Lamb (14 page)

“Hey Biff, I’m learning about Chi,” Joshua shouted into my ear. “It flows all around us. You can’t see it, or hear it, or smell it, but it’s there.”

“You don’t need to shout,” said Balthasar. Which is what I would have said, if I could have said anything.

Joshua put some drops in my eyes. “Sorry.” Then to Balthasar, “This poison, where did it come from?”

“I studied under a sage in China who had been the emperor’s royal poisoner. He taught me this, and many other of the magics of the five elements.”

“Why would an emperor need a poisoner?”

“A question that only a peasant would ask.”

“An answer that only an ass would give,” said Joshua.

Balthasar laughed. “So be it, child of the star. A question asked in earnest deserves an earnest answer. An emperor has many enemies to dispatch, but more important, he has many enemies who would dispatch him. The sage spent most of his time concocting antidotes.”

“So there’s an antidote to this poison,” Joshua said, poking me in the ribs again.

“In good time. In good time. Have some more wine, Joshua. I wish to discuss with you the three jewels of the Tao. The three jewels of the Tao are compassion, moderation, and humility…”

An hour later, four Chinese girls came and picked me up, wiped the floor where I had drooled, and carried me to our quarters. As they passed the great ironclad door I could hear scraping and a voice in my head that said, “Hey kid, open the door,” but the girls made no notice of it. Back in my room, the girls bathed me and poured some rich broth into me, then put me to bed and closed my eyes.

I could hear Joshua enter the room and shuffle around preparing for bed. “Balthasar says he will have Joy give you the antidote to the poison soon, but first you have a lesson to learn. He says that this is the Chinese way of teaching. Strange, don’t you think?”

Had I been able to make a sound, I would have agreed, yes, indeed it was strange.

So you know:

Balthasar’s concubines were eight in number and their names were:

And I found myself wondering, as a man does, about origins and motivations and such—as each of the concubines was more beautiful than the last, regardless of what order you put them in, which was weird—so after several weeks passed, and I could no longer stand the curiosity scratching at my brain like a cat in a basket, I waited until one of the rare occasions when I was alone with Balthasar, and I asked.

“Why Sue?”

“Short for Susanna,” Balthasar said.

So there you go.

Their full names were somewhat ungainly, and to try to pronounce them in Chinese produced a sound akin to throwing a bag of silverware down a flight of steps (ting, tong, yang, wing, etc.) so Joshua and I called the girls as follows:

which we couldn’t figure out how to shorten.

Except for a group of men who brought supplies from Kabul every two weeks, and while there would do any heavy moving, the eight young women did everything around the fortress. Despite the remoteness and the obvious wealth that the fortress housed, there were no guards. I found that curious.

Over the next week Joy tutored me in the characters that I would need to know to read the
Book of the Divine Elixirs or the Nine Tripods of the Yellow Emperor
, and the
Book of Liquid Pearl in Nine Cycles and of the Nine Elixirs of the Divine Immortals
. The plan was that once I became conversant in these two ancient texts, I would be able to assist Balthasar in his quest for immortality. That, by the way, was the reason that we were there, the reason that Balthasar had followed the star to Bethlehem at Joshua’s birth, and the reason that he had put Ahmad on notice to look for a Jew seeking the African magus. Balthasar sought immortality, and he believed that Joshua held the key to it. Of course we didn’t know that at the time.

My concentration while studying the symbols was particularly acute, helped by the fact that I could not move a muscle. Each morning Two Fu Dogs and Pillows (both named for their voluptuousness, which evidently came with considerable strength) would pull me from bed, squeeze me over the latrine, bathe me, pour some broth into me, then take me to the library and prop me in a chair while Joy lectured on Chinese characters, which she painted with a wet brush on large sheets of slate set on easels. Sometimes the other girls would stay and pose my body into various positions that amused them, and as much as I should have been annoyed by the humiliation, the truth be told, watching Pillows and Two Fu Dogs jiggle in paroxysms of girlish laughter was fast becoming the high point of my paralyzed day.

At midday, Joy would take a break while two or more of the other girls squoze me over the latrine, poured more broth into me, and then teased me mercilessly until Joy returned, clapped her hands, and sent them away well scolded. ( Joy was the bull-ox concubine of them all, despite her tiny feet.)

Sometimes during these breaks, Joshua would leave his own lessons and come to the library to visit.

“Why have you painted him blue?” asked Joshua.

“He looks good blue,” said Pea Pods. Two Fu Dogs and Tunnels stood by with paintbrushes admiring their work.

