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

“No one may eat a cow. Cows are the reincarnations of souls on their way to the next life.”

“Holy cow,” Josh said.

“That is what I am saying.”

Joshua shook his head as if trying to straighten jumbled thoughts. “You said that there were four castes, but you didn’t mention Untouchables.”

“Harijans, Untouchables, have no caste, we are the lowest of the low. We may have to live many lifetimes before we even ascend to the level of a cow, and then we may become higher caste. Then, if we follow our dharma, our duty, as a higher caste, we may become one with Brahma, the universal spirit of all. I can’t believe you don’t know this, have you been living in a cave?”

I was going to point out that Rumi was in no position to criticize where we had been living, but Joshua signaled me to let it go. Instead I said, “So you are lower on the caste system than a cow?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“So these Brahmans won’t eat a cow, but they will take your daughter and kill her for their goddess?”

“And eat her,” said Rumi, hanging his head. “At midnight on the night of the feast they will take her and the other children and tie them to the wooden elephants. They will cut off the children’s fingers and give one to the head of each Brahman household. Then they will catch her blood in a cup and everyone in the household will taste it. They may eat the finger or bury it for good luck. After that the children are hacked to death on the wooden elephants.”

“They can’t do that,” Joshua said.

“Oh yes, the cult of Kali may do anything they wish. It is her city, Kalighat.” [“Calcutta” on the Friendly Flyer map.] “My little Vitra is lost. We can only pray that she is reincarnated to a higher level.”

Joshua patted the Untouchable’s hand. “Why did you call Biff a heretic when he told you that we were Buddhist monks?”

“That Gautama said that a man may go directly from any level to join Brahma, without fulfilling his dharma, that is heresy.”

“That would be better for you, wouldn’t it? Since you’re on the bottom of the ladder?”

“You cannot believe what you do not believe,” Rumi said. “I am an Untouchable because my karma dictates it.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “No sense sitting under a bodhi tree for a few hours when you can get the same thing through thousands of lifetimes of misery.”

“Of course, that’s ignoring the fact that you’re a gentile and going to suffer eternal damnation either way,” said Josh.

“Yeah, leaving that out altogether.”

“But we’ll get your daughter back,” Joshua said.

Joshua wanted to rush into Kalighat and demand the return of Rumi’s daughter and the release of all the other victims in the name of what was good and right. Joshua’s solution to everything was to lead with righteous indignation, and there is a time and a place unto that, but there is also a time for cunning and guile (Ecclesiastes 9 or something). I was able to talk him into an alternate plan by using flawless logic:

“Josh, did the Vegemites smite the Marmites by charging in and demanding justice at the end of a sword? I think not. These Brahmans cut off and eat the fingers of children. I know there’s no finger-cutting commandment, Josh, but still, I’m guessing that these people think differently than we do. They call the Buddha a heretic, and he was one of their princes. How do you think they’ll receive a scrawny brown kid claiming to be the son of a god who doesn’t even live in their area?”

“Good point. But we still have to save the child.”

“Of course.”

“How?”

“Extreme sneakiness.”

“You’ll have to be in charge then.”

“First we need to see this city and this temple where the sacrifices will be held.”

Joshua scratched his head. His hair had mostly grown back, but was still short. “The Vegemites smote the Marmites?”

“Yeah, Excretions three-six.”

“I don’t remember that. I guess I need to brush up on my Torah.”

The statue of Kali over her altar was carved from black stone and stood as tall as ten men. She wore a necklace of human skulls around her neck and a girdle made of severed human hands at her hips. Her open maw was lined with a saw blade of teeth over which a stream of fresh blood had been poured. Even her toenails curved into vicious blades which dug into the pile of twisted, graven corpses on which she stood. She had four arms, one holding a cruel, serpentine sword, another a severed head by the hair; the third hand she held crooked, as if beckoning her victims to the place of dark destruction to which all are destined, and the fourth was posed downward, in a manner presenting the goddess’s hand-girded hips, as if asking the eternal question, “Does this outfit make me look fat?”

The raised altar lay in the middle of an open garden that was surrounded by trees. The altar was wide enough that five hundred people could have stood in the shadow of the black goddess. Deep grooves had been cut in the stone to channel the blood of sacrifices into vessels, so it could be poured through the goddess’s jaws. Leading to the altar was a wide stone-paved boulevard, which was lined on either side by great elephants carved from wood and set on turntables so they could be rotated. The trunks and front feet of the elephants were stained rusty brown, and here and there the trunks exhibited deep gouges from blades that had hewn through a child into the mahogany.

“Vitra isn’t being kept here,” Joshua said.

We were hiding behind a tree near the temple garden, dressed as natives, fake caste marks and all. Having lost when we drew lots, I was the one dressed as a woman.

“I think this is a bodhi tree,” I said, “just like Buddha sat under! It’s so exciting. I’m feeling sort of enlightened just standing here. Really, I can feel ripe bodhies squishing between my toes.”

Joshua looked at my feet. “I don’t think those are bodhies. There was a cow here before us.”

I lifted my foot out of the mess. “Cows are overrated in this country. Under the Buddha’s tree too. Is nothing sacred?”

“There’s no temple to this temple,” Joshua said. “We have to ask Rumi where the sacrifices are kept until the festival.”

“He won’t know. He’s Untouchable. These guys are Brahmans—priests—they wouldn’t tell him anything. That would be like a Sadducee telling a Samaritan what the Holy of Holies looked like.”

“Then we have to find them ourselves,” Joshua said.

“We know where they’re going to be at midnight, we’ll get them then.”

“I say we find these Brahmans and force them to stop the whole festival.”

“We’ll just storm up to their temple and tell them to stop it?”

“Yes.”

“And they will.”

“Yes.”

“That’s cute, Josh. Let’s go find Rumi. I have a plan.”

“You make a very attractive woman,” Rumi said from the comfort of his pit. “Did I tell you that my wife has passed on to her next incarnation and that I am alone?”

“Yeah, you mentioned that.” He seemed to have given up on us getting his daughter back. “What happened to the rest of your family, anyway?”

“They drowned.”

“I’m sorry. In the Ganges?”

“No, at home. It was the monsoon season. Little Vitra and I had gone to the market to buy some swill, and there was a sudden downpour. When we returned…” He shrugged.

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive, Rumi, but there is a chance that your loss could have been caused by—oh, I don’t know—perhaps the fact that you LIVE IN A FUCKING PIT!”

“That’s not helping, Biff,” Joshua said. “You said you had a plan?”