The Gospel According to Lazarus

by Richard Zimler

  ‘An important Roman is on his way here,’ I tell him. ‘He’s certain to punish you if you don’t set Yeshua free right now!’

  The young soldier takes out his knife and starts towards me with his eyes already envisaging my burial.

  I next remember being yanked backwards and falling to the ground so hard that the breath is knocked from me. A man with a scolding expression stands over me: Nikodemos.

  ‘Do you want to be crucified, too?’ he snarls. ‘Is that what you want?’

  I sit up.

  ‘And if my last wish is for death, what right do you have to take it from me?’ I shout.

  I am surprised by my words; I had not realized that I’d wished to end my own life.

  Mia is standing beside Nikodemos, and next to her is my son, and their worried faces confuse me. For a moment, I no longer even remember how I came to be here.

  A man yells for divine assistance. Is it Yeshua?

  His voice makes it difficult for me to breathe, so I turn on my side and pull as much air as I can into lungs. I pray for the Lord of Hosts to cut his ropes and fly us both so far from here that we shall never be found again.

  Take us to the desert beyond Alexandria, I think. Set us free.

  ‘Father, why have you abandoned me?’ Yeshua cries.

  Nikodemos and I listen for what he will say next. But we hear only a woman shrieking for mercy for her son Samuel, one of the other crucified men.

  ‘What do I do?’ I ask Nikodemos.

  ‘Pray for his soul. And keep your distance from him.’

  ‘I can’t!’ I declare. And if you think I can, then you never understood anything about me! I add in my mind.

  Mia comes to me. ‘Eli, we must leave here,’ she says.

  ‘No, just help me get up,’ I tell her. ‘I promise not to do anything reckless.’

  Does she know I’m lying? She may, but she takes my arm when I reach out to her.

  Yeshua’s head has fallen forward, his chin against his chest, and his breathing is unsure. I imagine him in darkness, his soul gazing up, then down, no longer knowing which way leads towards life and which towards death. Blood is seeping from his right heel, which has just been nailed to the side of his upright, and the executioner, who kneels by Yeshua’s left foot, has just raised his hammer again.

  At the first crack of bone, I hear a scream louder than any I have ever heard before, but it is not from Yeshua.

  ‘Stop!’ I shriek again, and I keep crying it over and over.

  But the executioner does not even look at me.

  Mia clamps her hand over my mouth, and I fight her, but Nikodemos tackles me from behind, and I am on the ground again.

  And then I am dizzy and sick.

  Yirmi keeps his hand on my back as I lean over the ground and rid myself of all I was before this day. He fetches me a gourdful of water. As I study my son’s crushed eyes, I imagine our thoughts meeting in the air between us, and his are pleading with me not to make him an orphan.

  ‘I won’t call out again,’ I whisper.

  Once I am standing, my son takes my hand and leads me forward towards the cross. How does he know what to do to help me?

  I study the glistening flesh torn from Yeshua’s side and the gouges in his cheek, confused as to why the Lord would make man such a fragile creature, so easily destroyed.

  If I could I would hold out my hands and catch all the life dripping from him and put it back in him, and I would work so fast that he could never die.

  A mad circle of flies feeds at his heels. The nails driven through his flesh are rusted.

  They do not even waste new iron on the likes of us, I think, and the throbbing rage that creates in my head makes it manifest that his blood is no longer simply falling on to the dry soil at the base of his cross but rather on to every hope I have ever had.

  Can it be that a small part of the Lord – exactly the size of a man – dies each time we do? All I see and hear seems to want me to believe that. For if it is not the case, then how can the Almighty feel compassion?

  Maryam of Magdala stands behind Yeshua, shivering, her woollen mantle crumpled at her feet. Perhaps, I think, she dares not stand in front of him, for she knows that she will faint if she sees his face.

  But I am wrong.

  The tiny step she soon takes to her left, and the way she measures her distance from Yeshua, tell me that she has moved herself between him and the light from the cloud-shrouded sun so that the shadow of her head and chest will fall directly across his legs and feet.

