How Best to Avoid Dying

by Owen Egerton

  You are a mute trickster, you are promise, you are the hawk and lizard and fly and buzz, you are Pete and a smoking woman and pollen, you are hills and sand and a girl in a towel. You have no name and you have all names.

  Today I’ll call you Texas. Tonight I’ll call sleep prayer. Tomorrow I’ll walk some more.

  LAZARUS DYING

  “Maybe he will return today,” John says. He is standing by the window, trying to peek at the sky above New York’s buildings. He has not put his tie on yet.

  “It will not be today.”

  “Maybe it will be.”

  John starts cleaning. Shuffling around straightening cushions and the one houseplant.

  “Have you seen my pamphlets?” he asks.

  After John’s shift at the copy shop, he hands out tracts around the city. Simple little books describing the pains of hell and the grace of the cross.

  “They were on the counter this morning.”

  “Never saw them,” I say.

  They have illustrations so that even the illiterate might be saved.

  “If you see them will you place them on my mat?”

  “Of course.”

  I burn his tracts in the sink as often as I can.

  I try not to watch him scurry around. I’m learning to rot.

  Two thousand years ago, I was a miracle.

  The first thing Jesus said to me when I stumbled from the tomb was, “I wanted to see what four days would do, Lazarus.”

  I nodded and brushed some flakes from my skin. He smiled and rested a hand on my back.

  “I think I’ll keep it to three,” he said.

  Pilgrims visited. They’d wait in the shade of a palm tree I planted as a young man. One by one, for a small fee, they would be led by my sisters behind a curtain to see me and ask questions. Some wanted to ask me about Jesus. Most wanted to ask me about death.

  “It was nothing at the time,” I told them. “In memory it is a little like biting into an under-ripened fruit, only not just your mouth, your whole body.”

  People didn’t like this answer. They would grimace, drop a coin in Martha’s hand, and head back home. Sometimes a hundred miles away. A hundred miles to find out the afterlife was not yet ready for picking. So I made up different answers.

  “There is milk there. There is cheese. It is morning always.” Or “Your mother is there. She complains about you constantly. Already the dead are sick of your name.”

  Once I told a man, “Your brother blames you for his death.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” he answered.

  “Perhaps you wished it.” I said. “So you might have his wife.”

  “I married her out of custom.”

  “He visits your room at night. Your brother watches.”

  I don’t know why I said these things. After this man left, Martha brought me a plate of food. Olives and bread. But I could not eat it.

  “The food is sick, Martha.”

  “The food is fine, brother. You are sick,” she said. “You need to rest. To sleep.”

  “I cannot sleep.”

  “Goodnight, brother.”

  I could hear Mary and Martha discuss me.

  “He is different. He stares,” Martha said.

  “He is alive. Is that not enough for you?”

  “We were wrong to ask for this.”

  “He is a miracle.”

  “He frightens me.”

  If I was sick, when would I be healthy? The mold did not heal. And no new mold grew. Nothing changes. Until now. Now I’m rotting. I’m learning to die.

  “Will you clean up a little today? he asks, tightening his tie.

  “No,” I say, sitting still against the wall. Our apartment is one room and one bathroom. John has purchased simple furniture. I refuse to use it, except to hide his preaching bible or holy textbooks.

  John lights candles in the morning. “I prefer the soft light,” he tells me. At night John pretends to sleep. He lies still with his eyes closed for hours and hours. He pretends to be hungry at meals. He reads all the scholarly books on the “historical Jesus.” He claims it’s devotion. In truth he wants to see how history is treating him.

  “Revelations is popular again,” he tells me. “Must be nigh.”

  “Nothing is nigh.”

  John is not like me. He was never dead. Never died. You can read about it in his gospel, but John swears that the story has been skewed.