“Well, he’s not going to be happy with this when he gets the antidote, I can tell you that.” Then to me Joshua said, “You know, you do sort of look good blue. Biff, I’ve appealed to Joy on your behalf, but she says she doesn’t think you’ve learned your lesson yet. You have learned your lesson though, haven’t you? Stop breathing for a second if the answer is yes.”

I did.

“I thought so.” Joshua bent and whispered in my ear. “It’s about that room behind the iron door. That’s the lesson they want you to learn. I got the feeling that if I asked about it I’d be propped up there next to you.” He stood up. “I have to go now. The three jewels to learn, don’t you know. I’m on compassion. It’s not as hard as it sounds.”

Two days later Joy came to my room in the morning with some tea. She pulled the tiny bottle from inside her dragon robe and held it close in front of my eyes. “You see the two small corks, a white one on one side of the vessel and a black one on the other? The black one is the poison I gave you. The white one is the antidote. I think you’ve learned your lesson.”

I drooled in response, while sincerely hoping she hadn’t mixed up the corks.

She tipped the little bottle over a teacup, then poured some tea down my throat, with half of it going down the front of my shirt as well. “That will take a while to work. You may experience some discomfort as the poison wears off.” Joy dropped the little bottle down into its nest of Chinese cleavage, then kissed me on the forehead and left. If I could, I would have snickered at the blue paint she had on her lips as she walked away. Ha!

“Some discomfort,” she had said. For the better part of ten days I’d had no sensation in my body at all, then suddenly things started to work again. Imagine rolling out of your warm bed in the morning into—oh, I don’t know—a lake of burning oil.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, Joshua, I’m about to crawl out of my skin here.” We were in our quarters, about an hour after I’d taken the antidote. Balthasar had sent Joshua to find me and bring me to the library, supposedly to see how I was doing.

Josh put his hand on my forehead, but instead of the usual calm that accompanied that gesture, it felt as if he’d lain a hot branding iron across my skin. I knocked his hand aside. “Thanks, but it’s not helping.”

“Maybe a bath,” Joshua suggested.

“Tried it. Jeez, this is driving me mad!” I hopped around in a circle because I didn’t know what else to do.

“Maybe Balthasar has something that can help,” Joshua said.

“Lead on,” I said. “I can’t just sit here.”

We headed off down the corridor, going down several levels on the way to the library. As we descended one of the spiral ramps I grabbed Joshua’s arm.

“Josh, look at this ramp, you notice anything?”

He considered the surface and leaned out to look at the sides of the tread. “No. Should I?”

“How about the walls and ceilings, the floors, you notice anything?”

Joshua looked around. “They’re all solid rock?”

“Yes, but what else? Look hard. Think of the houses we built in Sepphoris. Now do you notice anything?”

“No tool marks?”

“Exactly,” I said. “I spent a lot of time over the last two weeks staring at walls and ceilings with nothing much else to look at. There’s not the slightest evidence of a chisel, a pick, a hammer, anything. It’s as if these chambers had been carved by the wind over a thousand years, but you know that’s not the case.”

“So what’s your point?” Joshua said.

“My point is that there’s more going on with Balthasar and his girls than he lets on.”

“We should ask them.”

“No, we shouldn’t, Josh. Don’t you get it? We need to find out what’s going on without them knowing that we know.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why? Because the last time I asked a question I was poisoned, that’s why. And I believe that if Balthasar didn’t think you had something that he wants, I’d have never seen the antidote.”

“But I don’t have anything,” said Joshua, honestly.

“You might have something you don’t know you have, but you can’t just go asking what it is. We need to be devious. Tricky. Sneaky.”

“But I’m not good at any of those things.”

I put my arm around my friend’s shoulders. “Not always so great being the Messiah, huh?”

Meanwhile, when we got to the library, Balthasar was sitting before the heavy dragon table, eating a bit of cheese and sipping wine while Tunnels and Pea Pods poured a sticky yellow wax on his bald head, then spread it around with small wooden paddles. The easels and slates from my lessons had been stacked out of the way against the shelves full of scrolls and codices.

“You look good blue,” Balthasar said.

“Yeah, everybody says that.” The paint, once set, didn’t wash off, but at least my skin had stopped itching.

“Come in, sit. Have wine. They brought cheese from Kabul this morning. Try some.”

Joshua and I sat in chairs across the table from the magus. Josh, completely true to form, disregarded my advice and asked Balthasar outright about the iron door.

The aspect of the jolly wizard became suddenly grave. “There are some mysteries one must learn to live with. Did not your own God tell Moses that no one must look upon his face, and the prophet accepted that? So you must accept that you cannot know what is in the room with the iron door.”

