Lazarus is Dead

by Richard Beard

  It is the smell that tugs at his heart. He closes his eyes to capture a memory as faint as the memory of a dream, but think­ing doesn”t feel as if it”s going to work. Logic isn”t the mechanism to grasp the truth of whatever happened here.

  He sits on the lowest step, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his fingertips. No. Nothing.

  He pinches some dirt from the floor, granulates it between his fingers. A noise. Someone has entered the upper chamber.

  ‘Go away! I told you not to come back!’

  Lazarus fixes his eyes on the entrance above. A shadow on the step, then the shape of a man. It dips at the waist and dives straight at him.

  In Bethany, the tourist trade was founded in 33 CE, on the day visitors arrived in search of Lazarus.

  Yanav organises the daytrippers into an eager bustle of customers. ‘Don’t push at the back!’

  This explains why Lazarus is alone and vulnerable at the tombs. Visitors to Bethany already have secondary attractions in the square, like the thrill of bartering for Lazarus’s blood.

  ‘Drink it as it is!’ Yanav suggests. He makes his pitch while holding a clear vial of blood to the light. ‘Or make a compress to wrap an injury. Drip it onto salt or sugar and feed it to your children! I promise you, the blood of Lazarus will keep them safe.’

  Or if they can’t be tempted by blood, Yanav has a stock of recent fingernails. He can vouch that he was personally responsible for cutting a supply of hair from the head of Lazarus himself.

  ‘Burn it in the rooms of the dying. Bring solace and some extra days to those who you do love.’

  Lydia has enough memories without buying offcuts from his body. She is desperate to see how Lazarus has changed. An experience like this will have changed him, and she is prepared for the worst, for the Sholem Asch expectation of a contented Lazarus with ‘the wise, gentle smile of one who had penetrated all secrets and had come through to peace, the smile of one who had looked into the face of Death, and conquered him’ (The Nazarene).

  If Lazarus has solved the ultimate mysteries then Lydia doubts that she’ll be needed. They will never be together, she has already accepted that, but one last time she wants to see him for herself.

  Baruch pins Lazarus facedown to the ground like an animal for branding. He presses the cold blade of his knife flat behind Lazarus’s ear.

  ‘Not again,’ Lazarus grunts. He struggles but makes no progress. ‘Yanav, get off me. You know I want to live.’

  Baruch makes a fighter’s calculation. Lazarus has light-weight bones, and not enough muscle to surprise him.

  ‘What is beyond?’ he hisses.

  Lazarus stops moving. He doesn’t recognise the voice.

  ‘Lazarus, my friend, tell me what is beyond. If you do, I’ll make the killing quick.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ His voice is muffled by the inside flesh of his cheek crushed between his teeth. Baruch pulls his head up by the hair. ‘If I knew I’d tell you.’

  ‘Tell me, or you’ll wish you stayed dead.’

  ‘Wait! There is something!’

  ‘What? What is there?’

  ‘I don’t know what. I can’t remember. But there must be something, or I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  ‘I’m not a liar.’

  ‘You’re a well-known liar. You say you came back from the dead.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘And now what? You think you’re going to live forever?’

  Lazarus suddenly decides he’s had enough. Sickness couldn’t kill him. Yanav didn’t drown him. The beggar bowed down before him. Whoever his attacker is, he is outrageously ignorant of destiny.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Lazarus says. ‘Kill me. Find out how long I have to live.’

  With the boy in the forest Baruch had fumbled his knife, a basic error he wouldn’t usually make. This time he’s allowing Lazarus to speak. Nothing is as it was.

  ‘How did you keep your scheme a secret?’

  ‘Kill me.’

  ‘Where did you hide the food?’

  ‘You can’t do it, can you? I frighten you.’

  ‘I can do it. If you don’t like it, just come back.’ Baruch leans forward so that his lips are close to the heat of Lazarus’s ear. ‘God’s wrath is coming. Here is god’s wrath, today.’

  The dagger jars loose from Baruch’s hand, skitters across the floor. Lazarus twists himself free and scrambles away. He turns and sees his attacker flee up the stairs, then leaps towards the dagger, seizes it and jumps into a crouch. He points the blade at the new arrival on the far side of the tomb.