  “Peter and I were debating, we were always debating,” John told me. “Peter said he would die for Jesus. I said the greater challenge was to live for him. Jesus heard our talk and granted us both our desires. Me, I live until he returns and Peter was crucified head down. I saw it. Saw Peter scream. But I’m still here. Jesus said we’d compare thoughts at the end of time. He said that. This won’t last forever.”

  “Jesus was a liar.”

  “Never say this. Why do you say this?”

  I tug at my ear. It comes off in my fingers.

  “You are letting this happen,” he says.

  I smile. Bit by bit, I’m learning the secret. It is not trying to die, it is forgetting to live. Every day, forgetting. It is difficult. Two thousand years to learn. But look at me rot. Give me time and I’ll be gone.

  After my grave, the cattle feared me, wouldn’t let me near. Martha did my work. I missed working. Missed coming home tired and pleased. I remember, before dying, coming home to find Jesus sitting on my floor, my sisters doting on him. Martha with her foods and annoying hospitality. Mary with her submission. If he had touched either of them, they would have filled my home with sweat, they would have disappeared through their pores. This young-eyed lust of unmarried girls.

  I walked in and Martha handed me a bowl to wash my face.

  “Hello, Teacher,” I said.

  “Hello friend,” he said, “Sit. Have some wine and let’s talk.”

  I laughed. Jesus could have the company of magicians and rich men, but he chose to sit with me. And he laughed. All his philosophy, all his teaching had laughter in it. Just below the words.

  Jesus came to Bethany once more after my grave. A meal was planned at Simon the Leper’s home. Martha asked me to stay away.

  “There is still a smell to you brother. It will upset the Master.”

  I sat outside by a window, leaning on the dirt wall. I heard the laughter. I heard the eating. They could smell me through the window. I heard the complaining. It must have been strong. Mary smashed her perfume to cover the stench. She poured it out on Jesus. But Jesus was not fooled. He spoke of death.

  “John, bring me back some cigarettes. I’m going to take up smoking.”

  “You tried that before. It didn’t work.”

  “I’m going to try again.”

  Do not sleep for a year and you will remember things that never were. Do not sleep for ten years and you will mumble wisdom, cough poetry, and understand none of it. Do not sleep for a thousand years and God and Satan will dance in your throat.

  I have not slept in two thousand years. My head is more blood than brains. You can hear the slush.

  News came of Jesus’ death. My sisters wept, tore at their breasts.

  “Brother, brother. The Master is dead.”

  But I did not cry. And I could see they now thought of me only as a monster. Love was gone. Even pity was gone. I went back behind my curtain and stayed there.

  Days later there came news of the body being gone. Of Peter seeing something.

  “Peter sees what he wants to see,” Martha said. “Always has.”

  “John saw him too,” said Mary.

  “John will see whatever Peter tells him to see.”

  “Martha, it could be true,” Mary said. “Look at our brother.”

  “I do not want that to be true.”

  Curiosity grew. More pilgrims came to me every day.

  But I lied about Jesus, too. I told some he was a demon. Some I told that he was a Roman spy. I told one man that Jesus gave me life so he co
uld share my bed. This man shook his head. “I knew it,” he said. “I always knew it.”

  Again, I don’t know why I said these things. I tried to love as I loved before. My sisters, my God. But there was no love.

  Soon Mary and Martha turned the pilgrims away. My sisters didn’t like my answers. They didn’t like the way I tried to touch the women or how I bit at the men. They told the pilgrims I was sick or asleep or visiting the Temple. I could hear them whispering, offering figs for the journey home.

  Today, like most days, John will preach on the sidewalks and in the subways. Most people ignore him.

  “They search for parking spaces with more urgency than they search for God,” he once said.

  In the poorer neighborhoods John preaches to junkies and the insane. The gangs know John. When they catch him they tie him up and urinate on him. He comes home smelling. He returns the next day with the same words, the same message. “Where you fear there is judgment, where you hope there is nothing, in that place there is actually love.” They grab him again. He doesn’t fight. They take his clothes and send him away naked. He believes he’s doing God’s work.

