Lazarus is Dead Read Online Free Page B

coughs once, twice, spits on the ground by the tree.
    â€˜It’s absurd,’ he says to Mary, ‘Jesus and I haven’t been friends for years.’
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    As adults, Lazarus and Jesus are easy to distinguish. One lives near Jerusalem and the other in the Galilee. One is clean-shaven, the other typically remembered as bearded.
    But as children in small-town Nazareth, the boys could barely be told apart. They were the same age, born within a week of each other in Bethlehem. They endured the same character-building trek across the desert, and lived side by side in Egypt (probably at Alexandria). By the time it was safe to return home, and they arrived in Nazareth, neither could remember a life without the other.
    In Nazareth they were outsiders, and these are the friendships that survive. The local boys liked to taunt them, but Lazarus and Jesus rarely came to harm because they were lucky. Lazarus believed they were born lucky, the only two boys to escape the massacre in Bethlehem, and both from the line of David.
    This meant that David begat Solomon begat Roboam begat Abia, forty-two generations back to Abraham, and that at some upcountry confluence both Joseph and Eliakim’s families joined by a minor tributary into that principal river of distinguished names. Arriving from Egypt it also meant that both families could claim a tribal welcome in Nazareth, a proudly Davidian village.
    Hard to get luckier than that.
    Nazareth seemed designed for an idyllic childhood. Prosperous, agricultural, the region was neither too wild nor too civilised. To the north were bandits, allegedly, and Romans were garrisoned in the south. But in Nazareth itself it was easy to believe that if people were kind, life could be sweet and endless. Everyone would live forever.
    For Lazarus and Jesus the world was figs and cold water, soft blankets at night and sunrise through half-opened eyes. On the best days of summer the sky filled with cloud, bringing shade and the promise of rain, and whatever Lazarus did, Jesus did next. They climbed the timber delivered to Joseph’s workshop, scrambling up tree trunks and testing their balance. Lazarus climbed higher. Amos jumped up and down, scraped his knees when he tried to follow.
    There were accidents. Lazarus and Jesus fell out of the same olive tree, one after the other, and had very similar bruises. Lazarus caught a cold and passed the sickness to Jesus. The boys always recovered, and Menachem the Nazareth Rabbi told them they were indestructible, as strong as mules. None of the native children had bones as solid or constitutions as strong.
    Nor was anyone else as receptive at synagogue. Menachem had high hopes for both these boys, almost as high as they had for themselves. Between the two of them all ambitions seemed achievable. They spent long afternoons developing unchecked childish dreams: friends until the end of time, they’d wear golden sandals and have angels to buckle them.
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    â€˜What was the last thing he said to you?’
    â€˜I can’t remember.’
    Jesus had promised to visit them in Bethany. He never had.
    â€˜What I dislike most is pretence of any kind. Including the kind they’re calling miracles. How do these unbelievable stories spread?’
    â€˜I don’t know, I’m not involved.’ Lazarus could see that Isaiah was sceptical, and at that moment he wished he and Jesus had never met. ‘He was a small boy with scabs on his knees. Like the rest of us. He couldn’t even swim.’
    â€˜God is not whimsical,’ Isaiah had said, and the massive columns of Solomon’s Porch appeared to support this opinion. ‘He doesn’t visit his chosen on earth to play games, to point his finger and pick out this one and then that one for the better portions of luck. You need to think clearly, Lazarus. Jesus is not universally liked.’
    â€˜I know, I
know
. He creeps round those tiny villages. The stories aren’t