‘Is that significant?’
‘He’s not invulnerable. And look at his breathing. Like you and me he has to get air to his stomach. His liver has to move blood around the body.’
‘Can he feel pain?’
The doctor pinches his ear, hard. Lazarus jerks away, covering his head. Cassius kicks him his clothes.
‘The worst is over,’ he says. He dismisses the doctor but not the guards at the door. ‘Sit down, Lazarus. Eat an apple.’
While Lazarus dresses, Cassius taps the pads of his fingers against his lower lip, fleshing it out. ‘I have one more question.’
They sit opposite each other. Lazarus takes an apple and bites into it. His gums aren’t perfect — he leaves an imprint of blood on the exposed white flesh.
‘You want to ask what is beyond, don’t you?’
‘No. I want to ask if your god makes mistakes. Roman gods get it wrong all the time.’
The gods Cassius has known since childhood are imperfect, omniscient but not all powerful — they give fire to the titans and the titans are tricked by men. Jupiter shrugs his shoulders. Life goes on.
‘Earlier today Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on a donkey, as prophesied in the Book of Zechariah. I’m a foreigner and even I know that. There are other scriptures predicting a messiah from the line of David who comes from Nazareth. A star will shine brightly above his birthplace in Bethlehem.’
Lazarus reaches for a second apple. They’d studied the verses about the donkey back in Nazareth, and Jesus knows his scriptures.
‘Was there or was there not a star over Bethlehem when you were born?’
‘There was a star over every baby born in the village at that time.’
‘Yes,’ Cassius says. ‘But all of them except you and Jesus are dead. You too came into Jerusalem on a donkey, when you went to the Bethesda pool.’
Lazarus swallows his mouthful of apple. ‘I’m the son of a mason from Galilee. I was born in Bethlehem and fled with my family into Egypt.’
‘Exactly. You’re everything the scriptures said you would be.’ Cassius scratches the skin at the side of his eye. ‘And doesn’t the messiah come back from the dead?’
4
Everything is about Jesus these days, and has been for two thousand years.
It is Sunday night, one day after the resurrection of Lazarus, at the start of what has come to be known as Holy Week. During the next seven days Jesus will preach and make promises. He will eventually get himself arrested, tried, crucified and buried, and on the third day he will rise again to judge the quick and the dead.
Lazarus is a precondition for all these events, because the raising of Lazarus inspires the believers who accompany the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This in turn explains why neither the Sanhedrin nor the Romans can take immediate action against Jesus — ‘yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words’ (Luke 19: 48). Without Lazarus, Jesus would never have lasted until Friday.
As it is, his exact movements between now and then are disputed. For several days Jesus circulates freely while nothing is heard of his friend. The dramatic events towards the end of the week, starting with Thursday night’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, tend to eclipse the days that come before.
At some point, probably on the Monday, Jesus ‘entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the benches of those selling doves’ (Mark 11: 15).
Otherwise, across the four canonical gospels, events remain vague until Thursday. Jesus spends Monday to Wednesday ‘teaching in the Temple’ (Luke 21: 37). He is sighted at Bethany (Mark 11: 11) and on the Mount of Olives (Luke 21: 37), which suggests he can move in and out of Jerusalem as he pleases. This is consistent in all four gospels, and his freedom of movement is not entirely explained by the safety-in-numbers aspect of a supportive crowd (Luke 19: 48).
Lazarus is the answer. Two thousand years of Jesus has obscured the renown of Lazarus. The Romans have one of the friends safe, so they are less concerned about the other. Jesus is at large in the city because Lazarus is imprisoned in the fortress.
‘Are you the king of the Jews?’
‘I’m an overseer of Temple livestock.’
‘Good,’ Cassius says. ‘I don’t think we have a problem with that.’
‘I cast a shadow,’ Lazarus adds. ‘When I get sick I die.’
The great fear in Jerusalem at this time is that any claimant king of the Jews will disrupt the peace between Rome and occupied Judaea. Cassius has a plan, based on the accepted principle that a messiah should aim to do some good. Instead of adding to the tension, a messiah should start by easing political relationships.
‘You’re betrothed to marry the daughter of a senior Sanhedrin priest.’
‘How would you know that?’
‘Imagine how stable this country could be if a provincial messiah married into the Sanhedrin with the blessing of the Romans. Every angle is covered — all would be sweetness and light. You and I should make a visit to Isaiah, your prospective father-in-law.’
‘I don’t think messiahs get married.’
‘Messiahs can do whatever god ordains.’
Cassius is thinking ahead, already composing his report to Rome, but Lazarus is wilfully slow. ‘You don’t have a choice,’ Cassius says. ‘Look where you are now. This is your destiny.’
‘Because you say so?’
‘Or god does. One or the other. Whichever you prefer — both at the same time.’
‘That doesn’t sound right.’
The consuls in Rome are waiting for positive news, and for Cassius to explain his mistakes. ‘No? Then perhaps you should experience the alternative.’
The next confirmed sighting of Lazarus is at the crucifixion of Jesus.
Karel Čapek, who earlier enjoyed his joke about Lazarus dying from a chill, is equally flippant about the crucifixion. Lazarus is resting in Bethany (after the stress of recent events) when he and his sisters hear news of the imprisonment of Jesus. Martha and Mary are confident that Jesus in his turn will be saved by a miracle.
The intervention, they imagine, will come in human form. Jesus will be rescued by those who owe him a debt — the nobleman from Capernaum, the man who picked up his mat and walked, the blind man who now can see. An army of five thousand fed when hungry will descend on Jerusalem to deliver Jesus from harm. Lazarus will be their leader.
Yes, he’d like that very much, only he hasn’t been welclass="underline" ‘I don’t feel up to all this — the journey, the excitement … I should so much have liked to go.’
Čapek’s story is funny because absurd. Lazarus has to be present at the crucifixion. Where else would he be? The idea of his absence is laughable.
There are thousands of figurative representations of the passion and death of Jesus, and in most of the classic images a clean-shaven witness can be found in the keening crowd. From Fra Angelico in 1420 to Max Ernst in 1913, Lazarus is there. Look at a Tintoretto or a Rubens, or any of the masters of the Dutch school. Lazarus attends the crucifixion of Jesus, often in a favoured position at the front left portion of the canvas.
On Friday at midday, Lazarus will be with Jesus on the hill at Golgotha. By that time Lazarus, too, like his sisters in the story by Karel Capek, will believe he can save his friend.
Between the Sunday and Thursday of Holy Week, like the bible itself, Lazarus loses track of time.
His cell in the Antonia Fortress is a narrow room three floors above the level of the street. Lazarus stands on the end of his bed to look through the window high in the wall. A half-starved man might squirm his way through, but the outside walls offer no obvious handholds.