by Paul Haines
Abdul turned to run but it was too late. The monster was on him.
Outside, the prisoners huddled together in the darkness, moaning, waiting for the cannibal of Sikaram to get hungry once more.
Johnny & Babushka
R J Astruc
I love Christmas.
I think it’s mainly the tinsel.
But also the wrapping paper and the crackers and the presents and the carolling and Harrods and the Queen’s Message and the goodwill-to-all-mankind and the way my home-town Wickley looks in winter, all tucked up in a white fleece of snow.
My flat-neighbour Johnny Flannery says it’s weird for me to celebrate Christmas, on account of who I am and, more specifically, what I am. He has a point, I suppose. I’m a fairy. Genus: Perisan peri, or Perfume-eater. Era: 7th millenium BCE. Mythos: Zoroastrian. Traditionally, Zorastrians do Nouruz, we do Sadeh, we do Pateti, we do six gahambars and eleven Jashans; we do Khordad Sal (the anniversary of Zarathushtra’s birth) and, to even things up, we also do Zartosht No-Diso (the anniversary of Zarathushtra’s death).
We technically don’t do Christmas—but look, it’s all secular and commercial now, right? Sure, back in my day, it wasn’t all this jolly mince-pies-and-Tannenbaum stuff. Far from it. In 7000 BCE the Christ-child himself was a mere twinkle in his father’s eye—and a very faint twinkle at that. We didn’t get any decent December festivities until the Romans invented Dies Natalis Solis Invicti in the early two hundreds and invited every solar god and his dog to join the fun.
Christmas in the middle ages was a good laugh, what with the gambling and the carolling and the pageants and the rest. But to my mind, nothing can beat Christmas in twenty-first century London. Maybe it’s the vibe. Maybe it’s the festivities. Maybe it’s the way families come together, exchange gifts, and share the year’s joys and hardships over eggnog and turkey . . .
Okay, thinking about it, it’s probably the tinsel.
Anyway. This—the story that follows—isn’t a story about a Christmas miracle but I feel like it ought to be.
You’re welcome to suspend your disbelief.
* * *
Christmas Eve. The night before Christmas, and as it happens there is something stirring in my shitty ten-by-fifteen metre tenement flat: me.
I’m in the middle of making myself a Christmas crown out of foil, glue, beads and sticky-tape (I saw it on Playschool) when there’s a knock on my door. I unstick myself from the table, the wall, and my own sleeve and go to find out who it is.
Outside, bouncing from foot to foot in the corridor of our tenements, is my flat-neighbour Johnny Flannery. You know Johnny: six-foot eleven, brown, handsome, leather-clad, nominally Irish, with a grin that makes grannies feel faint and a police record almost as long as his very long arms. Last seen climbing out your bedroom window with a stereo in one hand and some Tupperware for the girlfriend in the other—yes, that Johnny Flannery.
Johnny is also sort-of-kind-of my best friend. I’d make a joke about that, but this is West London and I’m five-foot-flat and ethnic and a fucking fairy and I’ve come to be rather grateful for Johnny’s company. And, of course, his loyal silence regarding my supernatural origins. There’s not terribly much you can hide from your neighbour, particularly when he keeps breaking into your house to watch late-night cable.
“Zeeeem,” goes Johnny.
“Johnny,” I riposte. Then burp. I’ve spent much of the afternoon eating glitter, which I understand is bad for people and also quite bad for fairies too, but not in the same way. “I suppose you’d like to come in . . .”
But he already is in, his feet up on my coffee table, his arse on my couch, and the remote control in the palm of his hand. “Didn’t know if ancient Zoroastrian fairies celebrated Christmas,” he says, digging a hastily-wrapped present out of the pocket of his jacket. “So, like, if you do, here’s something. If you don’t, though, I’ll ’ave it back . . .”
“I do, ta, Johnny.”
“It’s a personal organiser,” he explains, as I tear away the paper.
Of course it is. I’m always asking him to get me something practical, and the personal organiser is the very epitome of practical. I switch it on and check the specs. It has an electronic diary, an alarm, a calendar, GPS, email and even an inbuilt web browser, which I guess would be useful if I ever felt masochistic enough to try surfing the net on a three-inch screen. Admittedly from certain angles it looks a little like the case Johnny’s girlfriend keeps her mascara in (which I’m certain he did on purpose, one of his less than subtle digs at my masculinity) . . .
“I figured it’d be useful, like,” says Johnny. “On account of you havin’ so many associates to keep up with. Banshees and demons and vampires and the rest of them types you fairy folk hang out with.”
“I’m a veritable supernatural socialite,” I agree, scrolling through Google street view with my thumbs. I might’ve been born nine millennia ago, but when it comes to technology I’m totally cutting-edge. I’ve even got my own Facebook page. “So where did you steal it from?”
Johnny pulls a face, a face that’s now full of the Christmas pudding I’d left out on the coffee table in case any hungry young carollers came knocking. “Ah now, Zeem, don’t look yer gift horse in his mouth. Where’s yer Christmas spirit?”
I give him a look. My flat is positively redolent with Christmas spirit, and has been since early November. I’m a fairy, after all; we get excitable around shiny things. There’s not a cupboard or table or chair I haven’t swathed in brightly coloured bunting; every doorknob is wearing its very own tiny Santa’s hat. My Christmas tree—an eight foot monstrosity I had to wheel home from Tescos in a shopping trolley—is bent double underneath the weight of the hundred-thousand odd decorations I’ve accumulated over the years and enough tinsel to moor a warship. (Personally, I think it compares quite favourably to the charity Giving Tree in Wickley’s shopping centre . . . ) Sprigs of mistletoe sprout somewhat optimistically from the light-fittings.