“He knows his Torah, and Prophets and Writings too,” Joshua said to me. “Balthasar knows more about Solomon than any of the rabbis or priests in Israel.”

“That’s swell, Josh.” I handed him a hunk of cheese to keep him amused. To Balthasar I said, “But you forget God’s butt.” You don’t hang out with the Messiah for most of your life without picking up a little Torah knowledge yourself.

“What?” said the magus. Just then the girls grabbed the edges of the hardened wax shell they’d made on Balthasar’s head and ripped it off in one swift movement. “Ouch, you vicious harpies! Can’t you warn me when you’re going to do that? Get out.”

The girls tittered and hid their satisfied grins behind delicate fans painted with pheasants and plum blossoms. They fled the library leaving a trail of girlish laughter in the hall as they passed.

“Isn’t there an easier way to do that?” asked Joshua.

Balthasar scowled at him. “Don’t you think that after two hundred years, if there was an easier way to do it I would have found it?”

Joshua dropped his cheese. “Two hundred years?”

I chimed in. “You get a hairstyle you like, stick with it. Not that you could call that hair, per se.”

Balthasar wasn’t amused. “What’s this about God’s butt?”

“Or that you could call that style, for that matter,” I added, rising and going to a copy of the Torah that I’d seen on the shelves. Fortunately it was a codex—like a modern book—otherwise I’d have been unwinding a scroll for twenty minutes and the drama would have been lost. I quickly flipped to Exodus. “Right, here’s the part you were talking about. ‘And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’ Right? Well, then God puts his hand over Moses as he passes, but he says, ‘I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’”

“So?” said Balthasar.

“So, God let Moses see his butt, so using your example, you owe us God’s butt. So tell us, what’s going on with that room with the iron door?” Brilliant. I paused and studied the blueness of my fingernails while savoring my victory.

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Balthasar. His momen
tary loss of composure was replaced by the calm and slightly amused attitude of the master. “What if I told you that it is dangerous for you to know about what is behind that iron door now, but once you have training, you will not only know, but you will gain great power from the knowledge? When I think you are ready, I promise to show you what is behind that door. But you must promise to study and learn your lessons. Can you do that?”

“Are you forbidding us to ask questions?” asked Joshua.

“Oh no, I’m simply denying you some of the answers for the time being. And trust me, time is the one thing that I have plenty of.”

Joshua turned to me. “I still don’t know what I am supposed to learn here, but I’m sure I haven’t learned it yet.” He was pleading me with his eyes to not push the issue. I decided to let it drop; besides, I didn’t relish the idea of being poisoned again.

“How long is this going to take?” I asked. “These lessons, I mean?”

“Some students take many years to learn the nature of Chi. You will be provided for while you are here.”

“Years? Can we think about it?”

“Take as long as you like,” Balthasar stood. “Now I must go to the girls’ quarters. They like to rub their naked breasts over my scalp right after it’s been waxed and is at its smoothest.”

I gulped. Joshua grinned and looked at the table in front of him. I often wondered, not just then, but most of the time, if Joshua had the ability to turn off his imagination when he needed to. He must have. Otherwise I don’t know how he would have ever triumphed over temptation. I, on the other hand, was a slave to my imagination and it was running wild with the image of Balthasar’s scalp massage.

“We’ll stay. We’ll learn. We’ll do what is needed,” I said.

Joshua burst out laughing, then calmed himself enough to speak. “Yes, we will stay and learn, Balthasar, but first I have to go to Kabul and finish some business.”

“Of course you do,” said Balthasar. “You can leave tomorrow. I’ll have one of the girls show you the way, but for now, I must say good night.” The wizard stalked off, leaving Joshua to collapse into a fit of giggles and me to wonder how I might look with my head shaved.

In the morning Joy came to our rooms wearing the garb of a desert trader: a loose tunic, soft leather boots, and pantaloons. Her hair was tied up under a turban and she carried a long riding crop in her hand. She led us through a long narrow passageway that went deep into the mountain, then emerged out of the side of a sheer cliff. We climbed a rope ladder to the top of the plateau where Pillows and Sue waited with three camels saddled and outfitted for a short journey. There was a small farm on the plateau, with several pens full of chickens, some goats, and a few pigs in a pen.

“We’re going to have a tough time getting these camels down that ladder,” I said.

Joy scowled and wrapped the tail of her turban around her face so that only her eyes showed. “There’s a path down,” she said. Then she tapped her camel on the shoulder with her crop and rode off, leaving Joshua and me to scramble onto our animals and follow.

The road down from the plateau was just wide enough for a single camel to sway his way down without falling, but once down on the desert floor, much like the entrance to the canyon where the fortress’s entrance lay, if you didn’t know it was there, you would never have found it. An added measure of security for a fortress that had no guards, I thought.

