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

hairless monk wearing a saffron-colored robe led us across an outer courtyard paved with flagstone through an austere doorway into the monastery. The floor inside was stone, and though immaculately clean, it was no more finished than the flagstone of the courtyard. There were only a few windows, more like arrow slits, cut high in the wall, and little light penetrated the interior once the front door was closed. The air was thick with incense and filled with a buzzing chorus of male voices producing a rhythmic chant that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once and made it seem as if my ribs and kneecaps were vibrating from the inside. Whatever language they were chanting in I didn’t understand, but the message was clear: these men were invoking something that transcended this world.
    The monk led us up a narrow stairway into a long, narrow corridor lined with open doorways no higher than my waist. As we passed I could see that these must be the monks’ cells, and each was just large enough to accommodate a small man lying down. There was a woven mat on the floor and a woolen blanket rolled up at the top of each cell, but there was no evidence of personal possessions nor storage for any. There were no doors to close for privacy. In short, it was very much like what I had grown up with, which didn’t make me feel any better about it. Nearly five years of the relative opulence at Balthasar’s fortress had spoiled me. I yearned for a soft bed and a half-dozen Chinese concubines to hand-feed me and rub my body with fragrant oils. (Well, I said I was spoiled.)
    At last the monk led us into a large open chamber with a high stone ceiling and I realized that we were no longer in a man-made structure, but a large cave. At the far end of the cave was a stone statue of a man seated cross-legged, his eyes closed, his hands before him with the first fingers and thumbs forming closed circles. Lit by the orange light of candles, a haze of incense smoke hanging about his shaved head, he appeared to be praying. The monk, our guide, disappeared into the darkness at the sides of the cave and Joshua and I approached the statue cautiously, stepping carefully across the rough floor of the cave.
    (We had long since lost our surprise and outrage at graven images. The world at large and the art we had seen in our travels served to dampen even that grave commandment. “Bacon,” Joshua said when I asked him about it.)
    This great room was the source of the chanting we had been hearing since entering the monastery, and after seeing the monks’ cells we determined that there must be at least twenty monks adding their voices to the droning, although the way the cave echoed it might have been one or a thousand. As we approached the statue, trying to ascertain what sort of stone it was made from, it opened its eyes.
    “Is that you, Joshua?” it said in perfect Aramaic.
    “Yes,” said Joshua.
    “And who is this?”
    “This is my friend, Biff.”
    “Now he will be called Twenty-one, when he needs to be called, and you shall be Twenty-two. While you are here you have no name.” The statue wasn’t a statue, of course, it was Gaspar. The orange light of the candles and his complete lack of motion or expression had only made him appear to be made of stone. I suppose we were also thrown off because we were expecting a Chinese. This man looked as if he was from India. His skin was even darker than ours and he wore the red dot on his head that we had seen on Indian traders in Kabul and Antioch. It was difficult to tell his age, as he had no hair or beard and there wasn’t a line in his face.
    “He’s the Messiah,” I said. “The Son of God. You came to see him at his birth.”
    Still no expression from Gaspar. He said, “The Messiah must die if you are to learn. Kill him tomorrow.”
    “’Scuse me?” I said.
    “Tomorrow you will learn. Feed them,” said Gaspar.
    Another monk, who looked almost identical to the first monk, came out of the dark and took Joshua by the shoulder. He led us out of the chapel chamber and back to the cells where he showed Joshua and me our accommodations. He took our satchels away from us and left. He returned in a few minutes with a bowl of rice and a cup of weak tea for each of us. Then he went away, having said nothing since letting us in.
    “Chatty little guy,” I said.
    Joshua scooped some rice into his mouth and grimaced. It was cold and unsalted. “Should I be worried about what he