Lazarus is Dead Read Online Free Page A

Bethlehem.
    Late each night he used to collapse on the floor, the handle of an empty wine jar twisting back his fingers. He groaned, wished he was dead. It was finished for Sarah, and she’d been lucky to die knowing her children were safe. Lazarus above all others was safe, and once clear of Bethlehem Sarah had gleamed with joy as if disaster had been forever defeated.
    Eliakim knew better. Children needed saving in Egypt, and in Nazareth, and would do until the end of time. There was no single day when the children didn’t need protecting.
    There were good times, too. Eliakim amazed the children with his stories about Jerusalem. A week in the big city, he said, especially at Passover, was worth a lifetime in a village like Nazareth. The Temple was a mile high and every massive stone was clad in spotless white marble. It was the home of the almighty that he and Joseph had built beam by beam, stone by stone. They were tradesmen by appointment to god.
    Eliakim could have been happy there, anywhere close to the city. They all could. Then he’d drink wine and remember to wish he was dead.
    Eliakim died when Lazarus was seven. He was working on the roof of the Roman theatre in Sephoris when a wooden scaffolding pole snapped beneath him. He fell twenty metres onto a pile of plasterer’s straw—instead of dying he broke his hip. He was carried back to Nazareth, and was recovering well. Then he caught pneumonia.
    Joseph stood last in line to make some farewell gesture to the body. The old fool was dead. His friend Eliakim, father of Martha, Mary, Lazarus and Amos, was dead. With the heel of his hand Joseph pushed a tear back towards his eye. Push it back. Death should never happen, for any reason, to anyone.
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4.
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    Mary, the sister of Lazarus, is unmarried, but she is generally considered better looking than Martha because she does fewer domestic chores.
‘ “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me.” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things”’
(Luke 10:40–41).
    Mary and Mary, the mother of Jesus and the sister of Lazarus. The number of Marys in the bible can seem clumsy, and a fiction writer would have edited out the confusion—the mother of Jesus and the sister of Lazarus (and also Mary Magdalene) should have different names so that readers can tell them apart.
    In fact there are two Marys for a simple reason: the sister of Lazarus is named after the mother of Jesus, and as a clue to her character the Mary connection is useful—the Lazarus Mary is a younger version of the Virgin Mary, and equally devoted to Jesus. Before too long, she will be washing his feet with her hair.
    â€˜You are unbelievable,’ she says to her brother. ‘Of course Isaiah said no. He’s more worried about Jesus, like every other Jerusalem priest. They’re so frightened by the truth they can barely breathe.’
    Mary is famously impractical. She doesn’t appreciate how Lazarus has planned it all out.
    He goes outside to think, stops at the bay tree and snaps off a leaf. He has a metallic taste in his mouth. He chews the leaf, spits it out, picks another which he slides between a gap in his teeth. The edge slices his gum. He swallows blood.
    At yesterday’s meeting he’d promised Isaiah that Saloma would want for nothing. Martha and Mary would care for her in Bethany, and the more lambs Lazarus traded in Jerusalem the more comfortable both she and Isaiah would be. It was a future any loving father should have grasped for his only daughter, especially if she was over the age of twenty and still unmarried because she had something wrong with her that nobody liked to mention.
    Isaiah had ignored this reasonable offer, and insisted on talking about Jesus.
    Lazarus feels his headache shift. It moves from behind his left eye to the centre of his forehead. He