Lazarus is Dead

by Richard Beard

  5.

  5.

  Jesus comes to Jerusalem.

  The British author Robert Graves, deep in his novel King Jesus (1946), uniquely identifies the significance of this unexplained trip to the capital city:

  He [Jesus] spent the months of December and January at Jerusalem, secretly financed by Nicodemon, but never once visited the house of Lazarus . . . ; and Lazarus, pained by this neglect, did not seek him out in the market places.

  During the last six months of his ministry Jesus travels to Jerusalem but decides against a visit to Lazarus. They both have birthdays at this time of year—thirty-three years old—but Jesus fails to make an effort for his only friend who lives a short walk away in Bethany. He avoids the visit even though Lazarus is widely known to be acutely, perhaps critically, sick.

  This is not a friendship without difficulties.

  In Bethany there is no time to lose. For the sake of his reputation, Yanav likes to make his more exotic interventions in public where everyone can see what he’s doing.

  ‘Fine,’ Lazarus says, ‘as long as it works. Let’s get started.’

  He leads Yanav out to the courtyard, and Martha follows.

  Mary is sitting, arms crossed, on the circular bench beneath the bay tree. No one will discuss her adventures in Jerusalem.

  ‘Whoever he was, your Roman was right,’ Martha had said. ‘This is where we belong. Not left for dead on the Galilee road. You didn’t even tell me you were leaving!’

  Now Mary stares meanly at a crumb trapped in the healer’s beard. Yanav locates the crumb, examines it, then pops it into his mouth.

  ‘Everyone sit with Mary on the bench,’ he says. ‘Make yourselves comfortable. We’re going to chase this demon out.’

  Lazarus watches Yanav rummage through the saddlebags on his donkey, while Martha and Mary bicker in whispers.

  ‘How much are you paying him?’ Mary asks.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Jesus heals for free.’

  ‘Yanav is a professional, not a carpenter.’

  He comes back with a curved thorn as long as his thumb.

  ‘This won’t hurt a bit.’ He opens Lazarus’s mouth. ‘Head back. Hold still.’

  ‘Aaah.’ Lazarus can’t make himself heard.

  ‘Tongue upwards. That’s it. Don’t move.’

  Yanav locates a glistening pustule on the underside of the tongue. He lances the swelling and collects pus onto the thorn’s sharpened point.

  ‘Martha next,’ he says. Martha’s eyes go blank but Yanav is the healer. He has a reputation.

  He asks for her left hand, palm downward. He clamps the hand between his knees and scratches the thorn between her knuckles, once, twice, three times, each time drawing blood. Martha shivers through her arm, shoulder, neck, all the way to her chin. Yanav goes back over the cuts, making sure the point enters deeply beneath the skin.

  Mary absolutely refuses. She stands up and turns her back.

  ‘Please,’ Lazarus says. ‘Trust him. For me. He says demons don’t like to be spread about.’

  ‘Thank you. I prefer to pray.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Yanav says. He’s disappointed, but healing is a mysterious art—everyone might be right.

  ‘I’m going to live,’ Lazarus says. ‘I promise you all. Give me a week or two and I’ll be dancing at my own betrothal.’

  Days pass, and Bethany neighbours tell Lazarus about Jesus in Jerusalem. He knows. Breathless messenger boys keep running to the village, as if energised by the secret of existence. They are so young. They think they know everything, but all they know is the news.

  No, they say, Jesus never mentions Bethany. He is not making arrangements to visit his only friend.

  Instead, Jesus is surrounded by rumours of the many miracles not credited by the evangelist John, unexplained events that feature in the other three gospels from which the story of Lazarus is omitted. There are confusing reports that in Galilee Jesus brought the dead back to life. A little girl, people say, though nobody will admit to knowing the details: ‘Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened’ (Luke 8:56).

  As if they’re not going to talk. People talk. Cassius listens. He has no idea what to make of this intelligence.

  ‘Jairus,’ his informants tell him. ‘That was the man’s name. His daughter died and then she was alive again, but the story doesn’t smell quite right.’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ Cassius interrupts. ‘Dead people don’t come back to life.’

