Lazarus

BY LEONID ANDREYEV

TRANSLATED BY ABRAHAM YARMOLINSKY

From _Lazarus and the Gentleman from San Francisco_. Published by
The Stratford Company. By permission of the publishers.

I

When Lazarus left the grave, where, for three days and three nights he
had been under the enigmatical sway of death, and returned alive to his
dwelling, for a long time no one noticed in him those sinister oddities,
which, as time went on, made his very name a terror. Gladdened
unspeakably by the sight of him who had been returned to life, those
near to him caressed him unceasingly, and satiated their burning desire
to serve him, in solicitude for his food and drink and garments. And
they dressed him gorgeously, in bright colors of hope and laughter, and
when, like to a bridegroom in his bridal vestures, he sat again among
them at the table, and again ate and drank, they wept, overwhelmed with
tenderness. And they summoned the neighbors to look at him who had risen
miraculously from the dead. These came and shared the serene joy of the
hosts. Strangers from far-off towns and hamlets came and adored the
miracle in tempestuous words. Like to a beehive was the house of Mary
and Martha.

Whatever was found new in Lazarus' face and gestures was thought to be
some trace of a grave illness and of the shocks recently experienced.
Evidently, the destruction wrought by death on the corpse was only
arrested by the miraculous power, but its effects were still apparent;
and what death had succeeded in doing with Lazarus' face and body, was
like an artist's unfinished sketch seen under thin glass. On Lazarus'
temples, under his eyes, and in the hollows of his cheeks, lay a deep
and cadaverous blueness; cadaverously blue also were his long fingers,
and around his fingernails, grown long in the grave, the blue had become
purple and dark. On his lips the skin, swollen in the grave, had burst
in places, and thin, reddish cracks were formed, shining as though
covered with transparent mica. And he had grown stout. His body, puffed
up in the grave, retained its monstrous size and showed those frightful
swellings, in which one sensed the presence of the rank liquid of
decomposition. But the heavy corpse-like odor which penetrated Lazarus'
graveclothes and, it seemed, his very body, soon entirely disappeared,
the blue spots on his face and hands grew paler, and the reddish cracks
closed up, although they never disappeared altogether. Th