The Gospel According to Lazarus

by Richard Zimler

  From my grandfather’s powerful and callused hands I have always drawn poetry and faraway dreams, just as I have always drawn loyalty and laughter from Mia’s.

  Out of habit, Shimon enters our courtyard only after dark, and he never dares leave our home during the day because people often mistake his skin rashes for leprosy and chase after him, throwing stones and sticks. Many of our neighbours still refer to him behind our backs as Shimon the Leper.

  On Shimon’s shoulder stands Ayin, our little Greek owl, whose name means eye in Aramaic. We called him that because his otherworldly golden stare has been known to cause trembling in even in the bravest visitors. Mia discovered him several years earlier, drawn by his heartrending screeching to an imposing villa in the Upper Town, where the poor creature had been nailed through his wings to the wooden door. Unfortunately, that is the torture the Romans and Latinized Jews inflict on any bird that ventures accidentally into their homes, as a way, they claim, of chasing away the ill fortune that they are said to carry inside.

  The wind changes direction as Shimon points out the constellations to me. A chorus of crickets has begun singing of their hopes for the spring.

  Youth and old age are two separate kingdoms. That is what I think as Shimon raises his arm to point out the stars in Argo to me. And why, too, I embrace him, breathing in deeply on the yeasty scent of him – of more than sixty years of sweat-soaked struggle.

  Some time later, Yirmi nudges me awake. We are alone in the courtyard; Grandfather Shimon must have gone back to bed.

  ‘Blessed be the Lord for returning you to me!’ I tell my son.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father. It took longer than I thought.’

  As he helps me sit up, I ask what he found out about Kurush.

  ‘The Baal Nefesh confirmed that he’s an old friend. And you were right; he’s a magus of the Zarathustrian faith.’

  I wish I could receive this as good news, but, if Kurush did not seal me inside a trance, then I was indeed dead – and I encountered no afterlife waiting for me.

  The panic rising inside me seems to be a living thing – greedy and unyielding and eager to possess me, which is why I reach out for my son. When the throbbing in my chest subsides, I ask him if the Baal Nefesh told him where Kurush has been staying.

  ‘At an inn near the Roman theatre,’ he replies. ‘But when I went there, the innkeeper told me he’d left on the day you … you no longer … When your breathing stopped.’

  There are good silences and bad ones, of course, and the silence that follows his words soon becomes one of lost hope. I have been changed for ever, I think. Nothing now will be as it was.

  ‘Did the innkeeper know where Kurush went?’ I ask.

  ‘No, so I asked all the guests I could find. I had to wait many hours for two of them to return to the inn. That’s why I was gone so long. But neither of them knew anything.’

  Once I have assured him that he did well, Yirmi tells me about a guest he questioned who was from distant Cochin. ‘He spoke such a strange form of Aramaic that I had to puzzle out every word. And, Papa, you should have seen his clothes! He wore pointed slippers and a hat decorated with embroidered lotus flowers. Do you know how the Hindus call the neshamah?’

  ‘No, I’ve no idea,’ I tell him.

  ‘Atman,’ he announces. ‘They say we all have a spark of God inside us. And do you know the name they have for Elohim?’

  I shake my head and laugh. Your youthful zeal is balm to your father, I tell him in my mind.

  ‘Brahma!’ he exclaims. ‘And he swore to me that wool does not grow on animals there, or even on trees like Herodotus says, but on spindly little plants!’

  My son’s voice is filled with his eagerness to see faraway lands. If only I may see this eager traveller of mine safely to the dawn of adulthood, I think.

  Who is the traitor who told Annas what Yeshua said in my tomb?

  When I stir in the night, this question lies in wait for me inside the chilly darkness. Invaded by a solitude so wide and deep that it holds everything I have ever lost, most especially my wife, I give in again to tears.

  I did not know I was dead. No one ever does. Such simple words they are, and yet they prove too cumbersome to fit inside my head once again.

  I curl my arm over my eyes. Odysseus drifted nine days on the ocean, clinging to a fragment of his ship, I think. For how long shall I, too, be awash in this deep, grey, limitless abyss into which I have fallen?

