Chapter 13

"I could kick that punk's punk ass," the angel said, jumping on the bed, shaking a fist at the television screen.

"Raziel," I said, "you are an angel of the Lord, he is a professional wrestler, I think it's understood that you could kick his punk ass." This has gone on for a couple of days now. The angel has found a new passion. The front desk has called a dozen times and sent a bellman up twice to tell the angel to quiet down. "Besides, it's just pretend."

Raziel looked at me as if I had slapped him. "Don't start with that again, these are not actors." The angel back flipped on the bed. "Ooo, ooo, you see that? Ho popped him with a chair. Thaz right, you go girl. She nasty."

It's like that now. Talk shows featuring the screaming ignorant, soap operas, and wrestling. And the angel guards the remote control like it's the Ark of the Covenant.

"This," I told him, "is why the angels were never given free will. This right here. Because you would spend your time watching this."

"Really?" Raziel said, and he muted the TV for what seemed like the first time in days. "Then tell me, Levi who is called Biff, if by watching this I am abusing the little freedom I've been given while carrying out this task, then what would you say of your people?"

"By my people you mean human beings?" I was stalling. I didn't remember the angel ever making a valid point before and I wasn't prepared for it. "Hey, don't blame me, I've been dead for two thousand years. I wouldn't have let this sort of thing happen."

"Uh-huh," said the angel, crossing his arms and striking a pose of incredulity that he had learned from a gangster rapper on MTV.

If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes. Oh, that and don't piss off Salome, that was a big one too. "Okay, we've fucked up," I said.

"Thaz whut I'm talkin' about," said the angel, entirely too satisfied with himself.

Yeah? Where was he when we needed him and his sword of justice at Balthasar's fortress? Probably in Greece, watching wrestling.

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 momentary 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."

"It's very powerful magic all right." I checked over my shoulder to see if Joshua was paying attention. He was hugging his coffee beans and mumbling to himself as he had for the whole trip. Praying, I presume.

"Tell me how it's done," Joy said. "I asked Joshua, but he's just chanting and looking stunned."

"Well, I could tell you how it's done, but you have to tell me what's going on behind the ironclad door."

"I can't tell you that, but perhaps we can trade other things." She pulled the tail of her turban away from her face and smiled. She was stunningly beautiful in the moonlight, even in men's clothes. "I know over a thousand ways to bring pleasure to a man, and that's only what I know personally. The other girls have as many tricks that they'd be willing to show you too."

"Yeah, but how is that useful to me? What do I need to know about pleasing a man?"

Joy ripped her turban off her head and smacked me across the back of the head with it, sending a small cloud of dust drifting into the night. "You're stupid and you're blue and the next time I poison you I will be sure to use something without an antidote."

Even the wise and inscrutable Joy could be goaded, I guess. I smiled. "I will accept your paltry offerings," I said with as much pomposity as an adolescent boy can muster. "And in return I will teach the greatest secret of our magic. A secret of my own invention. We call it sarcasm."

"Let's make coffee when we get home," said Joshua.

It was some challenge to try to drag out the process of how Joshua had returned the guard's sight, especially since I hadn't the slightest idea myself, but through careful misdirection, obfuscation, subterfuge, guile, and complete balderdash, I was able to barter that lack of knowledge into months of outrageous knob polishing by the beauteous Joy and her comely minions. Somehow, the urgency of knowing what was behind the ironclad door and the answers to other enigmas of Balthasar's fortress abated, and I found myself quite content pursuing the lessons the wizard assigned me during the day, while stretching my imagination to its limit with the mathematical combinations of the night. There was the drawback that Balthasar would kill me if he knew that I was availing myself of the charms of his concubines, but is the pilfered fruit not sweetened by the stealing? Oh, to be young and in love (with eight Chinese concubines).

Meanwhile Joshua took to his studies with characteristic zeal, fueled in no little bit by the coffee he drank every morning until he nearly vibrated through the floor with enthusiasm.

"Look at this, do you see, Biff? When asked, the master Confucius says, 'Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindness.' Yet Lao-tzu says, 'Recompense injury with kindness.' Don't you see?" Joshua would dance around, scrolls trailing out behind him, hoping that somehow I would share his enthusiasm for the ancient texts. And I tried. I really did.

"No, I don't see. The Torah says, 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,' that is justice."

"Exactly," said Joshua. "I think Lao-tzu is correct. Kindness precedes justice. As long as you seek justice by punishment you can only cause more suffering. How can that be right? This is a revelation!"

"I learned how to boil down goat urine to make explosives today," I said.

"That's good too," said Joshua.

It could happen like that any time of the day or night. Joshua would come blazing out of the library in the middle of the night, interrupt me in the midst of some complex oily tangle of Pea Pod and Pillows and Tunnels - while Number Six familiarized us with the five hundred jade gods of various depths and textures - and he'd avert his eyes just long enough for me to towel off before he'd shove some codex in my hand and force me to read a passage while he waxed enthusiastic on the thoughts of some long-dead sage.

