Lazarus is Dead (10 page)

‘Goodbye, Galilee!' Amos shouted. ‘I'll be back when I'm rich!'

‘Or by sunset,' Lazarus said, ‘whichever comes sooner.'

At Capernaum, the weavers rolled out their mats and set up awnings in the marketplace, while the three boys from Nazareth explored the rocky shore of Lake Galilee. They skimmed stones and watched the launch of fishing boats, the sails catching and dragging the men away. Poorer fishermen cast from the beach, wading in as far as their thighs, wrestling with the heavy knots of their nets. Today they were in a hurry. There was a storm coming.

Lazarus had swum in the lake many times, and it was best to find a cove out of sight of the locals. They said swimming was dangerous, and the currents unpredictable.

‘Or in other words,' Lazarus said, ‘they're old and frightened and have lost their appetite for life.'

 

‘Yes,' Yanav says. ‘We can try.'

He gathers scraps of wood from around the village, because Lazarus doesn't have the strength to reach Jerusalem on foot, or sitting astride the donkey. Yanav finds a hammer, and borrows some nails. He cuts rope and devises a solution. Anyone can be a carpenter.

Yanav lashes his homemade stretcher to the donkey. The stretcher is on sleds and has a wooden backrest so that Lazarus can sit upright, looking home towards Bethany as the donkey drags the stretcher to Jerusalem. Martha and Mary help their brother outside, while Yanav calms the donkey.

Their procession limps away from the village. The dog and the donkey, Yanav and the sisters, Lazarus bumping on the stretcher which scrapes up dust as they go. After an hour they're still in the first valley, and Lazarus insists on trying to walk.

“The strangest figure in the procession, a frightening appari­tion, was Lazarus,” writes Sholem Asch. “His yellow-ashen face stood out from among all the others, for it had the aspect of an empty skull above the covered leanness of the skeleton: his legs moved stiffly, like wooden supports, as he followed the ass.”

On the busy track Sadducees and Pharisees point him out. There in that hideous face is evidence of the weakness of Jesus. Not everyone agrees, and for the Jesus believers Lazarus has only himself to blame—he should have made more of an effort, offered himself for baptism in the River Jordan. Only those who demonstrate their faith will be saved.

The three-mile journey to Jerusalem takes all morning, and in his pitiful condition Lazarus is seen by travellers, priests, soldiers, traders, women, children. In Bethany, on the road, near Jerusalem. It is necessary. These are the witnesses who will later swear that Lazarus must have died, that no one living has ever looked so nearly dead.

Lazarus himself has other ideas. He has tried everything else, but not the Bethesda pool.

 

 

Jesus stood on the shore with their clothes and sandals in his arms. He followed Lazarus in everything else, but never into the water. He couldn't see the point of swimming—it wasn't a skill he wanted to learn.

The brothers raced each other into the lake. Lazarus won, but only just. They dived and sank and sprang back up again, water spuming from their shoulders. Amos did a comic backwards tumble, Goliath in the waves.

‘Let's go deeper,' Lazarus said. He didn't like Amos showing off for Jesus. ‘If you dare.'

‘I like it right here.'

‘You can touch the bottom. It doesn't count.'

Lazarus flipped over onto his back, his chin out of the water and also his toes. He checked Jesus was watching. Jesus had always been there, all through his childhood, as faithful as an imaginary friend. With Jesus everything would turn out fine. That was what their friendship had come to mean, and it was this message that Lazarus recognised in his friend's patient eyes.

Amos splashed back towards the shore and was stumbling out of the water. Lazarus taunted him and slapped the waves and laughed out loud until his brother changed his mind.

 

‘No stretchers,' someone says. ‘Mats at the back.'

In one of the lower porches they hire a mat at a ridiculous price. Martha hands over the coins because nothing is too good for Lazarus, as long as he doesn't die.

‘I'm thirty-three years old,' Lazarus says. ‘I'm not going to die.'

Martha adds another coin for luck.

Bethesda is heaving with the sick and dying. The porches and poolside have been packed since Jesus made his visit. Everyone here knows the story. Jesus arrived unannounced, selected a stranger at random, and told him to take up his mat and walk.

