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

Joshua looked at me as perplexed as he had at Gaspar a few minutes before. “Do you think he needs that stick?”

Number Seven Monk handed us our satchels, bowed deeply, then went back into the monastery and closed the door, leaving Joshua and me standing there by the gong. It was a clear morning and we could see the smoke of cook fires rising from the village below.

“We should have asked for some breakfast,” I said. “This is going to be a long climb down.”

“I’m not leaving,” Josh said.

“You’re kidding.”

“I have a lot more to learn here.”

“Like how to take a beating?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m not sure Gaspar will let me back in. He didn’t seem too pleased with me.”

“You threatened to kill him.”

“I did not, I warned that I’d kill him. Big difference.”

“So you’re not going to stay?”

And there it was, the question. Was I going to stay with my best friend, eat cold rice, sleep on a cold floor, take abuse from a mad monk, and very likely have my skull split open, or was I going to go? Go where? Home? Back to Kabul and Joy? Despite the long journey, it seemed easier to go back the way I had come. At least some level of familiarity would be waiting there. But if I was making easy choices, why was I there in the first place?

“Are you sure you have to stay here, Josh? Can’t we go find Melchior?”

“I know I have things to learn here.” Joshua picked up the drumstick and rang the gong. In a few minutes the little port opened in the door and a monk we had never seen before stuck his face in the opening. “Go away. Your nature is dense and your breath smells like a yak’s ass.” He slammed the hatch.

Joshua rang the gong again.

“I don’t like that whole thing about killing the Messiah. I can’t stay here, Joshua. Not if he’s going to hit you.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to get hit quite a few more times until I learn what he needs me to know.”

“I have to go.”

“Yes, you do.”

“But I could stay.”

“No. Trust me, you have to leave me now, so you won’t later. I’ll see you again.” He turned away from me and faced the door.

“Oh, you don’t know anything else, but you know that all of a sudden?”

“Yes. Go, Biff. Good-bye.”

I walked down the narrow path and nearly stumbled over a precipice when I heard the hatch in the door open. “Where are you going?” shouted the monk.

“Home,” I said.

“Good, go frighten some children with your glorious ignorance.”

“I will.” I tried to keep my shoulders steady as I walked away, but it felt like someone was ripping my soul through the muscles of my back. I would not turn around, I vowed, and slowly, painfully, I made my way down the path, convinced that I would never see Joshua again.

I’ve settled into some sort of droning routine here at the hotel, and in that way it reminds me of those times in China. My waking hours are filled with writing these pages, watching television, trying to irritate the angel, and sneaking off to the bathroom to read the Gospels. And I think it’s the latter that’s sent my sleeping hours into a landscape of nightmare that leaves me spent even when I wake. I’ve finished Mark, and again this fellow talks of a resurrection, of acts beyond the time of my and Joshua’s death. It’s a similar story to that told by the Matthew fellow, the events jumbled somewhat, but basically the story of Joshua’s ministry, but it’s the telling of the events of that last week of Passover that chills me. The angel hasn’t been able to keep the secret that Joshua’s teachings survived and grew to vast popularity. (He’s stopped even changing the channel at the mention of Joshua on television, as he did when we first arrived.) But is this the book from which Joshua’s teachings are drawn? I dream of blood, and suffering, and loneliness so empty that an echo can’t survive, and I wake up screaming, soaked in my own sweat, and even after I’m awake the loneliness remains for a while. Last night when I awoke I thought I saw a woman standing at the end of my bed, and beside her, the angel, his black wings spread and touching the walls of the room on either side. Then, before I could get my wits about me, the angel wrapped his wings around the woman and she disappeared in the darkness of them and was gone. I think I really woke up then, because the angel was lying there on the other bed, staring into the dark, his eyes like black pearls, catching the red blinking aircraft lights that shone dimly through the window from the tops of the buildings across the street. No wings, no black robe, no woman. Just Raziel, staring.

“Nightmare?” the angel asked.

“Memory,” I said. Had I been asleep? I remember that same red blinking light, ever so dim, playing on the cheekbone and the bridge of the nose of the woman in my nightmare. (It was all I could see of her face.) And those elegant contours fit into the recesses of my memory like a key in the tumblers of a lock, releasing cinnamon and sandalwood and a laugh sweeter than the best day of childhood.

Two days after I had walked away, I rang the gong outside the monastery and the little hatch opened to reveal the face of a newly shaven monk, the skin of his bald scalp still a dozen shades lighter in color than that of his face. “What?” he said.

“The villagers ate our camels,” I said.

“Go away. Your nostrils flare in an unpleasant manner and your soul is somewhat lumpy.”

“Joshua, let me in. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“I can’t just let you in,” Josh whispered. “You have to wait three days like everyone else.” Then loudly, and obviously for someone inside’s benefit, he said, “You appear to be infested by Bedouins! Now go away!” And he slammed the hatch.

I stood there. And waited. In a few minutes he opened the hatch.

“Infested by Bedouins?” I said.

“Give me a break. I’m new. Did you bring food and water to last you?”

“Yes, the toothless woman sold me some dried camel meat. There was a special.”

“That’s got to be unclean,” said Josh.

“Bacon, Joshua, remember?”

“Oh yeah. Sorry. I’ll try to sneak some tea and a blanket out to you, but it won’t be right away.”

“Then Gaspar will let me back in?”

“He was perplexed why you left in the first place. He said if anyone needed to learn some discipline, well, you know. There’ll be punishment, I think.”

“Sorry I left you.”

“You didn’t.” He grinned, looking sillier than normal with his two-toned head. “I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned here already.”

“What’s that?”

“When I’m in charge, if someone knocks, they will be able to come in. Making someone who is seeking comfort stand out in the cold is a crock of rancid yak butter.”

“Amen,” I said.

Josh slammed the little hatch, obviously the prescribed way of closing it. I stood and wondered how Joshua, when he finally learned how to be the Messiah, would work the phrase “crock of rancid yak butter” into a sermon. Just what we Jews needed, I thought, more dietary restrictions.

The monks stripped me naked and poured cold water over my head, then brushed me vigorously with brushes made from boar’s hair, then poured hot water on me, then scrubbed, then cold water, until I screamed for them to stop. At that point they shaved my head, taking generous nicks out of my scalp as they did so, rinsed away the hair that stuck to my body, and handed me a fresh orange robe, a blanket, and a wooden rice bowl. Later I was given a pair of slippers, woven from some sort of grass, and I made myself some socks from woven yak hair, but this was the measure of my wealth for six years: a robe, a blanket, a bowl, some slippers, and some socks.