Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christs Childhood Pal

Chapter 22

   

  Chapter 22

  Tamil, as it turned out, was not a small town in southern India, but the whole southern peninsula, an area about five times the size of Israel, so looking for Melchior was akin to walking into Jerusalem on any given day and saying, "Hey, I'm looking for a Jewish guy, anyone seen him?" What we had going for us was that we knew Melchior's occupation, he was an ascetic holy man who lived a nearly solitary life somewhere along the coast and that he, like his brother Gaspar, had been the son of a prince. We found hundreds of different holy men, or yogis, most of them living in complete austerity in the forest or in caves, and usually they had twisted their bodies into some impossible posture. The first of these I saw was a yogi who lived in a lean-to on the side of a hill overlooking a small fishing village. He had his feet tucked behind his shoulders and his head seemed to be coming from the wrong end of his torso.

  "Josh, look! That guy is trying to lick his own balls! Just like Bartholomew, the village idiot. These are my people, Josh. These are my people. I have found home. "

  Well, I hadn't really found home. The guy was just performing some sort of spiritual discipline (that's what "yoga" means in Sanskrit: discipline) and he wouldn't teach me because my intentions weren't pure or some claptrap. And he wasn't Melchior. It took six months and the last of our money and we both saw our twenty-fifth birthdays before we found Melchior reclining in a shallow stone nook in a cliff over the ocean. Seagulls were nesting at his feet.

  He was a hairier version of his brother, which is to say he was slight, about sixty years old, and he wore a caste mark on his forehead. His hair and beard were long and white, shot with only a few stripes of black, and he had intense dark eyes that seemed to show no white at all. He wore only a loincloth and he was as thin as any of the Untouchables we had met in Kalighat.

  Joshua and I clung to the side of the cliff while the guru untied from the human knot he'd gotten himself into. It was a slow process and we pretended to look at the seagulls and enjoy the view so as not to embarrass the holy man by seeming impatient. When he finally achieved a posture that did not appear as if it had been caused by being run over by an ox cart, Joshua said, "We've come from Israel. We were six years with your brother Gaspar in the monastery. I am - "

  "I know who you are," said Melchior. His voice was melodic, and every sentence he spoke seemed as if he were beginning to recite a poem. "I recognize you from when I first saw you in Bethlehem. "

  "You do?"

  "A man's self does not change, only his body. I see you grew out of the swaddling clothes. "

  "Yes, some time ago. "

  "Not sleeping in that manger anymore?"

  "No. "

  "Some days I could go for a nice manger, some straw, maybe a blanket. Not that I need any of those luxuries, nor does anyone who is on the spiritual path, but still. "

  "I've come to learn from you," Joshua said. "I am to be a bodhisattva to my people and I'm not sure how to go about it. "

  "He's the Messiah," I said helpfully. "You know, the Messiah. You know, Son of God. "

  "Yeah, Son of God," Joshua said.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Yeah," said Joshua.

  "So what do you have for us?" I asked.

  "And who are you?"

  "Biff," I said.

  "My friend," said Josh.

  "Yeah, his friend," said I.

  "And what do you seek?"

  "Actually, I'd like to not have to hang on to this cliff a lot longer, my fingers are going numb. "

  "Yeah," said Josh.

  "Yeah," said I.

  "Find yourself a couple of nooks on the cliff. There are several empty. Yogis Ramata and Mahara recently moved on to their next rebirth. "

  "If you know where we can find some food we would be grateful," Joshua said. "It's been a long time since we've eaten. And we have no money. "

  "Time then for your first lesson, young Messiah. I am hungry as well. Bring me a grain of rice. "

  Joshua and I climbed across the cliff until we found two nooks, tiny caves really, that were close to each other and not so far above the beach that falling out would kill us. Each of our nooks had been gouged out of the solid rock and was just wide enough to lie down in, tall enough to sit up in, and deep enough to keep the rain off if it was falling straight down. Once we were settled, I dug through my satchel until I found three old grains of rice that had worked their way into a seam. I put them in my bowl, then carried the bowl in my teeth as I made my way back to Melchior's nook.

