Lazarus

I

When Lazarus emerged from the tomb, where for three days and three nights he re­mained un­der the mys­te­ri­ous do­min­ion of death, and re­turned alive to his dwelling place, for a long time peo­ple did not no­tice in him those sin­is­ter odd­i­ties which, in time, made his very name a thing of ter­ror. Re­joic­ing with bright joy about the one re­turned to life, friends and ac­quain­tances cared for him cease­lessly, ap­peas­ing their greedy at­ten­tion by pro­vid­ing food, drink, and new clothes. And they cov­ered him lav­ishly with the bright col­ors of hope and laugh­ter, and when, in the man­ner of a groom in wed­ding gar­ments, he again sat among them at the table, and again ate, and again drank, they cried from emo­tion and called their neigh­bors to look upon the one who was mirac­u­lously res­ur­rected. Neigh­bors came and re­joiced with emo­tion; strangers came from far­away towns and set­tle­ments and in thun­der­ing ex­cla­ma­tions ex­pressed their rev­er­ence for the mir­a­cle—truly bees buzzed above the house of Mary and Martha.

And that which ap­peared new in Lazarus’ face and move­ments they put down to nat­ural causes, marks left from hav­ing en­dured heavy sick­ness and suf­fer­ing. Clearly, death’s de­struc­tive work on the corpse was only halted by di­vine power, it was not al­to­gether wiped out; and that which death had al­ready man­aged to do with the face and body of Lazarus was like an un­fin­ished sketch of a painter un­der a thin sheet of glass. On Lazarus’ tem­ples, un­der his eyes, and in the de­pres­sions of his cheeks there was a thick, sal­low blue­ness; the fin­gers of his hands were the same sal­low-blue, and on the nails, grown in the tomb, the blue turned pur­ple and dark. In some places on the lips and on the body the skin, in­flated in the tomb, had burst, and in those places there re­mained thin red­dish cracks, glim­mer­ing as if cov­ered by trans­par­ent mica. And he grew fat. The body, in­flated in the tomb, re­tained its mon­strous pro­por­tions, those fright­en­ing bulges un­der which one could sense the odi­ous mois­ture of de­com­po­si­tion. But the heavy smell of a corpse, which in­fused Lazarus’ fu­neral clothes and, it seemed, his very body, soon com­pletely dis­ap­peared, and af­ter some time the blue­ness of his hands and face soft­ened and, al­though they never com­pletely went away, the red­dish cracks in the skin be­came smoother. This is the face with which he ap­peared be­fore men in his sec­ond life; yet it seemed nat­ural to those who had seen him buried.

Apart from the face it seemed that Lazarus’ tem­per had changed, but this too did not sur­prise any­one and did not at­tract to it­self due at­ten­tion. Un­til his death, Lazarus was al­ways cheer­ful and care­free, en­joyed laugh­ter and harm­less jokes. It was for this pleas­ant and con­stant cheer­ful­ness, de­void of spite and gloom, that the Teacher came to love him. Now he was se­ri­ous and quiet, did not him­self make jokes and did not laugh at the jokes of oth­ers, and the words that he sel­dom ut­tered were very sim­ple, or­di­nary, and nec­es­sary words, just as de­void of con­tent and depth as those noises that an­i­mals use to ex­press pain and joy, thirst and hunger. A man can say such words all his life and no­body will ever dis­cover the sor­rows and joys of his in­ner spirit.

Thus, with the face of a corpse, which for three days lay in dark­ness un­der the do­min­ion of death—in lav­ish wed­ding gar­ments, gleam­ing with yel­low gold and bloody crim­son, heavy and quiet, al­ready hor­ri­fy­ingly dif­fer­ent and odd, yet still un­rec­og­nized as such by any­one—he sat at the feast­ing table among friends and ac­quain­tances. The ju­bi­la­tions moved around him in broad waves, at times gen­tle, at times tur­bu­lent-sonorous; and warm glances of love stretched to­wards his face, which still re­tained the cold­ness of the tomb; and the warm hand of a friend ca­ressed his heavy blue hand. And mu­sic played. They in­vited mu­si­cians, and they played mer­rily: drum and pipe, zither and gusli. Truly bees buzzed—truly ci­cadas crack­led—truly birds sang above the happy house of Mary and Martha.