Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal Page 5

  “Like a dog,” I said.

  “Yes!” Bart described a flourish in the air with the rat dog. “Exactly!” The little dog made as if to upchuck from the motion. Bart put him down and he wobbled away.

  A life without worry: right then it sounded wonderful. I mean, I didn’t want to live in the dirt and have other people think me mad, like Bartholomew, but a dog’s life really didn’t sound bad. The idiot had been hiding a deep wisdom all these years.

  “I’m trying to learn to lick my own balls,” Bart said.

  Maybe not. “I have to go find Joshua.”

  “You know he is the Messiah, don’t you?”

  “Wait a minute, you’re not a Jew—I thought you didn’t believe in any religion.”

  “The dogs told me he was the Messiah. I believe them. Tell Joshua I believe them.”

  “The dogs told you?”

  “They’re Jewish dogs.”

  “Right, let me know how the ball licking works out.”

  “Shalom.”

  Who would have thought that Joshua would find his first apostle among the dirt and dogs of Nazareth. Bleh.

  I found Joshua at the synagogue, listening to the Pharisees lecture on the Law. I stepped through the group of boys sitting on the floor and whispered to him.

  “Bartholomew says that he knows you are the Messiah.”

  “The idiot? Did you ask him how long he’s known?”

  “He says the village dogs told him.”

  “I never thought to ask the dogs.”

  “He says that we should live simply, like dogs, carry nothing, no affectations—whatever that means.”

  “Bartholomew said that? Sounds like an Essene. He’s much smarter than he looks.”

  “He’s trying to learn to lick his own balls.”

  “I’m sure there’s something in the Law that forbids that. I’ll ask the rabbi.”

  “I’m not sure you want to bring that up to the Pharisee.”

  “Did you tell your father about the angel?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I’ve spoken to Joseph, he’s going to let me learn to be a stonecutter with you. I don’t want your father to change his mind about teaching me. I think the angel would frighten him.” Joshua looked at me for the first time, turning from the Pharisee, who droned on in Hebrew. “Have you been crying?”

  “Me? No, Bart’s stench made my eyes water.”

  Joshua put his hand on my forehead and all the sadness and trepidation seemed to drain out of me in an instant. He smiled. “Better?”

  “I’m jealous of you and Maggie.”

  “That can’t be good for your neck.”

  “What?”

  “Trying to lick your own balls. It’s got to be hard on your neck.”

  “Did you hear me? I’m jealous of you and Maggie.”

  “I’m still learning, Biff. There are things I don’t understand yet. The Lord said, ‘I am a jealous God.’ So jealousy should be a good thing.”

  “But it makes me feel so bad.”

  “You see the puzzle, then? Jealousy makes you feel bad, but God is jealous, so it must be good, yet when a dog licks its balls it seems to enjoy it, but it must be bad under the Law.”

  Suddenly Joshua was yanked to his feet by the ear. The Pharisee glared at him. “Is the Law of Moses too boring for you, Joshua bar Joseph?”

  “I have a question, Rabbi,” Joshua said.

  “Oh, jeez.” I hid my head in my arms.

  Chapter 4

  Yet another reason that I loathe the heavenly scum with whom I share this room: today I found that I had offended our intrepid room service waiter, Jesus. How was I to know? When he brought our pizza for dinner, I gave him one of the American silver coins that we received from the airport sweet shop called Cinnabon. He scoffed at me—scoffed—then, thinking better of it, he said, “Señor, I know you are foreign, so you do not know, but this is a very insulting tip. Better you just sign the room service slip so I get the fee that is added automatically. I tell you this because you have been very kind, and I know you do not mean to offend, but another of the waiters would spit in your food if you should offer him this.”

  I glared at the angel, who, as usual, was lying on the bed watching television, and for the first time I realized that he did not understand Jesus’ language. He did not possess the gift of tongues he had bestowed on me. He spoke Aramaic to me, and he seemed to know Hebrew and enough English to understand television, but of Spanish he understood not a word. I apologized to Jesus and sent him on his way with a promise that I would make it up to him, then I wheeled on the angel.

  “You fool, these coins, these dimes, are nearly worthless in this country.”

  “What do you mean, they look like the silver dinars we dug up in Jerusalem, they are worth a fortune.”

  He was right, in a way. After he called me up from the dead I led him to a cemetery in the valley of Ben Hiddon, and there, hidden behind a stone where Judas had put it two thousand years ago, was the blood money—thirty silver dinars. But for a little tarnish, they looked just as they did on the day I had taken them, and they were almost identical to the coin this country calls the dime (except for the image of Tiberius on the dinars, and some other Caesar on the dime). We had taken the dinars to an antiquities dealer in the old city (which looked nearly the same as it did when I’d last walked there, except that the Temple was gone and in its place two great mosques). The merchant gave us twenty thousand dollars in American money for them. It was this money that we had traveled on, and deposited at the hotel desk for our expenses. The angel told me the dimes must have the same worth as the dinars, and I, like a fool, believed him.

  “You should have told me,” I said to the angel. “If I could leave this room I would know myself.”

  “You have work to do,” the angel said. Then he leapt to his feet and shouted at the television, “The wrath of the Lord shall fall upon ye, Stephanos!”

