At dusk the widow comes into her yard. She fills a water bowl for her chickens, then throws out handfuls of grain from her apron. She dusts off her hands and looks nervously about, as if she knows. She has felt like this for months, even before the death of her son. She bustles inside and bolts the door.
*
First-century Jews aren’t stupid. They’re not very different from who we are today, and if they were the events of those times would cease to have any relevance. They’re sceptical. They think about Jesus and look for the joke, as in later years comfort will be found in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979), or Gore Vidal’s Live from Golgotha (1992).
A gang of jeering young Sadducees, encouraged by the Sanhedrin, follow Lazarus into Jerusalem. They mock his sharp, sick features, the shaven cheeks sunk between bones. He looks like death, but nobody fears contamination because his sisters walk behind him with their heads held high.
‘He deserves it. Didn’t know his place.’
‘Galilean. It was his choice to shave. Can’t say he wasn’t warned.’
The social acceptance of Lazarus, it seems, is conditional on his success. Either that, or there is relief that his illness disproves the unsettling power of Jesus.
‘Looks bad, smells worse.’
They snigger, and laugh at what it means to be friends with the One. They hold their noses and slap their thighs, suck dates and blow out the long dry pips. Whenever the wind changes they shriek and clamp their nostrils shut. Everyone said it was true and it is. He stinks to high heaven.
Lazarus attempts to walk unaided. Yanav and the donkey lead the way, then Lazarus, with Martha and Mary following.
Lazarus trips, and doesn’t have the strength to right himself. He falls.
Everyone laughs.
Yanav helps him up, brushes the dust of his clothes.
Lazarus starts coughing, and to keep him moving Yanav lifts him onto the donkey. He weighs hardly anything. The procession moves forward again and Lazarus doubles up with the dysentery. He topples sideways off the donkey.
He is hilarious.
In the city, Isaiah and the Sanhedrin priests are pretending to ignore the presence of Jesus. They have already ordered their extreme response to the rumour that started in Nain. This is their warning to Jesus: don’t dare attempt anything spectacular in Jerusalem.
In the meantime, they continue with their ceremonies as usual. The betrothal of Lazarus to Saloma has been arranged for the open square near David’s Tomb in the Upper City. The huppah is already in place, a silk cloth secured over four poles carried by attendants. The attendants are experienced Temple guards, selected personally by Isaiah. Nobody will be interfering with the betrothal of his only daughter.
This precaution is a gesture towards the unknown powers of Jesus. As is the detachment of Roman soldiers sealing off the street that leads to and from the Temple. That’s where Jesus spends most of his time, in and around the Temple, and today he will not be permitted to change his routine.
Lazarus is helped into position beneath the canopy. The silk above his head symbolises the house he will provide for Saloma, the future he has decided is his. He concentrates on standing upright.
Yanav has a large family and many acquaintances, and a good number of guests have assembled to witness Saloma’s betrothal. They have to see it to believe it. Lazarus himself is having difficulty seeing, because common eye diseases have narrowed his field of vision. On both sides he sees black with an edge of grey, but he too wonders whether Jesus has planned a surprise appearance. He squints and scans the guests, turning his head to focus.
Jesus would be jealous. His old friend Lazarus is about to marry. He will father a dynasty, like Abraham, something Jesus himself shows no sign of doing. Jesus can stage as many deceptions as he likes, but family is the centre of every worthwhile life. He, Lazarus, is the better man. It was always him. He could do anything, whatever he wanted to do.
In the crowd, Lazarus makes out a woman he can’t place, who immediately from the shape of her he knows he wants. She disappears. He loses her.
Lydia. He didn’t recognise her with clothes on. He tries to find her again, and now she is over to his left. With every sway of her hips he realises he’s never seen her walk. She keeps disappearing behind family who are strangers. Lazarus wants her to stop, stand still, let him look at her. He wants her captive as she is in her room.
She is over to his right again. She covers half her face with her shawl, moves, slips behind a cluster of cousins.
Sick as Lazarus is, Lydia inflames the embers of his sixteen-year-old self. She fills him with an ache that pulses from his jaw through his heart to his testicles. She is once more on his left, but he can’t call out because he’s on show under the huppah waiting for his virgin bride.
Lydia moves, Lydia appears, Lydia disappears. She will not give him the respite he needs. She is there, and then a procession obscures her.
It is Saloma, heavily concealed beneath robes and veils, surrounded by many aunts. By now, for Lazarus, the ceremony is literally a blur. A matchmaker paid by the day confirms the details of the marriage contract. Instead of a money gift, Lazarus symbolically offers himself as a servant to Isaiah’s family, as a provider of sacrificial lambs. Saloma will live in Bethany and be cared for by Mary and Martha.
Lazarus has everything he planned for.
Yet he starts to act strangely, he can’t help himself. His head jerks left and right because even with fading eyesight he’s desperate for a glimpse of Lydia. He sees her again, now to his right, and suddenly understands what she’s doing. She is circling him seven times, and the canopy above his head is a trap with no escape. He wants to lie down. The matchmaker informs him he may now hold his betrothed by the hand.
He is sweating, aching, about to collapse. His eyes flutter upwards in his head and he reaches out his hand, his wrong hand, the one furthest from Saloma.
‘Martha, take me home.’
3
The next day Jesus goes looking in Jerusalem for someone who is sick.
Despite suggestions made by the disciples, no one within the city walls matches his requirements. He therefore leaves Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate, taking the Bethany road. The disciples nod wisely. The Bethesda pool, an impeccable choice. Jesus walks past the Bethesda pool. He looks set for Bethany, like most travellers who leave the city in this direction, and he is halfway there before he stops.
He closes his eyes, and stands quite still in the middle of the road. Time passes. A slight breeze cools his brow, and moves a strand of hair — black, brown, a dirty-blond colour — there are no consistent sources. A bead of sweat defies the breeze, appears on his forehead, rolls between his eyes, down the side of his nose, is channelled forward by his flared nostrils and hangs right at the very tip.
Jesus thumbs the sweat away. He turns round, strides through the gap made by disciples parting, and walks briskly back towards the city. He descends the steps to Bethesda.
He is in a hurry. At the back of the upper pool, a good distance from the water’s edge, he approaches a man he’s never seen before in his life. Jesus looks down at him, lying on his mat. The man has suffered from paralysis for thirty-eight years, and he has glassy red bedsores and his limbs are wasted through lack of use. Jesus does not weep.
He asks the man if he wants to be well (John 5: 6). It seems a strange question, but malingerers do exist. If this man prefers sickness to health then Jesus can find someone somewhere else whose need may be greater. The paralysed man replies with a complaint. He has no one to help him into the healing pool, and therefore he will never be healed. At which point Jesus loses patience.