  ‘You’d think he’d want people to know.’

  Cassius thinks this through. ‘Can anyone prove the girl was dead? You say she wasn’t buried, so maybe her revival wasn’t all it appeared to be.’

  ‘The father’s grief looked authentic.’

  ‘Anyone can fake emotion.’

  This story connects with another, about the son of the widow of Nain. He too is supposedly restored to life, which Cassius finds annoying. Cassius wants a messiah he can control, but Jesus is difficult to predict. He hushes up unbelievable powers in which his followers are prepared to believe. He travels to Jerusalem. He doesn’t visit Lazarus. What are the two of them playing at?

  In Jerusalem Jesus does nothing in particular, and therefore does nothing wrong. Cassius watches him from upstairs windows and from behind solid Temple pillars. He is reminded of Lazarus. The two men possess a similar self-reliance, which explains why neither has married. Many men who think too highly of themselves prefer to stay single.

  Cassius listens to his instinct. He has a strong feeling that as long as Jesus and Lazarus are kept apart, the Romans have nothing to fear.

  ‘Go and see him,’ Mary pleads. She is helping Lazarus back into his sitting position, rearranging the blanket over his shoulders. ‘He’s in the city. This is your chance, before they block the gates again. You have nothing to lose.’

  ‘He knows where I live.’

  ‘You have to ask him.’

  ‘Ask him what? He’s a fraud. Remember what happened to Amos, but then you weren’t there that day at the lake in Galilee. If anything, he should be asking help from me.’

  Mary squeezes his arm, at first to give him comfort and then to hurt him. She wants to be in Jerusalem embracing Jesus by the feet, but her brother and sister need her here in Bethany. She closes her eyes, prays for forgiveness. Then she sits at the loom and loops in strands of fine white linen for the betrothal gown. She can’t concentrate.

  ‘He is a lamb, he is a shepherd.’

  ‘Well, which?’ Lazarus snaps. His head feels like it could split in half. He pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders. ‘I know about sheep. He knows nothing about sheep. Nothing.’

  ‘He is bread. He is blood.’

  ‘Oh make up your mind.’

  Lazarus forbids any further mention of Jesus. He claims he’s more concerned about the betrothal, because they haven’t resolved the problem of the smell. He stinks of suspended flesh and of innards leaking.

  Yanav has done what he can. He gives Lazarus nutmeg to sweeten his breath, boils lemongrass with rose oil and waits for uphill breezes to blow the scent around the house. Not enough. He gives Martha baskets of dried laurel leaves to add to the fire, then pellets of cedar sap, rosemary, incense.

  Nothing helps for long. Yanav mixes concoctions of splintered goat horn in warm oil, or willow bark crushed into the fat of a pregnant ewe. Lazarus holds his nose and swallows, because medicine is a question of faith: Lazarus has to believe more strongly in the healing than in the sickness, and elaborate preparations can sway a reluctant believer.

  The demon does not come out. The smell remains.

  As a small comfort, the betrothal ceremony will at least take place outside, sanctioned beneath the eyes of god. Lazarus is determined to go through with it, because his business is neglected and failing: he needs Isaiah more than ever. He holds Mary’s hand. ‘You’ve been so good to me. Isaiah won’t let you starve, not when
you’re family.’

  Yanav buys more perfume. Nard is the best, and it comes in oil form in half-litre flasks at three hundred coins apiece. Martha questions the extra expense, but a genuine healer uses only the finest materials. Yanav rubs a handful of the perfumed oil in circles onto Lazarus’s chest. He can’t understand it: the rash and the pustules stay the same, but the smell is always worse.

  Yanav’s treatments gradually take effect. True, Lazarus isn’t visibly better, but nor is he any worse.

  His cough has stabilised, whereas villagers unable to afford a healer would expect, by now, blood to be appearing in the sputum. The blisters on his tongue, a symptom feared throughout the region, have neither swollen nor burst. The pustules harden but stay intact, and astonishingly both Martha and Mary remain untouched. They are models of robust good health.

  Lazarus loses weight and his eyesight weakens, but his digestion steadies because Yanav feeds him earth. Every morning he makes a paste with goat’s blood and powder from the termites’ nest.

