Skip to main content

A mad man’s Christmas

Fiction

Atami was sick of the blood on his sword.  He wanted to vomit.  That’s why he walked into Helga’s brothel.

“Get me some water to wash first,” he ordered when Helga’s nose puckered involuntarily at the stench of blood.  Helga shuddered at the sight of the blood-drenched sword.  “Then send me your best girl,” Atami growled.  “With enough wine,” he added.

“Not me, please,” Naomi said when Helga asked her to carry the water.

“Why not?” Helga shot an angry glance.

“He is Herod’s soldier.”

“And he looks majestic,” added Helga.  “Maybe you can please him enough and he’ll marry you.  Think of your future girl.”

“I hate Herod and his beasts.”

Naomi had reasons to hate Herod and his soldiers.  She was a descendant of the Hasmonean family which was ruined by Herod.  On Cleopatra’s request, Mark Antony had decided to make Aristobulus Hasmonea the king of Judea.  Herod’s beasts killed Aristobulus and haunted Hasmoneans like a vampire.  Naomi escaped into Helga’s brothel. 

“I’ll kill him,” Naomi said to herself as she carried the water to the ablution. 

“Wash away that,” Atami ordered when Naomi reached with the water.  He was asking her to wash away his vomit. 

“Pour it on me,” Atami ordered when Naomi brought the next pitcher of water.

Water became wine-red as it flowed down Atami’s body.  “How can he bear this cold, cold water?” Naomi wondered. 

Atami dried himself with the linen brought by Naomi and put on the robe given generously by Helga.

“Kings are mad people,” said Atami as he sat in front of the fire lit by Helga who had taken possession of whatever the soldier possessed as she helped him strip himself.  “Herod wanted all infants to be killed because some other kings came from somewhere and said that they had seen a star somewhere….”

Herod’s soldiers went all over the country killing all male infants because three people who called themselves kings from the east visited him and said that a child was born in Judea who would be the king of the Jews. 

“The East is mad,” said Atami as he sipped the wine that Helga kept supplying copiously.  “They have given their madness to Herod now.”

“Wasn’t Herod always mad?” Naomi blurted out.

Helga threw an angry glance at Naomi.

“You’re right, girl,” said Atami.  “I’m sick of him now.  Sick of Herod.  Sick of Antony and his bitch Cleopatra.  Sick of all Caesars.  What are kings but dogs in perpetual heat?”

Naomi and Helga looked at each other.  Helga served more wine to the soldier.  Wine seemed to enlighten him.

“I’m thinking of god,” said Atami. 

“God?” Helga was amused.

“Yup.  Someone told me that God was born on the earth and that’s what set the fire to Herod’s ass.  Some dream or prophecy or whatever shit, you know, the religious people.”

Helga winked at Naomi.  Naomi planted a kiss on the soldier’s stubbly cheek.

Atami pushed her away.

“I’m thinking of god,” he said.  “How will god wash away his sin of killing thousands of infants?  Thousands of innocents!  Thousands of innocents butchered for god’s sake.”

Helga and Naomi stared at each other.  They wondered what they would do with a mad man.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
14 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...
7 comments
Read more