The Collected Novels of José Saramago (141 page)

The next morning, Jesus went to Lazarus’s house to say good-bye and also reassure Lazarus and Martha that he was again living with his disciples after his mysterious retreat into the wilderness. Martha told him that her brother had left for the synagogue. So Jesus and his disciples set off on the road to Jerusalem, Mary Magdalene and the other women accompanying them as far as the last houses of Bethany, where they stopped and waved, content to wave although the men did not look back even once. The sky is cloudy and threatens rain, perhaps this is why there are so few people on the road, those with no urgent business in Jerusalem have decided to stay at home and wait for a sign from the heavens. The thirteen men walk, and thick gray clouds rumble above the mountains, as if sky and earth were finally about to come together, the mold and the molded, male and female, concave and convex. They reached the city gates and found, though the road had been deserted, the usual crowd gathered there, and they re-signed themselves to a long wait before reaching the Tempie.
But things turned out differently. The appearance of thirteen men, nearly all of them barefoot, with great staffs, flowing beards, and heavy, dark capes over tunics that had seen better days, caused the startled crowd to fall back and ask among themselves, Where can these men have come from, and who’s the one in front. No one knew the answer until a man who had come down from Galilee said, He’s Jesus of Nazareth, who claims to be the son of God and performs miracles. Where are they going, asked others, and since the only way of finding out was to follow them, many walked behind them, so that by the time they reached the entrance to the Temple, they were no longer thirteen but a thousand, and the people waited to see what would happen. Jesus walked on the side where the money changers were and said to his disciples, Here is what we have come to do, and with these words he began overturning the tables, berating those who were buying and selling, causing such an uproar that his words would not have been heard but for the fact that his natural voice rang out in stentorian tones, It is written that my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves, and he continued to overturn the tables, scattering coins everywhere, which brought great joy to the horde that rushed to gather this manna. The disciples followed Jesus’ example, and the tables of the dove sellers were also thrown to the ground, and the birds, released, flew over the Temple, circling wildly around the distant smoke from the altar, where they will not be burned now, for their savior has come. The Temple guards rushed to the scene, armed with batons to punish, capture, or expel the rioters, only to find themselves up against thirteen formidable Galileans with staffs in hand, who swept aside all who dared approach. Come, come, the lot of you, and feel God’s might, they taunted, falling on the guards, destroying everything in sight, and putting a torch to the tents. Soon a second column of smoke was spiraling into the air, and a voice cried out, Call the Roman soldiers, but no one paid attention, for happen what might, the Romans were forbidden by law to enter the Temple. More guards rushed to the scene, this time with swords and lances, they were joined by a few money changers and dove sellers determined not to leave the protection of their property to strangers, so little by little the guards gained the upper hand, and if this struggle was as pleasing to God as the crusades to come, He did not appear to be doing much to help His side. This was the situation when the high priest appeared at the top of the steps accompanied by all the other priests, elders, and scribes who could be summoned in haste, and in a voice powerful enough to match that of Jesus he declared, Let him go this time, but if he shows his face here again, we will cut him down and discard him, as we do to tares that threaten to choke the wheat at harvesttime. Andrew said to Jesus, who had fought at his side, You weren’t joking when you said you would bring the sword instead of peace, but staffs are useless as swords, to which Jesus replied, It all depends who is wielding the staff. What do we do now, asked Andrew. Let’s return to Bethany, answered Jesus, it’s not swords we need but determination. They withdrew in orderly fashion, their staffs pointed at the jeering crowd, who taunted them but went no further, and soon the disciples were safely out of Jerusalem and beating a hasty retreat, all of them exhausted, some even wounded.

When they reached Bethany, they noticed that that the people who appeared in their doorways looked at them with pity, but the disciples thought this only natural, given the lamentable state in which they had returned from battle. They learned the real reason for the gloom on everyone’s face when they came to the street where Lazarus lived and sensed a tragedy had occurred. Jesus ran ahead of the others, entered the yard, the people gathered there stepped aside with mournful sighs to let him pass, and from within came
the sound of weeping and lamentation, Oh my beloved brother, Martha could be heard sobbing, Oh my beloved brother, wailed the voice of Mary. Stretched out on the ground, on a pallet, Lazarus seemed to be sleeping, but he was not sleeping, he was dead. Nearly all his life he had suffered from a weak heart, then was cured, as everyone in Bethany could testify, and now was as composed as if carved from marble, as serene as if he had already passed into eternity, soon the first signs of putrefaction will appear, causing those around the corpse to feel even greater pain. Jesus, as if the strength had suddenly gone from his legs, fell to his knees, groaning and weeping, How did this happen, how did this happen, words that never fail to spring to our lips when we are confronted by something irremediable. We ask how it happened, a desperate, futile attempt to postpone the awful moment when we must accept the truth, we ask how it happened, as if we could replace death with life, exchange what is with what should be. From the depths of her grief Martha said to Jesus, Had you been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that everything you ask of God He will grant you, He granted you sight for the blind, healing for the lepers, speech for the mute, and all the other wonders that reside in your will and await your word. Jesus told her, Your brother will be raised from the dead, and Martha replied, I know he will rise to life on the day of resurrection. Jesus stood, an infinite strength took possession of him, in that moment he knew he could do anything, banish death from this body, restore it to life, give it speech, movement, laughter, even tears, but not of sorrow, and truly say, I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he asked Martha, Do you believe this, and she said, Yes, I believe you are the son of God who has come into this world. This being so, and with everything necessary in place, the power and the will to use that power, all Jesus has to do is stretch out his arms to that body abandoned by its soul, and say, Lazarus, arise, and Lazarus will rise from the dead, because it is the will of God, but at the very last moment Mary Magdalene placed a hand on Jesus’ shoulder and said, No one has committed so much sin in his life that he deserves to die twice, and dropping his arms, Jesus went outside to weep.