Now no one knows where best to set themselves up. Some hang back in the hope that Jesus will come again. Others push to the edge of the pool and wait for the water to tremble. When the reflections shudder, when the sky quakes and the pillars quiver, when the angels pass by, that is the moment to jump.

Lazarus can set up wherever he likes, because of the smell. No one dares come near.

‘Next to the water,' Lazarus says. ‘As close as we can get.'

He does not believe in miracle visits from Jesus. Even the magic of the Bethesda pool is more reliable. Lazarus wants to live, and there is nothing he will not try.

That afternoon, after the long trip from Bethany, fatigue overcomes him. He fights it, even though he could drop off at any moment. The water laps against the stone edges of the pool, and the glinting light is Galilee, at the lake. He can hear the groaning of the sick, but luckily he can barely see them. He has always been lucky.

In the night he lies awake. It is at night that he becomes a bad sleeper, with a tiredness too important to sleep through. He senses that someone is watching him, and he focuses on individual stars in the sky. Then he wonders if angels pass at night, when no one can see the water tremble.

Quietly, in the dark, he is frightened he's going to die.

The idea is inconceivable. Death is not to be confused with whatever is happening to him. Death is out there, and death happens, but not to him, not to Lazarus, with all his thoughts and memories and feelings.

This is when he has to be vigilant that his fears don't turn into prayers. He must not weaken. He reminds himself that he prefers planning to praying, and only he can help himself. He is the one, and he can do anything.

The next day the water is like glass, making clean reflections of the pillars on every side. As he waits, and watches, he discovers that there are sick people at the pool who as part of the mystery of sickness have lost their sense of smell. They recognise Lazarus and are surprised they can get so close.

They approach hesitantly, and pretend to be interested in his health, but Lazarus knows that before too long the question will come. They arrive at it from different directions but the question is always the same. What is Jesus like?

Lazarus looks at the surface of the water. It does not tremble.

‘What is Jesus really like? You're his friend.'

‘Slow at climbing.'

‘No, honestly.'

‘Hopeless at swimming. I don't remember.'

Jesus had light flickering around his face, not heavenly light, but sunshine reflected from the trembling surface of the lake.

‘Don't keep it to yourself. Tell us how he was as a child.'

Don't ask me, Lazarus thinks. Ask Amos.

 

 

He waded back out to the same depth as Lazarus, because it was important to keep up, to be as strong as the next boy along.

It happened quickly. Lazarus swam out further and Amos followed. Lazarus turned back, and Amos had his nose above the water, his hands paddling fast. His neck was strained back at an unnatural angle, and then his head went under. Lazarus thought his brother was playacting. He got his hands underneath him and pushed him up, gave him a shove towards the shore. He went under again.

‘That's not funny!'

Amos came up, paddling furiously, as if panic could keep him afloat. He whined with terror, his lips sucked tight into his mouth.

Lazarus caught him and held him up. He pushed him hard to get him started but his own head went under. He was the taller of the two, and his toe touched gravel on the bed of the lake.

The gravel slipped beneath him. He reached again with his foot but drifted further from the shore, pulled out by the currents of the coming storm. Amos was now closer to the shore than Lazarus but still out of his depth; Lazarus reached down a foot to move closer and found himself further away. His brain wasn't working—he made the mistake several times more before accepting he had to swim.

He splashed hard with his arms, slapping his hands into the water. He aimed himself at Amos but wasn't making progress. He put his foot down searching for solid ground but the gravel dragged him back before he could push himself off.

Now Lazarus, too, felt the strength leave his arms.

Staying alive would take all his effort. Finding his depth. Reaching the shore. He wanted to help Amos, with his whole heart he wanted to save him, but only to the point where he had to save himself. That was as far as his saving would go. Ahead of him Amos went under. Lazarus thrashed with his arms. Amos drifted away from him. Lazarus felt the nearness of death and he knew, with absolute certainty, that above all else he wanted to live.

Jesus stood on the shore, holding their clothes and sandals. He didn't help because he couldn't swim. He patiently watched Amos drown. He watched Lazarus save himself. He did not intervene.

