Dave Hop I got word that something was rotten in the back streets of Jerusalem. Something dark going down. And they might need a good man to be hanging around. Well, there was no good man, there was only me. Yours truly. So I go. A young guy called Mark is there, scribbling it all down, no doubt getting copy for a local rag, chasing down a good story. And this is a good story all right. The streets are jammed with no-goods weeping and wailing as some local hero is passing by with a cross on one shoulder and a series of lashes on the other. No doubt the night has not been good to him. I hold out my hand to the young scribbler, I see there’s grease on it from my last hot dog, I wipe it on my sleeve. Offer it again. The young reporter is busy but he looks at it and takes the time to five me.
‘Trick Casey,’ I say, flashing a cheaply printed business card, with three obvious spelling mistakes, and two coffee stains, ‘what’s going down?’
‘You don’t know?’ the guy’s voice has barely broken, I’m surprised they allow him out on his own. Especially with this kind of menace in the air, you can practically smell it.
‘Should I know?’
‘Three years in the making,’ the young guy mutters back. His writing is terrible, he is getting it all down so fast, but I guess as long as he can make out the hieroglyphics he’s on the right side of okay.
A woman cries as if her heart has been breaking all her life. So does another. The hero stumbles, falls, and more people let out soul shrieking yells. A few soldiers jab at the guy with spears and insults. But he’s under the cross and that thing is heavy as history itself. I wonder about getting involved, I’m no Hercules, but… just then another figure steps out of the blue, looks like a dad kind of figure there with two sons. One of the soldiers sees this as a good idea and gets the fella to hoike the cross up and onto his own shoulder. It’s a sorry sight and yet, soaked in glory somehow too. I can’t make head or tail of it. The hero struggles on behind the cross. He’s clearly been up all night and through hell and back. He can barely walk straight. The noise of the crowd grows like a pack of wolves calling for home. But there’s no such comfort here, just a hill up ahead and a rock looking for all the world like a skull face.
‘Three years you say?’ I ask the youngster making the notes.
‘Aha. But it’s all come to nothing. Folk thought this guy was gonna save the world, hell I did too. But look. It’s ending the way it all ends. Rubbed out by the Romans.’
The guy walks on and I stand watching. A figure steps up beside me and watches too.
‘It ain’t over yet.’
I turn to look but the guy next to me stops me.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he says, ‘I have to be careful, there’s a contract out on me, the Pharisees want me dead. But I’m telling you this thing ain’t over. And if anyone can talk about that it’s me.’
‘Who are you?’ I mutter.
‘The name’s Lazarus, trust me this thing’s too big, this guy’s not what people think he might be, he’s something else. I can’t see death holding him for long, And I know what I’m talking about.’
He narrows his eyes and something about his look tells me those two soul-windows had seen more than anything my head can dream up.
‘I know nothing about what’s going down here,’ I say and he sighs.
‘Look, if you want to talk we gotta go somewhere quiet, follow me.’
So I follow him and we end up down a side alley in a doorway under a flickering lamp. No sign of life down there.
Till I open my mouth to speak and the door opens behind us and a stream of young women slips past us. I step out of the way and glance up again at the lamp flickering above us. I see for the first time that it’s red. One of the women stops and nods at Lazarus. I noticed that they’re all painted up like precious portraits.
‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘are we disturbing your business?’
She shakes her head. ‘No I’m just visiting old friends. This used to be my base, but I want them to know what’s going on down in the town right now. I knew they’d want to come because… well… he spent a lot of time with them, befriended many of them. And look, you can see how keen they are to come out and do something help him. They want to save him. We all do.’
I look around at the painted faces, there isn’t one of them that doesn’t look concerned and frowning, and a couple of them are moist around the eyes. I looked again at the young woman who’s talking to us and I realise for the first time that she isn’t so painted up. Her face is open, confident, her spirit’s on show. And even though she’s clearly disturbed there is a light in her eyes.
‘This is terrible,’ she says quietly.
‘Yes, but I remember what he said to my sister about the resurrection and the life.’
She looks at Lazarus, the lamp above us flickers. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well if he is who I think he is, it can’t end strung up on a Roman cross.’
There was something about the way he said resurrection. Can’t say what it was, just something. Like he’d lived through it somehow maybe.
A short guy emerged from the shadows, and now the ally isn’t anything like lifeless. His nails are bitten down and there’s a tilt to his head.
Before he can say anything the soldier steps out of the shadows within the shadows, cruelty in his eyes and the sword in his hand ready for the slicing. He has a scar down his cheek that shouts of too many battles and not enough ducking and diving. But he’s clearly still here and has plenty of fight left in him yet. He looks at each one of us before he growls.
‘What are you lot doing here? You with the criminal who dropped his cross?’
I shrug. I don’t know who he is, I’m not lying, I’m not scared, I just don’t know. But the others, well… they all have a story to tell The other women melt away and he’s not concerned about stopping them. But he’s hellbent on questioning me and the short guy, along with Lazarus and the woman with the light in her eyes. Maybe it’s that light that he’s interest in.
‘Well I know him,’ she says defiantly, her head up and those eyes of her blazing. ‘He’s my friend. He fixed me up. Before I met him I used to lie awake sleepless every night, tormented, no peace in my soul. Then we crossed paths and…’ she snaps her fingers, ‘boom… everything changed.’
‘Boom?’ the solider sneers, but she isn’t backing down.
‘You heard right soldier. Boom.’
‘What about you shorty?’ he turns to the guy with the bitten nails. ‘Don’t I know you?’
‘Taxman,’ says the short guy.
‘That’s right, your good at it, made a small fortune. How about you slip me a little spondulix and we all say a farewell.’
‘Love to,’ says the short guy, ‘but I can’t.’ He squints up at the soldier. ‘I don’t have money now.’
The soldier laughs. ‘Caught embezzling were you?’
‘Nope. I met the guy with the cross. He changed everything, ended up giving all that spondulix away.’
The soldier’s face creases like an old map. There’s no sense in what he’s hearing. No sense at all. He looks at Lazarus.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he says, ‘you used to be an aristocrat and he turned you into a peasant.’
Lazarus laughs. ‘Better than that,’ he says, ‘you know all about death right?’
The soldier presses the tip of his dagger hard against Lazarus’s Adam’s apple. ‘Don’t mess with me, or I’ll show you all about death, pal.’
‘Don’t need to, I’ve already seen it, been there and back. And got the graveclothes.’
The soldier’s thrown by this, his mouth sags open. He lowers the sword and steps back.
‘You lot are crazy,’ he mutters. ‘And… and whatever you think he’s done for you, he won’t be doing it no more. Three hours and he’ll be history.’
But Lazarus shakes his head. ‘Watch and see,’ he says quietly, ‘watch and see.’
The solider closes in on him. ‘What d’you say to me?’ he snaps.
But Lazarus only looks back at him with eyes like beacons, and that one word, ‘Resurrection.’ That word he says so well.
And that was the last I saw of any of them. Though I heard plenty more about them all. The soldier went on his sneering way. The others went after the crowd, following the man and his cross. I slipped away to stare at nothing and clear my thoughts. Days later the story was out. There really was a resurrection, that Lazarus guy had been right. So I’m standing here now looking in an empty grave. No body. No sign of a struggle or a midnight raid. The place is neat and tidy, as if the corpse just got fed up of his surroundings and walked out of there. Somebody sure must be mad. All that trouble with a cross and those soldiers, and nothing to show for it. I mean, I’ve come looking for a body, that being the corpse of a wronged man, but there’s nothing here. Just a couple of birds singing, and the sound of their sweet song. Very much alive.
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