“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.”