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

“We’d better find some breakfast if we’re going to travel.”
    Joshua looked at me as perplexed as he had at Gaspar a few minutes before. “Do you think he needs that stick?”

    Number Seven Monk handed us our satchels, bowed deeply, then went back into the monastery and closed the door, leaving Joshua and me standing there by the gong. It was a clear morning and we could see the smoke of cook fires rising from the village below.
    “We should have asked for some breakfast,” I said. “This is going to be a long climb down.”
    “I’m not leaving,” Josh said.
    “You’re kidding.”
    “I have a lot more to learn here.”
    “Like how to take a beating?”
    “Maybe.”
    “I’m not sure Gaspar will let me back in. He didn’t seem too pleased with me.”
    “You threatened to kill him.”
    “I did not, I warned that I’d kill him. Big difference.”
    “So you’re not going to stay?”
    And there it was, the question. Was I going to stay with my best friend, eat cold rice, sleep on a cold floor, take abuse from a mad monk, and very likely have my skull split open, or was I going to go? Go where? Home? Back to Kabul and Joy? Despite the long journey, it seemed easier to go back the way I had come. At least some level of familiarity would be waiting there. But if I was making easy choices, why was I there in the first place?
    “Are you sure you have to stay here, Josh? Can’t we go find Melchior?”
    “I know I have things to learn here.” Joshua picked up the drumstick and rang the gong. In a few minutes the little port opened in the door and a monk we had never seen before stuck his face in the opening. “Go away. Your nature is dense and your breath smells like a yak’s ass.” He slammed the hatch.
    Joshua rang the gong again.
    “I don’t like that whole thing about killing the Messiah. I can’t stay here, Joshua. Not if he’s going to hit you.”
    “I have a feeling I’m going to get hit quite a few more times until I learn what he needs me to know.”
    “I have to go.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “But I could stay.”
    “No. Trust me, you have to leave me now, so you won’t later. I’ll see you again.” He turned away from me and faced the door.
    “Oh, you don’t know anything else, but you know that all of a sudden?”
    “Yes. Go, Biff. Good-bye.”
    I walked down the narrow path and nearly stumbled over a precipice when I heard the hatch in the door open. “Where are you going?” shouted the monk.
    “Home,” I said.
    “Good, go frighten some children with your glorious ignorance.”
    “I will.” I tried to keep my shoulders steady as I walked away, but it felt like someone was ripping my soul through the muscles of my back. I would not turn around, I vowed, and slowly, painfully, I made my way down the path, convinced that I would never see Joshua again.

C hapter 17
I’ve settled into some sort of droning routine here at the hotel, and in that way it reminds me of those times in China. My waking hours are filled with writing these pages, watching television, trying to irritate the angel, and sneaking off to the bathroom to read the Gospels. And I think it’s the latter that’s sent my sleeping hours into a landscape of nightmare that leaves me spent even when I wake. I’ve finished Mark, and again this fellow talks of a resurrection, of acts beyond the time of my and Joshua’s death. It’s a similar story to that told by the Matthew fellow, the events jumbled somewhat, but basically the story of Joshua’s ministry, but it’s the telling of the events of that last week of Passover that chills me. The angel hasn’t been able to keep the secret that Joshua’s teachings survived and grew to vast popularity. (He’s stopped even changing the channel at the mention of Joshua on television, as he did when we first arrived.) But is this the book from which Joshua’s teachings are drawn? I dream of blood, and suffering, and loneliness so empty that an echo can’t survive, and I wake up screaming, soaked in my own sweat, and even after I’m awake the loneliness remains for a while. Last night when I awoke I thought I saw a woman standing at the end of my bed, and beside her, the angel, his black wings spread and touching the walls of the room on either side. Then, before I could get my wits about me, the angel wrapped his wings around the woman and she disappeared in the darkness of them and was gone. I think I really woke up then, because the angel was lying