Lazarus remembers every detail—this is not a forgettable experience. On the shore, when he hauled himself out, Jesus had lost that look in his eye that said everything would turn out fine.

The body was never found, or if it was Lazarus was never told. He didn't ask.

He travelled home to Nazareth on the back of a cart, surrounded by veiled women who took turns to press him close to their breasts. He couldn't remember Jesus as a presence in the cart going home, but presumably he was there.

Innocent people must drown in Lake Galilee. Blameless families are required to grieve. This must be so, otherwise no one would be frightened for the disciples in the storm.

If Jesus is the son of god, then all stories both before and after exist in the service of this one incredible story. Every drowning makes its contribution to the glory.

“When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Caper­naum. By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them. A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. When they had rowed three or three and a half miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water”
(John 6:16–19).

Jesus walks on water. This is the next miracle, the fifth sign of the messiah as recorded in the Gospel of John.

Several explanations are possible. Jesus is standing on an unmapped sandbar. The disciples, confused by threatening weather, experience a moment of collective hysteria. Glaucoma, trachoma, conjunctivitis. In a random sample of twelve first-century Galileans, as many as a third may have suffered from an eye complaint.

Jesus walks on water; the body of Lazarus collapses. His skin retracts and his joints pop with fluid. Veins push outward through his black and yellow flesh. He jolts awake. The whites of his eyes are red.

The fifth miracle sends his body into a dramatic decline. Overnight, at the Bethesda pool, he reaches the invalid stage where on the second morning his sisters talk about him as if he isn't there.

‘Now, please,' Mary begs. ‘Look at him. We have to send for Jesus.'

‘There's nothing anyone can do,' Yanav says. ‘It's over.'

Mary looks at Martha.

‘We promised,' Martha says. ‘Disobeying his wishes could make him worse.'

‘How could he be any worse? He doesn't know up from down.'

‘We promised him we wouldn't send for Jesus.'

His sisters argue. Lazarus notices a tremor on the surface of the water. He doubts his eyesight but then the reflections break up, clouds in the sky shimmering and cracking. No one else sees it. He could topple himself in, first into the pool as the angels pass by.

He stares at the trembling water. He will hit the surface, sink, probably drown.

‘Send for Jesus,' Mary pleads. ‘That's all we have to do. Let me send a messenger.'

‘Stop,' Lazarus says.

The pool glasses over. It is difficult for Lazarus to speak, as if he's slowly being strangled with the minimum of force. ‘Don't send for Jesus. And get me away from the water. It's dangerous.'

 

Lazarus is going blind.

On the road home to Bethany the darkness at the edge of his vision begins to close in. He sees a migrating crane, sunlight bright on the tips of its wings. He finds it easier to close his eyes than to work out what anything means.

In the final stage of his illness, the various diseases blunder into each other, and the ability of his body's defences to distinguish between self and not-self fades. His immune cells overwhelm some areas and miss the distress signals from others. His B-lymphocytes are unable to protect him. His T-lymphocytes recognise their doom and surrender.

Death is filthy. Lazarus has no control over his bowels, and is exhausted after retching whatever thin gruel reaches his stomach. He wills his inner workings back into their rightful place, but doesn't know what to imagine or how the unimaginable should properly fit together. The effort of not knowing defeats him.

Poor Lazarus, like in the parable. Perhaps death is for the best, and if there is a heaven he may yet be comforted there.

Mary crouches close to the creaking stretcher, praying into her brother's ear. He beckons her closer still. It hurts him to speak, but if he stays silent the pain does not diminish.

‘What?' Mary asks. ‘What are you trying to tell me?'

‘Stop praying. Send for Lydia.'

‘I will not.'

‘Send for her. Please.'

Jesus walks on water. Jesus stands on the shore with their clothes in his arms, watching Amos drown. The gap between these two events is the emptiness into which Lazarus subsides.

 

Were they friends? Not really. Not after Amos died.

Jesus spent weeks afterwards in the synagogue, searching through the holy scrolls. He'd find obscure references to console his friend—
‘Come, let us return to the lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds'
(Hosea 6:1)—but to Lazarus these were only words.