  A little while later, a stirring behind me makes me let out a high-pitched yelp that might be comic under other circumstances.

  A caped figure is seated with his back to the far wall, his knees up. He raises two of his fingers – a signal that he and I agreed upon years before. It is his way of telling me that, although he is visiting distant worlds inside himself, all is under control.

  ‘How did you get in?’ I ask.

  ‘I tapped on Mia’s shutters and she was kind enough to open them.’

  ‘She must have thought you were Gephen.’

  ‘So that’s why she seemed so disappointed!’ he says, laughing.

  Yeshua crosses the room and drapes his cloak over my shoulders. Only then do I realize I have been shivering.

  He sits behind me, circles his arm around my chest and pulls me close. The slow rise and fall of his chest becomes the protection we have always given each other. Tears come again; they seem to have their own desires and needs at the moment.

  At length, we lay back together on my mat – into the togetherness of who we are and have always been.

  My own flesh shall be my comfort, I think.

  Yeshua’s scent of barley and wood smoke soon becomes a trail leading me back to our childhood in Natzeret.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he whispers. His breath is scented with wine.

  I say nothing; how can I tell him that death has taught me that he and I shall one day be dust – that we shall lose everything we once loved, even our childhood?

  He pulls me closer. His woodworkers’ hands are strong and coarse. How could I not feel pride in a friend who has never tried to hide his years of labour, even when the Pharisees, Sadducees and priests have ridiculed him for it?

  ‘The people trust you because you are one of them,’ I whisper.

  ‘I shall be who I shall be,’ he replies.

  Do you understand his word-play, Yaphiel? I Shall Be Who I Shall Be is, of course, one of our names for God.

  ‘And yet I’m no longer who I was,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve been overcome by doubts.’

  The fragile sound of my voice makes me cringe. I sit up, out of his embrace, feeling unworthy of him.

  ‘Death has taught you that you’re now a different man?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  As though reading a verse of Torah, he says, ‘The sea would tell you that the separateness of islands is an illusion.’

  I grip his hand as if it were a protective talisman, for my reply is not one that he will like. ‘Unless the sea itself is an illusion.’ I fear his anger, so I rush to add, ‘I’m not like you, Yeshua – I’m unable to journey to the remote realms you visit. I know almost nothing of God’s hidden life.’

  I release his hand so that he can flee from me if he so chooses, though I know I am also testing his loyalty, which chills me because it means that my resurrection may end up provoking me to ask too much of him.

  He sits up and spreads his right hand on top of my head, as if to gather in my thoughts. After he blesses me in the name of the Lord, we listen to the footsteps passing outside my window. An elderly neighbour – Weathervane, we call him – is complaining to his hound, Moonstone, about the pains in his back and hip. We say nothing as they pass us by, as if we were two mischievous boys pretending to be asleep. It occurs to me that our years of shared plotting – against our brothers and sisters, our parents, the world – is something that I would not want to have missed.

  ‘Lazar, the Nabataeans of the high desert never see the sea,’ he
tells me, ‘but they know it exists.’

  ‘Because they trust those who have seen great waters,’ I reply, implying with my tone that such confidence is no longer mine.

  ‘You sat on the Throne of Glory for two days. And then you separated from the Lord – one became two. So you feel you’ve been abandoned. And you wonder how you can live this way – separate from the source of life.’

  ‘I can’t live with all these doubts. I need … need my faith.’

  ‘Knock and the door shall be opened to you.’

  ‘But what if I no longer believe there is any door?’

  ‘This is my fault,’ he says with a moan. Turning away from me, he holds his head in his hands.

  I kneel next to him, angry at myself for speaking of my troubles. ‘You could not have foreseen all the consequences of your miracle,’ I tell him.

  ‘I should have. Perhaps I ought not to have come to you in your tomb.’

  His glassy eyes remind me that being unique can be a curse. Imagine having such porous borders around your heart that the afflictions of others become your own.

