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

“Like against you?”

“See? See what I mean?”

We left the village early the next morning, carrying only some rice balls, our waterskins, and what little money we had left. We left our three camels in the care of the toothless old woman, who promised to take care of them until we returned. I would miss them. They were the spiffy double-humpers we’d picked up in Kabul and they were comfortable to ride, but more important, none of them had ever tried to bite me.

“They’re going to eat our camels, you know? We won’t be gone an hour before one of them is turning on a spit.”

“They won’t eat the camels.” Joshua, forever believing in the goodness of human beings.

“They don’t know what they are. They think that they’re just tall food. They’re going to eat them. The only meat they ever get is yak.”

“You don’t even know what a yak is.”

“Do too,” I said, but the air was getting thin and I was too tired to prove myself at the time.

The sun was going down behind the mountains when we finally reached the monastery. Except for a huge wooden gate with a small hatch in it, it was constructed entirely of the same black basalt as the mountain on which it stood. It looked more like a fortress than a place of worship.

“Makes you wonder if all three of your magi live in fortresses, doesn’t it?”

“Hit the gong,” said Joshua. There was a bronze gong hanging outside the door with a padded drumstick standing next to it and a sign in a language that we couldn’t read.

I hit the gong. We waited. I hit the gong again. And we waited. The sun went down and it began to get very cold on the mountainside. I rang the gong three times loud. We ate our rice balls and drank most of our water and waited. I pounded the bejezus out of the gong and the hatch opened. A dim light from inside the gate illuminated the smooth cheeks of a Chinese man about our age. “What?” he said in Chinese.

“We are here to see Gaspar,” I said. “Balthasar sent us.”

“Gaspar sees no one. Your aspect is dim and your eyes are too round.” He slammed the little hatch.

This time Joshua pounded on the gong until the monk returned.

“Let me see that drumstick,” the monk said, holding his hand out through the little port.

Joshua gave him the drumstick and stepped back.

“Go away and come back in the morning,” the monk said.

“But we’ve traveled all day,” Joshua said. “We’re cold and hungry.”

“Life is suffering,” the monk said. He slammed the little door, leaving us in almost total darkness.

“Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to learn,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

“No, we wait,” said Joshua.

In the morning, after Joshua and I had slept against the great gate, huddled together to conserve warmth, the monk opened the little hatch. “You still here?” He couldn’t see us, as we were directly below the window.

“Yes,” I said. “Can we see Gaspar now?”

He craned his neck out the hatch, then pulled it back in and produced a small wooden bowl, from which he poured water on our heads. “Go away. Your feet are misshapen and your eyebrows grow together in a threatening way.”

“But…”

He slammed the hatch. And so we spent the day outside the gate, me wanting to go down the mountain, Joshua insisting that we wait. There was frost in our hair when we woke the next morning, and I felt my very bones aching. The monk opened the hatch just after first light.

“You are so stupid that the village idiots’ guild uses you as a standard for testing,” said the monk.

“Actually, I’m a member of the village idiots’ guild,” I retorted.

“In that case,” said the monk, “go away.”

I cursed eloquently in five languages and was beginning to tear at my hair in frustration when I spotted something large moving in the sky overhead. As it got closer, I saw that it was the angel, wearing his aspect of black robe and wings. He carried a flaming bundle of sticks and pitch, which trailed a trail of flames and thick black smoke behind him in the sky. When he had passed over us several times, he flew off over the horizon, leaving a smoky pattern of Chinese characters that spelled out a message across the sky: SURRENDER DOROTHY.

I was just fuckin’ with you (as Balthasar used to say). Raziel didn’t really write SURRENDER DOROTHY in the sky. The angel and I watched The Wizard of Oz together on television last night and the scene at the gates of Oz reminded me of when Joshua and I were at the monastery gate. Raziel said he identified with Glinda, Good Witch of the North. (I would have thought flying monkey, but I believe his choice was a blond one.) I have to admit that I felt some sympathy for the scarecrow, although I don’t believe I would have been singing about the lack of a brain. In fact, amid all the musical laments over not having a heart, a brain, or the nerve, did anyone notice that they didn’t have a penis among them? I think it would have shown on the Lion and the Tin Man, and when the Scarecrow has his pants destuffed, you don’t see a flying monkey waving an errant straw Johnson around anywhere, do you? I think I know what song I’d be singing:

Oh, I would while away the hours,

Wanking in the flowers, my heart all full of song,

I’d be gilding all the lilies as I waved about my willie

If I only had a schlong.

And suddenly it occurred to me, as I composed the above opus, that although Raziel had always seemed to have the aspect of a male, I had no idea if there were even genders among the angels. After all, Raziel was the only one I’d ever seen. I leapt from my chair and confronted him in the midst of an afternoon Looney Tunes festival.

“Raziel, do you have equipment?”

“Equipment?”

“A package, a taliwacker, a unit, a dick—do you have one?”

“No,” said the angel, perplexed that I would be asking. “Why would I need one?”

“For sex. Don’t angels have sex?”

“Well, yes, but we don’t use those.”

“So there are female angels and male angels?”

“Yes.”

“And you have sex with female angels.”

“Correct.”

“With what do you have sex?”

“Female angels. I just told you.”

“No, do you have a sex organ?”

“Yes.”

“Show me?”

“I don’t have it with me.”

“Oh.” I realized that there are some things I’d really rather not know about.

Anyway, he didn’t write in the sky, and, in fact, we didn’t see Raziel again, but the monks did let us into the monastery after three days. They said that they made everybody wait three days. It weeded out the insincere.

The entire two-story structure that was the monastery was fashioned of rough stone, none larger than could have been lifted into place by a single man. The rear of the building was built right into the mountainside. The structure seemed to have been built under an existing overhang in the rock, so there was minimal roofing exposed to the elements. What did show was made of terra-cotta tiles that lay on a steep incline, obviously to shed any buildup of snow.

A short and hairless monk wearing a saffron-colored robe led us across an outer courtyard paved with flagstone through an austere doorway into the monastery. The floor inside was stone, and though immaculately clean, it was no more finished than the flagstone of the courtyard. There were only a few windows, more like arrow slits, cut high in the wall, and little light penetrated the interior once the front door was closed. The air was thick with incense and filled with a buzzing chorus of male voices producing a rhythmic chant that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once and made it seem as if my ribs and kneecaps were vibrating from the inside. Whatever language they were chanting in I didn’t understand, but the message was clear: these men were invoking something that transcended this world.