"The Master says that 'the superior man may indeed endure want, but the inferior man, when he experiences want, will give into unbridled excess.' He's talking about you, Biff. You're the inferior man."

"I'm so proud," I told him, as I watched Number Six forlornly pack her gods into the warmed brass case where they resided. "Thank you for coming here to tell me that."

I was given the task of learning waidan, which is the alchemy of the external. My knowledge would come from the manipulation of the physical elements. Joshua, on the other hand, was learning neidan, the alchemy of the internal. His knowledge would come from the study of his own inner nature through the contemplation of the masters. So while Joshua read scrolls and books, I spent my time mixing quicksilver and lead, phosphorous and brimstone, charcoal and philosopher's stone, trying somehow to divine the nature of the Tao. Joshua was learning to be the Messiah and I was learning to poison people and blow stuff up. The world seemed very much in order. I was happy, Joshua was happy, Balthasar was happy, and the girls - well, the girls were busy. Although I passed the iron door every day (and the niggling voice persisted), what was behind it wasn't important to me, and neither were the answers to the dozen or so questions that Joshua and I should have put to our generous master.

Before we knew it a year had passed, then two more, and we were celebrating the passage of Joshua's seventeenth birthday in the fortress. Balthasar had the girls prepare a feast of Chinese delicacies and we drank wine late into the night. (And long after that, and even when we had returned to Israel, we always ate Chinese food on Joshua's birthday. I'm told it became a tradition not only with those of us who knew Joshua, but with Jews everywhere.)

"Do you ever think of home?" Joshua asked me the night of his birthday feast.

"Sometimes," I said.

"What do you think of?"

"Maggie," I said. "Sometimes my brothers. Sometimes my mother and father, but always Maggie."

"Even with all your experiences since, you still think of Maggie?" Joshua had become less and less curious about the essence of lust. Initially I thought that his lack of interest had to do with the depth of his studies, but I then realized that his interest was fading along with the memory of Maggie.

"Joshua, my memory of Maggie isn't about what happened the night before we left. I didn't go to see her thinking that we would make love. A kiss was more than I expected. I think of Maggie because I made a place in my heart for her to live, and it's empty. It always will be. It always was. She loved you."

"I'm sorry, Biff. I don't know how to heal that. I would if I could."

"I know, Josh. I know." I didn't want to talk about home anymore, but Josh deserved to get off his chest whatever it was that was bothering him, and if not to me, to whom? "Do you ever think of home?"

"Yes. That's why I asked. You know, the girls were cooking bacon today, and that made me think of home."

"Why? I don't remember anyone ever cooking bacon at home."

"I know, but if we ate some bacon, no one at home would ever know."

I got up and walked over to the half-wall that divided our rooms. There was moonlight coming through the window and Joshua's face had caught it and was glowing in that annoying way that it sometimes did.

"Joshua, you're the Son of God. You're the Messiah. That implies - oh, I don't know - that you're a Jew! You can't eat bacon."

"God doesn't care if we eat bacon. I can just feel it."

"Really. He still feel the same way about fornication?"

"Yep."

"Masturbation?"

"Yep."

"Killing? Stealing? Bearing false witness? Coveting thy neighbor's wife, et cetera? No change of heart on those?"

"Nope."

"Just bacon. Interesting. You would have thought there'd be something about bacon in the prophecies of Isaiah."

"Yeah, makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

"You're going to need more than that to usher in the kingdom of God, Josh, no offense. We can't go home with, 'Hi, I'm the Messiah, God wanted you to have this bacon.'"

"I know. We have much more to learn. But breakfasts will be more interesting."

"Go to sleep, Josh."

As time passed, I seldom saw Joshua except at mealtimes and before we went to sleep. Nearly all my time was taken up with my studies and helping the girls maintain the fortress, while nearly all of Joshua's time was spent with Balthasar, which would eventually become a problem.

"This is not good, Biff," Joy said in Chinese. I'd learned to speak her language well enough that she seldom spoke Greek or Latin anymore. "Balthasar is getting too close with Joshua. He seldom sends for one of us to join him in his bed now."

"You're not implying that Joshua and Balthasar are, uh, playing shepherd, are you? Because I know that's not true. Joshua isn't allowed." Of course the angel had said he couldn't know a woman, he hadn't said anything about a creepy old African wizard.

"Oh, I don't care if they're buggering their eyeballs out," said Joy. "Balthasar mustn't fall in love. Why do you think that there are eight of us?"

"I thought it was a matter of budget," I said.

"You haven't noticed that one of us will never spend two nights in a row with Balthasar, or that we don't speak with him beyond what is required for our duties and lessons?"

I had noticed, but it never occurred to me that there was something out of the ordinary. We hadn't gotten to the chapter on wizard - concubine behavior in the book yet. "So?"

"So I think he is falling in love with Joshua. That is not good."

"Well, I'm with you on that one. I wasn't happy the last time someone fell in love with him. But why does it matter here?"

