“You would hail the darkness, you would consort with demons and fly with the evil Djinn like Balthasar? I won’t have you near my booth, be gone from here.” She made the sign of the evil eye, which in her case was redundant.
“No, no, no,” I said. “None of that. The magus left some, uh, frankincense at Joshua’s house. We need to return it to him.”
The old woman regarded me with her good eye. “You’re lying.”
“Yes, he is,” said Josh.
“BALTHASAR!” I screamed in her face. It didn’t have the same effect as the first time around and I was a little disappointed.
“Stop that,” she said.
Joshua reached out to take her craggy hand. “Grandmother,” he said, “our ship’s captain, Titus Inventius, said you would know where to find Balthasar. Please help us.”
The old woman seemed to relax, and just when I thought she was going to smile, she raked her nails across Joshua’s hand and leapt back. “Titus Inventius is a scalawag,” she shouted.
Joshua stared at the blood welling up in the scratches on the back of his hand and I thought for a second that he might faint. He never understood it when someone was violent or unkind. I’d probably be half a day explaining to him why the old woman scratched him, but right then I was furious.
“You know what? You know what? You know what?” I was waving my finger under her nose. “You scratched the Son of God. That’s your ass, that’s what.”
“The magus is gone from Antioch, and good riddance to him,” screeched the crone.
The fat trader had been watching this the whole time without saying a word, but now he began laughing so hard that I could barely hear the old woman wheezing out curses. “So you want to find Balthasar, do you, God’s Son?”
Joshua came out of the stunned contemplation of his wounds and looked at the trader. “Yes, sir, do you know him?”
“Who do you think the monkey’s feet are for? Follow me.” He whirled on his heel and sauntered away without another word.
As we followed the trader into an alley so narrow that his shoulders nearly touched the sides, I turned back to the old crone and shouted, “Your ass, hag! Mark my words.”
She hissed and made the sign of the evil eye again.
“She was a little creepy,” Joshua said, looking at the scratches on his hand again.
“Don’t be judgmental, Josh, you’re not without creepiness yourself.”
“Where do you think this guy is leading us?”
“Probably somewhere where he can murder and kill us.”
“Yeah, at least one of those.”
Chapter 11
Since my escape attempt, I can’t get the angel to leave the room at all. Not even for his beloved Soap Opera Digest. (And yes, when he left to obtain the first one, it would have been a good time to make my escape, but I wasn’t thinking that way then, so back off.) Today I tried to get him to bring me a map.
“Because no one is going to know the places I’m writing about, that’s why,” I told him. “You want me to write in this idiom so people will understand what I’m saying, then why use the names of places that have been gone for thousands of years? I need a map.”
“No,” said the angel.
“When I say the journey was two months by camel, what will that mean to these people who can cross an ocean in hours? I need to know modern distances.”
“No,” said the angel.
(Did you know that in a hotel they bolt the bedside lamp to the table, thereby making it an ineffective instrument of persuasion when trying to bring an obdurate angel around to your way of thinking? Thought you should know that. Pity too, it’s such a substantial lamp.)
“But how will I recount the heroic acts of the archangel Raziel if I can’t tell the locations of his deeds? What, you want me to write, ‘Oh, then somewhere generally to the left of the Great Wall that rat-bastard Raziel showed up looking like hell considering he may have traveled a long distance or not?’ Is that what you want? Or should it read, ‘Then, only a mile out of the port of Ptolemais, we were once again graced with the shining magnificence of the archangel Raziel? Huh, which way do you want it?”
(I know what you’re thinking, that the angel saved my life when Titus threw me off the ship and that I should be more forgiving toward him, right? That I shouldn’t try to manipulate a poor creature who was given an ego but no free will or capacity for creative thought, right? Okay, good point. But do please remember that the angel only intervened on my behalf because Joshua was praying for my rescue. And do please remember that he could have saved us a lot of difficulty over the years if he had helped us out more often. And please don’t forget that—despite the fact that he is perhaps the most handsome creature I’ve ever laid eyes on—Raziel is a stone doofus. Nevertheless, the ego stroke worked.)
“I’ll get you a map.”
And he did. Unfortunately the concierge was only able to find a map of the world provided by an airline that partners with the hotel. So who knows how accurate it is. On this map the next leg of our journey is six inches long and would cost thirty thousand Friendly Flyer Miles. I hope that clears things up.
The trader’s name was Ahmad Mahadd Ubaidullaganji, but he said we could call him Master. We called him Ahmad. He led us through the city to a hillside where his caravan was camped. He owned a hundred camels which he drove along the Silk Road, along with a dozen men, two goats, three horses, and an astonishingly homely woman named Kanuni. He took us to his tent, which was larger than both the houses Joshua and I had grown up in. We sat on rich carpets and Kanuni served us stuffed dates and wine from a pitcher shaped like a dragon.
“So, what does the Son of God want with my friend Balthasar?” Ahmad asked. Before we could answer he snorted and laughed until his shoulders shook and he almost spilled his wine. He had a round face with high cheekbones and narrow black eyes that crinkled at the corners from too much laughter and desert wind. “I’m sorry, my friends, but I’ve never been in the presence of the son of a god before. Which god is your father, by the way?”
“Well, the God,” I said.
“Yep,” said Joshua. “That’s the one.”
“And what is your God’s name?”
“Dad,” said Josh.
“We’re not supposed to say his name.”
“Dad!” said Ahmad. “I love it.” He started giggling again. “I knew you were Hebrews and weren’t allowed to say your God’s name, I just wanted to see if you would. Dad. That’s rich.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “and we are certainly enjoying the refreshments, but it’s getting late and you said you would take us to see Balthasar.”
“And indeed I will. We leave in the morning.”
“Leave for where?” Josh asked.
“Kabul, the city where Balthasar lives now.”
I had never heard of Kabul, and I sensed that was not a good thing. “And how far is Kabul?”
“We should be there in less than two months by camel,” Ahmad said.
If I knew then what I know now, I might have stood and exclaimed, “Tarnation, man, that’s over six inches and thirty thousand Friendly Flyer Miles!” But since I didn’t know that then, what I said was “Shit.”
“I will take you to Kabul,” said Ahmad, “but what can you do to help pay your way?”
“I know carpentry,” Joshua said. “My stepfather taught me how to fix a camel saddle.”
“And you?” He looked at me. “What can you do?”
I thought about my experience as a stonecutter, and immediately rejected it. And my training as a village idiot, which I thought I could always fall back on, wasn’t going to help either. I did have my newfound skill as a sex educator, but somehow I didn’t think there’d be call for that on a two-month trip with fourteen men and one homely woman. So what could I do, what skill had I to gentle the road to Kabul?
“If someone in the caravan croaks I’m a great mourner,” I said. “Want to hear a dirge?”