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

“So?” said Balthasar.

“So, God let Moses see his butt, so using your example, you owe us God’s butt. So tell us, what’s going on with that room with the iron door?” Brilliant. I paused and studied the blueness of my fingernails while savoring my victory.

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Balthasar. His momentary loss of composure was replaced by the calm and slightly amused attitude of the master. “What if I told you that it is dangerous for you to know about what is behind that iron door now, but once you have training, you will not only know, but you will gain great power from the knowledge? When I think you are ready, I promise to show you what is behind that door. But you must promise to study and learn your lessons. Can you do that?”

“Are you forbidding us to ask questions?” asked Joshua.

“Oh no, I’m simply denying you some of the answers for the time being. And trust me, time is the one thing that I have plenty of.”

Joshua turned to me. “I still don’t know what I am supposed to learn here, but I’m sure I haven’t learned it yet.” He was pleading me with his eyes to not push the issue. I decided to let it drop; besides, I didn’t relish the idea of being poisoned again.

“How long is this going to take?” I asked. “These lessons, I mean?”

“Some students take many years to learn the nature of Chi. You will be provided for while you are here.”

“Years? Can we think about it?”

“Take as long as you like,” Balthasar stood. “Now I must go to the girls’ quarters. They like to rub their naked breasts over my scalp right after it’s been waxed and is at its smoothest.”

I gulped. Joshua grinned and looked at the table in front of him. I often wondered, not just then, but most of the time, if Joshua had the ability to turn off his imagination when he needed to. He must have. Otherwise I don’t know how he would have ever triumphed over temptation. I, on the other hand, was a slave to my imagination and it was running wild with the image of Balthasar’s scalp massage.

“We’ll stay. We’ll learn. We’ll do what is needed,” I said.

Joshua burst out laughing, then calmed himself enough to speak. “Yes, we will stay and learn, Balthasar, but first I have to go to Kabul and finish some business.”

“Of course you do,” said Balthasar. “You can leave tomorrow. I’ll have one of the girls show you the way, but for now, I must say good night.” The wizard stalked off, leaving Joshua to collapse into a fit of giggles and me to wonder how I might look with my head shaved.

In the morning Joy came to our rooms wearing the garb of a desert trader: a loose tunic, soft leather boots, and pantaloons. Her hair was tied up under a turban and she carried a long riding crop in her hand. She led us through a long narrow passageway that went deep into the mountain, then emerged out of the side of a sheer cliff. We climbed a rope ladder to the top of the plateau where Pillows and Sue waited with three camels saddled and outfitted for a short journey. There was a small farm on the plateau, with several pens full of chickens, some goats, and a few pigs in a pen.

“We’re going to have a tough time getting these camels down that ladder,” I said.

Joy scowled and wrapped the tail of her turban around her face so that only her eyes showed. “There’s a path down,” she said. Then she tapped her camel on the shoulder with her crop and rode off, leaving Joshua and me to scramble onto our animals and follow.

The road down from the plateau was just wide enough for a single camel to sway his way down without falling, but once down on the desert floor, much like the entrance to the canyon where the fortress’s entrance lay, if you didn’t know it was there, you would never have found it. An added measure of security for a fortress that had no guards, I thought.

Joshua and I tried to engage Joy in conversation several times during the journey to Kabul, but she was cranky and abrupt and often just rode away from us.

“Probably depressed that she’s not torturing me,” I speculated.

“I can see how that might bring her down,” said Joshua. “Maybe if you could get your camel to bite you. I know that always brightens my mood.”

I rode on ahead without another word. It’s wildly irritating to have invented something as revolutionary as sarcasm, only to have it abused by amateurs.

Once in Kabul, Joy led the search for the blinded guard by asking every blind beggar that we passed in the marketplace. “Have you seen a blind bowman who arrived by camel caravan a little more than a week ago?”

Joshua and I trailed several steps behind her, trying desperately to keep from grinning whenever she looked back. Joshua had wanted to point out the flaw in Joy’s method, while I, on the other hand, wanted to savor her doofuscosity as passive revenge for having been poisoned. There was none of the competence and self-assured nature she showed at the fortress. She was clearly out of her element and I was enjoying it.

“You see,” I explained to Joshua, “what Joy is doing is ironic, yet that’s not her intent. That’s the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm.”

“No kidding?” said Josh.

“Why do I waste my time with you?”

We indulged Joy’s search for the blind man for another hour before directing her inquiries to the sighted, and to men from the camel caravans in particular. Once she started asking sighted people, it was a short time before we were directed to a temple where the blinded guard was said to have staked his begging territory.

“There he is,” said Joshua, pointing to a ragged pile of human being beckoning to the worshipers as they moved in and out of the temple.

“It looks like things have been tough on him,” I said, amazed that the guard, who had been one of the most vital (and frightening) men I’d ever seen, had been reduced to such a pathetic creature in so short a time. Then again, I was discounting the theatrics of it all.

“A great injustice has been done here,” said Josh. He moved to the guard and gently put his hand on the blind man’s shoulder. “Brother, I am here to relieve your suffering.”

“Pity on the blind,” said the guard, waving around a wooden bowl.

“Calm now,” said Joshua, placing his hand over the blind man’s eyes. “When I remove my hand you will see again.”

I could see the strain in Joshua’s face as he concentrated on healing the guard. Tears trickled down his cheeks and dripped on the flagstones. I thought of how effortless his healings had been in Antioch, and realized that the strain was not coming from the healing, but from the guilt he carried for having blinded the man in the first place. When he removed his hand and stepped away, both he and the guard shivered.

Joy stepped away from us and covered her face as if to ward off bad air.

The guard stared into space just as he had while he had been begging, but his eyes were no longer white.

“Can you see?” Joshua said.

“I can see, but everything is wrong. People’s skin appears blue.”

“No, he is blue. Remember, my friend Biff.”

“Were you always blue?”

“No, only recently.”

Then the guard seemed to see Joshua for the first time and his expression of wonderment was replaced by hatred. He leapt at Joshua, drawing a dagger from his rags as he moved. He would have split my friend’s rib cage in a single swift blow if Joy hadn’t swept his feet out from under him at the last second. Even so, he was up in an instant, going for a second attack. I managed to get my hand up in time to poke him in the eyes, just as Joy kicked him in the back of the neck, driving him to the ground in agony.