  Cassius has his hands on his knees and is breathing hard. He puts up one hand.

  ‘Lazarus, lay down the weapon. I’m arresting you in the name of the empire.’

  5.

  1.

  In the Russian tradition, above all others, there is a yearning to know more about Lazarus. He is the patron saint of second chances, and his example ought to be instructive. There are times when everyone would like to start again.

  In the novel Crime and Punishment (1866), by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the student Raskolnikov kills an elderly woman with an axe. He is not instantly struck down by an avenging god, and is further disconcerted by his lack of remorse. He decides to visit his girlfriend Sonya, who is a prostitute, and on her chest of drawers he finds a bible (‘an old one, second-hand, in a leather binding’).

  ‘ “Where’s the bit about Lazarus?” he asked suddenly . . . “Go, read it!” ’

  Sonya then reads to Raskolnikov from John 11, verses 1–44, finishing at ‘Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

  ‘“That’s all there is about the raising of Lazarus,” she whispered sternly and abruptly, and stood unmoving, turned away to one side, not daring to raise her eyes to him, as though she were embarrassed.’

  That’s all there is.

  Sonya closes the book, but they both know there should be more. In the aftermath of his crime, Raskolnikov has turned to Lazarus, not to Jesus, because for Dostoyevsky the resurrection of Lazarus is ‘the great and unprecedented miracle’. It promises hope to a true unbeliever, or would do if only more of the story survived. Yes, Lazarus came back to life, but what then, what happened to him next?

  The biblical Lazarus fails to provide the guidance that Raskolnikov needs. ‘All she [Sonya] could see was that he was horribly, infinitely unhappy.’

  Raskolnikov is Lazarus, disconsolate and unsmiling, ‘infinitely unhappy’, surprised to be alive but uncertain what this life is for.

  2.

  They tie his hands, loop a rope around the binding, then fix the rope to the saddle of a Roman horse. This is the second procession of the day from Bethany into Jerusalem, and the less well known of the two because the believers who tell the story of Holy Week are active in the city with Jesus.

  ‘Where I am, my servant also will be,’ Jesus is saying in the Temple at this precise moment. ‘My father will honour the one who serves me’ (John 12:26).

  By the end of the week Jesus will have been arrested, imprisoned, beaten and executed. Even so, on this day in Jerusalem he is at liberty to travel and speak as he wishes. Both the Sanhedrin and now the Romans are preoccupied with Lazarus, who stumbles over trampled palm leaves littering the Jerusalem road. Every time he falters, the rope tugs him onward.

  Lazarus, too, is followed by a crowd. The believers are with Jesus, so those who walk with Lazarus do not believe.

  ‘If that’s him, he’s hardly worth it.’

  ‘Jesus saved one man in the Jerusalem region.’

  ‘And calls himself messiah.’

  ‘Lazarus was his friend.’

  ‘Isn’t that always the way?’

  ‘They cooked it up years ago.’

  ‘And no one saw Lazarus die.’

  They toss his name about like an unwanted gift: the malingerer Lazarus, the charlatan, the liar Lazarus of Nazareth. Inside the city walls, wo
men lean out of windows. Men leave their work to catch a glimpse of him.

  ‘They’re taking him to the fortress.’

  ‘The Romans have chosen Lazarus. They think he’s the one.’

  Children cower behind adult legs, and teenagers compete to look a dead man in the eye. Many hold their hands over their noses.

  Lazarus and Jesus have overreached themselves. Nobody with any sense believes in resurrection. Dead is dead. They’re Galileans too far from home, fake messiahs counterfeiting a special relationship with the Jewish god.

  ‘They’re the same as the rest of us.’

  ‘No one escapes death.’ On this point everyone can agree. ‘And especially not Lazarus the overseer. He was always a bit strange. I never liked him.’

  ‘Fear would be the wrong response,’ Cassius says. ‘Though to look at, you don’t seem very frightened.’

  Cassius polishes an apple, checks his reflected face in the skin. ‘The Antonia Fortress is the safest place in Jerusalem. That’s what we built it to be.’