  He will feel that she is with him, I think, and I know then that she intends to follow the path of the sun as it descends to the horizon. In the holy language of shadows, she is telling him, I shall remain with you for as long as it takes, and, in the end, I shall fall into the arms of death with you.

  And so I learn – too late, perhaps – that she loves him exactly as I do.

  My son and I kneel. Mia comes around to the other side of me.

  I study Yeshua’s closed eyes and imagine my lips pressing first to one then the other. I take his hands in mine and squeeze them tight, then release them and trace the sloping curve of his hips with my palms and kiss the top of his head and neck and lips, and the scent of him is of wood and papyrus, as it always has been. I feel the weight of his sex in my hand and hug myself around his legs. I caress my cheek against his and rub his whiskers against mine.

  I do these things because I need to know the beginning and the end of him, for only by knowing those things will the borders between us be erased, and I shall become the seer and the seen and the lover and the loved – and death will not end him, for he will for ever live in me.

  I shall remember everything that has taken place this day, I vow to him, although I do not yet know why.

  I take off my sandals and slip out of my tunic. Mia tries to stop me. ‘You can’t go naked here,’ she whispers, but I tell her there is no other way.

  ‘I shall shed all that might weigh me down,’ I say.

  Along with my clothes, I try to give up my fears, dreams, regrets and hopes, for Yeshua has always told me that the Lord greets us naked.

  His mother understands the simple grace of removing all that would only keep me from her son, because she calls my name as I kneel again, and she nods her tearful comprehension of my motives while running her hand down her chest. And then she, too, removes her sandals and takes off her headscarf.

  Could any of us send the person we most love to his grave – naked and defenceless – without wishing to accompany him?

  The Romans point at my covenant with the Lord and yell rude comments about my manhood, but what they do not know is that I no longer fear them, for the Torah that lives and the Torah that dies are both on my side in this battle: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall depart.

  Eliezer ben Niscroch and Samuel ben Abdiou. Those are the names of other two men who were crucified with Yeshua. Both were Judaeans, and both were rebels.

  Though they lived only at the fringes of this narrative of mine, they occupied the very centre of their own stories, of course.

  Over the next hours, I stand only once, when Yeshua tugs at the ropes binding his wrists and groans. Blood has begun to seep from his brow, and his mouth hangs open. I take a step forward and speak aloud. ‘Do not stay any longer than you have to. Finish what is most important, then leave us. No one will blame you for fleeing this miserable place.’

  After a time, his groans cease.

  Here are the last words I ever speak aloud to him while he lives: ‘Were it not for you, I’d never have learned who I am and where I was meant to go. I would know nothing. I shall be for ever grateful to you.’

  And then something unexpected stops my mind: his eyes open, and he recognizes me. As I gasp, he smiles encouragingly, as he nearly always does when we must part, and his right hand rises up, straining against its bindings, and he lifts two fingers to tell me that his work has come to an end – that he has done all h
e can do to heal our world, and the time has come for him to discard his earthly form and leave us. So I tell him in my mind that I shall join him as soon as he sends for me, and I thank him for transforming what could have been a bitter and lonely life into one of joy and gratitude, and I remind him to give counsel to the two holy warriors executed beside him, Eliezer and Samuel, for their souls will wish to have had more time and will become confused and anxious when they look back at their loved ones who are gathered here. And then his eyes close for the last time, and a sharp exhale of breath comes from his mouth accompanied by a trace of blood, and I hear a beating of wings so deep inside me that I perceive that a great mystery has taken place here and now, one that began with his birth and mine, and I know that I shall never fully understand what has come to pass this day, or why, and, when his chest no longer rises, Mia whispers his name, and she begins to chant a lamentation for our lost brother, and Yirmi adds his voice to hers, and I want to join them, but my voice is gone, and, after they fall silent, I embrace my son because he is weeping, and it is a blessing to be able to hold him against my naked flesh, and my sister hands me my tunic, and she tells me that she will take me back to Bethany, and I tell her, ‘Let me embrace our brother one last time, when he is lowered from his cross, and then I will go home with you.’