  “You’re deceived,” I tell John as he gathers his scriptures and goes to the door.

  “I am happy. You are not,” he says while counting his keys. “Which tree drinks the true water, the strong or the withered?”

  “No parables. That’s the rule. None.”

  “It was a metaphor.”

  “It was very close to a parable,” I say.

  “You’re without hope. You are rot.”

  “You’ll be the last, you know. There’ll be no believers in the world.”

  “You said that a thousand years ago.” He closes the door behind him.

  I am glad he’s gone. The silence helps. I can rot away to nothing today. Perhaps today.

  One evening I peeked from behind my curtain. Mary was sewing the hem of the dress she was wearing. She was smiling. I wanted to sit with her. I would say nothing. I would touch nothing. Just sit near and watch her sew. I tried to remember being in this place, before. Could that be true again? Couldn’t I sit still with my sister? I stepped through the curtain. She looked up. Her face stretched in fear.

  “Mary,” I said. She stood quickly, dropping the needle.

  “Martha is at the market. She’ll be home soon,” she said. I moved forward. She stepped back into a wall. “She’ll be home soon.”

  When I was dying Mary sat with me through the night. She dipped a cloth in water and cooled my forehead. I was sick with fever, often asleep, but each time I opened my eyes, Mary was there. “Shhh, brother. Peace,” she had said. How I wish she would say this now. Cool my head now. But I was no longer her brother. I could see that in her fear. I looked down at my hands, my blue skin. I hated it. I wanted to be dead. I wanted to be mourned, not feared.

  I waited without moving. She didn’t move either. Then I screamed. She fell to her knees and covered her face. She didn’t see me leave.

  That night I tried to die. I tied a rope around my neck and hung myself from a tree. I choked and spat, but I did not die. Thieves came and stole my sandals. I kicked at them and tried to yell, but the rope only allowed me to croak. They laughed and pushed me. They left me swinging. At dawn the rope snapped and I dropped to the dust. I wept because I could not die. The dying part of me had died the first time. So I went for Jesus. I wanted him to undo what he had done. He would grant me that.

  I asked wherever I went, but people were afraid. Of me and my mold. Of the Romans and the priests.

  I was lonely. I bought some time in a woman’s tent. The air was thick with oils. She rolled over me. I didn’t move. She kissed and rubbed. She moaned like a goat but with no help from me. I asked if I could leave.

  “Still the same price.”

  I dropped a coin and crawled over pillows to the door. But turned before I left.

  “Did you see the Master when he passed through?” I asked.

  “Which one?

  “Jesus of Nazareth.”

  “The one they killed? Yes. I saw him. His disciples kept me busy for days.”

  “Him as well?”

  “Once. But he was like you.”

  I cannot remember all the things he said. Sitting on mats, talking into the dark until even Mary would yawn. Something about a kingdom and bread. Something about losing and finding, about a bad son forgiven, and a nagging widow, and buildings crumbling and stars falling and all things made new.

  I came to Jerusalem, crowded and tall. I wore long robes to hide my skin. I found rumors. Jesus and Isaiah had been seen perched on the Temple’s top, crying for the city. Peter had performed miracles in the name of Roman gods. The priests had stolen the Master’s body and keep it in crypts under the Temple.

  Many had claimed to see him.

  “We saw him,” one man told me. A man I knew from before. “But we didn’t know it was him until he was gone.”

  “He has changed?”

  “Yes, but…but not like you. He is less flesh now.”

  Peter could be found preaching loudly in city squares. I went to hear him and ask him to tell where Jesus was, but when I saw him I was frightened. Too bold for me to trust. He argued with everyone. His words, all his words, were flavored with argument.

  I traveled for two days to Nazareth, hoping Jesus might be there with his mother. Dew forming on my beard at night. Sun in my eyes at day. I had once loved dawn, loved the gold in the palms. Nothing now.

  Jesus’ mother met me at the door. I knew her, but she didn’t seem to know me. Too sad to know anyone. She was old. She had never been old before.

