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

“I wonder how my cousin John is doing,” said Josh.

All along the muddy riverbank women washed clothes and babies only steps from where cattle waded and shat, men fished or pushed long shallow boats along with poles, and children swam or played in the mud. Here and there the corpse of a dog bobbed flyblown in the gentle current.

“Maybe there’s a road inland a little, away from the stench.”

Joshua nodded and climbed to his feet. “There,” he said, pointing to a narrow path that began on the opposite bank of the river and disappeared into some tall grass.

“We’ll have to cross,” I said.

“Be nice if we could find a boat to take us,” said Josh.

“You don’t think we should ask where the path leads?”

“No,” said Joshua, looking at a crowd of people who were gathering nearby and staring at us. “These people all look hostile.”

“What was that you told Gaspar about love was a state you dwell in or something?”

“Yeah, but not with these people. These people are creepy. Let’s go.”

The creepy little brown guy who was dragging me through the elephant grass was named Rumi, and much to his credit, amid the chaos and tumble of a headlong dash through a leviathan marshland, pursued by a muderous band of clanging, shouting, spear-waving decapitation enthusiasts, Rumi had managed to find a tiger—no small task when you have a kung fu master and the savior of the world in tow.

“Eek, a tiger,” Rumi said, as we stumbled into a small clearing, a mere depression really, where a cat the size of Jerusalem was gleefully gnawing away on the skull of a deer.

Rumi had expressed my sentiments exactly, but I would be damned if I was going to let my last words be “Eek, a tiger,” so I listened quietly as urine filled my shoes.

“You’d think all the noise would have frightened him,” Josh said, just as the tiger looked up from his deer.

I noticed that our pursuers seemed to be closing on us by the second.

“That is the way it is usually done,” said Rumi. “The noise drives the tiger to the hunter.”

“Maybe he knows that,” I said, “so he’s not going anywhere. You know, they’re bigger than I imagined. Tigers, I mean.”

“Sit down,” said Joshua.

“Pardon me?” I said.

“Trust me,” Joshua said. “Remember the cobra when we were kids?”

I nodded to Rumi and coaxed him down as the tiger crouched and tensed his hind legs as if preparing to leap, which is exactly what he was doing. As the first of our pursuers broke into the clearing from behind us the tiger leapt, sailing over our heads by half again the height of a man. The tiger landed on the first two men coming out of the grass, crushing them under his enormous forepaws, then raking their backs as he leapt again. After that all I could see was spear points scattering against the sky as the hunters became, well, you know. Men screamed, the woman screamed, the tiger screamed, and the two men who had fallen under the tiger crawled to their feet and limped back toward the road, screaming.

Rumi looked from the dead deer, to Joshua, to me, to the dead deer, to Joshua, and his eyes seemed to grow even larger than before. “I am deeply moved and eternally grateful for your affinity with the tiger, but that is his deer, and it appears that he has not finished with it, perhaps…”

Joshua stood up. “Lead on.”

“I don’t know which way.”

“Not that way,” I said, pointing in the direction of the screaming bad guys.

Rumi led us through the grass to another road, which we followed to where he lived.

“It’s a pit,” I said.

“It’s not that bad,” said Joshua, looking around. There were other pits nearby. People were living in them.

“You live in a pit,” I said.

“Hey, ease up,” Joshua said. “He saved our lives.”

“It is a humble pit, but it is home,” said Rumi. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

I looked around. The pit had been chipped out of sandstone and was about shoulder deep and just wide enough to turn a cow around in, which I would find out was a crucial dimension. The pit was empty except for a single rock about knee high.

“Have a seat. You may have the rock,” said Rumi.

Joshua smiled and sat on the rock. Rumi sat on the floor of the pit, which was covered with a thick layer of black slime. “Please. Sit,” said Rumi, gesturing to the floor beside him. “I’m sorry, we can only afford one rock.”

I didn’t sit. “Rumi, you live in a pit!” I pointed out.

“Well, yes, that is true. Where do Untouchables live in your land?”

“Untouchable?”

“Yes, the lowest of the low. The scum of the earth. None of the higher caste may acknowledge my existence. I am Untouchable.”

“Well, no wonder, you live in a fucking pit.”

“No,” Joshua said, “he lives in a pit because he’s Untouchable, he’s not Untouchable because he lives in a pit. He’d be Untouchable if he lived in a palace, isn’t that right, Rumi?”

“Oh, like that’s going to happen,” I said. I’m sorry, the guy lived in a pit.

“There’s more room since my wife and most of my children died,” said Rumi. “Until this morning it was only Vitra, my youngest daughter and me, but now she is gone too. There is plenty of room for you if you wish to stay.”

Joshua put his hand on Rumi’s narrow shoulder and I could see the effect it had, the pain evaporating from the Untouchable’s face like dew under a hot sun. I stood by being wretched.

“What happened to Vitra?” Joshua asked.

“They came and took her, the Brahmans, as a sacrifice on the feast of Kali. I was looking for her when I saw you two. They gather children and men, criminals, Untouchables, and strangers. They would have taken you and day after tomorrow they would have offered your head to Kali.”

“So your daughter is not dead?” I asked.

“They will hold her until midnight on the night of the feast, then slaughter her with the other children on the wooden elephants of Kali.”

“I will go to these Brahmans and ask for your daughter back,” Joshua said.

“They’ll kill you,” Rumi said. “Vitra is lost, even your tiger cannot save you from Kali’s destruction.”

“Rumi,” I said. “Look at me, please. Explain, Brahmans, Kali, elephants, everything. Go slow, act as if I know nothing.”

“Like that takes imagination,” Joshua said, clearly violating my implied, if not expressed, copyright on sarcasm. (Yeah, we have Court TV in the hotel room, why?)

“There are four castes,” said Rumi, “the Brahmans, or priests; Kshatriyas, or warriors; Vaisyas, who are farmers or merchants; and the Sudras, who are laborers. There are many subcastes, but those are the main ones. Each man is born to a caste and he remains in that caste until he dies and is reborn as a higher caste or lower caste, which is determined by his karma, or actions during his last life.”

“We know from karma,” I said. “We’re Buddhist monks.”

“Heretics!” Rumi hissed.

“Bite me, you bug-eyed scrawny brown guy,” I said.

“You are a scrawny brown guy!”

“No, you’re a scrawny brown guy!”

“No, you are a scrawny brown guy!”

“We are all scrawny brown guys,” Joshua said, making peace.

“Yeah, but he’s bug-eyed.”

“And you are a heretic.”

“You’re a heretic!”

“No, you are a heretic.”

“We’re all scrawny brown heretics,” said Joshua, calming things down again.

“Well, of course I’m scrawny,” I said. “Six years of cold rice and tea, and not a scrap of beef for sale in the whole country.”

“You would eat beef? You heretic!” shouted Rumi.

“Enough!” shouted Joshua.