Lazarus is Dead

by Richard Beard

  Isaiah and his wife accompany Lazarus to the room. After four days in a Roman cell he stinks of sweat but neither of them cover their noses.

  ‘Signs and wonders,’ Isaiah says, gesturing towards Saloma in the corner. ‘Now is your chance to make me believe.’

  ‘That isn’t why I came. I wanted to tell you we can’t get married.’

  ‘You are betrothed,’ her mother says.

  Isaiah nods. ‘By law you can touch my daughter.’

  Lazarus feels the strength of their longing. They want so much to believe that Lazarus, even against their instincts, is true. He kneels beside Saloma and she bangs her head against the wall. Then she covers her ears with a blanket. He reaches out towards her, stops, feels the heat from her hunched shoulders on his hand.

  ‘Heal her!’ Isaiah desperately wants Cassius to be right. Lazarus has died and is now alive and he will touch Saloma and through this miraculous contact Saloma will be healed. ‘You or Jesus, I don’t care which. Come on, Lazarus. Do some work.’

  Lazarus rocks back and stands up. He has not touched Saloma. He realises, possibly for the first time, that he is not the equal of Jesus.

  ‘I’m not a healer.’

  ‘You didn’t even try.’

  ‘You’d have to ask Jesus,’ Lazarus says. ‘And probably believe in him too.’

  Isaiah flares his nostrils. ‘That’s very convenient, because Jesus has gone into hiding. Somewhere in the Lower City, with the thieves and prostitutes. How can he help if we don’t know where he is?’

  ‘I’ll find him for you. I used to know my way around.’

  6.

  1.

  Have you found Jesus?

  This is what they ask when they come to the door. Christ on earth is elusive. If he had never gone missing, we’d know where he was.

  The hide-and-seek of the Christian Jesus has its origins in Holy Week, because the bible never commits to his exact whereabouts. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus spends Sunday night in Bethany. There is no mention of Lazarus, because Lazarus is imprisoned in the Antonia Fortress. Jesus uses Bethany as his base until Wednesday morning, and then he stays in Jerusalem.

  His movements are kept secret intentionally, and the theologian Marcus Borg cites Judas Iscariot as the reason: ‘By reporting that Jesus sent two disciples to make clandestine arrangements for the Passover meal, Mark has Jesus withhold from Judas its precise location, so that Judas cannot tell the authorities where to find Jesus during the meal.’

  The instructions given by Jesus suggest a network of contacts attuned to preconceived signals and coded phrases: ‘Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, “The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there’ (Mark 14:13–15).

  Lazarus has been separated from Jesus for many years, living far away in Bethany. He has been sick, and he died. On the Thursday after his escape from the Antonia, Lazarus can know none of the prearranged signals. He like everyone else has to search for the son of god, and for the same reason: if he finds Jesus, Jesus may have the answers. Why should Lazarus be alive? What is the purpose of his existence? He wants a second chance at asking what his second chance is for.

  His first task is to infiltrate the Jesus network in the Lower City. He knows someone who should be able to help.

  2.

  Lazarus launches himself up the ladder two rungs at a time, and bursts into Lydia’s attic. The lamps are flickering but Lydia is not at home.

  Baruch slams the trapdoor shut.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable. No charge.’

  For the first time Lazarus gets a clear view of the assassin sent to kill him. He is dark, heavy, an offence against Lydia’s careful version of heaven.

  Lazarus recoils and trips over a cushion. He has a soft landing. He looks desperately for a weapon, grabs a rounded flask of perfume and holds it ready. ‘What have you done with Lydia?’

  ‘She hasn’t been here since Saturday. Remember Saturday? You came back from the dead.’

  Baruch feints one way but moves the other, easily deflects the bottle that Lazarus throws at him. He catches Lazarus by the arm and tumbles him into the cushions, jamming his elbow into his side. He reaches round Lazarus’s neck, and grips him by the jaw. He could break him like a chicken.

  ‘If I wanted to kill you you’d be dead, several times over. The Sanhedrin priests have changed their plan. I’ve been ordered to leave you be.’

