The visit ended when the little tea and toast Lázaro García had managed to ingest itself returned to air and light, and propelled itself with uncommon force onto the priest’s cassock. There was more noise than quantity, really, but some things not even a saint can endure. Feeling disgusted, as well as snubbed, Father Emigdio turned to leave the house, thinking it would be best to face the people and get it over and done with.
Dr. Cantú’s day had improved immeasurably. He was under no illusions: he knew that the miracle of Lázaro the Survivor did not mean the end of the infection and the deaths, especially after the hours the crowd had spent gathered together, talking and coexisting in close proximity.
He did not know how much longer the epidemic would last, but now he knew that at least some would manage to survive in the town, in the state, in the country, and in the world.
For Father Emigdio, on the other hand, it would be the worst day of his life. He had started it shut away, afraid, behind the cathedral walls. Now he knew he should never have opened the doors, but he had let himself be infected by the excitement of the faithful, and his day had been filled with a wonder that his own faith had prepared him to blindly accept since he was a boy.
He had never believed himself worthy enough to see one of the great miracles in person, but today he had thought he was sharing the joy that important figures from the Bible must have felt on witnessing God’s greatness. He had participated in and was perhaps even an instigator of the fervor that had blossomed that day on the street where the Lazarus of Linares lived. What’s more, committing the sin of pride, Father Emigdio had announced the miracle prematurely to the archbishop of Linares, a claim that he now had to retract, humiliating himself, in the second and last telegram of his life. And as he went out onto the street like a bird of ill omen and announced that everything had been a misunderstanding, because, since Lázaro had not died, he could not have been resurrected, many people forgot his sacred status as a priest and cursed him for having made a fuss over nothing and for conning them. Some accused him of being a Judas the Betrayer for trying to draw them away from the faith with the miracle of Lázaro the Resurrected. Among these was Álvaro, the postman, who was waiting for him in the crowd and from whom Father Emigdio needed another favor.
“Come along,” he said to the disappointed Álvaro, “let’s go write another one.”
He left in a hurry—spattered in vomit, frightened of the heated atmosphere, and disappointed in himself—to write the telegraphic message: URGENT stop ERROR IN LINARES stop LAZARO NEVER DIED stop NEVER RESURRECTED stop JUST RECOVERED BY HIMSELF stop FORGIVE ME.
The reply that the governor of Nuevo León was expecting from the capital had not yet arrived, so this new telegram surprised the patient telegrapher who, between the two messages from Father Emigdio, had shaken off his depression by thinking about the Lazarus. He was in no hurry to send this latest bad news to the archbishop, thinking, in his renewed depression, that there was no rush when it came to bad tidings and that it could wait until the next day.
For his part, Father Emigdio, equally depressed, returned to the cathedral. He bolted the doors and, feeling very tired, went to bed, where he would spend the last night of his life. Because, in opening the door that day and going out to celebrate the failed miracle, infected with the fervor that surrounded him, he had also become infected with the disease. Luckily for him, his agony was as short as Mercedes Garza’s had been.
That day, Lázaro the Resurrected ate, rested, and regained his strength, so it might be considered a good day. But thereafter, he would become the only man in the world—because no other case had ever been known—to be nicknamed with his own Christian name. And the nickname would catch on so quickly that very soon everyone—except his brother—would forget what Lázaro of Linares’s original name had been.
And his infamy would accompany him for the rest of his life: he would never find a woman who wanted to spend her life or even a night with him. His reputation as a good-for-nothing would not, by itself, have prevented him from finding a partner, for women that fall for such men have always existed, in spite of concerned parents insisting, My child, don’t marry that man: he’s a good-for-nothing. Words in the wind. But none would forget or come to terms with the enduring mental image of Lázaro: dead, half-decomposed, stinking of rotten flesh.
Though Lázaro had returned to life and soon regained his health and good looks, all of them, even Celedonia Grajeda, the ugliest girl in town, would refuse with a shudder to share their flesh with a man and to touch it against a body that had lain rotten and worm ridden in the mass grave.
Aware of his misfortune and infamy but longing to be married, Lázaro was forced to search for a bride in nearby villages. But as everybody knows, in those villages, news travels fast, and news like Lázaro’s even faster. In none of them would he find a woman who would have him or even share the warmth of her body with him in a simple and fleeting dance.
14
Simonopio’s Sinapism
In the years that followed his recovery and until the day of his death, I suppose, when they saw him pass by, the people of Linares—whether believers or unbelievers—continued to call him Lázaro the Resurrected of Linares in gossipy or reverential whispers, depending on where the person was on the scale of faith. The coincidence of him sharing his name with the famous figure from the New Testament helped to perpetuate the amazement of the people, many of whom, before the famous incident of his miraculous return, had never had a word to say about him except to declare that he was a good-for-nothing.
I remember Lázaro. Not from the days when he was newly back to life, because that was years before I was born, but I do remember how he was much later, when little remained of the man he might have been, when all that remained of him was pure legend.
There was nothing extraordinary about him, physically speaking. All I remember is that he was a silent man with an unhurried gait. And very tall. Even if, to a child, everyone seems tall. Did he have brown, black, or green eyes? I couldn’t tell you now. Was his nose snub or aquiline? Again, I couldn’t say. I watched him pass by with some admiration because, from a young age, I was very fond of listening to stories and reading tales of adventure, and one of the most exciting and wonderful was the Gospel’s recounting of the death and return of Lazarus.
Or it was to me, at least.
Truth is, I could think of no greater adventure than a journey to and from that place that Lázaro must have reached when he gave up life. I, who at that age had traveled no farther afield than the family orchards and Monterrey, imagined that such a man must return with much to tell. I wanted to know everything: Did you cross the river? Did you see Charon? Did you fight the souls in purgatory? Or What is God’s face like? But my mama, letting out a sigh, would tell me, Don’t even think about it, and Don’t be so silly.
The day would come, years later, when I would ask Mama to call him, to invite him to visit me—prevented as I was from going out to find him, with or without permission. By then I had forgotten about the adventures and wanted only to ask him what one has to do to return from there.
In one of the few lies she would tell me in her life, my mama assured me that she had tried to find him, but that Lázaro had left Linares for a while.