  "I did not ask for a bowl," said Melchior. Joshua had already skirted the cliff and was sitting next to the yogi with his feet dangling over the edge. There was a seagull in his lap.

  "Presentation is half the meal," I said, quoting something Joy had once said.

  Melchior sniffed at the rice grains, then picked one up and held it between his bony fingertips.

  "It's raw. "

  "Yes, it is. "

  "We can't eat it raw. "

  "Well, I would have served it up steaming with a grain of salt and a molecule of green onion if I'd known you wanted it that way. " (Yeah, we had molecules in those days. Back off. )

  "Very well, this will have to do. " The holy man held the bowl with the rice grains in his lap, then closed his eyes. His breathing began to slow, and after a moment he appeared not to be breathing at all.

  Josh and I waited. And looked at each other. And Melchior didn't move. His skeletal chest did not rise with breath. I was hungry and tired, but I waited. And the holy man didn't move for almost an hour. Considering the recent nook vacancies on the cliff face, I was a little concerned that Melchior might have succumbed to some virulent yogi-killing epidemic.

  "He dead?" I asked.

  "Can't tell. "

  "Poke him. "

  "No, he's my teacher, a holy man. I'm not poking him. "

  "He's Untouchable. "

  Joshua couldn't resist the irony, he poked him. Instantly the yogi opened his eyes, pointed out to sea and screamed, "Look, a seagull!"

  We looked. When we looked back the yogi was holding a full bowl of rice. "Here, go cook this. "

  So began Joshua's training to find what Melchior called the Divine Spark. The holy man was stern with me, but his patience with Joshua was infinite, and it was soon evident that by trying to be part of Joshua's training I was actually holding him back. So on our third morning living in the cliff, I took a long satisfying whiz over the side (and is there anything so satisfying as whizzing from a high place?) then climbed to the beach and headed into the nearest town to look for a job. Even if Melchior could make a meal out of three grains of rice, I'd scraped all the stray grains out of both my and Joshua's satchels. The yogi might be able to teach a guy to twist up and lick his own balls, but I couldn't see that there was much nourishment in it.

  The name of the town was Nicobar, and it was about twice the size of Sepphoris in my homeland, perhaps twenty thousand people, most of whom seemed to make their living from the sea, either as fishermen, traders, or shipbuilders. After inquiring at only a few places, I realized that for once it wasn't my lack of skills that were keeping me from making a living, it was the caste system. It extended far deeper into the society than Rumi had told me. Subcastes of the larger four dictated that if you were born a stonecutter, your sons would be stonecutters, and their sons after them, and you were bound by your birth to never do any other job, regardless of how good or bad you were at it. If you were born a mourner, or a magician, you would die a mourner or a magician, and the only way you'd get out of death or magic was to die and be reincarnated as something else. The one skill that didn't seem to require belonging to a caste was village idiot, but the Hindus seemed to thrust the more eccentric holy men into this role, so I found no openings there. I did have my bowl, and
my experience at collecting alms for the monastery, so I tried my hand at begging, but every time I would get a good corner staked out, along would hop some one-legged blind guy to steal my action. By the late afternoon I had one tiny copper coin and the steward of the beggars guild had come along to warn me that if he caught me begging in Nicobar again, he'd see that I was admitted to the guild by the immediate removal of my arms and legs.

  I bought a handful of rice at the market and was skulking out of town, my bowl before me and my head down, like a good monk, when I saw before me a most delicate set of toes, painted vermilion and followed by a dainty foot, an elegant ankle ajangle with copper bangles, an inviting calf decorated with hennaed designs as intricate as lace, and from there a bright skirt led me up the seam to a bejeweled navel, full breasts haltered in yellow silk, lips like plums, a nose as long and straight as a Roman statue's, and wide brown eyes, shaded in blue and lined to make them look the size of a tiger's. They drank me in.