  ‘You gave life where there was none,’ I tell him. ‘That could not be wrong. You saved my children from becoming orphans – for which I’ll never be able to repay you. But perhaps all miracles come with a price. Yeshua, I saw nothing of God or of any life everlasting.’

  He gazes down and rubs his hand back and forth across his hair, as he does when he is perplexed. I fetch him my water jug in order to give him a moment to consider what I’ve told him without my scrutiny; he has been observed and studied since he first started his lessons in Torah, and there are times – such as now – when he cannot bear to have anyone’s glance upon him.

  Once he has slaked his thirst, he gazes beyond me, as if he has spotted a figure on a distant horizon. I say nothing; to be loved by someone far greater than myself is so overwhelming an experience at times that it keeps me silent when I would otherwise wish to speak.

  ‘I shouldn’t have delayed my return to you,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologize.’

  At length, he begins to talk of our first encounter.

  Dear Yaphiel, Yeshua and I met when we were eight years old. One spring morning, he simply stepped up to me in the marketplace in Natzeret and asked me to tell him my dream of the Lord as an eagle. It was my sister Marta – eager to stir up trouble – who had revealed it to him, disobeying in that way my father’s injunction to keep it a secret.

  Now, Yeshua does not explain why he returns to the past, but I hear in his speech-rhythm – hesitant and slow, as though he were climbing up a steep hill – that this is important to him.

  After he finishes his story of our first encounter, he says, ‘And now, after twenty-eight years, I have left you standing alone outside the Gate of Life.’ Leaning close to me, he whispers, ‘I see the impressions that the grasp of the Angel of Death has left in your flesh. I understand how it feels.’

  The conspiratorial urgency in his tone brings gooseflesh to my arms. Was he, too, embraced by Death during his time in the wilderness, as I’ve always suspected? Who – or what – descended upon him in the Syrian desert?

  He stands up and goes to my window. Cold air rushes into the room when he opens the shutters, and he peers into the courtyard. When he turns to me, he says, ‘I know the way back through the Gate of Life, and I shall guide you.’

  Yeshua and I chant hymns for a time, but I am unable to find the right rhythms, and trying to join my voice to his only proves to me that the rituals of faith that once came so easily to me no longer do. Will he guide me home through prayer? He does not say.

  My friend’s devotion to me soon allows me to talk of other matters that have been troubling me, however. ‘Annas ben Seth paid me a visit this evening,’ I tell him, using a tone of warning.

  ‘Marta told me that after Mia opened the door to me. She blames me for his visit.’

  ‘She blames you for everything!’ I say with a grin.

  Yeshua shrugs disappointedly. ‘Maybe she’s got a point.’

  ‘She’s just irritated by all the attention I’ve received of late.’ When Yeshua gazes out the window again, I say, ‘Apparently Caiaphas was too cowardly to come himself.’

  He makes the hand gesture of a Greek puppeteer tugging a string. It is his way of saying that our Temple priests are controlled by Caesar.

  ‘Listen, Yeshua, I’ve realized something alarming about what took place in my tomb. Someone in my family or one of your disciples memorized the exact words you used when you raised me from the dead and repeated them to Annas. You’ll have to watch even your closest friends carefully.’

  He shrugs as if it is of no import, which gives me the idea that he knows who the traitor is. When I ask, he whispers that he suspects Yehudah of Kerioth, one of our oldest and dearest friends.

  ‘But why would Yehudah betray you?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lazar, but I don’t want to speak about him. Annas may question you again, and the less you know about his betrayals the less you can reveal.’

  I join him at the window. ‘I don’t want you staying in Yerushalayim because you’re worried about what’s happened to me. You can guide me from afar.’

  ‘I am not staying because of you.’

  I suspect he’s lying, so I hold up my oil lamp between us to read his expression, but he hides his truth under a resentful frown.

  ‘Return to Perea – or go to the Galilee,’ I say, lowering my lamp. ‘I’ll sleep better knowing you are with our friends at home.’

  ‘No, I want to walk amongst the Passover pilgrims,’ he replies. ‘The time has come for me to proclaim His name aloud to them and everyone else.’

