Thirty-Four

Instead of returning to Paraea, Jesus decided that they would go north of Jerusalem into the deserted country around Ephraim. Thomas supposed that Jesus wished to be more available to enter Jerusalem during the Passover, a month or so off. He also seemed to feel that his preaching and announcing that the reign of God was about to start was over, because he had given enough proofs now that he was the Son of God, especially that there were quite a few prominent Judeans at the tomb when Lazarus emerged. If the people did not know now, it was because they had no wish to know. So his strategy evidently was to let the dust settle, and give people time to think.

There was no question but that what he had done was going to be thoroughly discussed--by everyone, not simply the Judean authorities. And here, Jesus was out of the way. Those who wished to find him probably could, but since he was not causing trouble, probably they would wait for a move from him before they did anything.

This, of course, left the students with nothing to do but discuss or--as seemed more common now--brood over their own problems. Matthew was pondering and shaking his head, and even David was on pins and needles about something. After a week or so, he asked Matthew if he could leave for a while. Perhaps to see Judith. But then he returned, and was apparently as full of despair as everyone else.

Then, after had been there quite some time, almost three weeks, Judith came running up, panting, "Master! Master!" Jesus came over, and she gasped, "Martha told me to tell you to co--come at once! She said that raising Lazarus was noth--nothing in comparison with this!"

Thomas wondered what calamity had occurred now. Had Lazarus gone mad?

Jesus put his hands on her shoulders as she tried desperately to breathe, and said in a calm voice, "I understand what is the matter. Be not distressed. You may tell them that my time has arrived, and that I will come to dinner there in two days, and that you should invite some friends of Lazarus, as you had planned. And you must assure them that there is no cause for concern."

"I do not understand. Invite? Planned?"

"They will know."

Judas, who had been listening as soon as he caught sight of Judith, said, "Are we all to accompany you, Master?" He seemed a bit nervous.

"The Twelve, I should think," said Jesus. They could not suffer an invasion of all of us." He looked over at Chusa's Joanna as he said this, and she reddened and fled when he caught her eye. What was that about? Thomas speculated that she probably had told Lazarus about Mary, and that this somehow had precipitated whatever the problem was. No, the Lazarus episode was definitely not over.

Jesus said to Judith, "Tell them to be ready in two days. It is little enough time for them to prepare, but if I know Martha, it will suffice; and I think it not prudent to delay longer. Now go when you have caught your breath; they will be wanting news as soon as possible."

Judith did not wait, but ran off before she had fully recovered. David looked after her with a mixture of desire and contempt, and then looked, his eyes narrowed, over at Judas.

Ezra came to Thomas, who happened to be by himself, and said in an undertone, "He raped her. I saw it."

"He what? Who?"

"Quietly, please. Judas. We have been observing him--well, I have been, lately. David has had a problem with Judith, who turns out to be hopelessly in love with Lazarus."

"With someone who has been dead! And she would not look at David because he had been dead!"

"She is a woman."

"This is becoming a farce. And of course, Lazarus pays no attention to her."

"It appears that Lazarus has paid no attention to anyone or anything since he came back."

"I had a feeling he would think being seen coming out of a grave would be a humiliation beyond bearing."

"Well, apparently you were correct, based on what I could gather from David. He is frantic, as you might imagine."

"But what is this about rape and Judas?"

"I had a suspicion that Judas was attracted to Mary, and when he went left us yesterday and went in the direction of Bethany, I decided to anticipate him, and I was right; I was in the woods behind the house, when Mary came by herself pondering something or other, and there he was. I was at a distance, and so could not hear, but I could see. He came up behind her, and held her, and said something in her ear. And after a short time she turned and slapped his face--and then he forced her down on the ground and raped her. I was so far away and it happened so fast that I could not intervene."

"Good God!"

"No doubt that is why Judas is a little nervous about having all of us go back there. I cannot believe the Master does not know this. No, he does know it, based on what he said just now to Judith. This is going to be very interesting."

"I cannot conceive what he has in mind!"

"Well, we will have to wait and see."

And what would it have to do, thought Thomas, with my father?

At any rate, shortly afterward, Jesus and the Twelve set off for Bethany, and for some reason did not collect a crowd as they traveled. Perhaps the people were busying themselves with preparing for the Passover, which was to take place in six days. Or perhaps when Jesus did not want to be accompanied, no one somehow noticed him and his followers.

