The Gospel According to Lazarus

by Richard Zimler

  ‘Exactly,’ he says, and he explains that he has already picked out a he-ass belonging to a friend, which means that he intends to fulfil scripture – and risk revealing himself as the Living Torah to those who have vision enough to see the truth.

  ‘I’ll walk with you,’ I tell him, ‘but I won’t speak to the crowds of my miracle. I’ve been sworn to silence by Annas, and to break that vow would put me in danger. I can’t risk making my children orphans.’

  ‘The people know that you’ve returned from the dead, and they’ll see you with me. And, seeing death and life together, they’ll know what I can do – and they’ll know, too, that the time has come for God to take back what is His.’

  So many matters I intended to broach with him before his appearance this evening – the crucifixions I witnessed, and his mother’s concerns, and my own revelations – but I sense that he is still far away, receiving counsel from Zechariah and others who have come before him. Though I do not believe he will be able to remain focused on our conversation or heed any advice I might venture to give him, I risk a single plea for caution. ‘I may not be near enough to you the next time you are swept away by the River Jordan.’

  He nods his understanding and thanks me with his smile.

  After I fetch a cushion for his head, he lies next to me on my mat and clasps my hand in his, as when we were boys. He must sense my continuing apprehension, because he tells me, ‘Tomorrow will worry for itself.’ Paraphrasing the words of Mosheh from In the Beginning, he adds, ‘I am with you and shall watch over you wherever you go in your dreams, and I shall bring you safely home.’

  When I awaken in the night, I draw our covers up over him more fully, and, though he stirs, he remains asleep, and I turn on my side, away from him, so that my thoughts are less likely to brush against him and awaken him, and I listen again to our conversation from a few hours earlier. When I hear him tell me of his plans to enter Yerushalayim, a startling discovery tugs me to my feet: he intends to construct a spiritual eruv around the city!

  It never occurred to me before that such a feat was possible. Yet the Lord must have assured him that by tracing his way around the perimeter of Yerushalayim he would limit the power of the priests and Romans over him.

  Yes, of course, this is how you must start! I think, gazing at him as if this strategy were an inevitability we ought both to have predicted years ago. Together we shall turn the entire city – every alleyway and square and house – into sacred space.

  Overwhelmed by the boldness and immensity of what he is about to do, I sit at my open window, exulting in the breezes blowing against my face, for they are telling me in their cool and delicate language that we are about to enter history.

  After a time it seems only fair that I have come to understand what he has not told me, because tonight we can lie beside each other until dawn and appreciate our quiet intimacy. But I do not return to my mat just yet. I squat on my heels by his side and move my palm over him – a finger’s width distant – so that I might feel my ache of longing for him as a deep and essential part of me before I let it go.

  22

  Mia was the first child born to our parents, and, from what she has told me, our father began teaching her to read on her seventh birthday. Every Sabbath afternoon, they would sit side by side in his workroom and study the scroll of In the Beginning that had been passed down in our family for generations. Marta, nearly four years younger than Mia, would sit next to her elder sister, forbidden from speaking but gleaning what she could from their lessons.

  Marta … Picture a slim, dark girl with her curly brown hair tied at the nape of her neck with a woven ribbon, leaning on her elbows over the table, chin cupped in her hands, coming to learn the challenging, rewarding, mouse-like art of being curious and silent at the same time.

  A little less than a year after Mia’s studies began, I was born, and Father never again gave his daughter another reading lesson. He left it to his wife to explain to Mia that the birth of a boy made her education unnecessary.

  To our mother’s surprise and relief, the girl received the news without tears; Mia would later tell me that she had already realized that the Gate of Words, once it had been opened to her, could never be shut again. Over the next few years, she would also learn how to write, under the clandestine tutelage of our Aunt Zilpah, my mother’s half-sister, who was raised in the Roman colony of Caesarea and who had come to regard the education of women as a birthright.

