“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 get 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.”