  Yanav sometimes asks questions about Rome, Romans, and the probability, in Lazarus’s opinion, as a respected tradesman in Jerusalem, of a popular uprising that could threaten the rule of the foreign oppressors. But he does this while applying a compress of moss and honey to the scabies rash, and Lazarus usually ignores the questions as he waits for an end to the itching. The end soon comes. Yanav works another miracle when he bleeds Lazarus with a cut beneath the armpit—his body cools, the fever briefly subsides.

  He gives Lazarus fish oil to drink, but in a month and a half nothing conquers the smell. The demon is weakening, Yanav is sure of it, but he has yet to cast the enemy out.

  Lazarus doesn’t always help. He wastes energy on self-pity and regret, because his life feels diminished. Each day holds fewer possibilities than the last, his choices fading as if heroic reunions and legendary adventures might now never happen. Poc. The options disappear, one after another they vanish. Poc.

  Lazarus will not have it. Life must not close down. He will stand in Jerusalem for his betrothal, no matter how he gets there. He will assert his will, ride on Yanav’s one-eyed donkey, do whatever needs to be done.

  4.

  Yanav chants invocations to every deity he can remember. There are so many gods, and most of them are difficult to please. He exhausts the remedies in his saddlebags, and makes regular trips to the market to search for fresh ingredients.

  It is in the Bethany market, without any warning, that Cassius pulls him aside. Yanav looks sideways at him, at the pale northern sky of his eyes. The Roman is disguised as an out-of-town trader.

  ‘How’s Lazarus?’

  ‘This isn’t the place or the time.’

  ‘You haven’t kept in touch. I hear he’s worse since Jesus came to Jerusalem.’

  Every healer has a last patient, a heavy defeat. Yanav does not intend his to be Lazarus.

  ‘We know he’s running out of money,’ Cassius adds. ‘Why are you trying so hard?’

  ‘I’m a healer. He’s an interesting case. Not what I expected.’

  ‘I only asked you to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘He’s dying.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Really?’

  Cassius is under no obligation to explain himself. He has decided that now is the time for the Romans to influence events. The Sanhedrin priests have mixed intentions, and, although they value the rule of law, they can be impulsive, and act without subtlety. Romans are more experienced in the practice of power, and Cassius prides himself on the delicacy of his judgement—it is better for everyone if Lazarus stays sick. This will neutralise Jesus. He can stage as many miracles as he likes, but his followers will always doubt him if he appears powerless to help his friend.

  ‘I hear you’re planning to take Lazarus to Jerusalem.’

  ‘For his betrothal. Have a heart.’

  ‘Be very careful. I don’t want him meeting with Jesus.’

  The Sanhedrin priests are the next to react. Jesus makes them nervous, especially in Jerusalem, because he knows how to appeal to the dissatisfied. He steals their spiritual attention, and the priests have the most to lose. They have a status to maintain, a living that needs to be earned.

  Later, when Lazarus comes back to life, we learn the depth of the Sanhedrin’s resentment: ‘So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus too, because on his account many Jews were rejecting them and believing in Jesus’ (John 12: 10–11).

  Lazarus is not their first encounter with rejection, or the religious competition offered by Jesus. So what would their ‘plans’ involve? How does a committee of senior priests set about murdering an opponent?

  They could hand him over to the occupying forces and intrigue for a crucifixion. But only as a last resort. Alternatively, they can do what they’ve done for centuries. They call on the Sicarii, the dagger-men.

  The Sicarii are a sect of first-century Jewish assassins. Their signature weapon is the dagger, and they are known for their efficiency and discretion. They travel under assumed names, and are expert at living unnoticed among strangers.

  In the village of Nain, on the lower slopes of the Hill of Moreh overlooking the Esdraelon Plain, Baruch stalks the widow’s boy who claims to have returned from the dead. ‘On his account many Jews were rejecting the priests and believing in Jesus.’ Resurrection is as intolerable now as it will be in three months’ time with Lazarus. These Jesus charades must stop, and quickly—the Sanhedrin have made their decision.

