Richard Beard - Lazarus Is Dead

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 home-made stretcher to the donkey. The stretcher is on sleds and has a wooden back-rest 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.

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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 to plan than to pray, 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.

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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 play-acting. 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.