  "You're a stranger," she said. One long finger on my chest stopped me on the spot. I tried to hide my rice bowl in my shirt, and in a fabulous display of sleight of hand, ended up spilling the grains down my front.

  "I'm from Galilee. In Israel. "

  "Never heard of it. Is it far?" She reached into my shirt and began to pick out the rice grains that had caught against my sash, running her fingernail along my stomach muscles and dropping the grains, one by one, into my bowl.

  "Very far. I've come here with my friend to obtain sacred and ancient knowledge, that kind of thing. "

  "What is your name?"

  "Biff - or Levi who is called Biff. We do that 'who is called' thing a lot in Israel. "

  "Follow me, Biff, I'll show you some ancient and sacred knowledge. " She hooked her finger into my sash and walked into a nearby doorway, for some reason completely confident that I would follow.

  Inside, amid piles of colorful pillows strewn about the floors and deep carpets the likes of which I hadn't seen since Balthasar's fortress, stood a carved camphorwood stand on which a large codex lay open. The book was bound in brass filigreed with copper and silver, and the pages were made of a parchment finer than I had ever seen.

  The woman pushed me toward the book and left her hand on my back as I looked at the open page. The handwritten script was gilded and so ornate that I could barely make out the words, which didn't matter anyway, because it was the illustration that caught my eye. A man and a woman, nude, each perfect. The man had the woman facedown on a rug, her feet hooked over his shoulders, her arms held behind her as he entered her. I tried to call on my Buddhist training and discipline to keep from embarrassing myself in front of the strange woman.

  "Ancient sacred wisdom," she said. "The book was a gift from a patron. The Kama Sutra, it's called. Thread of Desire. "

  "The Buddha said that desire is the source of all suffering," I said, feeling like the kung fu master that I knew I was.

  "Do they look like they are suffering?"

  "No. " I began to tremble. I had been too long out of the company of women. Far too long.

  "Would you like to try that? That suffering. With me?"

  "Yes," I said. All the training, all the discipline, all the control, gone in a word.

  "Do you have twenty rupees?"

  "No. "

  "Then suffer," she said, and she stepped away.

  "See, I told you. "

  Then she walked away, trailing the scent of sandalwood and roses behind her as she went to the door, her hips waving good-bye to me all the way across the room, the bangles on her arms and ankles ringing like tiny temple bells calling me to worship at her secret grotto. At the door she crooked a finger for me to follow her out, and I did.

  "My name is Kashmir," she said. "Come back. I'll teach you ancient and sacred knowledge. One page at time. Twenty rupees each. "

  I took my stupid, pathetic, useless grains of rice and went back to my holy, stupid, useless, stupid male friends at the cliff.

  "I brought some rice," I said to Joshua when I had climbed to my nook in the cliff. "Melchior can do his rice thing and we'll have enough for supper. "

  Josh was sitting on the shelf of his nook, his legs folded into the lotus position, hands in the mudra of the compassionate Buddha. "Melchior is teaching the path to the Divine Spark," Joshua said. "First you have to quiet the mind. That's why there's so much physical discipline, attention to breath, you have to be so completely in control that you can see past the illusion of your body. "

  "And how is that different from what we did in the monastery?"

  "It's subtle, but it's different. There the mind would ride the wave of action, you could meditate while on the exercise posts, shooting arrows, fighting. There was no goal because there was no place to be but in the moment. Here, the goal is to see beyond the moment, to the soul. I think I'm getting a glimpse. I'm learning the postures. Melchior says that an accomplished yogi can pass his entire body through a hoop the size of his head. "

  "That's great, Josh. Useful. Now let me tell you about this woman I met. " So I jumped over to Josh's ledge and began to tell him about my day, the woman, the Kama Sutra, and my opinion that this just might be the sort of ancient spiritual information a young Messiah might need.

