Richard Beard - Lazarus Is Dead

There is something about Lazarus — he looks frail and he smells horrendous, but Yanav can sense survival deep within him.

‘No need to panic,’ he says, deciding to trust intuition. ‘If you do exactly as I say, I’ll have you as good as new.’

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 lemon grass 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.