  For three days, mainly from the roof of the synagogue, Baruch watches the widow’s house. He changes his position with the sun, so that whatever the time of day he is a shadow within a shadow.

  At dusk the widow comes into her yard. She fills a water bowl for her chickens, then throws out handfuls of grain from her apron. She dusts off her hands and looks nervously about, as if she knows. She has felt like this for months, even before the death of her son. She bustles inside and bolts the door.

  First-century Jews aren’t stupid. They’re not very different from who we are today, and if they were the events of those times would cease to have any relevance. They’re sceptical. They think about Jesus and look for the joke, as in later years comfort will be found in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979), or Gore Vidal’s Live from Golgotha (1992).

  A gang of jeering young Sadducees, encouraged by the Sanhedrin, follow Lazarus into Jerusalem. They mock his sharp, sick features, the shaven cheeks sunk between bones. He looks like death, but nobody fears contamination because his sisters walk behind him with their heads held high.

  ‘He deserves it. Didn’t know his place.’

  ‘Galilean. It was his choice to shave. Can’t say he wasn’t warned.’

  The social acceptance of Lazarus, it seems, is conditional on his success. Either that, or there is relief that his illness disproves the unsettling power of Jesus.

  ‘Looks bad, smells worse.’

  They snigger, and laugh at what it means to be friends with the One. They hold their noses and slap their thighs, suck dates and blow out the long dry pips. Whenever the wind changes they shriek and clamp their nostrils shut. Everyone said it was true and it is. He stinks to high heaven.

  Lazarus attempts to walk unaided. Yanav and the donkey lead the way, then Lazarus, with Martha and Mary following.

  Lazarus trips, and doesn’t have the strength to right himself. He falls.

  Everyone laughs.

  Yanav helps him up, brushes the dust off his clothes.

  Lazarus starts coughing, and to keep him moving Yanav lifts him onto the donkey. He weighs hardly anything. The procession moves forward again and Lazarus doubles up with the dysentery. He topples sideways off the donkey.

  He is hilarious.

  In the city, Isaiah and the Sanhedrin priests are pretending to ignore the presence of Jesus. They have already ordered their extreme response to the rumour that started in Nain. This is their warning to Jesus: don’t dare attempt anything spectacular in Je
rusalem.

  In the meantime, they continue with their ceremonies as usual. The betrothal of Lazarus to Saloma has been arranged for the open square near David’s Tomb in the Upper City. The huppah is already in place, a silk cloth secured over four poles carried by attendants. The attendants are experienced Temple guards, selected personally by Isaiah. Nobody will be interfering with the betrothal of his only daughter.

  This precaution is a gesture towards the unknown powers of Jesus. As is the detachment of Roman soldiers sealing off the street that leads to and from the Temple. That’s where Jesus spends most of his time, in and around the Temple, and today he will not be permitted to change his routine.

  Lazarus is helped into position beneath the canopy. The silk above his head symbolises the house he will provide for Saloma, the future he has decided is his. He concentrates on standing upright.

  Yanav has a large family and many acquaintances, and a good number of guests have assembled to witness Saloma’s betrothal. They have to see it to believe it. Lazarus himself is having difficulty seeing, because common eye diseases have narrowed his field of vision. On both sides he sees black with an edge of grey, but he too wonders whether Jesus has planned a surprise appearance. He squints and scans the guests, turning his head to focus.

  Jesus would be jealous. His old friend Lazarus is about to marry. He will father a dynasty, like Abraham, something Jesus himself shows no sign of doing. Jesus can stage as many deceptions as he likes, but family is the centre of every worthwhile life. He, Lazarus, is the better man. It was always him. He could do anything, whatever he wanted to do.

  In the crowd, Lazarus makes out a woman he can’t place, who immediately from the shape of her he knows he wants. She disappears. He loses her.

  Lydia. He didn’t recognise her with clothes on. He tries to find her again, and now she is over to his left. With every sway of her hips he realises he’s never seen her walk. She keeps disappearing behind family who are strangers. Lazarus wants her to stop, stand still, let him look at her. He wants her captive as she is in her room.