  Lazarus tastes the salt sweat from Baruch’s palm. He can feel the creak of his bones about to break.

  ‘They’re aiming for Jesus instead. He shouldn’t have upset the tables of the moneychangers. By doing that, he saved your life.’

  Baruch pats Lazarus twice on the cheek, then releases him. ‘I should say he saved your life again. Twice in a week. Some friend.’

  Lazarus rubs blood back into his arms. ‘If you’re not going to kill me, what do you want?’

  ‘Very little. Hardly anything. Just one thing. It’s about last week, and where you went. I want to know if there’s anyone waiting.’

  In the tomb Baruch had been nervous, uncertain. Now that he’s had time to think, he is terrified. He has always sincerely believed that when his victims died they were dead.

  ‘Remember I could have killed you. So tell me. Are they waiting? It’s not as though I make the decisions. I just do the killing.’

  Lazarus says: ‘I’m looking for Jesus. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Maybe they’ll forgive me. In the Sicarii our training starts at seven years old. I never had any choice.’

  ‘Help me find Jesus. I know you can do that.’

  Baruch looks up sharply. ‘Are you after the money?’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘The priests have set money aside, as a reward for whoever brings him in. Someone will claim it sooner or later.’

  ‘But not you?

  ‘I’m a killer. That’s what I do. I’m not an informer.’

  ‘So you do know where he is?’

  ‘I know where he was last seen. Tell me what I can expect on the other side.’

  Lazarus stares into the assassin’s frightened, unblinking eyes. In return for news about Jesus, he gives Baruch what he wants.

  Cassius needs five or six men, no more, but he is out of the habit of asking permission.

  ‘You were wrong about Jesus,’ the governor says. He is a balding, middle-aged administrator. Every inconvenience is a direct assault on the authorised idleness he’d been promised. ‘You reported in writing both to me and to Rome that Jesus couldn’t gather a following in Jerusalem. You captured Lazarus but you let him escape.’

  The governor is not impressed. He has cancelled all leave, and Cassius will not be allocated even one soldier to develop his hunches about Lazarus. Passover is a volatile festival. It reminds the Judaeans that they’re expecting a messiah and the end of the world, but there will be no end of the world, not with the Romans in charge.

  ‘Why have we lost sight of Jesus? What do your spies think they’re doing?’

  The spies have been keeping Cassius informed about the movements of Lazarus. After his escape from the fortress Lazarus had been seen leaving Isaiah’s house, and then later he was spotted in the Lower City. The spies will not, however, lay a hand on him. They know where he’s been.

  ‘I can pick up Lazarus, but I need those legionnaires.’

  ‘Why didn’t you flog him? The soldiers stay here in barracks. Jesus is the one we want.’

  Cassius goes to the marketplace below the west wall, where Yanav is continuing his brisk business in genuine Lazarus relics.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Either. Both.’

  ‘Maybe in the same place,’ Yanav says. ‘Lazarus is searching, like everyone else.’

 
‘And where exactly is he looking? Take an educated guess.’

  ‘If I were him, I’d start where Jesus was last seen. Bethany. Anywhere else is speculation.‘

  Cassius thinks: what would Lazarus do? He’d be smart, and travel at dusk, to attract the least attention. Cassius decides to get ahead of him. He crosses the Kidron Stream, alone, and settles down behind a shrivelled fig tree. He is hidden from the road and he waits. Birds return to their nests, and night falls heavily on the last of the day, squeezing out a final grey layer of light.

  Lazarus turns the corner. He walks briskly, like someone who knows he’s being watched.

  Cassius follows him, up the gravelled tracks through the uneven groves of the Mount of Olives. Silver leaves twitch green and grey in the twilight. Lazarus can make this journey in his sleep, but as the night blackens, dark as the inside of a sack, Cassius becomes confused. He trips over a tree root and skins his hands. He scrambles upright, but the incline is against him and he bangs his knee. It feels as if the whole world is against him.

  He can’t keep up, nor see where he’s going. He sits down, and breathes deeply, because regular breathing is good for logical thought.

  ‘Yaaaah!’