  At the time, I interpret his words symbolically; it does not occur to me that he has already planned a very public entry into Jerusalem.

  ‘If you suspect Yehudah,’ I say, ‘then you have to find an excuse to send him away.’

  ‘No. His betrayal is not without its usefulness.’ When I press him to explain, he says, ‘Twice now I have given him false confidences, and twice he has passed them on to Caiaphas.’

  ‘That would seem a dangerous game.’

  He kneels down to remove his sandals. ‘In the end,’ he says, ‘it makes little difference what Yehudah says and does. Pilatus can arrest me any time he likes.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t he?’

  When Yeshua is barefoot, he stands back up. ‘Because my work has gone well in the Galilee. I have thousands more followers now, and Pilatus and his friends in Rome fear that an uprising would begin there if anything should happen to me. They’re also aware that, with some help from well-placed allies, we can cause troubles here in Judaea.’

  ‘In that case, Annas may prove a more intractable enemy.’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s known for years that I aim to end the privileges of the priesthood, and yet he has made no serious moves against me.’

  ‘But now he has another reason to loathe you.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘He envies you!’

  Yeshua shows me a doubtful look.

  ‘It’s true. While he and I were conversing, I realized what’s motivated his rage. You’ve a mastery of spirit and matter that goes far beyond his capabilities. When you raised me from the dead, within sight of Jerusalem –’

  ‘El Shaddai raised you from the dead,’ Yeshua cuts in.

  ‘But you summoned Him. I’m convinced that Annas took that as a personal affront.’

  Yeshua shakes his head disappointedly. ‘The priests profess to have entered the Gate of Knowledge, but they haven’t the courage or the grace to do so – and they hide the keys from the rest of us.’ He places an imaginary crown on his head. ‘They strut around in their embroidered robes as if they were royalty. Yaaqov told me that Annas attended a funeral last week with his tzitzit dangling for all to see?’ He points a finger of warning at me. ‘Beware of men who display their prayer shawl in publ
ic. They represent a great danger to you in particular.’

  ‘Why to me?’

  ‘You try to hide your contempt for them, but you nearly always fail.’

  ‘Annas told me I must never speak of what happened today,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, I agree – that would be far safer for you.’

  After drawing a deep breath Yeshua reaches out to the window frame to steady himself and lowers his chin to his chest, as though to doze off while standing up, which I have seen him do on a number occasions, after hours of preaching and healing. How did I fail to see that his candle flame is nearly extinguished?

  I sit him down on my mat, and he leans back against the wall with a grateful sigh. When I believe he is asleep, I lay down beside him.

  Gazing at Yeshua, whose eyes are closed and who is breathing gently, I see that he has succeeded where I have failed; he has the life that was meant for him. I shall never become a teacher or travel far beyond the borders of Zion, I think.

  And yet I feel neither sorrow nor envy. Is it my affection for him that saves me from useless and unwanted emotions?

  I can live with my disappointment if I have him and my children, I think.

  When I stand, Yeshua asks me where I’m going. ‘To check on Yirmi and Nahara,’ I whisper. ‘Now go back to sleep.’

  ‘No. Wait for me a moment and I’ll come with you.’

  As I give him my consent, I think, Yes, of course – on this night we shall all be together, Yeshua and my children and me, even if for just a few moments, and I offer my thanks to the Lord.

  Yeshua sits up and wipes his hand down across his face and neck. I expect him to yawn or smile, but instead he shows me a troubled look.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I question.

  ‘There are things I must tell you about our past together. And I dare not let them wait any longer, for they have been crying out to be heard for far too long already.’

  12

  Yaphiel, I fear that I have not made an important point clear to you: it is possible for a sage or prophet to confer with the Lord at the same time as he converses with a friend or preaches to a crowd. In short, and contrary to what you may have been led to believe, a man can be in two places at the same time. In fact, if what Yeshua told me on a number of occasions is correct, then we are always and inevitably in two places at once – in this world, where we are travellers, and in our true home.