Lazarus nods. Beside the door, he notices, is a small shrine to Minerva, goddess of victory. Beyond the door, for more pragmatic interventions, two Roman soldiers stand guard. ‘You’re going to kill me.’
Cassius replaces his apple in the fruit bowl which is the centrepiece of a low rectangular table. ‘Help yourself,’ he says. ‘If you’re hungry.’
Lazarus bumps his toes over the tiles in the mosaic floor. If he were dead, how would he know? He imagines he is dead, and it turns out the Romans have conquered everywhere, even the afterlife.
‘If I’m dead you can’t kill me. Therefore I have nothing to fear.’
‘First things first.’
‘So what comes first?’
Cassius clicks his fingers. One of the guards unties Lazarus’s hands. The soldier tries not to touch him, treating Lazarus with the same caution as foreign novelties from previous campaigns. Lazarus is as unlikely as a crocodile, and possibly as treacherous.
‘Stay by the door,’ Cassius tells him.
No one wants to be alone with Lazarus, not even Cassius. Even without the alleged death, the rapid healing is against nature. If he can do this, they all think, what else can he do?
‘I brought you here for your own protection.’
‘I knew it. You’re going to kill me.’
‘That may not solve the problem. For example if you come back again. I’ve called for the garrison doctor. He will be with us shortly.’
Lazarus glances at the doorway. There wouldn’t be soldiers guarding the doors of heaven, not even a Roman heaven, unless heaven wasn’t safe for Romans. And then it wouldn’t be heaven. He can’t sustain this bravado. He is not dead, nor is he fearless. He is alive on earth in the Antonia Fortress, and he is frightened.
‘If we do kill you we’ll do it properly,’ Cassius adds, sensing that at last his words are having an effect. He pushes on. ‘Death the Roman way means crucifixion, and no one comes back from that.’
‘Please. I haven’t broken any laws. Not that I know of.’
‘I was there at the tomb. I saw what happened.’
‘So what did you see? Did I come back from the dead?’
‘In some ways, for your sake, I hope so. If you’re lying then the penalty for false witness is death.’
‘The penalty for everything is death.’
‘That’s justice for you. We’re going to check your physical condition. Take off all your clothes.’
3
The Lazarus resurrection, like other supernatural events in the Christian story, can enrage the scholastic mind. ‘Higher Criticism’ emerged in Germany in the eighteenth century, and the higher critics subjected the bible to the same objective analysis as other historical documents. Their aim was to establish the truth of biblical narratives.
David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74), who extended the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) concluded that the Lazarus story was a ‘myth’. In his highly influential Life of Jesus (1863), Ernest Renan considers it a fraud perpetrated by the disciples to grow the Christian community.
Cassius resists such intuitive umbrage, the equivalent of assuming that Lazarus smells. True and false are such primitive categories. He prefers to ask whether the raising of Lazarus can be useful.
In Bethany, a blue-eyed Bedouin lost in the crowd, Cassius had watched Jesus weep. Angry, uncomfortable, Jesus had called Lazarus out from his tomb. The incident had been compellingly staged.
Cassius will admit that Lazarus emerging from the darkness of the tomb, flapping and falling in his funeral rags, had been an unsettling spectacle. Not what he or anyone else had expected. It was unbelievable. He had flung his gourd of water to the ground, put his hands on his hips. This should not be allowed, not after he’d sent his briefing to Rome. He’d confirmed in writing that Lazarus was dead, and claimed this as convincing proof of the weakness of Jesus. In Judaea, he reported, there was currently no identifiable threat.
He has now had a day and a half to subdue his indignation, to rationalise what he’s seen and not to believe his eyes.
Cassius is no stranger to the divine. As a junior officer he’d once stood within twenty paces of the Emperor Tiberius in Rome. He will never come closer to a god on earth, but with the emperor it is easy to tell. He shines. He gives off light.
On this occasion Cassius has decided to be philosophical, in the manner of Cicero: ‘For nothing can happen without cause; nothing happens that cannot happen, and when what was capable of happening has happened, it may not be interpreted as a miracle … We therefore draw the conclusion: what was incapable of happening never happened, and what was capable of happening is not a miracle’ (De Divinatione 2: 28, 44 BCE).
Cassius is culturally in sympathy with Cicero’s Roman approach: Lazarus may well have come back from the dead. Fine. Absorbed. One day Rome will discover how and why, even if in every time and place until that day the event will remain a mystery.
To kill him as the Sanhedrin wish to do is a wasted opportunity.
‘I asked you to take off your clothes. I suggest you cooperate.’
What is worse than death?
Lazarus being sent to Rome as a trophy. This is the standard imperial response to awkward religious figures. Humiliate the shaman. Lock him in a travelling cage, and parade him naked to Rome.
In the Forum the senators will titter behind their hands at the Jew back from the dead. They will keep him in reserve for an afternoon of applied theology at the Circus — god’s chosen cadet against god’s unblessed beasts. A dilemma to intrigue Caesar himself, if Lazarus is lucky.
But first the senators will ask him what is beyond.
If he fails to answer they will tire of him. Then they will torture him, to ensure he tells the truth. Reason permits deceit, and pain suppresses reason. Lazarus will not lie if his rational faculties are inhibited.
It is a simple question, Lazarus — tell us what is beyond.
They start with the flogging whip, or flagellum, made with straps of leather embedded with glass or nails. If this doesn’t kill him, the torture can progress to more intricate equipment like the equuleus, the ‘young horse’. Iron weights are involved, and a narrow customised bench.
In his Lives of the Twelve Caesars (119 CE) the historian Suetonius describes a first-century torture invented by Tiberius (14–37 CE), the emperor at this time. Tiberius would force his victims ‘to drink a great quantity of wine, and presently tie their members with a lute string, that he might rack them at once with the girding of the string, and with the pressure of urine’.
Tiberius will be succeeded by Caligula, notorious for his use of flames and saws. It is at this stage that prisoners call for their mothers, then after that for their god.
If Lazarus insists on remaining silent, refusing even under torture to share his experience of the beyond, the Romans will wash their hands and crucify him.
The agony will be worse than any illness. It may be worse than death.
Nothing can surprise Lazarus, not now. This is how he keeps himself calm. He reminds himself that anything can happen, good or bad. In which case, has he learned more than anyone else?
He is lying face-down on the floor, naked, his arms and legs spread in a star. Mosaic squares stipple his belly when he breathes. The doctor, a Greek with a long face, is examining the skin behind his ears.
‘Turn over. Lie on your back.’
The doctor inspects Lazarus’s gums, then thumbs up his eyelids.
‘There’s no smell, is there?’ Cassius is leaning against a wall with his arms crossed.
‘Mosquito bite. Inside of the left knee.’