  Shouting aloud also helps. He rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes, then pushes the skin of his forehead towards his hairline. He lets go and becomes himself again. Organise, he thinks. Fetch a horse, wait for some moonlight to ride by.

  He turns back towards the city—saving people is harder than he’d expected, but he isn’t giving up. If Lazarus can be persuaded to cooperate, then nobody will have to die.

  3.

  At first, Martha doesn’t recognise him. The last time she saw her brother he was tied to a rope being dragged away by Romans. She spent hours grieving him a second time, and then Jesus returned from Jerusalem. He calmed her, and almost convinced her that everything could turn out well.

  His beard has grown. She mistakes him for Jesus, but then the moon comes out and there he is, Lazarus her brother, alive yet again.

  Before his death, Martha hadn’t cried in thirty years. Now she cries every day. Tears come as she rushes towards him, as she pulls at him and holds him close. She slaps her wet cheek against his neck, his shoulder, then holds him at arm’s length to check his face.

  ‘What about the Romans? Where are they?’

  ‘Where they always are. What are you doing outside?’

  The house, the Home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, is pale in the moonlight. Beside the bay tree in the courtyard a fire is snapping, and Martha had been sweeping embers back towards the flames. Lazarus wants a closer look, and with his first step he kicks a chip of crockery across the yard.

  ‘We’re burning everything,’ Martha says. ‘Every object you ever touched. The priests ruled the house was unclean, defiled by contact with the dead. One of the younger ones made me collect the kindling.’

  ‘I heard Jesus was here. After I was taken by the Romans.’

  ‘He said it didn’t matter, that we’d soon forget. They’re only possessions.’

  Lazarus sees the remains of his razor near the base of the fire, the copper blade twisted and blackened.

  ‘The rugs,’ Martha says. ‘Gone. The blankets we carried from Galilee.’

  Martha has saved what she can for everyday use. Otherwise their life is in ashes: clothes, bedding, the bolt of silk that Mary and Martha were keeping for weddings never destined to happen. ‘Jesus is probably right. You can’t take it with you.’

  ‘Is he here now?’

  ‘Not since yesterday.’

  ‘So you’ve had to do this on your own?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Martha says. ‘I’ve had help.’

  ‘Mary came back? I’m glad.’

  ‘Not Mary. Jesus sent someone from the city.’

  A woman backs out of the house carrying a tray with an engraved brass teapot and matching goblets. She turns, and Lydia recognises him immediately, despite his beard, his fatigue, the darkness and his surprise at seeing her in the doorway.

  ‘Look who’s back from the dead.’ She smiles. ‘Not too bad, considering. I heard you had a green head.’

  Cassius can predict the future. He decides what Rome needs and then makes it happen.

  Lazarus will be the Roman client messiah. Not Jesus. Lazarus will neutralise the threat posed by Jesus, or any other impostor, and consolidate peace in the region for decades to come. Cassius has it all mapped out. Judaeans are infected with too much hope for god, and Lazarus can be the next affliction, a messiah who is not the king of the Jews and who doesn’t act provocatively during major religious festivals.

  The Church of Lazarus Christ will not change the way things are, not too much. It favours law and order, naturally, and is tolerant of gods and religions from elsewhere. Lazarus himself will reward the ambitious and punish the lazy, but no one should give up everything they own to follow him. Stay at home. Respect property and stability, relax. The world is not approaching an end and these are not the last days before a decisive battle between light and darkness.

  In fact, life tomorrow will be much the same as it is today. This is one of Rome’s most important unstated objectives. Tomorrow will be the same as today, if not slightly better.

  Cassius reaches the Fortress to find that the Antonia horses have been transferred to the stables at the Praetorium. He curses and changes direction. The governor is wrong to be anxious: religion has to be managed, not repressed. It can distract the people from thoughts of rebellion, keep the children out of trouble and men in bed with their wives.

  Lazarus will be the son of god, and Lazarus will belong to Rome.

  They eat with Absalom’s family in Absalom’s house. Lazarus is impatient to get back to Jerusalem, to continue his search for Jesus.

