In the street below a cart rolls by. It is filled with straw, heading for the Temple stockyards. The street is very far down. Lazarus would have to be incredibly lucky not to kill himself. Another hay cart passes, and stops directly beneath the window. Lazarus looks down on the driver’s head, and the driver has no idea he’s there.
Lazarus sits on the bed, which is as long as the cell and half as wide. At regular intervals faces peer through the barred opening in the door. He sits on his hands. At least he has his health.
He sleeps.
Cassius bangs on the door. Lazarus wakes up.
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘I was sleeping.’
It is dark. Cassius goes away. Lazarus sits and watches a shiny black cockroach take its chances across the floor. It wants to eat and reproduce and be king of all the cockroaches. Lazarus steps on it.
He lifts his foot, and waits for the cockroach to come back to life. It does so. Several times. As long as he doesn’t step on it too hard.
He flops back on the bed, one arm trailing off the side. He counts the times Jesus has ruined his life.
5
Depression is one way in which death shows its strength. Some of the blackness of the tomb remains, and it is the darkness Lazarus can’t endure. The darkness and enclosed spaces and time going by.
Does Jesus know where he is? And had he always known it would come to this, even as a child, when they ran free in the hills above Nazareth?
Lazarus is increasingly sure he’s alive, truly alive, and with every hour that passes it is harder to believe he died. If he’d died, genuinely, then he’d still be dead. He wouldn’t be sighing at the sorrow of life in a cramped Roman cell.
He bites his lip until it bleeds. Later, he plucks out a clutch of eyelashes. He doesn’t believe in resurrection. It wasn’t death that he’d experienced, but some unnatural state of suspension, which Jesus has inflicted upon him.
If he knows. If Jesus has always known.
When Amos drowned he knew, and when Lazarus left Nazareth for Bethany. He knew that selling sheep to the Temple was an ill-omened business, and that Lazarus would never marry or return to the Galilee, would fall sick and die and come back to life and be imprisoned in the Antonia Fortress. This was always the shape his life was going to take.
The white days of their Nazareth childhood tilt and catch a different light. They have a dark underside and make unwelcome shadows: there is no coincidence and there is no luck. The story of Lazarus is a device in the life of Jesus.
Lazarus is overcome with self-pity. That’s right, Lazarus, it isn’t fair. Fall on your knees and blub. Whine and cry. Wish that you were dead.
He crawls across the cell and plants his forehead flush against the rough plastered wall. It is a long time since he prayed, and in the past he was always relieved when no one answered. It was a solace to know that he was on his own, and that whatever happened was up to him.
Now he genuinely hopes to be heard, but has forgotten how to do it. Lazarus has mislaid his certainty about what he wants, or what is worth having.
He curls up on the floor and puts his hands flat between his thighs. The mosquito bite on his knee is healing, life’s miracle at work. His body is renewing itself for no obvious reason, and he grieves for his overlaid childhood. He grieves for his vanished future and his poor, deserted sisters. He grieves his own ugly death, and his plans that have come to nothing.
Lazarus weeps.
Inside Isaiah’s house, the tables and chairs are so neatly arranged it is clear that visitors are barely welcome. There is a background hush of shuffling, of women taking up position to eavesdrop.
‘Lazarus would have liked to be here,’ Cassius says, ‘but he is temporarily indisposed. He wanted to apologise for his unseemly behaviour at the betrothal. I know it’s no excuse, but at the time he wasn’t feeling well.’
‘I’m honoured that a Roman official should take an interest.’
Isaiah has an urgent meeting with the Sanhedrin. He is in full priest’s regalia but he bows nevertheless. Not so deeply that his eyes leave Cassius. ‘If you’ve come about Jesus, we priests in Jerusalem know where he’s hiding. The situation is under control.’
Cassius nods. Religion doesn’t have to cause trouble, not when managed correctly.
‘We’ll take care of Jesus, I promise,’ Isaiah says. ‘We don’t approve of civic disturbances of any kind.’
‘That’s why I’m here. I want to persuade you to look ahead, take a broader view. Lazarus too has his followers. He doesn’t make promises he can’t keep — no pulling down the Temple and rebuilding it in three days. Give Lazarus a second chance.’
‘Too late. We already have plans for Lazarus.’
‘Let him marry Saloma, for the good of everyone involved.’
‘Lazarus died. That normally annuls any betrothal.’
‘Is that why you voted for the Sicarii to intervene? Or was it just to free Saloma from a marriage contract?’
‘That wasn’t my decision. Every member of the Sanhedrin was there.’
‘As well as some Roman spies. Call off the assassin. Let Lazarus live.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Then Lazarus can’t heal your daughter.’
Isaiah takes a step forward, eyes narrowed. ‘Of course he can’t. Nobody can. She’s beyond help.’
‘Lazarus came back from the dead,’ Cassius says, meeting Isaiah’s gaze. ‘What more does a messiah have to do?’
‘Heal the innocent. Yes. We all know that. Me, you, Jesus and every Judaean from here to kingdom come. Healing should be any messiah’s first and most important task ’
For twenty-five years Isaiah has accepted god’s gift of a daughter who can’t keep food in her mouth. She can be treated for months at a time with no visible improvement to her leg, and healers have proved worse than useless. Yanav gave her a drink of leaves and seawater while three miles away the dead came back to life. Why is his love and devotion unrewarded?
‘Agree to the marriage,’ Cassius says. ‘You’ll see what Lazarus can do.’
*
On Thursday morning, after four days and nights in a Roman cell, Lazarus wakes up with the hard weight of his head on one ear, and hears the march of approaching soldiers. He startles upright, and the footsteps go quiet. He lies down again and listens, crunch, crunch, but the sandals are not coming closer. It is the sound of the pulse in his neck, a stomping at the back of his jaw.
He decides to kill himself, as an act of revenge.
He sits upright, rubs his fingers over his cheeks and chin, but his deadly razor is back in the house in Bethany. He hasn’t shaved for eight days, including being dead, and he’ll soon look like a believer in god. The lie is too much to bear.
He stands on the end of the bed. His shoulders are level with the sill of the window. If he can get his head through, and then his shoulders, he knows the rest of him will follow. He has been ill. The muscles in his upper body are not what they were. Everything is ordained.
He pulls himself up, turns his head sideways and hauls his shoulders through. His body scrapes halfway out before his hands confirm no holds on either side of the outside wall. Directly below him a cart full of straw rolls by. It does not stop beneath the window.
He is stuck head-first out of a window on the third floor of the Antonia Fortress. His lower legs are braced against the ceiling to keep him in, and there is a fatal drop to the cobbles of the street below. He is not a fav-oured son of god. That would be a terrible misjudgement to make.
Now is the time. He angles his body downwards and straightens his legs. He slips through the window, turns in the air, his legs coming over behind him. The last thing he sees, looking above, is the empty sky over Israel.