Amos was gone, and when you're dead you're dead. That's what the Sadducees believed, and their scriptural evidence was easier to find—
‘the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun'
(Ecclesiastes 9:5–6).

Lazarus wept. Jesus watched. Lazarus wiped his eyes and walked away.

He grew the first hairs of his beard—again Lazarus was first. He shaved them off. The Rabbi urged the Nazareth villagers to allow for the boy's anger and tolerate his wayward behaviour. This flaunting of the laws was grief, or growing up. All being well, he'd soon return to the fold.

To Lazarus, their tolerance made no difference, because god destroys both the blameless and the wicked. He could be understood or forgiven or ignored, without consequences—their god, if he existed, acted as if he didn't. Amos was dead. There were no divine interventions.

Jesus grew his hair and his beard like everyone else, as if god were not at fault and god was watching and god cared. Jesus kept himself busy. He had sheep troughs to hollow, and advanced classes on the intricate rituals of the Torah. Lazarus sometimes despised him, watching silently as Jesus sanded a nut bowl.

‘How special is it just doing what your dad does? We can be more important than this.'

Joseph told Lazarus he was a fool for wanting to leave the village. Lazarus called Joseph a hypocrite. He and Mary had left Bethlehem for a better life, and Lazarus wanted the same.

‘Those were exceptional circumstances.'

‘Were they?'

‘It was ordained.'

‘Why should this be different?'

Lazarus and Jesus should have been living in the mountains like lions. Or not in the mountains, but anywhere else but Nazareth.

Their friendship, however strong it had once been, was never destined to last. Quite the opposite. The two boys had to be uncoupled, placing one at either end of the country. Some decisive event had been necessary to prise such friends apart, and that event was Jesus standing inept on the shore as Amos drowned in the lake. Their separation was in the design.

 

 

Lazarus regrets everything. If this is how life ends he must have made mistakes. He'd planned to live enough life for all three of them.

He remembers the pressure of his early ambition, hot and tight enough to burst. In Nazareth the streets narrowed, the houses shrank to nothing, and he lay awake for long afternoons listening to silence and his echoing solitude. He was dissolving, at one with the dates and figs melting to treacle outside. He has the same feeling now that he's dying.

Joseph said he was too young to leave Nazareth, and anyway none of them were city people. Jerusalem would swallow him whole, while Galilee was safe and his friends were there to help him. Lazarus laughed. He remembered the shore.

Menachem the Rabbi supplied the opportunity. He had always said the two Bethlehem boys were special, but it was Lazarus he took aside. His cousin Absalom near Jerusalem had an opening in the sheep trade. It wasn't much, but a young man with a pragmatic outlook could make a comfortable living. If he worked hard and made connections at the Temple, he could earn himself a fortune.

Martha and Mary would travel with him, to keep him company and help him set up house. Luckily, neither of his sisters was married.

‘You are the one I have chosen.' Menachem's milky eyes focused somewhere to Lazarus's left. ‘King David, too, left home in his youth. A great future awaits you in Bethany, I'm sure of it. I have prayed for you, Lazarus of Nazareth. God will do the rest.'

Lazarus found Jesus in Joseph's workshop. It was a long time since their last proper conversation.

‘I'm going to Jerusalem. Menachem has it all plotted out.'

Jesus was experimenting with fasting, hoping for visions of the heavenly mystery. In real time this meant he was planing the edge of a door in the wrong direction. He could have hurt himself.

‘You should come. We'll earn enough for two. Easily.'

It was the final appeal Lazarus would make to their friendship. Despite Amos, he was prepared to make a last effort, because he'd have sworn they still had feelings in common, like not feeling at home in Nazareth.

‘Jerusalem,' Lazarus repeated, as if the name of the city spoke for itself. Literally anything was possible in Jerusalem, and he could see that Jesus was tempted.

But it was too late, with too much left unspoken. They were friends, yes, but Jesus would soon be a carpenter, like his father before him. Lazarus had grander schemes in mind; he was leading the way and he could sense that Jesus was jealous. Jesus wished he were Lazarus, but no one gets everything they want.

