Richard Beard - Lazarus Is Dead

‘Thank you. I am. I think.’

Lazarus looks over Isaiah’s head towards the village. Passover sunlight makes the flat white houses float and tremble, and that’s where he wants to be, reunited with his friend. Separating the two of them, a shimmering mass of people, examining every movement Lazarus makes. He kneels and picks up a stone. It is smooth, warmed by the sun, and he lifts it and lowers it. Lazarus weighs the warm stone in his hand. He drops the stone and it lands in the sand with a thump. He has control over objects, and he feels alive. Possibilities open up again, destinations are within his range. He feels he wants to run.

Isaiah coughs into his hand, and the hand stays close to his face, fingers hovering near his cheek.

‘Contact with the dead carries a strict tariff,’ he says. ‘Full ritual washing and seven days’ absence from the Temple. The Sanhedrin will want to speak with you. There’s no obvious precedent.’

‘What was it like?’ Absalom asks. He cuts across Isaiah but his voice remains gentle, full of hope. The ends of his long eyebrows quiver. ‘Did you see anyone we know?’

There is too much that Lazarus doesn’t understand. He looks around for evidence of the presence of god. On a nearby rock a lizard lifts one leg, then another, unconvinced of the solidity beneath its feet. Jesus will be able to explain. Jesus is in Bethany and all Lazarus need do is ask.

3

‘Jesus is sleeping,’ Peter says. He takes this opportunity to show Lazarus that no one is as close to Jesus as he is. ‘What he did today wasn’t easy. For anybody.’

‘This time yesterday I was dead. I have some questions.’

In the Book of John, Lazarus has a non-speaking role. His questions remain unasked, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t try.

After the miracle, Jesus and his disciples are invited into the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Jesus withdraws to the upper room, and Peter keeps Lazarus away from the stairs. In his own house, which is full of strange men with tics and nervous twitches. Life has repeatedly surprised the disciples, and they haven’t fully recovered.

Lazarus wonders if he smells. It’s the way they look at him, their hands fluttering close to their noses. The disciples have abandoned their families and walked from the Galilee, so how is it that Lazarus receives special attention without even leaving home?

‘Tell us what it was like.’

‘Let me speak with Jesus.’

Peter does not move from the foot of the stairs, big hands loose by his sides. Unlike the others he doesn’t twitch, which is why they call him the rock. He is a stone, this man, and his large impassive face is stone, but he wishes that Jesus, just once, had called him friend.

‘Please,’ Lazarus says. ‘We have some catching up to do.’

‘Do you want to thank him?’

‘I don’t know. What counts as good behaviour after a resurrection?’

Lazarus is already impatient with their limited outlook. Perhaps he’ll thank Jesus warmly for all he’s done. But, now he thinks about it, he might also suggest that Jesus could have come earlier, or stopped him from falling sick in the first place. It seems churlish to complain, but every first word he imagines saying is ‘but’.

The bible is therefore accurate, up to a point, about the initial silence of Lazarus. On this particular subject, and for a while there will be no other, he isn’t sure where to start.

Four days is too long. A piece of Martha’s heart stays buried with Lazarus in the tomb. Maybe Jesus thought she’d be good at death, that after her mother and father and Amos she’d learned how to cope. He was wrong.

She mashes chickpeas with oil in a bowl, bunches her skirts to move to the fire, kneels and fusses with embers. Out of habit she tosses on sprigs of rosemary, for the smell. It is better to keep active, and not to look too closely at Lazarus.

He takes a scoop from the cooking bowl with his finger. Martha slaps his hand. At a practical level, they can’t afford to feed thirteen strangers. Or they can, but they’ll have to sell the only remaining flask of nard. And Mary will need to help. She’s at the top of the stairs, sitting, waiting, doing absolutely nothing. Jesus might wake up, she thinks, and choose her for a vital errand.

Martha sweeps, straightens, reorders the universe while keeping an eye on her pots. Her response to miracles is to stay firmly in the world she knows.

‘Slow down,’ Lazarus says. ‘Stop working. Talk to me.’

He balances on one leg and pulls the other knee towards his chest. He loves what his muscles can do. Peter crosses his arms. Lazarus wobbles and sniffs his armpit. ‘Was I really dead?’

‘You were dead. We all cried. Jesus arrived in the village. He cried too.’

‘But you’re sure I was dead?’

‘It was horrible.’ At last Martha stands still, hands bunched around the handle of her broom. ‘He hasn’t even said sorry.’

‘I don’t think he has to apologise.’

‘There are so many of them. We can afford one more meal, and then that’s it. Tell him.’

‘Martha. I’m a rich man. Let them stay, if that’s what they want. I can feed Jesus and his disciples for weeks.’

‘You don’t understand anything, do you?’ Martha reaches out her hand and touches his cheek, her mind adding up the cost of the mourners, Yanav, the herbs, the perfume. ‘Nothing was too good for you, Lazarus, as long as you didn’t die.’

Lazarus presses her hand to his cheek. He wants to reassure her, to remind her of the miracle.

‘I died and came back to life.’

‘Yes,’ Martha says. ‘But what for?’

Resurrection builds an appetite. However little we know about the resurrected, they are uniformly hungry. The daughter of Jairus is twelve years old. She is brought back to life and Jesus completes his miracle with two clear instructions: ‘ He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat ’ (Mark 5: 43).

Jesus himself, when the moment comes, is constantly eating after his return from the dead. In the Gospel of Luke he eats with the travellers he meets on the road to Emmaus — ‘ he was at the table with them ’ (Luke 24: 30) — and in the painting Christ at Emmaus (1598), Caravaggio spreads this table with roast chicken, bread, apples, pears, grapes and a pomegranate.

After the Emmaus meal, Jesus returns to Jerusalem and appears to the disciples. ‘“ Do you have anything to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it ’ (Luke 24: 41–43). In John he appears to the disciples on the shore of Lake Galilee. ‘ Come and have breakfast ’ (John 21: 12) and no one speaks until the fish and bread are finished.

Lazarus too is hungry. In the bible his only recorded act after leaving the tomb is to eat dinner in the Bethany house. ‘ Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with [Jesus]’ (John 12: 2).

This is his opportunity to talk, but first he has to eat. He is famished, and as he chews and swallows he organises the questions in his mind: why did you leave me so long? Will I ever remember what happened? What now is the plan?

Lazarus tries not to anticipate the answers, but with Jesus the old habits return, and he is used to leaping ahead. He and Jesus, best of childhood friends from Nazareth, will pick up where they left off, arm-in-arm, invincible. Lazarus had been with Jesus in Bethlehem at the beginning, he was there in Egypt and in Nazareth, and now in Bethany near Jerusalem he is the final and conclusive sign: he and Jesus are destined for glory.

Lazarus asks Peter, with all due respect, if he’ll give up his place next to Jesus. Peter hesitates, but makes way.