violence
a month after king signed the Second Amazing War Treaty, i poisoned my neighbour to death.
i chose poison because i’m not a violent person. i prefer my hands not get bloody. does it sound like i do this often? no, actually, he was the first person i caused the death of. & you’ll see, it was really my last resort. in fact, i’m so sure you & everyone will agree with me that i didn’t even attempt to hide the truth. i told the whole town i did it.
i was summoned by the court. i requested a public audience as i had grown tired of justifying the story to every person i met. it had become time to clear the air once and for all. i would not be called a killer.
court was set up in the grand arena. throngs & mobs, circling, screaming in the stands around & above me. all my limbs chained, i faced king, & advisor, as they eyed me curiously. a big man appeared on a lower level & read out my charges. his voice boomed across the arena. people stirred again.
king passed a message down to the big man & he bellowed, “defend yourself”
“could I request to be unchained?” i yelled back, “i am not a violent man”
the king whispered. the messenger scurried. the big man bellowed, once again, “you’re a killer.”
“please. i am not.”
king. messenger. big man- “several townsfolk have testified that you confessed to poisoning your neighbour’s lemonade”
“that is true”
scuttling. “so was your intention not to kill?”
“my intention was solely justice”
“justice for what?”
“king, my neighbour has a tree that leans against our common fence. it’s roots have grown deep into my field. into where my dead wife was buried. last month, i found my wife in all her bony glory, sitting on top of the land! the roots had thrown her out of the earth! if as you say, i killed this man, then did he not also rape my dead wife & put her naked on display?”
“the tree” big man relayed “might have caused your wife dishonour. your neighbour was innocent.”
“well then, the poison caused his death, king. i am innocent”
the king was getting visibly agitated with every message he sent, “you mixed the poison!”
“he planted the tree!”
the messenger had just begun running again, but I decided to continue, “king, if we are talking about who caused the death. then i have a new admission to make. as you are aware, i am the only barber in this town. i have had over 500 people sitting in the stands here cut their hair at my house in the last month. & i have done a special thing, king, to establish my trust in the sense & goodwill of this town. i have charged each one of them a coin extra in the last month & used those & only those coins to buy the poison I used on my neighbour. then have not those 500 townsfolk actually caused his death by financing it? am I not simply a vessel for their own devices?”
the crowd shifted- a few yelps & cries.
falling back to silence when the big man spoke: “they didn’t know what they were paying for!”
“does anyone ever? no two of my haircuts ever turn out exactly the same. yet i charge the-”
“these are futile rhetorics! king shall have no more of this. say he did dishonour your dead wife. did you, even once attempt to resolve this without such extremism?”
“king, i begged the man to stop and pull his tree out & let my dead wife be dead in peace, but that wretched mountain fellow, a distant descendant of the same lineage that we waged the Second Amazing War against, king, he replied in his foreign, savage language, & conveniently substituted himself for a deaf marionette. there was no hope in the letter or word for he was uncivilised in the ghastliest senses.”
“still,” big man this time relayed a message from advisor, “how must you take justice into your hands when we exist to make such judgements about your lives.”
“well, advisor, what would you have done?”
again, the messenger was mid-run when I decided to continue- “if, as you conceded, my neighbour did rape my dead wife, what is the punishment you would have judged.”
“capital”
“& what have i done?”
“you dare to think your actions can be compared with the state’s?”
“no, sir. i simply have a question- is the law different for a king and his citizens?”
king stood up, enraged, walking to big man, closing the distance for the messanger to run, “of course not! king would have come straight to the court had such a fate befallen his wife.”
i laughed. “oh, how i wish that was all i meant”
mid-run, i carried on, “king, my neighbour’s house sits on our town’s soil, right at the foothills of the mountains. faithfully. not too far from the border where the savages invaded. we heard the shelling of the Second Amazing War every day. a thousand or so years ago, even that land, nearly precisely up until my fence was just a forest, mostly occupied by the barbarian tribe. my house has stood there for over twenty generations of my ancestors. but you see, our rulers did claim that portion of the forest in the foothills, just as you have over the last year. & we lived there. that was until my neighbour’s father married a woman from the tribe & bore a child. my neighbour is that child, king. not a month ago, you waged the Second Amazing War to wipe out their entire tribe that threatened to invade us, and today, when one of them encroaches on our land, & rapes our women, how do you call my deliverance of justice violent? would any of us, in a million years, think to call you violent, oh good king- i must ask you, did you kill those barbarians?”
murmurs scattered across the arena. the king stopped, lost in thought. messenger, positioned to sprint, waited expectantly. big man scratched his belly absentmindedly.
eventually, king walked to big man himself, while the messenger stared agape, “i deliver the will of the people, who pay me in taxes to distribute their justice & protect their rights”
“i know the people you speak of, king, & their pure virtue and faith in justice. i cut their hair, after all. these people are sensible people. they know that i have also only delivered justice.”
murmurs of general agreement filled the air as people nodded into a consensus about their sensibility.
a while passed. king & advisor discussed at length. eventually, their decisions were heard.
the first was to unchain me. for i wasn’t a violent man.