  "Her name is Kashmir, which means soft and expensive. "

  "But she's a prostitute, Biff. "

  "Prostitutes didn't bother you when you were making me help you learn about sex. "

  "They still don't bother me, it's just that you don't have any money. "

  "I got the feeling she likes me. I think maybe she'll do me pro bono, if you know what I mean?" I elbowed him in the ribs and winked.

  "You mean for the public good. You forget your Latin? 'Pro bono' means 'for the public good. '"

  "Oh. I thought it meant something else. She's not going to do me for that. "

  "No, probably not," said Josh.

  So the next day, first thing, I made may way back to Nicobar, determined to find a job, but by noon I found myself sitting on the street next to one of the blind, no-legged beggar kids. The street was packed with traders, haggling, making deals, exchanging cash for goods and services, and the kid was making a killing on the spare change. I was astounded at the amount in the kid's bowl; there must have been enough for three Kama Sutra pages right there. Not that I would steal from a blind kid.

  "Look, Scooter, you look a little tired, you want me to watch the bowl while you take a break?"

  "Get your hand out of there!" The kid caught my wrist (me, the kung fu master). He was quick. "I can tell what you're doing. "

  "Okay, fine, how about I show you some magic tricks. A little sleight of hand?"

  "Oh, that'll be fun. I'm blind. "

  "Look, make up your mind. "

  "I'm going to call for the guild-master if you don't go away. "

  So I went away, despondent, defeated - not money enough to look at the edge of a page of the Kama Sutra. I skulked back to the cliffs, climbed up to my nook, and resolved to console myself with some cold rice left over from last night's supper. I opened my satchel and -

  "Ahhh!" I leapt back. "Josh, what are you doing in there?" And there he was, his beatific old Joshua face with the sole of a foot on either side like big ears, a few vertebrae showing, one hand, my ying-yang amulet vial, and a jar of myrrh.

  "Get out of there. How'd you get in there?"

  I've mentioned our satchels before. The Greeks called them wallets, I guess you would call them duffel bags. They were made of leather, had a long strap we could throw over our shoulder, and I suppose if you'd asked me before, I would have said you could get a whole person in one if you had to, but not in one piece.

  "Melchior taught me. It took me all morning to get in here. I thought I'd surprise you. "

  "Worked. Can you g
et out?"

  "I don't think so. I think my hips are dislocated. "

  "Okay, where's my black glass knife?"

  "It's at the bottom of the bag. "

  "Why did I know you were going to say that?"

  "If you get me out I'll show you what else I learned. Melchior taught me how to multiply the rice. "

  A few minutes later Joshua and I were sitting on the ledge of my nook being bombarded by seagulls. The seagulls were attracted by the huge pile of cooked rice that lay between us on the ledge.

  "That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. " Except that you really couldn't see it done. One minute you had a handful of rice, the next a bushel.

  "Melchior says that it usually takes a lot longer for a yogi to learn to manipulate matter like this. "

  "How much longer?"

  "Thirty, forty years. Most of the time they pass on before they learn. "

  "So this is like the healing. Part of your, uh, legacy?"

  "This isn't like the healing, Biff. This can be taught, given the time. "

  I tossed a handful of rice into the air for some seagulls. "Tell you what. Melchior obviously doesn't like me, so he's not going to teach me anything. Let's trade knowledge. "

  I brought rice to Joshua, had him multiply it, then sold the surplus in the market, and eventually I started trading fish instead of rice because I could raise twenty rupees in fewer trips. But before that, I asked Joshua to come to town with me. We went to the market, which was thick with traders, haggling, making deals, exchanging cash for goods and services, and over on the side, a blind and legless beggar was making a killing on the change.

  "Scooter, I'd like you to meet my friend Joshua. "

  "My name's not Scooter," said the waif.

  A half hour later Scooter could see again and miraculously his severed legs had been regenerated.

  "You bastards!" said Scooter as he ran off on clean new pink feet.

  "Go with God," Joshua said.

  "Now I guess we'll see how easy it is to earn a living!" I shouted after the kid.

  "He didn't seem very pleased," said Josh.

