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

“And a lot of girls is a good thing?”

“You’re a ninny, aren’t you?”

“I thought you’d be more specific. What does Maggie have to do with Lot and Solomon?”

“I can’t tell you about me and Maggie, Josh. I just can’t.”

We were passing a lick of prostitutes gathered outside the door of an inn. Their faces were painted, their skirts slit up the side to show their legs glistening with oil, and they called to us in foreign languages and made tiny dances with their hands as we passed.

“What the hell are they saying?” I asked Joshua. He was better with languages. I think they were speaking Greek.

“They said something about how they like Hebrew boys because we can feel a woman’s tongue better without our foreskins.” He looked at me as if I might confirm or deny this.

“How much money do we have?” I asked.

The inn rented rooms, stalls, and space under the eave to sleep. We rented two adjacent stalls, which was a bit of a luxury for us, but an important one for Joshua’s education. After all, weren’t we on this journey so he could learn to take his rightful place as the Messiah?

“I’m not sure if I should watch,” Joshua said. “Remember David was running over the roofs and happened onto Bathsheba in her bath. That set a whole chain of sin in motion.”

“But listening won’t be a problem.”

“I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

“Are you sure that you don’t want to try this yourself, Josh? I mean, the angel was never clear about your being with a woman.” To be honest, I was a little frightened myself. My experience with Maggie hardly qualified me to be with a harlot.

“No, you go ahead. Just describe what’s happening and what you’re feeling. I have to understand sin.”

“Okay, if you insist.”

“Thank you for doing this for me, Biff.”

“Not just for you, Josh, for our people.”

So that’s how we ended up with the two stalls. Josh would be in one while I, along with the harlot of my choice, instructed him from the other in the fine art of fornication.

Back out at the front of the inn I shopped for my teaching assistant. It was an eight-harlot inn, if that’s how you measure an inn. (I understand that now they measure inns in stars. We are in a four-star inn right now. I don’t know what the conversion from harlots to stars is.) Anyway, there were eight harlots outside the inn that day. They ranged in age from only a few years older than us to older than our mothers. And they ran the gamut of shapes and sizes, having in common only that they were all highly painted and well oiled.

“They’re all so…so nasty-looking.”

“They’re harlots, Biff. They’re supposed to be nasty-looking. Pick one.”

“Let’s go look at some different harlots.” We had been standing a few doors down from the harlots, but they knew we were watching. I walked over and stopped close to a particularly tall harlot and said, “Excuse me, do you know where we might find a different selection of harlots? No offense, it’s just that my friend and I…”

And she pulled open her blouse, exposing full breasts that were glistening with oil and flecks of mica, and she threw her skirt aside and stepped up so a long leg slid behind me and I could feel the rough hair between her legs grinding against my hip and her rouged nipples brushed my cheek and in that instant profound wood did from my person protrude.

“This one will be fine, Josh.”

The other harlots let loose with an exaltation of ululation as we led my harlot away. (You know ululation as the sound an ambulance makes. That I get an erection every time one passes the hotel would seem morbid if you didn’t know this story of how Biff Hires a Harlot.) The harlot’s name was Set. She was a head and a half taller than me, with skin the color of a ripe date, wide brown eyes flecked with gold, and hair so black that it reflected blue in the dim light of the stable. She was the perfect harlot design, wide where a harlot should be wide, narrow where a harlot should be narrow, delicate of ankle and neck, sturdy of conscience, intrepid and single-minded of goal once she was paid. She was an Egyptian, but she had learned Greek and a little Latin to help lubricate the discourse of her trade. Our situation required more creativity than she seemed accustomed to, but after a heavy sigh she mumbled something about “if you fuck a Hebrew, make room in the bed for his guilt,” then pulled me into my stall and closed the gate. (Yes, the stalls were used for animals. There was a donkey in the stall opposite Josh’s.)

“So what’s she doing?” Josh asked.

“She’s taking off my clothes.”

“What now.”

“She’s taking off her clothes. Oh jeez. Ouch.”

“What? Are you fornicating?”

“No. She’s rubbing her whole body over mine, sort of lightly. When I try to move she smacks me in the face.”

“How does it feel?”

“How do you think? It feels like someone smacking you, you twit.”

“I mean how does her body feel? Do you feel sinful? Is it like Satan rubbing against you? Does it burn like fire?”

“Yeah, you got it. That pretty much has it.”

“You’re lying.”

“Oh wow.”

Then Josh said something in Greek that I didn’t catch all of and the harlot answered, sort of.

“What did she say?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know, you know my Greek is bad.”

“Mine isn’t, I couldn’t understand what she said.”

“Her mouth is full.”

Set raised up. “Not full,” she said in Greek.

“Hey, I understood that!”

“She has you in her mouth?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s heinous.”

“It doesn’t feel heinous.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No, Josh, I gotta tell you, this really is—oh my God!”

“What? What’s happening?”

“She’s getting dressed.”

“Are you done sinning? That’s it?”

The harlot said something in Greek that I didn’t understand.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said that for the amount of money we gave her, you’re finished.”

“Do you think you understand fornication now?”

“Not really.”

“Well then, give her some more money, Joshua. We’re going to stay here until you learn what you need to know.”

“You’re a good friend to suffer this for me.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“No, really,” Joshua said. “Greater love hath no man, than he lay down for his friend.”

“That’s a good one, Josh. You should remember that one for later.”

The harlot then spoke at length. “You want to know what this is like for me, kid? This is like a job. Which means that if you want it done, you need to pay for it. That’s what it’s like.” (Joshua would translate for me later.)

“What’d she say?” I asked.

“She wants the wages of sin.”

“Which are?”

“In this case, three shekels.”

“That’s a bargain. Pay her.”

Much as I tried—and I did try—I didn’t seem able to convey to Joshua what it was he wanted to know. I went through a half-dozen more harlots and a large portion of our traveling money over the next week, but he still didn’t understand. I suggested that perhaps this was one of the things that the magician Balthasar was supposed to teach Joshua. Truth be told, I’d developed a burning sensation when I peed and I was ready for a break from tutoring my friend in the fine art of sinning.

It’s a week or less by sea if we go to Selucia, then it’s less than a day’s walk inland to Antioch,” Joshua said, after he had been talking to some sailors who were drinking at the inn. “Overland it’s two to three weeks.”

“By sea, then,” I said. Pretty brave, I thought, considering I’d never set foot in a boat in my life.