“Of course he’s dead,” Caiaphas said. “What in all the hells are you talking about? The house of Eliezar was one of the most prominent families in Israel even if, often mistaken and prone flirting with heresy. We all heard, Nikodemos and Joseph and several others went down to see it. Lazaros son of Timon is dead. And has been dead.”
“Lazaros is alive and well and eating and drinking and laughing and, possibly, about to marry, and he is in Bethany. And what everyone has seen and what everyone is talking about is that Jesus of Nazareth brought him back to life. Called on the four winds, stood and called out to God as his father and then—just as if he were reprimanding a child who had slept too long, called him out of his tomb.”
“Though he had been dead three days.”
“Four days,” Amittai corrected.
“And it is not the first time he has done this.”
“It is not the first time you have heard of him doing it,” Caiaphas said, sitting back in his chair in the great room where he often called impromptu meetings when he was looking out of the stone window onto the Court of the Nations.
“But this,” Joseph of Arimathea said, “is the first time we all have een it, and that it has happened in Jerusalem.”
“I refuse,” Joseph Caiaphas said, “to believe in every strange thing they say about this man. And I refuse to believe that he brought Lazaros of Bethany back from death.”
“It hardly matters what you beleive,” a voice echoed across the hall.
Slender, slight, perpetually sarcastic, so spake Annas, who was now in his burgundy kaftan and scarlet overrobe, his thin beard barely grey, his face so very pleased.
“The people believe it,” the father in law of Caiaphas continued, “and what is more, those people, including Joseph, including Nikodemos, including many elite members of the Sanhedrin and the high families of Israel saw it.”
Caiaphas, frowning, look across the room at the man who, according to the ancient law, was still High Priest.
“So the question is not do you believe that Lazaros has returned from the dead, but what do we do about it?”
“What are we about anyway?” Amittai demanded.
“Here is this man performing many signs—however he is performing them. Whatever was behind it, this last thing happened, and many of the others happened as well. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him—”
“And then the Romans will come and take away both our temple,” Annas said, “and our whole people as well.”
“One could argue that we are on a slow road to them doing that anyway,” Joseph said. “And that when they do—”
“If—” Caiaphas lifted a finger, “if, my friend.”
“If,” Joseph bowed, “then it will have nothing to do with Jesus at all and everything to do with the factions represented in our very Sanhedrin, and how even now you are trying to stifle a people who are not at sympathy with any of us at all.”
“I wish that he had stayed up north where they love his kind of heresy,” someone lamented.
“I have heard that he has been running about in a scarlet and blue robe—”
“We learn of his fashion now!” Annas snorted.
“Lord Annas, I beg, allow me to finish. I have heard he is running about in a scarlet robe telling people that he will come down here to Jerusalem and be killed by us as he nearly was the last time.”
“Jerusalem is not Galilee,” another said. “These are not his people and we are the least of his problem. We were not the ones who took up stones against him.”
“I had heard that there was a woman—a common whore—and these men tried to stone her, but they came to Jesus and he was writing in the dirt with his finger. They asked him if she should die because she had broken the Law—”
“We are under Roman law,” Nafai said. “And not even a whore can be stoned.”
“We are under Roman law when the Romans are looking,” Nikodemous said, “and when they aren’t the people can be drunk with violence, but please, Nikanor, continue your story.”
“Well they asked if she should die, but Jesus said not a word but kept drawing in the dust, and finally he said, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ At this, they turned away and left, though reluctantly.”
“Is there a point to this story?” Annas purred.
“The point,” said Nikanor, who was the same age as Annas and of an equally dignifid house, “is that the people are full of violence, and if you move against traditional ways they are full of violence here in Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem, Jerusalemn, you stone thr prophets…”
“What’s that?” Caiaphas said in irritation, as one who had a headache.
“Something that Jesus said.”
“Something that Jesus said,” Caiaphas echoed. “Oh, he’s full of a lot of sayings, isn’t he?”
“The best thing we can do is bring him before us and have a discussion, learn what he means,” Gamaliel said.
“Yes,” Alexander nodded. “He has the ear of the people. What an ally he could be!”
“He is a blasphemer and breaker of the Law,” Nathan declared, “something which you Sadducees do not understand, and what we must do is—”
“Fools and Know Nothings,” Caiaphas slapped his hand on the great table before him.
“What do I care for his supposed blasphemies? His transgressions against what you Nathan, and what you Amittai, think is the pure law? Or his philosophy, his hold on the people? In another world, in a world that no longer exists, we might have discussed all of our differences all of the time and it would not have mattered. But this is the world where the Herods themselves have been deposed for not keeping order, where unruly Jews are nailed to crosses and towns razed to the ground. In Rome itself, Sejanus made one blood bath and then Tiberius made another, and Pilate was the tool of one of those men, and then the other, and he has already killed any number of us for rioting. If we allow this Jesus or anyone else, to create the stir he created here the last time, then we will most certainly feel the consequence, and how can it not be that none of you yammering fools seems to understand that it is better for us that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish?”
“Which man?” Nathan asked. “Jesus… Or the most inconveniently living Lazaros?”
Caiaphas stared Nathan full in his face, his expression unchanging. And then he lowered his eyes, murmuring:
“Friend, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
That night in Bethany, things were subdued. Something had happened so wonderful, but also so terrible and so very close to Jerusalem and its dangers, that there was nothing like the impromptu party that had occurred at the home of Jairus when Malthace had been raised, or the parade to Sepphoris which had happened after the raising of Seth as the people of Nain processed out of town to his burial. Nikodemos was riding away from the house, head cloaked, heading to the home of Simon for the night, and he had just given them the news of the meeting in Jerusalem.
“You are known to Caiaphas,” Jude had attempted to joke, looking at Jesus.
