Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

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.

C hapter 19
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