  “I’m looking for your son,” I said. She nodded and covered her nose. She led me to an inner room. There, scribbling by a weak candle, was John.

  “Your son?” I asked her again. She nodded again and left. John looked up and let his eyes focus. He smiled. “She’s my mother now, Lazarus. A gift from the Lord to her and to me.”

  Poor Mary. John was no Jesus. Thin, weak, and with a sad beard. Once at my home, before the deaths, Peter had slapped John’s back and laughed loudly. “Looks as if an old dog has shed on your chin.” All the disciples had laughed. John had smiled slightly. He was the youngest of Jesus’ men. He kept close to Peter, listening as much as Peter talked. But this John was different.

  “I need to find the Master,” I said.

  “I would have thought you’d come sooner.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He knew you were sick. Did you know that? He waited. Said it was for God’s glory. We said he should hurry.”

  “Please tell me how to find him.” My voice was stern.

  “He let you die. You have a reason.” I moved close to him. “He is gone,” John said.

  “Where?”

  “Into the sky. To Heaven to prepare a place for us. He’ll return. You may wait with me, if you wish.”

  I turned to leave.

  “I have a reason too,” he said. But I didn’t stay.

  I was hungry for death. Life felt wrong. I needed to feast on what I had only tasted. I knew I couldn’t have my own, but I could be close to others’. I returned to Jerusalem and watched the crucifixions outside the city wall. Sat near as they tied the men to the beams. Moved closer after the crowds left. Horrible. But I wanted it.

  For a time I met with the church in Ephesus. Sipped wine with them. Sang hymns. Listened as they retold stories and argued about what each meant. I tried to find hope where they found hope. I could not. When Jerusalem had a famine, I volunteered to help. I wanted to see more dying. Wanted death.

  I saw the city fall forty years after he called me from the cave. Everything burning and the Temple falling. I thought that this must be the end. His return. All things would be made new. But he did not return.

  It’s raining in New York. I stand by the window and listen, gently pulling teeth from my mouth. John will stay in the rain. He will raise his voice over thunder and speak of a love. He will r
eturn and bring me food. He eats and expects me to as well. He, like me, doesn’t need food any more than he needs sleep. But John believes this is how one should live.

  “John, you are so dull,” I told him. “Why did Jesus put up with you?”

  “He loved me.”

  “So you keep saying, but why?”

  “Because he did.”

  Below the window children are playing in the puddles. My mouth does not bleed.

  After Jerusalem fell, the Romans tried to burn me. I felt the pain, but my skin only bubbled. It did not burn. So they set me out on the sea with no sail and no supplies. The sea didn’t kill me either. For days and months I floated, watching the blue above and the blue below until my eyes changed hue. Eventually my boat fell to planks and I floated free, on my back, up and down on waves like small mountains. Staring at the sun, which crossed the sky as if blown by the wind. Fish kissed my palms and jumped over my face. Always waves in my ears and salt in my skin.

  Sometimes I was afraid. The sky seemed to be moving farther and father away. At night I would hear howling and see shadows rise up larger than the Temple. I believed all the world was again flooded. No one but me remained.

  Other times my fear was like awe. Sky, sea, and stars. I sang Psalms and worshipped. The stars were like souls. The children of Abraham. The salt in my eyes and the spray in the air would catch moonlight and make it seem as if perhaps the stars were finally falling. I had been promised they would fall and all things would be made new.

  The stars did not fall. They don’t fall. They fade. Every morning, they fade. For two thousand years, they do nothing but fade.

  After a year I floated on to a green coast. Light skinned people found me, carried me to a bed with wool blankets. Dried my skin and poured oil over my scalp. They spoke, but I didn’t understand. One woman, wearing fur, took warm water and washed my face. She hummed and I knew the melody. A Psalm. And behind her stood John.

  “John?” I asked.

  “God is good. He has brought us here.”

  “God is God. And I am no man to judge if he is good.”