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

Then I heard the laughing and Joshua grabbed my arm. The laughing got louder. Joshua swung me around to face death in purple. As I turned the dark figure threw back his hood and I saw the grinning black face and shaved head of a man—a very tall man, but a man nonetheless. He threw open the robe and I could see that it was, indeed, a man. A man who had been standing on the shoulders of two young Asian women who had been hiding beneath the very long robe.

“Just fuckin’ with you,” he said. Then he giggled.

He leapt off of the women’s shoulders and took a deep breath before doubling over and hugging himself with laughter. Tears streamed out of his big chestnut eyes.

“You should have seen the look on your faces. Girls, did you see that?” The women, who wore simple linen robes, didn’t seem as amused as the man. They looked embarrassed and a little impatient, as if they’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything but this.

“Balthasar?” Joshua asked.

“Yeah,” said Balthasar, who stood up now and was only a little taller than I was. “Sorry, I don’t get many visitors. So you’re Joshua?”

“Yes,” Joshua said, an edge in his voice.

“I didn’t recognize you without the swaddling clothes. And this is your servant?”

“My friend, Biff.”

“Same thing. Bring your friend. Come in. The girls will attend to Ahmad for the time being.” He stalked off down a corridor into the mountain, his long purple robe trailing behind him like the tail of a dragon.

We stood there by the door, not moving, until we realized that once Balthasar turned a corner with his lamp we’d be in darkness again, so we took off after him.

As we ran down the corridor, I thought of how far we had traveled, and what we had left behind, and I felt as if I was going to be sick to my stomach any second. “Wise man?” I said to Joshua.

“My mother has never lied to me,” said Josh.

“That you know of,” I said.

Well, by pretending to have an overactive bladder, I’ve managed to sneak enough time in the bathroom to finish reading this Gospel of Matthew. I don’t know who the Matthew is that wrote this, but it certainly wasn’t our Matthew. While our Matthew was a whiz at numbers (as you might expect from a tax collector), he couldn’t write his own name in the sand without making three mistakes. Whoever wrote this Gospel obviously got the information at least secondhand, maybe thirdhand. I’m not here to criticize, but please, he never mentions me. Not once. I know my protests go against the humility that Joshua taught, but please, I was his best friend. Not to mention the fact that this Matthew (if that really is his name) takes great care in describing Joshua’s genealogy back to King David, but after Joshua is born and the three wise men show up at the stable in Bethlehem, then you don’t hear from Joshua again until he’s thirty. Thirty! As if nothing happened from the manger until John baptized us. Jeez.

Anyway, now I know why I was brought back from the dead to write this Gospel. If the rest of this “New Testament” is anything like the book of Matthew, they need someone to write about Joshua’s life who was actually there: me.

I can’t believe I wasn’t even mentioned once. It’s all I can do to keep from asking Raziel what in the hell happened. He probably showed up a hundred years too late to correct this Matthew fellow. Oh my, there’s a frightening thought, edited by the moron angel. I can’t let that happen.

And the ending? Where did he get that?

I’ll see what this next guy, this Mark, has to say, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

The first thing that we noticed about Balthasar’s fortress was that there were no right angles, no angles period, only curves. As we followed the magus through corridors, and from level to level, we never saw so much as a squared-off stair step, instead there were spiral ramps leading from level to level, and although the fortress spread all over the cliff face, no room was more than one doorway away from a window. Once we were above the ground level, there was always light from the windows and the creepy feeling we’d had when we entered quickly passed away. The stone of the walls was more yellow in color than the limestone of Jerusalem, yet it had the same smooth appearance. Overall it gave the impression that you were walking through the polished entrails of some huge living creature.

“Did you build this place, Balthasar?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said, without turning around. “This place was always here, I simply had to remove the stone that occupied it.”

“Oh,” I said, having gained no knowledge whatsoever.

We passed no doors, but myriad open archways and round portals which opened into chambers of various shapes and sizes. As we passed one egg-shaped doorway obscured by a curtain of beads Balthasar mumbled, “The girls stay in there.”

“Girls?” I said.

“Girls?” Joshua said.

“Yes, girls, you ninnies,” Balthasar said. “Humans much like yourselves, except smarter and better smelling.”

Well, I knew that. I mean, we’d seen the two of them, hadn’t we? I knew what girls were.

He pressed on until we came to the only other door I had seen since we entered, this one another huge, ironclad monster held closed with three iron bolts as big around as my arm and a heavy brass lock engraved with strange characters. The magus stopped and tilted an ear to the door. His heavy gold earring clinked against one of the bolts. He turned to us and whispered, and for the first time I could clearly see that the magus was very old, despite the strength of his laugh and the spring in his step. “You may go anywhere you wish while you stay here, but you must never open this door. Xiong zai.”

“Xiong zai,” I repeated to Joshua in case he’d missed it.

“Xiong zai.” He nodded with total lack of understanding.

Mankind, I suppose, is designed to run on—to be motivated by—temptation. If progress is a virtue then this is our greatest gift. (For what is curiosity if not intellectual temptation? And what progress is there without curiosity?) On the other hand, can you call such a profound weakness a gift, or is it a design flaw? Is temptation itself at fault for man’s woes, or is it simply the lack of judgment in response to temptation? In other words, who is to blame? Mankind, or a bad designer? Because I can’t help but think that if God had never told Adam and Eve to avoid the fruit of the tree of knowledge, that the human race would still be running around naked, dancing in wonderment and blissfully naming stuff between snacks, naps, and shags. By the same token, if Balthasar had passed that great ironclad door that first day without a word of warning, I might have never given it a second glance, and once again, much trouble could have been avoided. Am I to blame for what happened, or is it the author of temptation, God Hisownself?

Balthasar led us into a grand chamber with silks festooned from the ceiling and the floor covered with fine carpets and pillows. Wine, fruit, cheese, and bread were laid out on several low tables.

“Rest and refresh,” said Balthasar. “I’ll be back after I finish my business with Ahmad.” Then he hurried off, leaving us alone.

“So,” I said, “find out what you need to from this guy, then we can get on the road and on to the next wise man.”

“I’m not sure it’s going to be that quick. In fact, we may be here quite some time. Maybe years.”

“Years? Joshua, we’re in the middle of nowhere, we can’t spend years here.”

“Biff, we grew up in the middle of nowhere. What’s the difference?”

“Girls,” I said.

“What about them?” Joshua asked.

“Don’t start.”