Joshua and I tried to engage Joy in conversation several times during the journey to Kabul, but she was cranky and abrupt and often just rode away from us.

“Probably depressed that she’s not torturing me,” I speculated.

“I can see how that might bring her down,” said Joshua. “Maybe if you could get your camel to bite you. I know that always brightens my mood.”

I rode on ahead without another word. It’s wildly irritating to have invented something as revolutionary as sarcasm, only to have it abused by amateurs.

Once in Kabul, Joy led the search for the blinded guard by asking every blind beggar that we passed in the marketplace. “Have you seen a blind bowman who arrived by camel caravan a little more than a week ago?”

Joshua and I trailed several steps behind her, trying desperately to keep from grinning whenever she looked back. Joshua had wanted to point out the flaw in Joy’s method, while I, on the other hand, wanted to savor her
doofuscosity as passive revenge for having been poisoned. There was none of the competence and self-assured nature she showed at the fortress. She was clearly out of her element and I was enjoying it.

“You see,” I explained to Joshua, “what Joy is doing is ironic, yet that’s not her intent. That’s the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm.”

“No kidding?” said Josh.

“Why do I waste my time with you?”

We indulged Joy’s search for the blind man for another hour before directing her inquiries to the sighted, and to men from the camel caravans in particular. Once she started asking sighted people, it was a short time before we were directed to a temple where the blinded guard was said to have staked his begging territory.

“There he is,” said Joshua, pointing to a ragged pile of human being beckoning to the worshipers as they moved in and out of the temple.

“It looks like things have been tough on him,” I said, amazed that the guard, who had been one of the most vital (and frightening) men I’d ever seen, had been reduced to such a pathetic creature in so short a time. Then again, I was discounting the theatrics of it all.

“A great injustice has been done here,” said Josh. He moved to the guard and gently put his hand on the blind man’s shoulder. “Brother, I am here to relieve your suffering.”

“Pity on the blind,” said the guard, waving around a wooden bowl.

“Calm now,” said Joshua, placing his hand over the blind man’s eyes. “When I remove my hand you will see again.”

I could see the strain in Joshua’s face as he concentrated on healing the guard. Tears trickled down his cheeks and dripped on the flagstones. I thought of how effortless his healings had been in Antioch, and realized that the strain was not coming from the healing, but from the guilt he carried for having blinded the man in the first place. When he removed his hand and stepped away, both he and the guard shivered.

Joy stepped away from us and covered her face as if to ward off bad air.

The guard stared into space just as he had while he had been begging, but his eyes were no longer white.

“Can you see?” Joshua said.

“I can see, but everything is wrong. People’s skin appears blue.”

“No, he
is
blue. Remember, my friend Biff.”

“Were you always blue?”

“No, only recently.”

Then the guard seemed to see Joshua for the first time and his expression of wonderment was replaced by hatred. He leapt at Joshua, drawing a dagger from his rags as he moved. He would have split my friend’s rib cage in a single swift blow if Joy hadn’t swept his feet out from under him at the last second. Even so, he was up in an instant, going for a second attack. I managed to get my hand up in time to poke him in the eyes, just as Joy kicked him in the back of the neck, driving him to the ground in agony.

“My eyes!” he cried.

“Sorry,” I said.

Joy kicked the knife out of the guard’s reach. I put an arm around Joshua’s chest and pushed him back. “You need to put some distance between you and him before he can see again.”

“But I only meant to help him,” said Joshua. “Blinding him was a mistake.”

“Josh, he doesn’t care. All he knows is that you are the enemy. All he knows is that he wants to destroy you.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing. Even when I try to do the right thing it goes wrong.”

“We need to go,” said Joy. She took one of Joshua’s arms while I took the other and we led him away before the guard could gather his senses for another attack.

Joy had a list of supplies that Balthasar wanted her to bring back to the fortress, so we spent some time tracking down large baskets of a mineral called cinnabar, from which we would extract quicksilver, as well as some spices and pigments. Joshua followed us through the market in a daze until we passed a merchant who was selling the black beans from which was made the dark drink we’d had in Antioch.

“Buy me some,” Joshua said. “Joy, buy me some of those.”

She did, and Joshua cradled the bag of beans like an infant all the way back to the fortress. We rode most of the way in silence, but when the sun
had gone down and we were almost to the hidden road that led up to the plateau, Joy galloped up beside me.

“How did he do it?” she asked.

“What?”

“I saw him heal that man’s eyes. How did he do it? I know many kinds of magic, but I saw no spells cast, no potions mixed.”