  "He's only learning to express himself. Forget him, others are suffering as well. "

  And so it came to pass, that Joshua of Nazareth moved among them, healing them and performing miracles, and all the little blind children of Nicobar did see again, and all the lame did stand up and walk.

  The little fuckers.

  And so the exchange of knowledge began: what I was learning from Kashmir and the Kama Sutra for what Joshua was learning from the holy man Melchior. Each morning, before I went to town and before Joshua went to learn from his guru, we met on the beach and shared ideas and breakfast. Usually some rice and a fresh fish roasted over the fire. We'd gone long enough without eating animal flesh, we had decided, despite what Melchior and Gaspar tried to teach us.

  "This ability to increase the bounty of food - imagine what we can do for the people of Israel, of the world. "

  "Yes, Josh, for it is written: 'Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach a man to be a fish and his friends eat for a week. '"

  "That is not written. Where is that written?"

  "Amphibians five-seven. "

  "There's no friggin' Amphibians in the Bible. "

  "Plague of frogs. Ha! Gotcha!"

  "How long's it been since you had a beating?"

  "Please. You can't hit anyone, you have to be at total peace with all creation so you can find Sparky the Wonder Spirit. "

  "The Divine Spark. "

  "Whatever, th - ouch. Oh great, and what am I supposed to do, hit the Messiah back?"

  "Turn the other cheek. Go ahead, turn it. "

  As I said, thus did the enlightened exchange of sacred and ancient teachings begin:

  The Kama Sutra sayeth:

  When a woman winds her small toes into the armpit hair of the man, and the man hops upon one foot, while supporting the woman on his lingam and a butter churn, then the achieved position is called "Rhinoceros Balancing a Jelly Donut. "

  "What's a jelly donut?" Joshua asked.

  "I don't know. It's a Vedic term lost to antiquity, but it is said to have had great significance to the keepers of the law. "

  "Oh. "

  The Katha Upanishad sayeth:

  Beyond the senses are the objects,

  and beyond the objects is the mind.

  Beyond the mind is pure reason,

  and beyond reason is the Spirit in man.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You have to think about it, but it means that there's something eternal in everyone. "

  "That's swell. What's with the guys on the bed of nails?"

  "A yogi must leave his body if he is going to experience the spiritual. "

  "So he leaves through the little holes in his back?"

  "Let's start again. "

  The Kama Sutra sayeth:

  When a man applies wax from the carnuba bean to a woman's yoni and buffs it with a lint-free cloth or a papyrus towel until a mirror shine is achieved, then it is called Readying the Mongoose for Trade-in. "

  "Look, she sells me pieces of sheepskin parchment, and each time, after we're finished, I'm allowed to copy the drawings. I'm going to tie them all together and make my own codex. "

  "You did that? That looks like it hurts. "

  "This from a guy I had to break out of a wine jar with a hammer yesterday. "

  "Yeah, well, it wouldn't have happened if I'd remembered to grease my shoulders like Melchior taught me. " Joshua turned the drawing to get a different angle on it. "You're sure this doesn't hurt?"

  "No, not if you keep your bottom away from the incense burners. "

  "No, I mean her. "

  "Oh, her. Well, who knows? I'll ask her. "

  The Bhagavad Gita sayeth:

  I am impartial to all creatures,

  and no one is hateful or dear to me,

  but men devoted to me are in me,

  and I am in them.

  "What's the Bhagavad Gita?"

  "It's like a long poem in which the god Krishna advises the warrior Arjuna as he drives his chariot into battle. "

  "Really, what's he advise him?"