  For Marta, however, the end of her elder sister’s lessons came with the purposeless and tormenting finality of a stillbirth. She could not have put her feelings into neatly ordered words, but she regarded it as a profound betrayal; she had behaved exactly as our parents had asked and had nothing to show for it.

  When she was twelve, she told me once – and with matter-of-fact certainty – that she felt only loathing for our father, since he had done all he could to ruin her childhood.

  And you, little brother, are responsible as well.

  She never actually said that to me, but it was implied by her vicious cruelty to me over the coming months.

  When I was eleven and she was fifteen, I came to her when I heard her crying in the night and offered to give her secret reading and writing lessons.

  ‘Are you really so dim-witted to believe that I could ever accept any charity from you?’ she demanded before pushing me away.

  I have long suspected that Marta has never forgiven me for being born. Even so, I might have ended up winning her grudging affection were it not for one more tragedy.

  When she was seventeen and about to be married, she refused to proceed with the wedding, announcing that the man to whom she was betrothed – a stonemason, like my father – was unworthy of her. My father took up his rule measuring two Roman feet in length and summoned Marta into the bedroom she shared with Mia. He gave strict orders that my mother, my eldest sister and I were not to enter, no matter what we heard.

  Marta’s shrieks for help made neighbours assemble around our house, and my mother turned so pale that Mia and I had to help her into bed. When Father finally opened the door, his hands were stained with his daughter’s blood. I did not see Marta that night; he expressly forbade me from comforting her.

  By the time Marta shuffled out of her room the next morning her face had swollen into a mass of bread dough. Somewhere under all that bruising was her right eye. We didn’t know it at the time, but the hearing in her left ear was damaged permanently.

  She was married a month later.

  It may sound impossible, but the beating she received might easily have been worse. I believe, in fact, that my father would have taken her life or sold her into slavery if she had told him the truth – that she was in love with Yeshua. He was just thirteen at the time and the son of a poor woodworker.

  Marta never told Yeshua that she would accept only him, but he knew it. As did I.

  Boys grow up more slowly than girls, and I understood nothing of love when I was thirteen. I am ashamed to say that I ridiculed her behind her back for what was, to her, a lonely and desperate wish to marry the boy she loved.

  Yeshua and I went to visit her at her new home in the stoneworker’s district of Yerushalayim, but she was always so short-tempered with us that we stopped visiting. I can see now that conversing with Yeshua was a reminder that she would be for ever trapped in a life she could not bear.

  About a year after her marriage, when she was pregnant with her daughter Salome – who would not survive her first year – Marta told me that Yeshua had failed her at her most difficult time. She stunned me by ordering me to give him up as a friend, and, when I refused, she told me – tears of rage sliding down her cheeks – that I would one day come to regret having chosen him over her.

  I am reminded of this cruel history the following dawn, shortly after I see Yeshua off on the road to Yerushalayim. While I am sitting on my mat, drinking my barley broth, Marta comes to me and says, ‘You ought not to allow him into your home, you kn
ow.’

  ‘Marta, I’m thirty-six years old. I’ll do what I want.’

  ‘He didn’t even return in time to save you,’ she tells me resentfully.

  ‘Because I’d provoked a bad quarrel with him. And he was busy preaching.’

  ‘Eli, when will you learn that he uses you, just like he uses everyone?’

  I have noticed Marta generally jabs at me in the morning, when I am least prepared to defend myself. ‘I’m sorry, Marta,’ I tell her, ‘but at such an early hour, I find there is nothing I want to argue about – not with you or anyone else.’

  ‘The truth must not be made to wait!’ she says in a haughty voice, as though she has become – overnight – our family philosopher.

  ‘Marta, if you keep pushing me, I’m certain to say something we’ll both regret.’ I speak slowly and precisely, so she cannot later deny that I did not warn her.

  ‘You ought to hear what people say about the two of you!’ she says, sneering.

  So it is that I learn that her hate is spilling over into places where it will stain even the small comforts and pleasantries that remain to us.

