Christopher Moore - Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

Strange.

I should have had a plan before I tried to escape from the hotel room, I see that now. At the time, dashing out the door and into the arms of sweet freedom seemed like plan enough. I got as far as the lobby. It is a fine lobby, as grand as any palace, but in the way of freedom, I need more. I noticed before Raziel dragged me back into the elevator, nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process, that there were an inordinate number of old people in the lobby. In fact, compared to my time, there are inordinate numbers of old people everywhere—well, not on TV, but everywhere else. Have you people forgotten how to die? Or have you used up all of the young people on television so there’s nothing left but gray hair and wrinkled flesh? In my time, if you had seen forty summers it was time to start thinking about moving on, making room for the youngsters. If you lasted to fifty the mourners would give you dirty looks when they passed, as if you were purposely trying to put them out of business. The Torah says that Moses lived to be 120 years old. I’m guessing that the children of Israel were following him just to see when he would drop. There was probably betting.

If I do manage to escape the angel, I’m not going to be able to make my living as a professional mourner, not if you people don’t have the courtesy to die. Just as well, I suppose, I’d have to learn all new dirges. I’ve tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I’m having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone’s ass? Is “ho” always feminine, and “muthafucka” always masculine, while “bitch” can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be “stupid”? I’ll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.

The journey. The quest. The search for the Magi.

We traveled first to the coast. Neither Joshua nor I had ever seen the sea before, so as we topped a hill near the city of Ptolomais, and the endless aquamarine of the Mediterranean stretched before us, Joshua fell to his knees and gave thanks to his father.

“You can almost see the edge of the world,” Joshua said.

I squinted into the dazzling sun, really looking for the edge of the world. “It looks sort of curved,” I said.

“What?” Joshua scanned the horizon, but evidently he didn’t see the curve.

“The edge of the world looks curved. I think it’s round.”

“What’s round?”

“The world. I think it’s round.”

“Of course it’s round, like a plate. If you go to the edge you fall off. Every sailor knows that,” Joshua said with great authority.

“Not round like a plate, round like a ball.”

“Don’t be silly,” Joshua said. “If the world was round like a ball then we would slide off of it.”

“Not if it’s sticky,” I said.

Joshua lifted his foot and looked at the bottom of his sandal, then at me, then at the ground. “Sticky?”

I looked at the bottom of my own shoe, hoping to perhaps see strands of stickiness there, like melted cheese tethering me to the ground. When your best friend is the son of God, you get tired of losing every argument. “Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean the world is not sticky.”

Joshua rolled his eyes. “Let’s go swimming.” He took off down the hill.

“What about the God?” I asked. “You can’t see him.”

Joshua stopped halfway down the hill and held his arms out to the shining, aquamarine sea. “You can’t?”

“That’s a crappy argument, Josh.” I followed him down the hill, shouting as I went. “If you’re not going to try, I’m not going to argue with you anymore. So, what if stickiness is like God? You know, how He abandons our people and leads them into slavery whenever we stop believing in Him. Stickiness could be like that. You could float off into the sky any time now because you don’t believe in stickiness.”

“It’s good that you have something to believe in, Biff. I’m going in the water.” He ran down the beach, shedding his clothes as he went, then dove into the surf, naked.

Later, after we’d both swallowed enough salt water to make us sick, we headed up the coast to the city of Ptolemais.

“I didn’t think it would be so salty,” Joshua said.

“Yeah,” I said, “you’d never know it by looking at it.”

“Are you still angry about your round-earth-stickiness theory?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” I said, sounding very mature, I thought. “You being a virgin and all.”

Joshua stopped and grabbed my shoulder, forcing me to wheel around and face him. “The night you spent with Maggie I spent praying to my father to take away the thoughts of you two. He didn’t answer me. It was like trying to sleep on a bed of thorns. Since we left I was beginning to forget, or at least leave it behind, but you keep throwing it in my face.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I forgot how sensitive you virgins can be.”

Then, once again, and not for the last time, the Prince of Peace coldcocked me. A bony, stonecutter’s fist just over my right eye. He hit harder than I remembered. I remember white seabirds in the sky above me, and just a wisp of clouds across the sky. I remember the frothy surf sloshing over my face, leaving sand in my ears. I remember thinking that I should get up and smite Josh upside the head. I remember thinking then that if I got up, Josh might hit me again, so I lay there for a moment, just thinking.

“So, what do you want?” I said, finally, from my wet and sandy supinity.

He stood over me with his fists balled. “If you’re going to keep bringing it up, you have to tell me the details.”

“I can do that.”

“And don’t leave anything out.”

“Nothing?”

“I’ve got to know if I’m going to understand sin.”

“Okay, can I get up? My ears are filling with sand.”

He helped me to my feet and as we entered the seaside city of Ptolomais, I taught Josh about sex.

Down narrow stone streets between high stone walls.

“Well, most of what we learned from the rabbis was not exactly accurate.”

Past men sitting outside their houses, mending their nets. Children selling cups of pomegranate juice, women hanging strings of fish from window to window to dry.

“For instance, you know that part right after Lot’s wife gets turned to stone and then his daughters get drunk and fornicate with him?”

“Right, after Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed.”

“Well, that’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said.

We passed Phoenician women who sang as they pounded dried fish into meal. We passed evaporation pools where children scraped the encrusted salt from the rocks and put it into bags.

“But fornication is a sin, and fornication with your daughters, well, that’s a, I don’t know, that’s a double-dog sin.”

“Yeah, but if you put that aside for a second, and you just focus on the two young girls aspect of it, it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds initially.”

“Oh.”

We passed merchants selling fruit and bread and oil, spices and incense, calling out claims of quality and magic in their wares. There was a lot of magic for sale in those days.

“And the Song of Solomon, that’s a lot closer, and you can sort of understand Solomon having a thousand wives. In fact, with you being the Son of God and all, I don’t think you’d have any problem getting that many girls. I mean, after you figure out what you’re doing.”