L
IKE AN ICY GUST OF WIND, THE DEATH OF
L
AZARUS EXTINGUISHED
the zeal John had kindled in Jesus’ heart, a zeal in which serving God and serving the people had become one and the same thing. After the first few days of mourning, when the duties and habits of everyday life were gradually resumed, Peter and Andrew went to speak to Jesus. They questioned him about his plans, asked whether they should go preach once more in the towns or instead return to Jerusalem for a fresh assault, the disciples were beginning to feel restless, eager to be doing something, We didn’t part with our possessions, our work, and our families, they complained, just to sit around all day. Jesus looked at them as if in a blur and listened as if having difficulty recognizing their voices amid a chorus of discordant cries. After a long silence he told them they must be patient, must wait a little more, he still had some thinking to do, could sense that something was about to happen which would decide their fate once and for all. And he assured them he would soon join them in the camp, which puzzled Peter and Andrew, for why should the two sisters remain alone when the men still had not decided what to do, You don’t need to come back for our sake, said Peter, who had no way of knowing that Jesus was torn between two duties, the first toward the men and women who had abandoned everything to follow him, the second here in this house, toward the sisters, duties similar yet opposed, like a face and a mirror. The ghost of Lazarus was present and refused to go away, he was in the harsh words spoken by Martha, who could not forgive Mary for having prevented their brother from being restored to life, nor could she forgive Jesus for not using his God-given power. Lazarus was present too in Mary’s tears, for by delivering her brother from a second death she would have to live forever with the remorse of having failed to deliver him from his first. Like an enormous presence filling every space, Lazarus was also in Jesus’ troubled soul, in which horses pulled in four directions, or four ropes coiled around winches were slowly tearing him apart, and the hands of God and the devil were amusing themselves, divinely and diabolically, with the remains.

The afflicted and diseased, hoping to be healed, came to the door of the house that had once belonged to Lazarus. Sometimes Martha would appear and drive them away, as if to say, There was no salvation for my brother, why should there be for you, but they would keep returning until they succeeded in reaching Jesus, who healed them and sent them away without once saying, Repent. To be healed is like being reborn without having died, for the newborn have no sins and therefore no need to repent. But these acts of physical rebirth, if I may call them that, although most merciful, left a sour feeling in Jesus’ heart, for they were only a postponement of the inevitable, he who today leaves healthy and content will be back tomorrow with new woes that have no remedy. Jesus became so melancholy that one day Martha said, Don’t you die on me, for that would be like losing Lazarus all over again, and Mary Magdalene, beneath the sheet they shared, whimpered like a wounded animal hiding in the dark, You need me now more than ever, but I cannot reach you if you lock yourself behind a door beyond human strength. Jesus answered Martha, saying, My death will embrace all the deaths of Lazarus, who will go on dying without ever being restored to life, and to Mary he said, Even if you cannot enter, do not abandon me, even if you cannot see me, stretch out your hand, otherwise I will forget life or it will forget me. A few days later he went to join his disciples, and Mary Magdalene went with him. I’ll look at your shadow if you don’t wish me to look at you, she told him, and he replied, I wish to be wherever my shadow is if that is where your eyes are. Loving each other, they exchanged these amorous phrases not only because they were beautiful and true, but because shadows were closing in, and it was time for the two to prepare themselves for the darkness of final absence.

News reached the camp that John the Baptist had been taken prisoner. Nothing was known except that he had been arrested and Herod himself ordered his imprisonment. Jesus and his followers were inclined to think that Herod had been provoked by John’s prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, which he repeated everywhere between baptisms, He who comes after me will baptize you with fire, and between imprecations, O generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Jesus told his disciples that they must be prepared for every manner of persecution, because rumors had been rife for some time that they were preaching the same message, it was only to be expected that Herod would put two and two together and pursue the carpenter’s son, who claimed to be the son of God, and his followers, for this was the second and more powerful head of the dragon threatening to topple him from his throne. Bad news may not be preferable to no news, but it was received with equanimity by men who had been waiting and hoping for everything but lately had had to make do with nothing. They asked one another, and Jesus too, what they should now do, stand together and resist Herod’s wickedness, scatter throughout the towns, or retreat into the wilderness, where they could eat wild honey and locusts, as John the Baptist had done before he left to herald the glory of Jesus and, by the looks of it, to meet a miserable end. Yet there was no sign of Herod’s troops arriving in Bethany to slaughter more innocents, thus Jesus and his disciples were considering carefully the various alternatives when another report arrived, informing them that John had been beheaded and that his punishment had nothing to do with the coming of the Messiah or the kingdom of God, he had incurred Herod’s wrath by speaking out against adultery, of which the king himself was guilty, having married Herodias, his niece and sister-in-law, while her husband still lived. The news of John’s death brought tears to the eyes of men and women alike, and the entire camp mourned, but no one believed that he had been killed for the reason given. Judas Iscariot, whom, you may remember, John baptized, was beside himself with rage, he said that Herod’s decision must have had a more serious motive, How can this be, he asked the company gathered there, including the women, John proclaims the Messiah is coming to redeem people, and they kill him for condemning an adulterous marriage between uncle and niece, when adultery has been common practice in that family since the time of the first Herod. How can this be, he railed, when God Himself ordered John to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, it must have been God, because nothing can happen without His willing it, so perhaps those of you who know God better than I can explain to me why He should allow His plan to go awry like this on earth, and before you tell me that God knows even if we don’t, let me tell you that I insist on knowing what God knows.