  I stand up so that she can see I am a man now. And since I would not want my children to have to listen to mean-spirited condemnations of their father, I warn her to never voice her criticisms of Yeshua and me in front of Yirmi or Nahara. ‘And when I say never,’ I add, ‘that’s exactly what I mean!’

  Is revealing my anger a mistake?

  ‘Listen closely,’ she hisses at me. ‘If anything happens to you because of what you are planning with Yeshua, don’t count on me to raise your children or help them in any way. They will be dead to me!’

  To put some distance between Marta and me, I take Nahara and Yirmi outside Bethany late that morning, to the plot of land we rent. I spread out our tattered old rug under a mammoth carob tree, but the tiny brown ants of Judaea prove so envious of our bounty that we are forced to move twice while eating our modest lunch and end up hiding from them in an orchard of plum trees.

  After Yirmi joins some boys playing in a nearby field that has been left fallow – and when I am certain that my daughter and I are not being watched – I have Nahara practise reading some simple Aramaic phrases that I have scripted on a sheet of papyrus. I know I shall always remember that day because of the delighted laughter we share when she misreads chesed for chasidah, turning the sentence ‘The Lord’s kindness saved me’ into the glorious ‘The Lord’s stork saved me!’

  As we work, my thoughts return to Marta, and I am reminded again of those difficult words from the Book of Names that have helped me understand her: ‘I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.’

  Dearest Yaphiel, this may be the most misunderstood verse in all of the Torah, and I believe I can adjudge the discernment of any man or woman by the depth of their interpretation of it. Know this, my child: the true meaning of these words is not – as most people believe – that God holds us accountable for the actions of our forefathers. No, the Lord of Gifts is giving us a far more subtle and insightful teaching: that we are formed by the deeds and desires of our parents and grandparents, and our punishment for failing to make peace with all they have given us – both good and bad – and for not assuming responsibility for our own path in life is that we shall be for ever forced to repeat their mistakes.

  Yeshua arrives at my home shortly after my children and I get back that afternoon. Yohanon and Maryam of Magdala have accompanied him, and, as a gift, they bring us a basket of plump and pimply citrons and two bunches of wild asparagus.

  The citrons give me an opportunity to perform an old comedy conceit of mine for my Nahara and our guests as a prelude to our meal; I juggle three of them high in the air but always fumble one and make sure it hits me square on the head. It is just a bit of silliness, but my daughter squeals with laughter, over and over, and her unbridled glee gives me hope that our lives are regaining at least some of their usual tranquil contours.

  Yeshua soon takes to my little stage in the courtyard, taps lightly on Nahara’s head and pulls an asparagus spear from her ear.

  ‘Do it again!’ she shrieks, clapping her hands.

  He next pulls a spear from her bottom.

  When the girl looks back at me for an explanation, I tell her that Yeshua can do many things that other people can’t, which makes her squat on her heels and look up at him as if he were a mountain she is preparing to climb.

  As his final trick, Yeshua shows my daughter that he is concealing nothing in his hands, then taps his own head twice and opens his mouth to reveal a citron. As he hands it to her, he says, ‘Keep knocking, dear Nahara, and the door will open!’

  The girl looks back and forth between the fruit and Yeshua with astonished eyes. ‘How did he do that?’ she asks me.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I say truthfully, for, though it is possible that Yeshua put the citron in his mouth before stepping into my home, he could not then have then spoken to me and my daughter without mangling his words.

  To my questioning looks, my friend shakes his finger at me. ‘You have to knock on your own door, not mine!’ he says with a hearty laugh.

  While Yeshua gives Nahara a ride around the courtyard on his shoulders, Marta plays our family matron. It is as she is filling Maryam’s cup with wine that I take note of the delicate, fawn-like grace of her movements. Do our guests, remarking her mournful eyes, feel the turn of a sympathetic wheel inside them?

