“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.