  "He advises him not to feel bad about killing the enemy, because they are essentially already dead. "

  "You know what I'd advise him if I was a god? I'd advise him to get someone else to drive his friggin' chariot. The real God wouldn't be caught dead driving a chariot. "

  "Well, you have to look at it as a parable, otherwise it sort of reeks of false gods. "

  "Our people don't have good luck with false gods, Josh. They're - I don't know - frowned upon. We get killed and enslaved when we mess with them. "

  "I'll be careful. "

  The Kama Sutra sayeth:

  When a woman props herself up on the table and inhales the steam of the eucalyptus tea, while gargling a mixture of lemon, water, and honey, and the man takes the woman by the ears, and enters her from behind, while looking out the window at the girl across the street hanging out her laundry to dry, then the position is called "Distracted Tiger Hacking Up a Fur Ball. "

  "I couldn't find that one in the book, so she dictated it to me from memory. "

  "Kashmir's quite the scholar. "

  "She had the sniffles, but agreed to my lesson anyway. I think she's falling for me. "

  "How could she not, you're a very charming fellow. "

  "Why, thank you, Josh. "

  "You're welcome, Biff. "

  "Okay, tell me about your little yoga thing. "

  The Bhagavad Gita sayeth:

  Just as the wide-moving wind

  is constantly present in space,

  so all creatur
es exist in me.

  Understand it to be so!

  "Is that the kind of advice you'd give someone who's riding into battle? You'd think Krishna would be saying stuff like, 'Look out, an arrow! Duck!'"

  "You'd think," Joshua sighed.

  The Kama Sutra sayeth:

  The position of "Rampant Monkey Collecting Coconuts" is achieved when a woman hooks her fingers into the man's nostrils and performs a hokey-pokey motion with her hips and the man, while firmly stroking the woman's uvula with his thumbs, swings his lingam around her yoni in a direction counter to that in which water swirls down a drain. (Water has been observed swirling down the drain in different directions in different places. This is a mystery, but a good rule of thumb for achieving Rampant Monkey is to just go in the direction counter to which your own personal drain swirls. )

  "Your drawings are getting better," Joshua said. "In the first one I thought she had a tail. "

  "I'm using the calligraphy techniques we learned in the monastery, only using them to draw figures. Josh, are you sure it doesn't bother you, talking about this stuff when you'll never be allowed to do it?"

  "No, it's interesting. It doesn't bother you when I talk about heaven, does it?"

  "Should it?"

  "Look, a seagull!"

  The Katha Upanishad sayeth:

  For a man who has known him,

  the light of truth shines.

  For one who has not known, there is darkness.

  The wise who have seen him in every being

  on leaving this life, attain life immortal.

  "That's what you're looking for, huh, the Divine Spark thing?"

  "It's not for me, Biff. "

  "Josh, I'm not a satchel of sand here. I didn't spend all of my time studying and meditating without getting some glimpse of the eternal. "

  "That's good to know. "

  "Of course it helps when angels show up and you do miracles and stuff too. "

  "Well, yes, I guess it would. "

  "But that's not a bad thing. We can use that when we get home. "

  "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

  "Not a clue. "

  Our training went on for two years before I saw the sign that called us home. Life was slow, but pleasant there by the sea. Joshua became more efficient at multiplying food, and while he insisted on living an austere lifestyle so he could remain unattached to the material world, I was able to get a little money ahead. In addition to paying for my lessons, I was able to decorate my nook (just some erotic drawings, curtains, some silk cushions) and buy a few personal items such as a new satchel, an ink stone and a set of brushes, and an elephant.

  I named the elephant Vana, which is Sanskrit for wind, and although she certainly earned her name, I regret it was not due to her blazing speed. Feeding Vana was not a difficulty with Joshua's ability to turn a handful of grass into a fodder farm, but no matter how hard Joshua tried to teach her yoga, she was not able to fit into my nook. (I consoled Joshua that it was probably the climb, and not his failure as a yoga guru that deterred Vana. "If she had fingers, Josh, she'd be snuggling up with me and seagulls right now. ") Vana didn't like being on the beach when the tide came and washed sand between her toes, so she lived in a pasture just above the cliff. She did, however, love to swim, and some days rather than ride her on the beach all the way to Nicobar, I would have her swim into the harbor just under water, with only her trunk showing and me standing on her forehead. "Look, Kashmir, I'm walking on water! I'm walking on water!"