  Mia sees me eyeing Marta suspiciously and seats me far from her at supper. And, to give her no cause for jealousy, she has Grandfather Shimon and Cousin Ariston sit between Yeshua and me.

  Perhaps the absurdity of worrying about our seating arrangements has set Marta thinking about forging a truce; after we have finished our sweets, she comes around to me and whispers excitedly, ‘Come and see the progress I’ve made on my rug!’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Please, Eli – for me.’

  She leads me across our courtyard to her workroom. I see that she has added a large, four-pointed star below the final row of both black and white dolphins. After I compliment her talents, she tells me that she mixed madder and indigo to make its stunning shade of violet. ‘You know, Eli, the star is meant to represent you – your central place in all our lives,’ she says.

  The movement inside me is that of a younger brother turning away to find safety, for I suspect that her sudden affection is a tactic meant to win my continued allegiance. To hide my doubts about her sincerity, however, I squeeze her hand. ‘I’m sorry I caused you to worry,’ I say.

  She caresses my cheek, and her hand is so like my mother’s that it chills me. ‘Eli, I say malicious things to you because I know you won’t give up on me – it’s simply not in your nature,’ she says. ‘But I know I went too far today. I’m sorry. If ever your children are in need of my help, they’ll have it. I pledge that to you. Though I’d understand it if you wanted to keep them far from me.’

  I would like to confess to her that the hostilities between us exhaust me, but I have heard apologies from her too many times in the past to entirely believe this one. I limit myself to assuring her that I shall always seek out her help with my children. Is she disappointed? Undoubtedly, but what she shows me is a grateful smile. As I’ve discovered, one reveals very little during an undeclared war.

  After Grandfather Shimon makes his way up to bed, Yeshua and I are left alone with Maryam and Yohanon. He tells his disciples that he will spend another night with me and meet them just after dawn at Bethany’s western boundary.

  For dawn, he uses the word shepharphar. It is a spiralling, exuberant word, and it reminds me of how the Aramaic language has shaped and coloured my inner landscape.

  As we watch Maryam and Yohanon walking away down my street, Yeshua tells me that he recently healed a seventy-year-old Nabataean woman who was so afraid of butterflies getting tangled in her hair or fluttering into h
er mouth that she had not left home since she was a girl.

  If the lightest and most delicate of the Lord’s creatures can become our enemy, I think, then is there any hope of ever ending our miseries?

  When Yeshua notices my disquiet, he whispers a verse of Psalm, ‘“Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan, I shall now arise.”’

  So it is that he begins to tell me of his plans to bring justice to Zion. We sit opposite each other in my room, and he tells me in an excited voice – as though striding towards a triumph just ahead – that he will lead his followers through Yerushalayim the next morning and address them at the Synagogue of the Woodworkers.

  ‘And I need you there with me,’ he says.

  ‘I promised you I’d be with you and I shall,’ I reply. I’ll bring my knife and keep my eyes on you, I do not add.

  A small comfort … When I ask if Yehudah of Kerioth will accompany us, Yeshua tells me that he received word before supper that he has remained in Capernaum. ‘May the Lord show him favour there,’ he says. ‘And may he be wise for the rest of his days.

  When I awaken in the night, I find Yeshua in my courtyard, naked and shimmering in the moonlight, walking in a slow and careful circle, as if around a sleeping child. He is whispering the Passover prayer, the aim of which is to make us understand that the Exodus is a call to freedom that sounds in us at every moment: Bivhilu yatzanu mimitzrayim, halahma anya b’nei horin. In haste we went out of Egypt with our bread of affliction, and now we are free.

  The papyrus ribbon on which I have written the incantation meant to heal my leg has come loose, so I retie it around my ankle before standing up.

  I squat on my heels inside the circle he is walking and join my chanting to his, and this time my voice is secure and confident, and, even though my leg begins to cry out in pain, I do not pause, since I shall never make him walk alone.

  It would do you well to remember, Yaphiel, that in any battle of wills, it is sometimes difficult to know who is the cat and who the mouse …