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 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...
18 comments
Read more

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

Goodbye, Little Ones

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...
6 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...
39 comments
Read more