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

poison and antidote from around her neck and put it around mine. It might have seemed a strange gift to anyone else, but I was the sorceress’s apprentice and it seemed perfect to me. She tucked the black glass knife into my sash. “No matter how long it takes, come back and see me. I promise I won’t paint you blue again.”
    I promised her and we kissed and I climbed on my camel and Joshua and I rode off. I tried not to look back, once again, to another woman who had stolen my heart.
    We rode a half a furlong apart, each of us considering the past and future of our lives, who we had been and who we were going to be, and it was a couple of hours before I caught up with Joshua and broke the silence.
    I thought of how Joy had taught me to read and speak Chinese, to mix potions and poisons, to cheat at gambling, to perform slight of hand, and where and how to properly touch a woman. All of it without expecting anything in return. “Are all women stronger and better than me?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    It was another day before we spoke again.

P art III
Compassion
Torah! Torah! Torah!
WAR CRY OF THE KAMIKAZE RABBIS

C hapter 16
    We were twelve days into our journey, following Balthasar’s meticulously drawn map, when we came to the wall.
    “So,” I said, “what do you think of the wall?”
    “It’s great,” said Joshua.
    “It’s not that great,” I said.
    There was a long line waiting to get through the giant gate, where scores of bureaucrats collected taxes from caravan masters as they passed through. The gatehouses alone were each as big as one of Herod’s palaces, and soldiers rode horses atop the wall, patrolling far into the distance. We were a good league back from the gate and the line didn’t seem to be moving.
    “This is going to take all day,” I said. “Why would they build such a thing? If you can build a wall like this then you ought to be able to raise an army large enough to defeat any invaders.”
    “Lao-tzu built this wall,” Joshua said.
    “The old master who wrote the Tao? I don’t think so.”
    “What does the Tao value above all else?”
    “Compassion? Those other two jewel things?”
    “No, inaction. Contemplation. Steadiness. Conservatism. A wall is the defense of a country that values inaction. But a wall imprisons the people of a country as much as it protects them. That’s why Balthasar had us go this way. He wanted me to see the error in the Tao. One can’t be free without action.”
    “So he spent all that time teaching us the Tao so we could see that it was wrong.”
    “No, not wrong. Not all of it. The compassion, humility, and moderation of the Tao, these are the qualities of a righteous man, but not inaction. These people are slaves to inaction.”
    “You worked as a stonecutter, Josh,” I said, nodding toward the massive wall. “You think this wall was built through inaction?”
    “The magus wasn’t teaching us about action as in work, it was action as in change. That’s why we learned Confucius first—everything having to do with the order of our fathers, the law, manners. Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won’t break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon. That’s what Balthasar was trying to teach me.”
    “I’ve said it before, Josh—and you know how I love bacon—but I don’t think bacon is enough for the Messiah to bring.”
    “Change,” Joshua said. “A Messiah has to bring change. Change comes through action. Balthasar once said to me, ‘There’s no such thing as a conservative hero.’ He was wise, that old man.”
    I thought about the old magus as I looked at the wall stretching over the hills, then at the line of travelers ahead of us. A small city had grown up at the entrance to the wall to accommodate the needs of the delayed travelers along the Silk Road and it boiled with merchants hawking food and drink along the line.
    “Screw it,” I said. “This is going to take forever. How long can it be? Let’s go around.”

    A month later, when we had returned to the same gate and we were standing in line to get through, Joshua asked: “So what do you think of the wall now? I mean, now that we’ve seen so much more of it?”
    “I think it’s ostentatious and unpleasant,” I said.
    “If they don’t have a name for it, you should suggest that.”
    And so it came to pass that through