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

I stopped chewing and listened. Suddenly I could see someone standing in the doorway between the two rooms. I drew in my breath and held it. Then I heard the old woman’s voice, speaking Chinese with her peculiar accent: “To take the life of a human or one like a human. To take a thing that is not given. To claim to have superhuman powers.”

I was slow, but suddenly I realized that the old woman was reciting the rules for which a monk could be expelled from the monastery. As she came into the dim light from the window she said, “To have intercourse with anyone, even down to an animal.” And at that second, I realized that the toothless old woman was completely naked. A mouthful of chewed turnip rolled out of my mouth and down the front of my robe. The old woman, close now, reached out, I thought to catch the mess, but instead she caught what was under my robe.

“Do you have superhuman powers?” the old woman said, pulling on my manhood, which, much to my amazement, nodded an answer.

I need to say here that it had been over two years since we had left Balthasar’s fortress, and another six months before that since the demon had come and killed all of the girls but Joy—thus curtailing my regular supply of sexual companions. I want to go on record that I had been steadfast in adhering to the rules of the monastery, allowing only those nocturnal emissions as were expelled during dreams (although I had gotten pretty good in directing my dreams in that direction, so all that mental discipline and meditation wasn’t completely useless). So, that said, I was in a weakened state of resistance when the old woman, leathery and toothless as she might have been, compelled me by threat and intimidation to share with her what the Chinese call the Forbidden Monkey Dance. Five times.

Imagine my chagrin when the man who would save the world found me in the morning with a twisted burl of Chinese crone-flesh orally affixed to my fleshy pagoda of expandable joy, even as I snored away in transcendent turnip-digesting oblivion.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” said Joshua, turning to the wall and throwing his robe over his head.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” I said, roused from my slumber by the disgusted exclamation of my friend.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” said the old woman, I think. (Her speech was generously obstructed, if I do say so myself.)

“Jeez, Biff,” Joshua stuttered. “You can’t…I mean…Lust is…Jeez, Biff!”

“What?” I said, like I didn’t know what.

“You’ve ruined sex for me for all time,” Joshua said. “Whenever I think of it, this picture will always come up in my mind.”

“So,” I said, pushing the old woman away and shooing her into the back room.

“So…” Joshua turned around and looked me in the eye, then grinned widely enough to threaten the integrity of his ears. “So thanks.”

I stood and bowed. “I am here only to serve,” I said, grinning back.

“Gaspar sent me to look for you. He’s ready to leave.”

“Okay, I’d better, you know, say good-bye.” I gestured toward the back room.

Joshua shuddered. “No offense,” he said to the old woman, who was out of sight in the other room. “I was just surprised.”

“Want a turnip?” I said, holding up one of the knobby treats.

Joshua turned and started out the door. “Jeez, Biff,” he was saying as he left.

Another day spent wandering the city with the angel, another dream of the woman standing at the foot of my bed, and I awoke finally—after all these years—to understand what Joshua must have felt, at least at times, as the only one of his kind. I know he said again and again that he was the son of man, born of a woman, one of us, but it was the paternal part of his heritage that made him different. Now, since I’m fairly sure I am the only person walking the earth who was doing so two thousand years ago, I have an acute sense of what it is to be unique, to be the one and only. It’s lonely. That’s why Joshua went into those mountains so often, and stayed so long in the company of the creature.

Last night I dreamed that the angel was talking to someone in the room while I slept. In the dream I heard him say, “Maybe it would be best just to kill him when he finishes. Snap his neck, shove him into a storm sewer.” Strange, though, there wasn’t the least bit of malice in the angel’s voice. On the contrary, he sounded very forlorn. That’s how I know it was a dream.

I never thought I’d be happy to get back to the monastery, but after trudging through the snow for half the day, the dank stone walls and dark hallways were as welcoming as a warmly lit hearth. Half of the rice we had collected as alms was immediately boiled, then packed into bamboo cylinders about a hand wide and as long as a man’s leg, then half of the root vegetables were stored away while the rest were packed into satchels along with some salt and more bamboo cylinders filled with cold tea. We had just enough time to chase the chill out of our limbs by the cook fires, then Gaspar had us take up the cylinders and the satchels and he led us out into the mountains. I had never noticed when the other monks left on the pilgrimage of secret meditation that they were carrying so much food. And with all this food, much more than we could eat in the four or five days we were gone, why had Joshua and I been training for this by fasting?

Traveling higher into the mountains was actually easier for a while, as the snow had been blown off the trail. It was when we came to the high plateaus where the yak grazed and the snow drifted that the going became difficult. We took turns at the head of the line, plowing a trail through the snow.

As we climbed, the air became so thin that even the highly conditioned monks had to stop frequently to catch their breaths. At the same time, the wind bit through our robes and leggings as if they weren’t there. That there was not enough air to breathe, yet the movement of the air would chill our bones, I suppose is ironic, yet I was having a hard time appreciating it even then.

I said, “Why couldn’t you just go to the rabbis and learn to be the Messiah like everyone else? Do you remember any snow in the story of Moses? No. Did the Lord appear to Moses in the form of a snow bank? I don’t think so. Did Elijah ascend to heaven on a chariot of ice? Nope. Did Daniel come forth unharmed from a blizzard? No. Our people are about fire, Joshua, not ice. I don’t remember any snow in all of the Torah. The Lord probably doesn’t even go to places where it snows. This is a huge mistake, we never should have come, we should go home as soon as this is over, and in conclusion, I can’t feel my feet.” I was out of breath and wheezing.

“Daniel didn’t come forth from the fire,” Joshua said calmly.

“Well, who can blame him, it was probably warm in there.”

“He came forth unharmed from the lion’s den,” said Josh.

“Here,” said Gaspar, stopping any further discussion. He put down his parcels and sat down.

“Where?” I said. We were under a low overhang, out of the wind, and mostly out of the snow, but it was hardly what you could call shelter. Still, the other monks, including Joshua, shed their packs and sat, affecting the meditation posture and holding their hands in the mudra of all-giving compassion (which, strangely enough, is the same hand gesture that modern people use for “okay.” Makes you think).

“We can’t be here. There’s no here here,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Gaspar. “Contemplate that.”

So I sat.

Joshua and the others seemed impervious to the cold and as frost formed on my eyelashes and clothing, the light dusting of ice crystals that covered the ground and rocks around each of them began to melt, as if there was a flame burning inside of them. Whenever the wind died, I noticed steam rising off of Gaspar as his damp robe gave up its moisture to the chill air. When Joshua and I first learned to meditate, we had been taught to be hyperaware of everything around us, connected, but the state that my fellow monks were in now was one of trance, of separation, of exclusion. They had each constructed some sort of mental shelter in which they were happily sitting, while I, quite literally, was freezing to death.