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

everyone’s meditation with your infernal noise, you barbarian?
    “Joshua has attained enlightenment,” I said.
    Gaspar said nothing, meaning, So? That’s the idea, you unworthy spawn of a razor-burned yak. I could tell that’s what he meant by the tone in his voice.
    “So he’s invisible.”
    “Mu,” Joshua’s voice said. Mu meaning nothing beyond nothingness in Chinese.
    In an act of distinctly uncontrolled spontaneity, Gaspar screamed like a little girl and jumped four feet straight in the air. Monks stopped chanting and looked up. “What was that?”
    “That’s Joshua.”
    “I am free of self, free of ego,” Joshua said. There was a little squeak and then a nasty stench infused us.
    I looked at Gaspar and he shook his head. He looked at me and I shrugged.
    “Was that you?” Gaspar asked Joshua.
    “Me in the sense that I am part of all things, or me in the sense of I am the one who poofed the gefilte gas?” asked Josh.
    “The latter,” said Gaspar.
    “No,” said Josh.
    “You lie,” I said, as amazed at that as I was at the fact that I couldn’t see my friend.
    “I should stop talking now. Having a voice separates me from all that is.” With that he was quiet, and Gaspar looked as if he were about to panic.
    “Don’t go away, Joshua,” the abbot said. “Stay as you are if you must, but come to the tea chamber at dawn tomorrow.” Gaspar looked to me. “You come too.”
    “I have to train on the poles in the morning,” I said.
    “You are excused,” Gaspar said. “And if Joshua talks to you anymore tonight, try to persuade him to share our existence.” Then he hurried off in a very unenlightened way.

    That night I was falling asleep when I heard a squeak in the hall outside of my cell, then an incredibly foul odor jolted me awake.
    “Joshua?” I crawled out of my cell into the hall. There were narrow slots high in the walls through which moonlight could sift, but I saw nothing but faint blue light on the stone. “Joshua, is that you?”
    “How could you tell?” Joshua’s disembodied voice said.
    “Well, honestly, you stink, Josh.”
    “The last time we went to the village for alms, a woman gave Number Fourteen and me a thousand-year-old egg. It didn’t sit well.”
    “Can’t imagine why. I don’t think you’re supposed to eat an egg after, oh, two hundred years or so.”
    “They bury them, leave them there, then dig them up.”
    “Is that why I can’t see you?”
    “No, that’s because of my meditation. I’ve let go of everything. I’ve achieved perfect freedom.”
    “You’ve been free ever since we left Galilee.”
    “It’s not the same. That’s what I came to tell you, that I can’t free our people from the rule of Romans.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because that’s not true freedom. Any freedom that can be given can be taken away. Moses didn’t need to ask Pharaoh to release our people, our people didn’t need to be released from the Babylonians, and they don’t need to be released from the Romans. I can’t give them freedom. Freedom is in their hearts, they merely have to find it.”
    “So you’re saying you’re not the Messiah?”
    “How can I be? How can a humble being presume to grant something that is not his to give?”
    “If not you, who, Josh? Angels and miracles, your ability to heal and comfort? Who else is chosen if not you?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I wanted to say good-bye. I’ll be with you, as part of all things, but you won’t perceive me until you become enlightened. You can’t imagine how this feels, Biff. You are everything, you love everything, you need nothing.”
    “Okay. You won’t be needing your shoes then, right?”
    “Possessions stand between you and freedom.”
    “Sounded like a yes to me. Do me one favor though, okay?”
    “Of course.”
    “Listen to what Gaspar has to say to you tomorrow.” And give me time to think up an intelligent answer to someone who’s invisible and crazy, I thought to myself. Joshua was innocent, but he wasn’t stupid. I had to come up with something to save the Messiah so he could save the rest of us.
    “I’m going to the temple to sit. I’ll see you in the morning.”
    “Not if I see you first.”
    “Funny,” said Josh.

    Gaspar looked especially old that morning when I met him in the tea room. His personal quarters consisted of a cell no bigger than my own, but it was located just off the tea room and had a door which he could close. It was cold in