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

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.
    “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