Free Lamb by Christopher Moore

Spanish.”
    “Sorry, I was showing off my English. I know many swear words.”
    “Well done. Spanish please.”
    “Pendejo!”
    “Splendid, now storm out.”
    Jesus turned on his heel and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
    “He spit on me?” Raziel said, still not believing it. “An angel of the Lord, and he spit on me.”
    “Yes, you offended him.”
    “He called me a fuckstick. I heard him.”
    “In his culture, it is an affront to ask another man to buy a Soap Opera Digest for you. We’ll be lucky if he ever brings us a pizza again.”
    “But I want a Soap Opera Digest. ”
    “He said you can buy one just down the street, I will be happy to go get one for you.”
    “Not so fast, Apostle, none of your tricks. I’ll get it myself, you stay here.”
    “You’ll need money.” I handed him some bills.
    “If you leave the room I will find you in an instant, you know that?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “You cannot hide from me.”
    “Wouldn’t dream of it. Hurry now.”
    He sort of shuffled sideways toward the door. “Don’t try to lock me out, I’m taking a key with me. Not that I need it or anything, being an angel of the Lord.”
    “Not to mention a fuckstick.”
    “I don’t even know what that means.”
    “Go, go, go.” I shooed him through the door. “Godspeed, Raziel.”
    “Work on your Gospel while I’m gone.”
    “Right.” I slammed the door in his face and threw the safety lock. Raziel has now watched hundreds of hours of American television, you’d think he would have noticed that people wear shoes when they go outside.

    The book is exactly as I suspected, a Bible, but written in a flowery version of this English I’ve been writing in. The translation of the Torah and the prophets from the Hebrew is muddled sometimes, but the first part seems to be our Bible. This language is amazing—so many words. In my time we had very few words, perhaps a hundred that we used all the time, and thirty of them were synonyms for guilt. In this language you can curse for an hour and never use the same word twice. Flocks and schools and herds of words, that’s why I’m supposed to use this language to tell Joshua’s story.
    I’ve hidden the book in the bathroom, so I can sneak in and read it while the angel is in the room. I didn’t have time to actually read much of the part of the book they call the New Testament, but it’s obvious that it is the story of Joshua’s life. Or parts of it, anyway.
    I’ll study it later, but now I should go on with the real story.
    I suppose I should have considered the exact nature of what we were doing before I invited Maggie to join us. I mean, there is some difference between the circumcision of an eight-day-old baby boy, which she hadseen before, and the same operation on the ten-foot statue of a Greek god.
    “My goodness, that is, uh, impressive,” Maggie said, staring up at the marble member.
    “Graven image,” Joshua said under his breath. Even in the moonlight I could tell he was blushing.
    “Let’s do it.” I pulled a small iron chisel from my pouch. Joshua was wrapping the head of his mallet with leather to deaden its sound. Sepphoris slept around us, the silence broken only by the occasional bleat of a sheep. The evening cook fires had long since gone to coals, the dust cloud that stirred through the city during the day had settled, and the night air was clean and still. From time to time I would catch a sweet whiff of sandalwood coming from Maggie and I would lose my train of thought. Funny the things you remember.
    We found a bucket and turned it upside down for Joshua to stand on while he worked. He set the tip of my chisel on Apollo’s foreskin and ventured a light tap with the mallet. A tiny fragment of marble flaked away.
    “Give it a good whack,” I said.
    “I can’t, it will make too much noise.”
    “No, it won’t, the leather will cover it.”
    “But I might take the whole end of it off.”
    “He can spare it,”