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

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.”

C hapter 21
    “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?”
    “Right. Rumi, am I correct in assuming that these pits, when someone is not living in them, are used for tanning hides?”
    “Yes, it is work that only Untouchables may do.”
    “That would account for the lovely smell. I assume you use urine in the tanning process, right?”
    “Yes, urine, mashed brains, and tea are the main ingredients.”
    “Show me the pit where the urine is condensed.”
    “The Rajneesh family is living there.”
    “That’s okay, we’ll bring them a present. Josh, do you have any lint in the bottom of your satchel?”
    “What are you up to?”
    “Alchemy,” I said. “The subtle manipulation of the elements. Watch and learn.”
    When it was not being used, the urine pit was the home of the Rajneesh family, and they were more than happy to give