  But this is another lie; now that Yeshua is gone I know that I have no home anywhere in this world.

  47

  Nikodemos carries Yeshua down from his cross, kneels and eases him on to the barren soil with the help of Yosef of Arimathea. After his mother and grandmother sooth his wounds and cry their laments and say their farewells, I sit by him and thank him in a whisper for leading me to the island that gave us shelter for so many years, and I apologize for not understanding so much of what he tried to teach me and for failing him, and I bury my face in his hands and breathe through them, but they smell nothing like him, and they are waxen and heavy and cold.

  In death, we never much resemble who we were in life, for all the mystery is gone.

  48

  Maryam of Magdala stood for hours behind Yeshua’s cross, so she could not have seen him open his eyes to me. Although I have no hope of raising her spirits – that is beyond the scope of any man or woman – she deserves to be aware of everything I know, which is why, after I say goodbye to the others, I tell her that Yeshua recognized me just before he departed.

  She is no longer able to stand, so I kneel beside her.

  She clamps her hands over her mouth and shows me glistening, hopeful eyes. ‘Are you sure?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. He raised two fingers in the way we used to do as boys – to tell me he had to leave us but that he would be all right.’ I show her the sign I mean. ‘And some time before that he spoke to me as well – in my mind, as he has many times before. He said that there still remained a few things he would try to accomplish before returning to the Lord. He said his body was failing and … and that he would have to leave it behind.’

  Yosef of Arimathea has overheard our conversation and comes to me. ‘I’m sorry, Eli,’ he says, taking my shoulder, ‘I never saw him open his eyes – and I was watching him the whole time.’

  Three ragged waifs start fighting over one of the nails used to fix Yeshua’s heel to the cross, for they know it will fetch a good price as an amulet. After Mia shouts at them to take their shameful quarrel elsewhere, I summon Nikodemos, who is talking with friends from the Galilee, and ask him to confirm what I saw.

  ‘I didn’t see him look at you or anyone else,’ he tells me. ‘And I know he didn’t lift any of his fingers. In fact, the way his hand was bound, I’m fairly certain he couldn’t have.’

  I do not react with anger or resentment. I thank Nikodemos and Yosef for telling me the truth – their truth – but I also do not question what I saw. You see, Yaphiel, the mysteries of the world sometimes appear to each of us in ways that others cannot see, and there are experiences that are not meant to be shared. We have had them because they are right for us – and because we have been prepared to receive them by all we have ever seen and heard and touched. And suffered.

  49

  Yeshua must be taken to his place of rest without delay, since the Sabbath will be upon us at sundown. Yosef has offered one of his family’s tombs for this purpose. I consider accompanying him and the others, but Mia will not hear of it.

  ‘You’ve been through enough, and you’ll only make yourself ill again.’

  Mia leads me to Bethany and then to my room, and she washes the knife wound on my forehead and coaxes me into my bed, and she sits on my floor, by the window to our courtyard, and she watches over me.

  Each time I awaken in the night, she is sitting beside me.

  Over the next three days, I do not leave my alcove.

  What would I do without the help of Erebos, the god of darkness? I keep the shutters closed. I cannot imagine ever allowing sunlight to reach me again.

  When hunger overtakes me, I eat matzoh soaked in wine. It is the only food I can keep down.

  I am able to keep tears away at times by telling myself that Yeshua’s suffering is over. Still, when I am weeping, I am certain that the grief in my heart and eyes and belly will never leave me.

  An irony: when Mia assures me that time will ease my pain, I grow frightened, for I would never want to diminish in any way the living hollow inside me. Without my grief I wouldn’t be who I am, I think.

  When I do not believe I can bear any more, I drink, for inside wine resides slumber, and inside slumber is forgetfulness.