 

Out in the square the children play sick man tag, keeping one eye open for Jesus, who could appear in Bethany at any time.

There are plenty of visitors who arrive in his place.They drift in from the villages and from Jerusalem. Most are strangers but some are friends, because Lazarus had many friends. They want to pay their respects.

‘My brother is not dead.' Martha turns them away. ‘You've wasted your journey.'

But Martha can't stop them leaving gifts and offering compliments. They act as if Lazarus is accomplishing a very difficult task, and make it worse by not speaking ill of him, as if there is no hope.

Isaiah makes the trip from Jerusalem.

‘I was wondering about the date for the wedding,' he says, but his pretence can't last. He hands Martha a bag of coins, and closes her hands around it. ‘Lazarus was a good man. It is the least our family can do. You should take him to see his tomb.'

‘He can't see.'

‘There is comfort in being well prepared.'

‘Our brother is very ill,' Martha says. ‘Even small distances are a challenge.'

In this period of terminal decline Cassius visits Bethany several times, and not always in disguise. In battle uniform he rides into the village, accompanied by officers on restless chargers from the garrison. Cassius manoeuvres his immense black horse as far as Lazarus's gate.

Martha comes to the doorway. She squints into the sunlight and dries her hands on a cloth. The Roman horse sniffs in her direction, as if curious to know whether she's edible. Cassius leans forward in the saddle.

‘Any signs of improvement?'

Martha turns and goes back inside.

Cassius smiles. Jesus can walk on water but he can't help Lazarus.

Yanav comes out to ask Cassius to leave the family in peace.

‘With pleasure,' Cassius says, wheeling his horse away. He calls back over his shoulder. ‘And thank you. You've done an excellent job.'

 

 

Lazarus insists at all times on lamps that are filled and lit.

‘Send for Jesus,' Mary says. She can't think it and not say it. ‘Send for Jesus. Send for Jesus. Send for Jesus.'

‘More oil, more wicks,' Martha says. ‘Don't let any go out.'

People can get used to anything, except dying. Lazarus has known for years that Jesus is not coming to Bethany and he will not come. In the day as at night he tells the passing of time in the guttering of flames in oil. He is terrified when a wick starts to flicker and smoke.

More lamps! More! Don't let the light go out.

Lazarus rarely speaks. When he makes the effort, it is to curse the winter of his birth. He should have been killed in the Bethlehem slaughter, as good as dead from the moment he left the womb.

‘Fight,' Mary says. ‘Stay alive long enough for him to come.'

‘Mary, Jesus has had his chance. He was in Jerusalem. He didn't want to see us.' Martha has no patience for false comforts. She asks Yanav if there's anything else they can do.

He shakes his head. Yanav tends to Lazarus's hair, cropping it so short the ridges of his skull are visible. Every other day he shaves him. The smallpox scabs have dried and Yanav smoothes oil over the pocked skin of Lazarus's face, consoling him with long strokes of the Syrian copper blade.

Martha takes her brother's hand, and Lazarus grips on hard. If he holds on tight enough she'll lift him to his feet. If she lifts him gently he can walk.

‘Where do you want to go, Lazarus?'

He pulls, but he does not rise up. His wasted arms tremble.

‘Lazarus, where?'

He falls back.

He tries to speak, tries to say. His thoughts and memories and feelings have come to nothing. It doesn't matter how much anyone learns. Poc. The knowledge disappears. One thing after another, and Lazarus plucks imaginary objects from the air. The opportunity to marry. Poc. The decision to be good, or the chance once more to see Lydia naked. Poc poc. To have children of his own and to show them the glory of the Temple. Poc.

Months ago, work had slipped from his power. Then Jerusalem, then Bethany, then his own yard. He has this room. He has Yanav the healer and his sisters.

Martha takes Mary in her arms. They are both exhausted.

‘Don't cry, Mary. Don't cry, my baby girl.'

They break apart, and holding hands they need only a brief second of eye contact. They turn to face their brother and Martha takes an audible breath.