  Lazarus nods. Beside the door, he notices, is a small shrine to Minerva, goddess of victory. Beyond the door, for more pragmatic interventions, two Roman soldiers stand guard. ‘You’re going to kill me.’

  Cassius replaces his apple in the fruit bowl which is the centrepiece of a low rectangular table. ‘Help yourself,’ he says. ‘If you’re hungry.’

  Lazarus bumps his toes over the tiles in the mosaic floor. If he were dead, how would he know? He imagines he is dead, and it turns out the Romans have conquered everywhere, even the afterlife.

  ‘If I’m dead you can’t kill me. Therefore I have nothing to fear.’

  ‘First things first.’

  ‘So what comes first?’

  Cassius clicks his fingers. One of the guards unties Lazarus’s hands. The soldier tries not to touch him, treating Lazarus with the same caution as foreign novelties from previous campaigns. Lazarus is as unlikely as a crocodile, and possibly as treacherous.

  ‘Stay by the door,’ Cassius tells him.

  No one wants to be alone with Lazarus, not even Cassius. Even without the alleged death, the rapid healing is against nature. If he can do this, they all think, what else can he do?

  ‘I brought you here for your own protection.’

  ‘I knew it. You’re going to kill me.’

  ‘That may not solve the problem. For example if you come back again. I’ve called for the garrison doctor. He will be with us shortly.’

  Lazarus glances at the doorway. There wouldn’t be soldiers guarding the doors of heaven, not even a Roman heaven, unless heaven wasn’t safe for Romans. And then it wouldn’t be heaven. He can’t sustain this bravado. He is not dead, nor is he fearless. He is alive on earth in the Antonia Fortress, and he is frightened.

  ‘If we do kill you we’ll do it properly,’ Cassius adds, sensing that at last his words are having an effect. He pushes on. ‘Death the Roman way means crucifixion, and no one comes back from that.’

  ‘Please. I haven’t broken any laws. Not that I know of.’

  ‘I was there at the tomb. I saw what happened.’

  ‘So what did you see? Did I come back from the dead?’

  ‘In some ways, for your sake, I hope so. If you’re lying then the penalty for false witness is death.’

  ‘The penalty for everything is death.’

  ‘That’s justice for you. We’re going to check your physical condition. Take off all your clothes.’

  3.

  The Lazarus resurrection, like other supernatural events in the Christian story, can enrage the scholastic mind. “Higher Criti­cism” emerged in Germany in the eighteenth century, and the higher critics subjected the bible to the same objective analysis as other historical documents. Their aim was to establish the truth of biblical narratives.

  David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74), who extended the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) concluded that the Lazarus story was a ‘myth’. In his highly influential Life of Jesus (1863), Ernest Renan considers it a fraud perpetrated by the disciples to grow the Christian community.

  Cassius resists such intuitive umbrage, the equivalent of assuming that Lazarus smells. True and false are such primitive categories. He prefers to ask whether the raising of Lazarus can be useful.

  In Bethany, a blue-eyed Bedouin lost in the crowd, Cassius had watched Jesus weep. Angry, uncomfortable, Jesus had called Lazarus out from his tomb. The incident had been compellingly staged.

  Cassius will admit that Lazarus emerging from the darkness of the tomb, flapping and falling in his funeral rags, had been an unsettling spectacle. Not what he or anyone else had expected. It was unbelievable. He had flung his gourd of water to the ground, put his hands on his hips. This should not be allowed, not after he’d sent his briefing to Rome. He’d confirmed in writing that Lazarus was dead, and claimed this as convincing proof of the weakness of Jesus. In Judaea, he reported, there was currently no identifiable threat.

  He has now had a day and a half to subdue his indignation, to rationalise what he’s seen and not to believe his eyes.

  Cassius is no stranger to the divine. As a junior officer he’d once stood within twenty paces of the Emperor Tiberius in Rome. He will never come closer to a god on earth, but with the emperor it is easy to tell. He shines. He gives off light.