"I can't tell you. But there has been more commotion coming from the house of doom," said Joy. "You have to help me. If I'm right, we have to stop Balthasar. We'll observe them tomorrow while we adjust the flow of Chi in the library."

"No, Joy. Not library Chi. The stuff in the library is too heavy. I hate library Chi."

Chi or Qi: the breath of the dragon, the eternal energy that flows through all things; in balance, as it should be, it was half yin, half yang, half light, half dark, half male, half female. The Chi in the library was always getting fucked up, while the Chi in the rooms with just cushions, or with lightweight furniture, seemed well adjusted and balanced. I don't know why, but I suspected it had a lot to do with Joy's need to make me move heavy things.

The next morning Joy and I went to the library to spy on Joshua and Balthasar while we redirected the library's Chi. Joy carried a complex brass instrument she called a Chi clock, which was supposed to be able to detect the flow of Chi. The magus was noticeably irritated as soon as we entered the room.

"Must this be done now?"

Joy bowed. "Very sorry, master, but this is an emergency." She turned and barked commands at me like a Roman centurion. "Move that table over there, can't you see that it rests on the tiger's testicles? Then point those chairs so they face the doorway, they lie on the dragon's navel. We're lucky someone hasn't broken a leg."

"Yeah, lucky," I said, straining to move the huge carved table, wishing that Joy had recruited a couple of the other girls to help. I'd been studying feng shui for more than three years now and I still couldn't detect the least bit of Chi, coming or going. Joshua had reconciled the elusive energy by saying that it was just an Oriental way to express God all around us and in all things. That may have helped him toward some sort of spiritual understanding, but it was about as effective as trained sheep when it came to arranging furniture.

"Can I help?" Joshua asked.

"No!" shouted Balthasar, standing up. "We will continue in my quarters." The old wizard turned and glared at Joy and me. "And we are not to be disturbed, under any circumstances."

He took Joshua by the shoulder and led him out of the room.

"So much for spying," I said.

Joy consulted the Chi clock and patted a cabinet filled with calligraphy materials. "This most certainly rides on the horn of the ox, it must be moved," she pronounced.

"They are gone," I said. "We don't have to pretend at this anymore."

"Who is pretending? That cabinet channels all the yin into the hall, while the yang circles like a bird of prey."

"Joy, stop it. I know you're making this stuff up."

She dropped the brass instrument to her side. "I am not."

"Yes, you are." And here I thought I'd push my credibility a bit, just to see. "I checked the yang in this room yesterday. It is in perfect balance."

Joy dropped to her hands and knees, crawled under one of the huge carved dragon tables, curled up into a ball, and began to cry. "I'm no good at this. Balthasar wants us all to know it, but I've never understood it. If you want the Elegant Torture of a Thousand Pleasant Touches, I can do it, you want someone poisoned, castrated, or blown up, I'm your man, but this feng shui stuff is just, just..."

"Stupid?" I supplied.

"No, I was going to say difficult. Now I've angered Balthasar and we have no way of knowing what is happening between him and Joshua. And we must know."

"I can find out," I said, polishing my nails on my tunic. "But I have to know why I'm finding out."

"How will you find out?"

"I have ways that are more subtle and crafty than all your Chinese alchemy and direction of energies."

"Now who's making things up?" I'd lost most of my credibility by dragging out the arcane-Hebrew-knowledge-for-sexual-favors ruse until I had actually claimed credit for receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments as well as constructing the Ark of the Covenant. (What? It's not my fault. Joshua was the one who would never let me be Moses when we were kids.)

"If I find out, will you tell me what is going on?"

The head concubine chewed at an elegantly lacquered nail as she thought about it. "You promise not to tell anyone if I tell you? Not even your friend Joshua?"

"I promise."

"Then do what you will. But remember your lessons from The Art of War."

I considered the words of Sun-tzu, which Joy had taught me: Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby, you can be the director of the opponent's fate. So after considering strategy carefully, running and rejecting the various scenarios in my head, working out what seemed a nearly foolproof plan, and making sure the timing was perfect, I went into action. That very night, as I lay in my bed and Joshua in his, I called forth all my powers of subtlety and mysteriousness.

"Hey Josh," I said. "Balthasar sodomizing you?"

"No!"

"Vice versa?"

"Absolutely not!"

"You get the feeling he'd like to?"

He was quiet for a second, then he said, "He's been very attentive lately. And he giggles at everything I say, why?"

"Because Joy says it's not good if he falls in love with you."

"Well, it's not if he's expecting any sodomizing, I'll tell you that. That's going to be one disappointed magus."

"No, worse than that. She won't tell me what, but it's really, really bad."

"Biff, I realize you may not think so, but from my way of thinking, sodomizing the Son of God is really, really bad."

"Good point. But I think she means something to do with whatever is behind the iron door. Until I find out, you have to keep Balthasar from falling in love with you."

"I'll bet he was myrrh," said Josh. "Bastard, he brings the cheapest gift and now he wants to sodomize me. My mother told me the myrrh went bad after a week too."

Did I mention that Joshua was not a myrrh fan?