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.
Jesus turns towards Lazarus. His eyes smile sadly. He puts his hand on his old friend’s shoulder. Lazarus blinks. He wonders if his questions are stupid. He blinks twice. He opens his mouth to speak and Mary comes in with the nard.
What happens next is known widely. Mary interrupts the dinner, at last finding her role in the story. Everyone has to move and furniture must be shifted so that she can kneel at the feet of Jesus. She uncorks the flask of nard, pours out the perfumed oil and washes his feet with her hair.
Sometimes, Mary wants to say, words are not enough.
4
1
LAZARUS SPENDS THE night after his resurrection on the roof, under the stars. His house is full, and he is acting on a strong craving for open spaces.
He does not immediately sleep. He regrets not speaking with Jesus, to confirm his conviction of being brought back for a purpose. Now Peter has reclaimed him, at least until the morning, and Lazarus lies awake wondering if a resurrection can wear out, wear off. He gazes at the stars and breathes the clean night air slowly in, slowly out.
In the simplest terms, after he returns from the dead, is Lazarus happy or is he sad?
Saint Epiphanios, Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus (367–403 CE) claims that Lazarus will live on for another thirty years. In the next three decades, according to ecclesiastical tradition, he will only smile once.
This is a possibility.
On the other hand, the American playwright Eugene O’Neill (Lazarus Laughed, 1925) depicts a Lazarus brimming with joy at his second chance among the living. ‘Laugh! Laugh with me! Death is dead! Fear is no more! There is only life! There is only laughter!’
Lazarus wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t experienced a little new-world optimism, like Ishmael in Moby-Dick (1851): ‘all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; supplementary clear gain of so many months or weeks as the case may be’.
All the same, the documentary evidence weighs in the other direction. In front of the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus weeps, and weeping is a stubborn feature of the earliest salvaged memories about Lazarus. Johan Huizinga in The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924) describes ‘the popular belief, then widely spread, according to which Lazarus, after his resurrection, lived in a continual misery and horror at the thought that he should have again to pass through the gate of death’.
On the night before the day known in the Christian calendar as Palm Sunday, Lazarus turns onto his stomach on the roof of his house. Chin on hands, he stares over the moonlit hills of scrub and rock, and a Bedouin fire burns brightly in the distance, like an answering star to the heavens.
Lazarus has the feeling he’s being watched. He listens for a command, like those received by the prophets, then hugs himself and rolls from side to side. He chants ‘here I am, here I am, here I am’. God does not respond with the consoling near-echo of I am here.
Lazarus plans ahead for tomorrow, his second day back on earth. He won’t make the same mistakes twice. This time around he’ll keep Jesus close, and value their friendship as he did when they were young. He’ll trust that instinct, once so strong and now rekindled, that he and Jesus will live as heroes. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of his life: Jesus will explain about Amos, and clear up the differences between life and death.
‘Here I am,’ Lazarus whispers. ‘Here I am.’
His chant loses meaning, becomes a sequence of the sounds of nothingness, until eventually beneath the stars on the roof in Bethany, Lazarus falls asleep.
2
He shakes himself awake. Already the sun is halfway towards noon. He jumps up, makes a fresh start, bundles down the outside steps, shouts at Martha for his breakfast.
A disciple is sitting beside the door. Nathaniel? Matthew? Lazarus can never remember their names. This one like the others is bearded and dark-skinned, and smells of sweat and fish. His left eyelid is trembling.
‘Jesus asked me to thank you. Your hospitality was most welcome.’
‘Where is he?’
‘They left for Jerusalem, everyone except me.’
Balthazar or Andrew stands up and sniffs, testing the air. He raises his hand but instead of covering his nose he holds his eyelid still.
‘Can you tell me what death was like?’
‘He can’t have left. Not without letting me know.’
‘Was it very glorious?’
‘We haven’t had a chance to talk.’
Lazarus runs into the village square, as if to catch stragglers before it’s too late. Jesus is long gone, and in the village the mood has changed.
Bethany is exhausted. The mid-morning sunlight makes sharp edges along abandoned crutches, while bandages brown with tidemarks of blood curl and crack in the dust. There are charred stones around cold fires. This is what the absence of Jesus looks like.
‘Peter asks that you stay in Bethany.’ The disciple has followed Lazarus into the square. ‘We’ll send the doubters out from Jerusalem. When they see how alive you are, they’ll believe that Jesus is the one.’