  On this occasion Cassius has decided to be philosophical, in the manner of Cicero: ‘For nothing can happen without cause; nothing happens that cannot happen, and when what was capable of happening has happened, it may not be interpreted as a miracle . . . We therefore draw the conclusion: what was incapable of happening never happened, and what was capable of happening is not a miracle’ (De Divinatione 2: 28, 44 BCE).

  Cassius is culturally in sympathy with Cicero’s Roman approach: Lazarus may well have come back from the dead. Fine. Absorbed. One day Rome will discover how and why, even if in every time and place until that day the event will remain a mystery.

  To kill him as the Sanhedrin wish to do is a wasted opportunity.

  ‘I asked you to take off your clothes. I suggest you cooperate.’

  What is worse than death?

  Lazarus being sent to Rome as a trophy. This is the standard imperial response to awkward religious figures. Humiliate the shaman. Lock him in a travelling cage, and parade him naked to Rome.

  In the Forum the senators will titter behind their hands at the Jew back from the dead. They will keep him in reserve for an afternoon of applied theology at the Circus—god’s chosen cadet against god’s unblessed beasts. A dilemma to intrigue Caesar himself, if Lazarus is lucky.

  But first the senators will ask him what is beyond.

  If he fails to answer they will tire of him. Then they will torture him, to ensure he tells the truth. Reason permits deceit, and pain suppresses reason. Lazarus will not lie if his rational faculties are inhibited.

  It is a simple question, Lazarus—tell us what is beyond.

  They start with the flogging whip, or flagellum, made with straps of leather embedded with glass or nails. If this doesn’t kill him, the torture can progress to more intricate equipment like the equuleus, the ‘young horse’. Iron weights are involved, and a narrow customised bench.

  In his Lives of the Twelve Caesars (119 CE) the historian Sue­tonius describes a first-century torture invented by Tiberius (14–37 CE), the emperor at this time. Tiberius would force his victims ‘to drink a great quantity of wine, and presently tie their members with a lute string, that he might rack them at once with the girding of the string, and with the pressure of urine’.

  Tiberius will be succeeded by Caligula, notorious for his use of flames and saws. It is at this stage that prisoners call for their mothers, then after that for their god.

  If Lazarus insists on remaining silent, refusing even under torture to share his experience of the beyond, the Romans will wash their hands and crucify him.

  The agony will be worse than any illness. It may be worse than death.


  Nothing can surprise Lazarus, not now. This is how he keeps himself calm. He reminds himself that anything can happen, good or bad. In which case, has he learned more than anyone else?

  He is lying facedown on the floor, naked, his arms and legs spread in a star. Mosaic squares stipple his belly when he breathes. The doctor, a Greek with a long face, is examining the skin behind his ears.

  ‘Turn over. Lie on your back.’

  The doctor inspects Lazarus’s gums, then thumbs up his eyelids.

  ‘There’s no smell, is there?’ Cassius is leaning against a wall with his arms crossed.

  ‘Mosquito bite. Inside of the left knee.’

  ‘Is that significant?’

  ‘He’s not invulnerable. And look at his breathing. Like you and me he has to get air to his stomach. His liver has to move blood around the body.’

  ‘Can he feel pain?’

  The doctor pinches his ear, hard. Lazarus jerks away, covering his head. Cassius kicks him his clothes.

  ‘The worst is over,’ he says. He dismisses the doctor but not the guards at the door. ‘Sit down, Lazarus. Eat an apple.’

  While Lazarus dresses, Cassius taps the pads of his fingers against his lower lip, fleshing it out. ‘I have one more question.’

  They sit opposite each other. Lazarus takes an apple and bites into it. His gums aren’t perfect—he leaves an imprint of blood on the exposed white flesh.

  ‘You want to ask what is beyond, don’t you?’

  ‘No. I want to ask if your god makes mistakes. Roman gods get it wrong all the time.’

  The gods Cassius has known since childhood are imperfect, omniscient but not all powerful—they give fire to the titans and the titans are tricked by men. Jupiter shrugs his shoulders. Life goes on.

  ‘Earlier today Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on a donkey, as prophesied in the Book of Zechariah. I’m a foreigner and even I know that. There are other scriptures predicting a messiah from the line of David who comes from Nazareth. A star will shine brightly above his birthplace in Bethlehem.’