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

“Tamil, right?” Joshua said.

“Go south. It is very far. There are many dangers along the way. Remember your training.”

“We will.”

“Good.” Number Four turned on his heel and walked into the monastery, then shut the heavy wooden gate.

“No, no, Four, don’t embarrass yourself with a sappy good-bye,” I said to the gate. “No, really, please, no scenes.”

Joshua was counting our money out of a small leather purse. “It’s just what we left with them.”

“Good.”

“No, that’s not good. We’ve been here six years, Biff. This money should have doubled or tripled during that time.”

“What, by magic?”

“No, they should have invested it.” He turned and looked back at the gate. “You dumb bastards, maybe you should spend a little less time studying how to beat each other up and a little more time on managing your money.”

“Spontaneous love?” I said.

“Yeah, Gaspar’ll never get that one either. That’s why they killed the yeti, you know that, don’t you?”

“Who?”

“The mountain people. They killed the yeti because they couldn’t understand a creature who wasn’t as evil as they were.”

“The mountain people were evil?”

“All men are evil, that’s what I was talking to my father about.”

“What did he say?”

“Fuck ’em.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“At least he answered you.”

“I got the feeling that he thinks it’s my problem now.”

“Makes you wonder why he didn’t burn that on one of the tablets. ‘HERE, MOSES, HERE’S THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, AND HERE’S AN EXTRA ONE THAT SAYS FUCK ’EM.’”

“He doesn’t sound like that.”

“FOR EMERGENCIES,” I continued in my perfect impression-of-God voice.

“I hope it’s warm in India,” Joshua said.

And so, at the age of twenty-four, Joshua of Nazareth did go down into India.

The road was just wide enough for the two of us to walk side by side. The grass on either side was as high as an elephant’s eye. We could see blue sky above us, and exactly as far along the path as the next curve, which could have been any distance away, because there’s no perspective in an unbroken green trench. We’d been traveling on this road most of the day, and passed only one old man and a couple of cows, but now we could hear what sounded like a large party approaching us, not far off, perhaps two hundred yards away. There were men’s voices, a lot of them, footsteps, some dissonant metal drums, and most disturbing, the continuous screams of a woman either in pain, or terrified, or both.

“Young masters!” came a voice from somewhere near us.

I jumped in the air and came down in a defensive stance, my black glass knife drawn and ready. Josh looked around for the source of the voice. The screaming was getting closer. There was a rustling in the grass a few feet away from the road, then again the voice, “Young masters, you must hide.”

An impossibly thin male face with eyes that seemed a size and a half too large for his skull popped out of the wall of grass beside us. “You must come. Kali comes to choose her victims! Come now or die.”

The face disappeared, replaced by a craggy brown hand that motioned for us to follow into the grass. The woman’s scream hit crescendo and failed, as if the voice had broken like an overtightened lute string.

“Go,” said Joshua, pushing me into the grass.

As soon as I was off of the road someone caught my wrist and started dragging me through the sea of grass. Joshua latched onto the tail of my shirt and allowed himself to be dragged along. As we ran the grass whipped and slashed at us. I could feel blood welling up on my face and arms, even as the brown wraith pulled me deeper into the sea of green. Above the rasping of my breath I heard men shouting from behind us, then a thrashing of the grass being trampled.

“They follow,” said the brown wraith over his shoulder. “Run unless you want your heads to decorate Kali’s altar. Run.”

Over my shoulder to Josh, I said, “He says run or it will be bad.” Behind Josh, outlined against the sky, I saw long, swordlike spear tips, the sort of thing one might use for beheading someone.

“Okey-dokey,” said Josh.

It had taken us over a month to get to India, most of the journey through hundreds of miles of the highest, most rugged country we had ever seen. Amazingly enough, there were villages scattered all through the mountains, and when the villagers saw our orange robes doors were flung wide and larders opened. We were always fed, given a warm place to sleep, and welcomed to stay as long as we wished. We offered obtuse parables and irritating chants in return, as was the tradition.

It wasn’t until we came out of the mountains onto a brutally hot and humid grassland that we found our mode of dress was drawing more disdain than welcome. One man, of obvious wealth (he rode a horse and wore silk robes) cursed us as we passed and spit at us. Other people on foot began to take notice of us as well, and we hurried off into some high grass and changed out of our robes. I tucked the glass dagger that Joy had given me into my sash.

“What was he going on about?” I asked Joshua.

“He said something about tellers of false prophecies. Pretenders. Enemies of the Brahman, whatever that is. I’m not sure what else.”

“Well, it looks like we’re more welcome here as Jews than as Buddhists.”

“For now,” said Joshua. “All the people have those marks on their foreheads like Gaspar had. I think without one of those we’re going to have to be careful.”

As we traveled into the lowlands the air felt as thick as warm cream, and we could feel the weight of it in our lungs after so many years in the mountains. We passed into the valley of a wide, muddy river, and the road became choked with people passing in and out of a city of wooden shacks and stone altars. There were humped-back cattle everywhere, even grazing in the gardens, but no one seemed to bear them any mind.

“The last meat I ate was what was left of our camels,” I said.

“Let’s find a booth and buy some beef.”

There were merchants along the road selling various wares, clay pots, powders, herbs, spices, copper and bronze blades (iron seemed to be in short supply), and tiny carvings of what seemed to be a thousand different gods, most of them having more limbs than seemed necessary and none of them looking particularly friendly.

We found grain, breads, fruits, vegetables, and bean pastes for sale, but nowhere did we see any meat. We settled on some bread and spicy bean paste, paid the woman with Roman copper coin, then found a place under a large banyan tree where we could sit and look at the river while we ate.

I’d forgotten the smell of a city, the fetid mélange of people, and waste, and smoke and animals, and I began to long for the clean air of the mountains.

“I don’t want to sleep here, Joshua. Let’s see if we can find a place in the country.”

“We are supposed to follow this river to the sea to reach Tamil. Where the river goes, so go the people.”

The river—wider than any in Israel, but shallow, yellow with clay, and still against the heavy air—seemed more like a huge stagnant puddle than a living, moving thing. In this season, anyway. Dotting the surface, a half-dozen skinny, naked men with wild white hair and not three teeth apiece shouted angry poetry at the top of their lungs and tossed water into glittering crests over their heads.