  So eager was my erotic princess to share my embrace that rather than wonder at the spectacle as did the other townsfolk she could only reply:

  "Park the elephant in back. "

  (The first few times she said it I thought she was referring to a Kama Sutra position that we had missed, pages stuck together perhaps, but it turned out such was not the case. )

  Kashmir and I became quite close as my studies progressed. After we went through all the positions of the Kama Sutra twice, Kashmir was able to take things to the next level by introducing Tantric discipline into our lovemaking. So skillful did we become at the meditative art of coupling that even in the throes of passion, Kashmir was able to polish her jewelry, count her money, or even rinse out a few delicates. I myself had so mastered the discipline of controlled ejaculation that often I was halfway home before release was at last achieved.

  It was on my way home from Kashmir's - as Vana and I were cutting through the market so that I could show my friends the ex-beggar boys the possible rewards for the man of discipline and character (to wit: I had an elephant and they did not) - that I saw, outlined on the wall of a temple of Vishnu, a dirty water stain, caused by condensation, mold, and wind-blown dust, which described the face of my best friend's mother, Mary.

  "Yeah, she does that," said Joshua, when I swung over the edge of his nook and announced the news. He and Melchior had been meditating and the old man, as usual, appeared to be dead. "She used to do it all the time when we were kids. She sent James and me running all over the place washing down walls before people saw. Sometimes her face would appear in a pattern of water drops in the dust, or the peelings from grapes would fall just so in a pattern after being taken out of the wine press. Usually it was walls. "

  "You never told me that. "

  "I couldn't tell you. The way you idolized her, you'd have been turning the pictures into shrines. "

  "So they were naked pictures?"

  Melchior cleared his throat and we both looked at him. "Joshua, either your mother or God has sent you a message. It doesn't matter who sent it, the message is the same. It is time for you to go home. "

  We would be leaving for the north in the morning, and Nicobar was south, so I left Joshua to pack our things on Vana while I walked into town to break the news to Kashmir.

  "Oh my," she said, "all the way back to Galilee. Do you have money for the journey?"

  "A little. "

  "But not with you?"

  "No. "

  "Well, okay. Bye. "

  I could swear I saw a tear in her eye as she closed the door.

  The next morning, with Vana loaded with my drawings and art supplies; my cushions, curtains, and rugs; my brass coffeepot, my tea ball, and my incense burner; my pair of breeding mongooses (mongeese?), their bamboo cage, my drum set, and my umbrella; my silk robe, my sun hat, my rain hat, my collection of carved erotic figurines, and Joshua's bowl, we gathered on the beach to say good-bye. Melchior stood before us in his loincloth, the wind whipping the tails of his white beard and hair around his face like fierce clouds. There was no sadness in his face, but then, he had endeavored his entire life to detach from the material world, which we were part of. He'd already done this a long time ago.

  Joshua made as if to embrace the old man, then instead just poked him in the shoulder. Once and only once, I saw Melchior smile. "But you haven't taught me everything I need to know," Josh said.

  "You're right, I have taught you nothing. I could teach you nothing. Everything that you needed to know was already there. You simply needed the word for it. Some need Kali and Shiva to destroy the world so they may see past the illusion to divinity in them, others need Krishna to drive them to the place where they may perceive what is eternal in them. Others may perceive the Divine Spark in themselves only by realizing through enlightenment that the spark resides in all things, and in that they find kinship. But because the Divine Spark resides in all, does not mean that all will discover it. Your dharma is not to learn, Joshua, but to teach. "

  "How will I teach my people about the Divine Spark? Before you answer, remember we're talking about Biff too. "

  "You must only find the right word. The Divine Spark is infinite, the path to find it is not. The beginning of the path is the word. "

  "Is that why you and Balthasa
r and Gaspar followed the star? To find the path to the Divine Spark in all men? The same reason that I came to find you?"

  "We were seekers. You are that which is sought, Joshua. You are the source. The end is divinity, in the beginning is the word. You are the word. "