The disciples encircled Jesus and looked at him with anguish. Would he or would he not give the sign? What was he waiting for? How long would he wait? Why was he delaying, and why, instead of raising his hand in a signal to heaven, was he staring at the ground? He, to be sure, need be in no hurry, but they-they were poor men who had sacrificed everything, and the time had come for them to be repaid.
“Decide, Rabbi!” said Peter, red-faced and sweating. “Give the sign!”
Jesus, motionless, had closed his eyes. Sweat ran in drops from his forehead. Your day is approaching, Lord, he said over and over to himself; the end of the world has come. I know that I shall bring it-I-but by dying… Repeating this again and again, he found courage.
John came up to him too. He touched his shoulder and pushed him to make him open his eyes. “If you don’t give the sign now,” he said, “we’re finished. What you’ve done today means death.”
“It means death,” Thomas joined in, “and, for your information, we don’t want to die.”
“Die!” cried Philip and Nathanael, startled. “But we came here to reign!”
John leaned close to Jesus’ breast. “What are you thinking about, Rabbi?” he asked.
But Jesus pushed him away. “Judas, come here beside me,” he said, and he supported himself on the redbeard’s sturdy arm.
“Courage, Rabbi,” Judas whispered. “The hour has come; we mustn’t let them be ashamed of us.”
Jacob stared with hatred at Judas. Earlier, the master would not even turn to look at him, and now, what was this friendship and secret whispering? “They’re cooking up something, the two of them. What do you say, Matthew?”
“I don’t say anything. I listen to what all of you say and do, and I write. That’s my job.”
Jesus squeezed Judas’s arm. Suddenly he felt dizzy. Judas supported him. “Are you tired, Rabbi?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m tired.”
“Think of God and you’ll feel refreshed,” the redbeard replied.
Jesus recovered his balance and turned to the disciples. “Come, let us go,” he said.
But the disciples stood still. They did not want to leave. Where? Again to Bethany? And for how long? They had had enough of this shuttling back and forth.
“I think he’s teasing us,” Nathanael remarked softly to his friend. “I’m not budging!” Having said this, he followed the rest of the disciples, who had started to go sullenly back toward Bethany.
Behind them, the Levites and Pharisees guffawed. A youngish Levite, ugly and round-shouldered, slung a lemon rind which struck Peter square in the face.
“Nice throw, Saul! You hit the bull’s-eye!”
Peter started to turn around to charge the Levite, but Andrew held him back. “Be patient, my brother,” he said. “Our turn will come.
“When? Damn it, when, Andrew?” Peter grumbled. “Can’t you see the mess we’re in?”
Humiliated and silent, they took to the road. The crowd behind them had dispersed, cursing. No one followed them any more; no one laid out his ragged garment for the rabbi to walk upon. Philip dragged the donkey now, while Nathanael, behind, held the tail. Both were in a hurry to return the animal to its master so that they would not get into trouble. The sun was burning; a warm breeze blew; clouds of dust rose up and suffocated them. As they approached Bethany, there in front of them was Barabbas with two savage, huge-mustached companions.
“Where are you taking your master?” he shouted. “Mercy on us, he’s scared right out of his pants!”
“They’re taking him to resurrect Lazarus!” replied Barabbas’s companions, bursting into guffaws.
When they reached Bethany and entered the house they found the old rabbi breathing his last. The women were kneeling around him, silently and motionlessly watching him depart. They knew that there was nothing they could do to bring him back. Jesus approached and placed his hand on the old man’s forehead. The rabbi smiled but did not open his eyes.
The disciples squatted in the yard with a bitter taste in their mouths. They did not speak.
Jesus nodded to Judas. “Judas, my brother, the hour has come. Are you ready?”
“I ask you again, Rabbi: why did you choose me?”
“You know you’re the strongest. The others don’t bear up… Did you go speak to the high priest Caiaphas?”
“Yes. He says he wants to know when and where.”
“Tell him the eve of the Passover after the paschal dinner, at Gethsemane. Try to be brave, Judas, my brother. I’m trying too.”
Judas shook his head and without speaking went out to the road in order to wait for the moon to rise.
“What happened at Jerusalem?” old Salome asked her sons. “What happened to you that makes you so silent?”
“I think, Mother, that we’ve built our house on sand,” Jacob answered. “The damage is done!”
“And the rabbi, the grandeur, the silks threaded with gold, the thrones?… Did he deceive me, then?” The old lady looked at her sons and clapped her hands, but neither of them answered her.
The moon emerged from behind the Moabite mountains, sad and fully round. Hesitant, it stopped for a moment at the mountains’ crest, looked at the world and then all at once made its decision, pulled away from the peaks and began to rise. Lazarus’s dark hamlet, as though it had suddenly been whitewashed, gleamed a brilliant white.
At daybreak the disciples swarmed around the teacher. He did not speak but looked at them one by one as though seeing them for the first, or the last, time. Toward midday he opened his mouth. “Friends, I desire to celebrate the sacred Passover with you. On a day such as this our ancestors departed, left the land of slavery behind them and entered the freedom of the desert. We also, for the first time on this Passover, come out of another slavery and enter another freedom. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
No one spoke. These words were obscure. What was the new slavery, what the new freedom? They did not understand. After a few moments Peter said, “There’s one thing I do understand, Rabbi. Passover without lamb is impossible. Where will we find the lamb?”
Jesus smiled bitterly. “The lamb is ready, Peter. At this very moment it is proceeding all by itself to the slaughter, so that the world’s poor may celebrate the new Passover. Don’t worry, therefore, about the lamb.”
Lazarus, who had been sitting silently in the corner, got up, placed his skeleton-like hand over his breast and said, “Rabbi, I owe my life to you and, bad as it is, it’s still better than the darkness of Hades. I shall therefore bring you the Passover lamb as a gift. A friend of mine is a shepherd on the mountain. Goodbye, I’m going to him.”
The disciples looked at him with astonishment. Where did this living dead man find the strength to get up and move toward the door! The two sisters fell upon him to prevent his leaving, but he pushed them aside, took a cane to lean upon, and strode over the threshold.
He proceeded through the village lanes. The doors along his passage opened. The frightened, surprised women emerged and marveled that his spindle shanks could walk, that his sagging middle did not break! Though he was in pain he took heart and now and then struggled to whistle in order to show how indubitably he had been rejuvenated. But his lips could not quite join. He therefore abandoned the whistling and began, with a serious expression, to ascend the mountain’s slope, toward his friend’s sheepfold.
He had not advanced a stone’s throw, however, when from out of the flowering broom Barabbas jumped up in front of him. How many days had he roamed the village waiting for this moment, waiting for the confounded resurrected fellow to stick his nose out of his house so that he could do away with him? He must prevent men from seeing him and being reminded of the miracle. The son of Mary, since the day he resuscitated him, had certainly amassed a great following; therefore Lazarus must be dispatched back into the grave and gotten rid of once and for all.