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

Joshua got almost to the doors before he turned. “Do you know the difference between praying and meditating, Biff?”

I shook my head.

“Praying is talking to God. Meditating is listening. I’ve spent most of these last six years listening. Do you know what I’ve heard?”

Again I said nothing.

“Not a single thing, Biff. Now I have some things I want to say.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said.

“I know.” He turned and started inside.

“Josh,” I called. He paused and looked over his shoulder at me.

“I won’t let that happen to you, you know that, right?”

“I know,” he said, then he went inside to give his father a divine ass-chewing.

The next morning Gaspar summoned us to the tea room. The abbot looked as if he had not slept in days and whatever his age, he was carrying a century of misery in his eyes.

“Sit,” he said, and we did. “The old man of the mountain is dead.”

“Who?”

“That’s what I called the yeti, the old man of the mountain. He has passed on to his next life and it is time for you to go.”

Joshua said nothing, but sat with his hands folded in his lap, staring at the table.

“What does one have to do with the other?” I asked. “Why should we leave because the yeti has died? We didn’t know he even existed until we had been here for two years.”

“But I did,” said Gaspar.

I felt a heat rising in my face—I’m sure that my scalp and ears must have flushed, because Gaspar scoffed at me. “There is nothing else here for you. There was nothing here for you from the beginning. I would not have allowed you to stay if you weren’t Joshua’s friend.” It was the first time he’d used either of our names since we’d arrived at the monastery. “Number Four will meet you at the gate. He has the possessions you arrived with, as well as some food for your journey.”

“We can’t go home,” Joshua said at last. “I don’t know enough yet.”

“No,” said Gaspar, “I suspect that you don’t. But you know all that you will learn here. If you come to a river and find a boat at the edge, you will use that boat to cross and it will serve you well, but once across the river, do you put the boat on your shoulders and carry it with you on the rest of your journey?”

“How big is the boat?” I asked.

“What color is the boat?” asked Joshua.

“How far is the rest of the journey?” I queried.

“Is Biff there to carry the oars, or do I have to carry everything?” asked Josh.

“No!” screamed Gaspar. “No, you don’t take the boat along on the journey. It has been useful but now it’s simply a burden. It’s a parable, you cretins!”

Joshua and I bowed our heads under Gaspar’s anger. As the abbot railed, Joshua smiled at me and winked. When I saw the smile I knew that he’d be okay.

Gaspar finished his tirade, then caught his breath and resumed in the tone of the tolerant monk that we were used to. “As I was saying, there is no more for you to learn. Joshua, go be a bodhisattva for your people, and Biff, try not to kill anyone with what we have taught you here.”

“So do we get our boat now?” Joshua asked.

Gaspar looked as if he were about to explode, then Joshua held his hand up and the old man remained silent.

“We are grateful for our time here, Gaspar. These monks are noble and honorable men, and we have learned much from them. But you, honorable abbot, are a pretender. You have mastered a few tricks of the body, and you can reach a trance state, but you are not an enlightened being, though I think you have glimpsed enlightenment. You look everywhere for answers but where they lie. Nevertheless, your deception hasn’t stopped you from teaching us. We thank you, Gaspar. Hypocrite. Wise man. Bodhisattva.”

Gaspar sat staring at Joshua, who had spoken as if he were talking to a child. The old man went about fixing the tea, more feebly now, I thought, but maybe that was my imagination.

“And you knew this?” Gaspar asked me.

I shrugged. “What enlightened being travels halfway around the world following a star on the rumor that a Messiah has been born?”

“He means across the world,” said Josh.

“I mean around the world.” I elbowed Joshua in the ribs because it was easier than explaining my theory of universal stickiness to Gaspar. The old guy was having a rough day as it was.

Gaspar poured tea for all of us, then sat down with a sigh. “You were not a disappointment, Joshua. The three of us knew as soon as we saw you that you were a being unlike any other. Brahman born to flesh, my brother said.”

“What gave it away,” I said, “the angels on the roof of the stable?”

Gaspar ignored me. “But you were still an infant, and whatever it was that we were looking for, you were not it—not yet, anyway. We could have stayed, I suppose, and helped to raise you, protect you, but we were all dense. Balthasar wanted to find the key to immortality, and there was no way that you could give him that, and my brother and I wanted the keys to the universe, and those were not to be found in Bethlehem either. So we warned your father of Herod’s intent to have you killed, we gave him gold to get you out of the country, and we returned to the East.”

“Melchior is your brother?”

Gaspar nodded. “We were princes of Tamil. Melchior is the oldest, so he would have inherited our lands, but I would have received a small fiefdom as well. Like Siddhartha, we eschewed worldly pleasures to pursue enlightenment.”

“How did you end up here, in these mountains?” I asked.

“Chasing Buddhas.” Gaspar smiled. “I had heard that there lived a sage in these mountains. The locals called him the old man of the mountain. I came looking for the sage, and what I found was the yeti. Who knows how old he really was, or how long he’d been here? What I did know was that he was the last of his kind and that he would die before long without help. I stayed here and I built this monastery. Along with the monks who came here to study, I have been taking care of the yeti since you two were just infants. Now he is gone. I have no purpose, and I have learned nothing. Whatever there was to know here died under that lump of ice.”

Joshua reached across the table and took the old man’s hand. “You drill us every day in the same movements, we practice the same brush strokes over and over, we chant the same mantras, why? So that these actions will become natural, spontaneous, without being diluted by thought, right?”

“Yes,” said Gaspar.

“Compassion is the same way,” said Joshua. “That’s what the yeti knew. He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words. That’s what he taught me. Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell. That was his gift.”

“Wow,” I said.

“I came here to learn that,” said Josh. “You taught it to me as much as the yeti.”

“Me?” Gaspar had been pouring the tea as Joshua spoke and now he noticed that he’d overfilled his cup and the tea was running all over the table.

“Who took care of him? Fed him? Looked after him? Did you have to think about that before you did it?”

“No,” said Gaspar.

Joshua stood. “Thanks for the boat.”

Gaspar didn’t accompany us to the front gate. As he promised, Number Four was waiting for us with our clothes and the money we had when we arrived six years before. I picked up the ying-yang vial of poison that Joy had given me and slipped the lanyard over my head, then I pushed the sheathed black glass dagger into the belt of my robe and tucked my clothes under my arm.

“You will go to find Gaspar’s brother?” Number Four asked. Number Four was one of the older monks, one of the ones who had served the emperor as a soldier, and a long white scar marked his head from the middle of his shaved scalp to his right ear, which had healed to a forked shape.