As they arrived, a number of people from Jerusalem were already there, friends of Lazarus, talking with him and pointedly avoiding mention of the event that had happened, but simply making small talk, which Lazarus took almost no part in, merely giving one-word answers when he had to speak. He was obviously in the depths of despair--a fact which was as manifest and as ignored by everyone as his death and return to life--and was finding it a supreme effort behave with even minimal politeness. Fortunately, the people surrounding him were of the upper class in Jerusalem, and, given Lazarus' personality, he could not insult them by ignoring them or appearing too morose.

Martha, who was in the room, was looking with concern and pride at his effort. Mary, as usual, was not visible.

As soon as everyone saw the Twelve and Jesus, the atmosphere, if possible, grew even more tense. Though Martha and Zebediah (the name of the older man Thomas had seen earlier with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus) had made careful selection among the guests from Jerusalem to be certain that there was no one who would immediately rush out and denounce Jesus on sight, it was still common knowledge that his whereabouts was to be reported to the authorities as soon as he set foot in Judean territory, and there was always a danger that someone might do something untoward. But no one made a move. Martha had been most judicious.

Lazarus greeted Jesus politely--what else could he do?--but since Jesus was not high society, he looked at him with a loathing that made his position on resurrection perfectly clear, and nodded perfunctorily to the twelve Emissaries (to whom he had always paid scant attention in any case), and then turned back to one of his banking companions from the city, evidently resolved to act as if Jesus were not there, and letting Martha who was responsible for this debacle, make the best of it she could. Martha's attitude indicated that what she wanted was for the Emissaries to be present for some reason, and she evidently had those from Jerusalem in order to prevent Lazarus from rushing away as he might well have done in other circumstances.

Fortunately, neither Jesus nor--what was more perilous--any of his Emissaries started any controversial conversation; and the others put a face on things whenever it was necessary for any in the two groups to mingle, which they did as little and as briefly as possible. There was a certain bemusement on both sides that the two groups would have been invited together; both thought it was a social blunder on Mary's part, who presumably had wanted to unite those who had come to the tomb with Lazarus' savior, not realizing that what had happened at the tomb was as forbidden as mentioning the name of the One who had effected the deed.

Mary had come in, rather shyly, around this time, and helped Martha to place the guests on the dining-couches , with those from Jerusalem lying at all the high places around the outside of the U of the table (the serving was done from inside)--to the left and right of Lazarus, who would, of course, as the master of the house, be at the center of the curve. Jesus and the Twelve were seated in the lowest places at the table, but given what Jesus had taught about such things, they were not in much of a position to complain.

At least Jesus was lying at the arm of the table in front of Lazarus (though it meant that he had to tip his head to look at him); it would have been a distinct insult if Lazarus had not been facing in his direction. Thomas was beside Matthew on the low end of the other side.

Martha and Judith with the servants served the dinner; and again Mary absented herself. Matthew had tried to catch her eye earlier, but she had been very preoccupied with something-or-other, and left as soon as she decently could.

Martha had just taken in some dish to serve, when Mary, with a look of anguish and sorrow, rushed into the room, looked about as if distraught, and said, "Master! Forgive me!" and rushed to his feet, which, like everyone's, were hanging over the outside edge of the dining-couch on which he was lying. She broke the neck of a bottle of nard and poured it over them, kneeling and wiping them with her hair. At first, she made weeping noises, and then the tears became all too real. Everyone, Matthew especially, was paralyzed with shock. This was a reenactment, for some reason, of what they all knew had happened at the house of Simon the Pharisee in Magdala.

Thomas, remembering what Ezra had told him, thought that perhaps Mary had started out in a melodramatic attempt to show Jesus that she was innocent of the rape (which was absurd, but why else do it?), and then halfway through began to wonder if she had been as unwilling for Judas to have her as she had thought at first, and really needed Jesus's forgiveness all over again. She certainly seemed genuinely remorseful.

The scent of the perfume filled the whole room, as it must have done in Magdala, and there was total, stunned silence, except for her weeping, as he had been told there had been then.

"Why this waste?" came a scornful voice, shattering the stillness. It was Judas.

Mary froze and now there was not a sound at all. "Why was this perfume not sold?" he went on. "It would have brought three hundred denarii, and we could have given the money to the poor."

Jesus looked over at him, with a momentary flash of disdain, swiftly overcome. Then he said, in a gentle voice, "Let her alone. Why are you pestering her? She has done a me a great kindness." He looked down at her. "She is preparing me for my burial. You always have the poor with you; you will not always have me." Then he looked around the room. "Amen I tell you, whenever the good news about me is reported in the whole world, what she has done this day will be told in memory of her."

