disrupted if a rebellion breaks out. And I’ll say that a rebellion is inevitable unless Yeshua is released.’

  Lucius glares at me. ‘If you tell him that, dearest Eli, he’ll have you flogged and raised on a cross!’

  Yirmi grabs my arm. ‘Don’t go to Pilatus! I won’t let you!’

  I hold him close. ‘I’ll proceed with caution. And you’ll be with me every step of the way, so you can make sure I keep my word.’ Then, without deciding to say any more, a truth I had not understood before enters my voice: ‘You’ll be my shield against evil.’

  I do not know why, but I believe that my son has become a living talisman – that, for as long as he is at my side, no harm shall come to me.

  ‘You’re going to have to convince Pilatus some other way,’ Lucius tells me, and I hear in his resigned sigh that I am losing him already.

  As if I have entered one of those dreams where we do something impossible with the greatest of ease, I go to him and kneel before him.

  One moment, we are the person we have always been, and the next all our designs for our own life are gone and we are someone new, and we wonder how we could have failed to remember that a part of our soul will always remain as wilful, cryptic and unpredictable as the Almighty.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Lucius says, glowering, and he struggles to his feet.

  ‘If you save Yeshua from years of confinement,’ I tell him, ‘I’ll work for you for the rest of my life as your slave.’

  I reach for his hands, but he pushes me away. ‘Eli, you always say the silliest things at the worst possible times. Don’t you understand that I have too many slaves already, and they are nothing but trouble!’ To Yirmi, he says, ‘Please summon your father back to you.’

  ‘You know how the Romans think,’ I rush to add, ‘and I … I can’t even put together a proper sentence in Latin. You’re the only person who can help me!’

  Lucius looks between me and Yirmi, fearing that he may have to lose face in front of a boy. In the way he gazes down, I sense he is searching his memory for a speech that will sa
ve him.

  ‘No more quotes from eminent men!’ I plead. And then, by chance, or through the intervention of an unseen guide, I manage to say the right thing. ‘Don’t you see? This is the part of a lifetime! You shall help a smelly two-footed mule convince a Roman despot to release a Jewish mage!’

  Lucius squeezes his eyes shut and holds his head in his hands as though I am driving him mad. Where does he go in his thoughts? Later, he will tell me that he travelled back to the three occasions when he was permitted to remain in the presence of Pilatus.

  Blessed be the remarkable memories of Roman-Jewish actors!

  He opens his eyes and stands. ‘There just may be a way,’ he whispers. ‘But this part of a lifetime … It will be for you, Eli, not me.’

  41

  Lucius bases the identity I am to assume on a cherished role he was once given in a Phlyax play written by Sopater of Paphos. I am to be an ascetic augur and oculomancer on a pilgrimage to Yerushalayim from the wilds of the Galilee. My austere existence at the fringes of society will explain my threadbare clothing and rough hands.

  We give my alter ego a Galilean mother and an Ionian father, so that my knowledge of Torah, as well as the customs of the people of Zion – if revealed – shall seem wholly credible.

  Although our conquerors tend to keep to themselves, we can take no chances on my face seeming familiar to any of the servants or slaves I might meet, so Abibaal clips my hair short and dyes it obsidian-black with the mix of kohl and charred frankincense he uses on his master. As he effects this transformation, Lucius tells me that the augur he played was a youthful ornithomancer who read fortunes from the flight of birds. He researched the part by consulting a blind and elderly haruspex living in the port city of Ostia, and he tells me what he still recalls of their extensive dialogues, which turns out to be a great deal. He can still name the different birds that are said to reveal the future by the direction and swiftness of their flight. This includes, he says, the blackbird, raven, crow and glede.