“The High Priest of all Israel tosses in his sleep and worries about you. Just think on that.”
But they were mostly silent and mostly glad, and after Marta had set supper before them while Mary was caring for Benjamin, her young nephew who toddled up and down the living room, and was trying to catch up with the Peter’s daughter, Lazaros, freshly returned from the mikvah, sat in a brown robe, flexing his hands and looking at them, running his hands up and down his arms, touching his cheeks, blinking and opening and closing his mouth.
“I don’t feel dead. I don’t look it. I feel better than I ever have… I…”
Sara, for once not serving, held his hand.
“Are you alright?” he looked to her.
“Master—”
“Never call me that again.”
“My husband,” she said, “I… we washed and bound you. Even while we could not believe it, we washed your feet, your flesh, wrapped you in linens and myrrh and aloe and bound you tight, and even when you were ill, you remember, in those days before and after you fell into hallucinations,the shadows were around your eyes while your skin went paler and paler. If… if you had seen yourself… And now, I cannot believe it.”
“I feel strange, polluted,” Lazaros confessed to Jesus. “More alive than ever. But… I was dead. I was…”
Jesus took him by the hand, but it was Malthace who spoke.
“You are not polluted, only revived. I have died. Seth, who was with us once, he died too. And everyone in the resurrection will have died as well. You are not unclean. You are blessed.”
Jesus only nodded his head, but Lazaros said:
“Nikodemos warned that someone spoke of killing me.”
“No one will kill you,” Jesus said.
“When I… when it was done, I saw before my eyes all that you would do, that this sickness indeed would not end in death. You will live, but…”
“But what, old friend,” Lazaros asked.
“You should prepare to leave. You have many homes in many places, and it may be time for you to find another.”
“Do you say this as my friend or as the Christ?”
“You think there’s a difference?”
They were quiet a little longer, and then Jesus said, “Love will make you feel alive. Love will drain these fears, this terror, away.”
Magdalene sat on the rooftop with her sister and watch the moon rise higher. It had been enormous and was still large, burning white. They had always instinctively looked away from the direction of the burial grounds, but now they looked upon them yawning black in the night, and Mary said, “Did you not feel it today? How we were on the edge of a great and dangerous something, just about to tip over into it. And we could choose to fall into it, or we could back away.”
“Yes,” Marta said. “I’ve felt it many times, but not so much as today, when we stood before the tomb and looked into nothing, and then out came Lazaros, stronger and more alive than he had ever been before.”
The sisters sat in silence a while, and then Marta said, “Now that Lazaros is well, when Jesus leaves, you will go with him?”
“My place is with him.”
“Yes,” Marta nodded. “I know that.”
“We will have our time together, you and men, and plenty of it, sister.”
Marta nodded and smiled.
“Good night, talitha,” she said, taking her sister’s hand as Mary rose.
“Good night, big sister,” Mary said.
Marta kissed her hand, and watched her sister go down the stairs.
Downbelow, Mary entered the room where the old keepsakes were, and the moonlight came through the high and narrow window, shining on the chest where the alabaster cup with the jewel in its heart was, and where was the ancient alabaster jar. Her eyes rested on both, and then she departed.
But her ears heard the whisper of a sound, and she followed it to the curtain she parted, where she watched the moon on Lazaros’s back, his shoulders, his flexing buttocks, saw Sara’s thighs wrapped about his waist as he pressed himself into her, raising his head in ecstasy. They moved togther, cries escaping Sara’s mouth as Lazaros pressed deep into her, and Magdalene felt a dormant part of her swell, light up and flood, before she remembered to release the curtain and head to her pallet.
She was dizzy with lust and miracle and fear and a hope of she knew not what. She drifted off to sleep in her room, and in the room beside her, in the darkness, tears ran down Jesus’ face from his wide shining eyes as he gazed up at the night blackened ceiling. His hands gripped the ancient chair he sat in like a king on a throne, and his robe lay on the ground. Between his legs knelt John, whose head snaked and snaked and snaked and then, at last, descended, remaining on him, John the best beloved and the ever contemplative, now holding him in meditation, now kneeling, eyes closed in silence while Jesus whimpered at the touch of his tongue and swelled large and larger in his mouth, while for love of him, John took him as deep as possible, until he gagged, until the saliva of his mouth ran over Jesus and pooled between his thighs like a sacred pool. They had moved between this and quiet fucking, and then this again, and now, when John was so winded his eyes were like pies and his mouth and body exhausted, he gripped Jesus knees and said to him:
“Whatever you are planning, unless you plan to die, we must leave in the morning, and leave quietly.”
John was right, and he had given Jesus the sacrament that made him feel like a man again rather than this strange creature calling corpses out of tombs, knowing far too much, telling storms to shut up. In John’s arms he was soft, at John’s touch he was vulnerable to his lust, his need to fuck, to plow and be plowed. Now, in the dark, the light burst from the tip of his cock in humbling explosion as he gripped John’s shoulders and flooded his gagging mouth.
“ Yes, Jonni,” he said, rubbing his hands in John’s black hair and wondering why he was so stupid and so blind he hadn’t even seen that John was growing a beard, a thin one like Alphaeus’. Alphaeus! He needed to be kinder to him, He loved him, yes, but he forgot it. And he was afraid for the slender young publican’s safety. All of his men needed to be safe.
“Yes, we will leave.”
And in the morning, before the sun was fully up, they did, And Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the people of Judea. Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.
When it was almost time for the Pesach, many went up from the country to Jerusalem. They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the Temple courts they asked one another, “What do you think? Is he coming to the festival at all?”
But by then, with Caiaphas’s quiet nod, the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who found out where Jesus was should report it so that they might arrest him.
END OF PART THREE