  “What in the hell are you shouting at?”

  The angel wagged a finger at the screen, “He has exchanged Catherine’s baby for its evil twin, which he fathered with her sister while she was in a coma, yet Catherine does not realize his evil deed, as he has had his face changed to impersonate the bank manager who is foreclosing on Catherine’s husband’s business. If I was not trapped here I would personally drag the fiend straight to hell.”

  For days now the angel had been watching serial dramas on television, alternately shouting at the screen or bursting into tears. He had stopped reading over my shoulder, so I had just tried to ignore him, but now I realized what was going on.

  “It’s not real, Raziel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s drama, like the Greeks used to do. They are actors in a play.”

  “No, no one could pretend to such evil.”

  “That’s not all. Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus? Not real. Characters in a play.”

  “You lying dog!”

  “If you’d ever leave the room and look at how real people talk you’d know that, you yellow-haired cretin. But no, you stay here perched on my shoulder like a trained bird. I am dead two thousand years and even I know better.” (I still need to get a look at that book in the dresser. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could goad the angel into giving me five minutes privacy.)

  “You know nothing,” said Raziel. “I have destroyed whole cities in my time.”

  “Sort of makes me wonder if you destroyed the right ones. That’d be embarrassing, huh?”

  Then an advertisement came on the screen for a magazine that promised to “fill in all the blanks” and give the real inside story to all of soap operas: Soap Opera Digest. I watched the angel’s eyes widen. He grabbed the phone and rang the front desk.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need that book.”

  “Have them send up Jesus,” I said. “He’ll help you get it.”

  On our first day of work, Joshua and I were up before dawn. We met near the well
and filled the waterskins our fathers had given us, then ate our breakfasts, flatbread and cheese, as we walked together to Sepphoris. The road, although packed dirt most of the way, was smooth and easy to walk. (If Rome saw to anything in its territories, it was the lifelines of its army.) As we walked we watched the rock-strewn hills turn pink under the rising sun, and I saw Joshua shudder as if a chill wind had danced up his spine.

  “The glory of God is in everything we see,” he said. “We must never forget that.”

  “I just stepped in camel dung. Tomorrow let’s leave after it’s light out.”

  “I just realized it, that is why the old woman wouldn’t live again. I forgot that it wasn’t my power that made her arise, it was the Lord’s. I brought her back for the wrong reason, out of arrogance, so she died a second time.”

  “It squished over the side of my sandal. Well, that’s going to smell all day.”

  “But perhaps it was because I did not touch her. When I’ve brought other creatures back to life, I’ve always touched them.”

  “Is there something in the Law about taking your camel off the road to do his business? There should be. If not the Law of Moses, then the Romans should have one. I mean, they won’t hesitate to crucify a Jew who rebels, there should be some punishment for messing up their roads. Don’t you think? I’m not saying crucifixion, but a good smiting in the mouth or something.”

  “But how could I have touched the corpse when it is forbidden by the Law? The mourners would have stopped me.”

  “Can we stop for a second so I can scrape off my sandal? Help me find a stick. That pile was as big as my head.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Biff.”

  “I am listening. Look, Joshua, I don’t think the Law applies to you. I mean, you’re the Messiah, God is supposed to tell you what he wants, isn’t he?”

  “I ask, but I receive no answer.”

  “Look, you’re doing fine. Maybe that woman didn’t live again because she was stubborn. Old people are that way. You have to throw water on my grandfather to get him up from his nap. Try a young dead person next time.”

  “What if I am not really the Messiah?”

  “You mean you’re not sure? The angel didn’t give it away? You think that God might be playing a joke on you? I don’t think so. I don’t know the Torah as well as you, Joshua, but I don’t remember God having a sense of humor.”

  Finally, a grin. “He gave me you as a best friend, didn’t he?”

  “Help me find a stick.”

  “Do you think I’ll make a good stonemason?”

  “Just don’t be better at it than I am. That’s all I ask.”

  “You stink.”

  “What have I been saying?”

  “You really think Maggie likes me?”

  “Are you going to be like this every morning? Because if you are, you can walk to work alone.”

  The gates of Sepphoris were like a funnel of humanity. Farmers poured out into their fields and groves, craftsmen and builders crowded in, while merchants hawked their wares and beggars moaned at the roadside. Joshua and I stopped outside the gates to marvel and were nearly run down by a man leading a string of donkeys laden with baskets of stone.

  It wasn’t that we had never seen a city before. Jerusalem was fifty times larger than Sepphoris, and we had been there many times for feast days, but Jerusalem was a Jewish city—it was the Jewish city. Sepphoris was the Roman fortress city of Galilee, and as soon as we saw the statue of Venus at the gates we knew that this was something different.

  I elbowed Joshua in the ribs. “Graven image.” I had never seen the human form depicted before.

  “Sinful,” Joshua said.

  “She’s naked.”

  “Don’t look.”

  “She’s completely naked.”

  “It is forbidden. We should go away from here, find your father.” He caught me by my sleeve and dragged me through the gates into the city.

  “How can they allow that?” I asked. “You’d think that our people would tear it down.”