As he was speaking, there was a sudden stirring. Mary looked up, and everyone's eyes focused on Lazarus, his face ashen, rising from the table and rushing out of the room. Mary leaped up and ran after him. In the room, people began getting up and there was general consternation.

There was a movement to try to follow him, and then people began to think better of it, and a few blocked the door. And then, from the other room, suddenly there were women's screams and sounds of fighting, which went on for a considerable time. Judith had apparently attacked Mary, from what could be gathered, and Martha had joined in.

After what seemed an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, Lazarus' voice rose above the tumult. "Judith! Judith! Judith! Stop! Stop!"

Immediately, everything ceased. There was a dead silence both in the room where the fighting had been going on and in the dining room.

Lazarus' voice came again, too soft for words to be audible, and then there was the sound of Judith sobbing and muffled words, as if she were speaking into cloth.

After another, rather briefer silence, Lazarus spoke again and she answered, more distinctly now but still too faint to for anyone to understand what was being said. :Lazarus said something else, rather more at length, and then she replied, with something that sounded like, "Dear dear Lazarus, I did not dare!"

Judith? "Dear Lazarus?" So David was right. And, wonder of wonders, it sounded as if Lazarus had realized it and accepted it! This was it! This was the miracle that would bring him to his senses!

--Well, at least somewhat more to his senses than he had been. To make Lazarus a rational individual would be to create a completely different person. And, to be sure, the Lazarus who emerged after a short interval was in some sense an entirely different person either from the one who had entered that room of mayhem or the one they had seen earlier in the day. But he was still recognizably Lazarus. He was--of all things--secretly elated about something, and announced to all that he was sorry to have disturbed the party, but that there had been a slight accident that he had been able to take care of (something Thomas seriously doubted), and now everything would be all right; that no one was really hurt, but that it was better, all things considered, for the women to remain in seclusion for the rest of the day--and, in short, he begged their pardon for suggesting that it might be well to put an end to the festivities.

They all pronounced that they understood perfectly, though not one of them could make head or tail of it. What bewildered them most of all was the contrast to what he had been just moments before. All, including Jesus and his Emissaries, left with a minimum of fuss, a few of the banking friends asking Lazarus when they would see him in Jerusalem, to which he replied, "Soon. Soon. Very soon, in fact." They seemed gratified with his response.

Thomas was stunned. Granted, this was a major miracle, comparable in its way to bringing Lazarus back to life. Mary had been forgiven (if she needed forgiveness), Judas had been rebuked (but in a kindly way, intimating that Jesus knew, but was willing to forgive), and Lazarus had somehow been transformed. And Judith seemed to have declared her love for him, and he seemed willing to accept her! That was the most amazing thing of all, if indeed it were true. Of course, they could not ask the women, since presumably, they had been tearing each other's hair out. And Lazarus did not seem to look on Mary--of Magdala!--as more of a disgrace than his own emergence from the grave! Incredible!

But what did all this have to do with Thomas's father? Other than that Jesus was a master miracle-worker, if one could use such a term? True, it showed that horrible events could be brought round to--one supposed--happy endings (Imagine Judith as Lazarus's wife!), and so it gave Thomas some vague hope that somehow something might be brought out of his own situation, without--God forbid!--the grotesquerie of Samuel's coming back and beginning to live among them again. But the more he thought about it in the light of this event, the more confused Thomas became.

They went back to the camp at Ephraim, where Ezra came over, all eagerness to find out what happened. When Thomas told him, he laughed a great laugh, and said, "He certainly has a wonderful sense of humor, has he not, in addition to all his other qualities! Thomas, there is hope for you yet! There is hope for both of us!"

"Dear God! I hope I will not be made a laughing-stock!"

"Never fear. If you are, you will enjoy it as much as everyone else. Wait and see."

That was a new twist, and Thomas pondered it for hours. Well, what could he do but wait and see?

And then it occurred to him that he had now been sober for two full years! And for at least a month without even the bladder!

--Which, of course, awakened in him a fierce longing to find another bladder and make the magic liquid again. Just for a taste, of course. And then the memory of his father floated before him. and put a stop to his yearning. Interesting; his father was using him as a horrible example in order to stay sober, and he was using his father for the same purpose.

But what did Jesus have in store for them?