  ‘What about the Romans?’ Martha asks.

  ‘They’re more likely to find me here than in the city.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Absalom says. ‘You don’t need to run. Jesus brought you back and he knows what he’s doing.’

  Lazarus is also hungry, and this is the Passover meal of roasted lamb and matzoh to celebrate the deliverance from Egypt. He’ll eat quickly, he says, and then he’ll go. He sits cross-legged on the floor between Lydia and Martha, and eats as he has eaten every day this week: each meal could be his last.

  Absalom is describing the Passover meals prepared by his mother, and Lazarus sees him for what he is, a kindly old man with expressive eyebrows who talks to the dead at night.

  ‘I asked her if she noticed your visit. She didn’t reply. Perhaps you saw her and she didn’t see you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lazarus replies. ‘That must be it. Don’t worry. Your mother is there like everyone else. They are waiting for us.’

  He had said the same to Baruch. What Baruch now does with that knowledge is up to him, but on balance as he eats Lazarus decides that life after death, specifically his own, has been revealed for the greater good. Absalom, for example, wants to hear that his mother exists. He can resist asking whether she has been judged, or if the afterlife is overcrowded or up or down or dark or light. His mother still is, which is all he needed to know.

  Absolom calls for wine. ‘To absent friends,’ he says, and they drink.

  Lazarus is amazed by the changes since he was last in Bethany. Absalom’s serenity extends to sharing his table with Lydia, because Jesus suggested he should. Jesus, it seems, is a calming influence: Martha is resigned to the destruction of their home.

  ‘Life is short,’ she shrugs. ‘We worked hard. We saved money. Jesus has a different idea of what’s important.’

  ‘Which he hasn’t yet shared with me.’

  Lydia laughs. ‘Same old Lazarus. Thinner, especially in the face, but still a little jealous.’

  There is something radiant about the others that Lazarus envies. It is like the reverse of death. A light has been ignited in them, or like flowers in springtime first one then another of them blooms. They have opened up to belief, poc, t
o new possibilities.

  Lazarus feels excluded from this unexpected optimism. They have changed in his absence, as if they know more about Jesus than he does. Even now, he wants to defend the uniqueness of his childhood friendship.

  ‘I came to find Jesus,’ he reminds them.

  ‘You should definitely talk to him,’ Lydia agrees. ‘It would help.’

  ‘That depends,’ Martha says. ‘Jesus doesn’t want to hear him complaining.’

  ‘It’s not for me. It’s for Isaiah. He thinks Jesus can heal Saloma.’

  ‘Oh Lazarus, you can do better than that. Start by being honest with yourself.’

  ‘Jesus is in danger. The assassin told me the priests have offered money to anyone who betrays him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lydia says. ‘We know.’ She looks at him evenly. ‘The Romans are chasing you. The Sicarii may decide to kill you. You’re trapped in a rotten betrothal and you’re oblivious to the people who love you. We understand why you’re looking for Jesus.’

  Hooves clatter in the square. A single rider dismounts, and they listen to footsteps heading away from them, in the direction of Lazarus’s house.

  ‘Quick. Find me somewhere to hide.’

  4.

  On the Jesus side of the story, Thursday is also an eventful evening. While Lazarus is eating in Bethany, the disciples and Jesus are preparing themselves for what will turn out to be the last supper they share together. The meal will be eaten in the upstairs room of a Jerusalem inn. The location is secret, but archaeologists suggest a site close to the Siloam Pool in the poorer Lower City.

  In first-century Palestine the last supper would not have been prepared or served by men. The lamb and the bowls of bitter herbs would have been sent up from the inn below. Mary arranges them on the table. She places the bread and pours the wine.

  When the meal finishes, Jesus will leave the inn. He and the disciples will walk to the Mount of Olives. No one knows exactly why. It may be, only hours before his arrest, that Jesus suddenly craves the open air, among olive trees, and a hillside where he can see and hear what the ancients saw and heard before him. He was brought up in Nazareth. He prefers outdoor spaces where simple truths remain true: fire and food, shelter and sleep, man and beast.