  “They did, a band of Zealots. Joseph told me. The Romans caught them and crucified them by this road.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Joseph told me not to speak of it.”

  “You could see her breasts.”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “How can I not think about it? I’ve never seen a breast without a baby attached to it. They’re more—more friendly in pairs like that.”

  “Which way to where we are supposed to work?”

  “My father said to come to the western corner of the city and we would see where the work was being done.”

  “Then come along.” He was still dragging me, his head down, stomping along like an angry mule.

  “Do you think Maggie’s breasts will look like that?”

  My father had been commissioned to build a house for a wealthy Greek on the western side of the city. When Joshua and I arrived my father was already there, directing the slaves who were hoisting a cut stone into place on the wall. I suppose I expected something different. I suppose I was surprised that anyone, even a slave, would do as my father instructed. The slaves were Nubians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, criminals, debtors, spoils of war, accidents of birth; they were wiry, filthy men, many wearing nothing more than sandals and a loincloth. In another life they might have commanded an army or lived in a palace, but now they sweated in the morning chill, moving stones heavy enough to break a donkey.

  “Are these your slaves?” Joshua asked my father.

  “Am I a rich man, Joshua? No, these slaves belong to the Romans. The Greek who is building this house has hired them for the construction.”

  “Why do they do as you ask? There are so many of them. You are only one man.”

  My father hung his head. “I hope that you never see what the lead tips of a Roman whip do to a man’s body. All of these men have, and even seeing it has broken their spirit as men. I pray for them every night.”

  “I hate the Romans,” I said.

  “Do you, little one, do you?” A man’s voice from behind.

  “Hail, Centurion,” my father said, his eyes going wide.

  Joshua and I turned to see Justus Gallicus, the centurion from the funeral at Japhia, standing among the slaves. “Alphaeus, it seems you are raising a litter of Zealots.”

  My father put his hands on my and Joshua’s shoulders. “This is my son, Levi, and his friend Joshua. They begin their apprenticeship today. Just boys,” he said, by way of apology.

  Justus approached, looked quickly at me, then stared at Joshua for a long time. “I know you, boy. I’ve seen you before.”

  “The funeral at Japhia,” I said quickly. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the wasp-waisted short sword that hung from the centurion’s belt.

  “No,” the Roman seemed to be searching his memory. “Not Japhia. I’ve seen this face in a picture.”

  “That can’t be,” my father said. “We are forbidden by our faith from depicting the human form.”

  Justus glared at him. “I am not a stranger to your people’s primitive beliefs, Alphaeus. Still, this boy is familiar.”

  Joshua stared up at the centurion with a completely blank expression.

  “You feel for these slaves, boy? You would free them if you could?”

  Joshua nodded. “I would. A man’s spirit should be his own to give to God.”

  “You know, there was a slave about eighty years ago who talked like you. He raised an army of slaves against Rome, beat back two of our armies, took over all the territories south of Rome. It’s a story every Roman soldier must learn.”

  “Why, what happened?” I asked.

  “We crucified him,” Justus said. “By the side of the road, and his body was eaten by ravens. The lesson we all learn is that nothing can stand against Rome. A lesson you need to learn, boy, along with your stonecutting.”

  Just then another Roman soldier approached, a legionnaire, no
t wearing the cape or the helmet crest of the centurion. He said something to Justus in Latin, then looked at Joshua and paused. In rough Aramaic he said, “Hey, didn’t I see that kid on some bread once?”

  “Wasn’t him,” I said.

  “Really? Sure looks like him.”

  “Nope, that was another kid on the bread.”

  “It was me,” said Joshua.

  I backhanded him across the forehead, knocking him to the ground. “No it wasn’t. He’s insane. Sorry.”

  The soldier shook his head and hurried off after Justus.

  I offered a hand to help Joshua up. “You’re going to have to learn to lie.”

  “I am? But I feel like I’m here to tell the truth.”

  “Yeah, sure, but not now.”

  I don’t exactly know what I expected it would be like working as a stonemason, but I know that in less than a week Joshua was having second thoughts about not becoming a carpenter. Cutting great stones with small iron chisels was very hard work. Who knew?

  “Look around, do you see any trees?” Joshua mocked. “Rocks, Josh, rocks.”

  “It’s only hard because we don’t know what we’re doing. It will get easier.”

  Joshua looked at my father, who was stripped to the waist, chiseling away on a stone the size of a donkey, while a dozen slaves waited to hoist it into place. He was covered with gray dust and streams of sweat drew dark lines between cords of muscle straining in his back and arms. “Alphaeus,” Joshua called, “does the work get easier once you know what you are doing?”

  “Your lungs grow thick with stone dust and your eyes bleary from the sun and fragments thrown up by the chisel. You pour your lifeblood out into works of stone for Romans who will take your money in taxes to feed soldiers who will nail your people to crosses for wanting to be free. Your back breaks, your bones creak, your wife screeches at you, and your children torment you with open, begging mouths, like greedy baby birds in the nest. You go to bed every night so tired and beaten that you pray to the Lord to send the angel of death to take you in your sleep so you don’t have to face another morning. It also has its downside.”