  Nikodemos sends a Greek servant to see me on the afternoon of the Sabbath, to assure me that Yeshua is in his tomb. I am too soaked in drink by then to retain much of what he recounts to me about the ceremony. His expression moves from disappointment to resentment over the course of our conversation. I know I ought to care, but I don’t.

  Paullus comes the next day in a litter carried by four slaves in saffron-coloured tunics. I am asleep when he arrives, and Mia refuses to wake me. Paullus tells her that he is sorry to have failed me and that when I am in better spirits he would like me to visit him.

  When I am in better spirits? After Mia gives me his message, I am tempted to return to his villa for the pleasure of howling with laughter in his face.

  In my reveries, I chop off Annas’ wrinkled, shrunken old-man’s head with an axe and carry it with me on a boat, far out into the Great Sea, and I toss it into the murky waters so that it will be eaten by cuttlefish and squid and all the scaleless creatures of the darkest depths, and he will be obliged to wander the earth for ever as a headless ibbur.

  I am obviously not a generous drunk. No, I am more of the vengeful kind, which is why Grandfather Shimon is perfectly right to refuse me his sword when I ask if I may keep it with me.

  White with a fringe of golden silk …

  Those were the colours of Paullus’ toga on the day he came to visit me. I missed his regal arrival at my door, but my neighbours were greatly impressed and apparently gossiped about it for days afterwards.

  Sometimes I think that there are a vast number of episodes in my life that Mia and my children could tell more artfully and accurately than I could.

  Mia tries to start conversations with me about trifles – the spring flowers, for instance – and I know I ought to play along and reply, Yes, the plum blossoms are lovely, but the words cling to my throat the moment I consider speaking them.

  Although my children no longer have any reason to flee to Alexandria, my cousins Ion and Ariston suggest that I move my family there as soon as possible. ‘We’d help you start over in Egypt,’ they say.

  I tell them I shall gladly consider their magnanimous offer once I feel strong enough to leave my room, but, the truth is, I have no idea what start over could possibly mean in this context.

  When Lucius visits, I am asleep, and he has Abibaal dab warm water on my hands to rouse me from my fermented slumber and then proceeds to lecture me on how I must not give in to despair and th
at he wishes to stand with me at Yeshua’s tomb so that our prayers might help his soul complete its journey. He seems to have decided that the way out of his own grief will be through usefulness, but I do not wish to be useful even to myself any more.

  My children visit me sometimes, and the three of us play together with Nahara’s top and wooden snake. Yirmi’s worries about me prompt him to request that he remain with me at night, and Nahara wishes to share my bed as well, but I tell them that I snore when I am drunk and would only keep them awake. The real reason for my refusal – God forgive me – is that I do not wish to be touched by anyone but him.

  Gephen comes to me as well, and I talk to him about the trifles that I am unable to discuss with Mia, because, when I listen to myself addressing a cat, my voice seems so silly and unlikely that I am occasionally able to imagine that nothing of what I witnessed on Golgotha was real.

  It is such a glorious relief to give up on participating in my own life that I wonder why I bothered venturing out into the world for so long.

  Once, while caressing Gephen’s warm belly, I conclude that I would have fared better with my sisters and wife and parents if I had been born a pet cat.

  My days are filled with such useless, wine-inspired revelations.

  When I give in to weeping, I lie face down on my mat and cover my head with my pillow, since I would not want my sister or son hearing me and trying to comfort me.

  Mia comes to sit with me on my third morning after Yeshua’s death, before I have had a chance to dip my breakfast matzoh in wine, and she asks if she can open my shutters. It is a relief – in both body and spirit – to be able to reply with a simple but definitive no, and it is at that moment that I discover how much more secure and strong I would have felt over the course of my adult life had I said no every time I wanted to.

  Marta does not come to see me. Yirmi tells me that she has been spending most of her time away from home. Did Mia and I fail her? Often, in my mind, I see an affectionate woman with Marta’s face – quick to praise and laugh and a weaver of renown throughout Zion – who is the sister I might have had.