“Don’t you roll yer eyes at me, fairy-boy,” Johnny says, one figure jabbing the bulls-eye of my Rudolf-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer jumper. “Cynical folks like you always ferget the true meanin’ of Christmas. Ain’t about bleeding tinsel and presents and the like. It’s all about givin’ somethin’ back to those who need it.”
“No, that’s the true meaning of your court-ordered community service. I’ve done my charity work, thanks. I advised the Giving Tree people on their tinsel choices—”
Johnny’s about to clip me one over the ear when we hear someone yelling outside–and then, close, too close, the squeal of brakes.
And then a thump.
Johnny and I look at each other.
We’re out the door in record time.
* * *
The victim of the crash is an old woman. A trio of young hoods stand dumbly around her body, which is spread-eagled on the pavement like a clumsy snow-angel. The pooling light of the streetlamps gives this sad little tableaux a strangely ethereal quality. Ethereal and still. There’s no sign of the car that hit her. Or a sign that help is on its way. Or a sign that anyone except the hoods have even noticed the woman on the ground. And at this time of the evening there’s few cars on the road (which is iced up and slippery), and all the shops across the way have already closed their doors for the holidays.
“Ambulance,” I say, puffing up—Johnny a half-step behind me. “Did you call an—”
“Course we done,” says a hood. “We ain’t stupid, mate. They says they’ll be here in a half hour, like, on account of how the traffic’s bogged in round the top end of town. Christmas shopping n all.”
“Said we had to watch her, like, until they came. So’s we is. It’s the charitable thing, innit.’ This little slice of Dickensian Christmas spirit comes from the lips of a fat white kid in a yellow hoodie. She stares down at the crumpled woman and sighs. “God bless the old cunt.”
I look down, too. There’s no blood. The woman’s left arm’s sitting at a
funny angle and her chest looks dented, curving inward where it shouldn’t. She’s breathing, sort of, little whistles and whispers like a sleeping child. Her head’s wrapped up in one of those patterned scarfs that Russian ladies sometimes wear, and her clothes are quaintly old-fashioned, layers of gypsy skirts and a belt of chain and flat silver discs.
In one hand she’s clutching a sack that’s almost as big as she is. Gently I bend down and pry away her fingers.
And—because I’m curious—I look inside.
It’s filled with presents.
Each one is wrapped up in shiny Christmas paper, with the name and address of a lucky child pasted to the front.
“Oh, yer kiddin’,” says Johnny, who’s looking over my shoulder. “Oh. Oh geez. Oh geez, Zeem. Do you know who that is? I mean, is that bleedin’—”
“Yes. Poor woman. I wonder what she’s doing out at this time.”
“Oh, we know,” says Johnny, tapping the side of his nose to intimate a secret shared. “We know why.”
“We do?”
“Sure we do. Old lady with a bag full of presents . . .” If he intimates any harder he might take a nostril off. “Not that hard to guess who it is, is it?”
“Guess who—oh.” I don’t know the specifics of the British school syllabus, but I do know that there’s a big focus on cultural diversity. I expect that Johnny has heard the stories of Babushka; that he’s familiar with the old Russian woman in a headscarf, a sack of presents over her shoulder, chasing the Christ-child from house to house with the tenacity of an insurance salesman. “That’s nice, Johnny,” I say uneasily. “But actually—”
Johnny bounces, energised. “You know what we got to do now, don’t you? We got to deliver ’em.”
“What?” I look at the hoods, hoping for a sensibly derisive teenage response, but the hoods are already looking at Johnny—tattooed, six foot eleven, serial offender Johnny Flannery—and have appeared to come to the consensus that this man is a Role Model. “Christmas spirit,” they chime. “‘Tis the reason for the season.”
“Please, Johnny. If it was any other day of the year you’d be going through her wallet for her credit cards. It’ll take us ages to find these people, anyway. Do I look like I know where . . .” I check a present. “ . . . Holsbury Street in Upper Wickley is off the top of my head?”
Johnny nudges my arm, and I realise I’m still holding my personal organiser.
“Don’t you got a GPS on that thing, mate?” he asks, grinning.
* * *
So, on the night before Christmas, when I should be at home eating glitter and watching the BBC’s Carols from Kings, I am instead tramping up the streets of Wickley behind a convicted felon and three probable-felons-to-be. I’m not really sure why I’m doing it, only that Johnny is very persuasive and also very tall. And maybe I feel a tiny bit guilty, too. I’m a creature of goodness and light and happiness, but tonight my conscience has been upstaged by the humanitarian instincts of a bunch of local thugs.
We’ve left the Russian lady in the hands of the paramedics. (They say she’ll pull through, which I can tell Johnny’s having a hard time not declaring a Christmas miracle). The first address on our Christmas list—for a present Johnny’s carefully selected by the age-old method of lucky dipping—is on Mercy Street. According to the GPS, this is a casual five minute stroll away for someone who’s six foot eleven and fit, and a horrible five minute sobbingpantingstumble away for someone who’s five foot flat and has a belly full of glitter.
But it’s too much to hope the others will slow down for me. Johnny, striding along with a sack of presents slung over his shoulder, is unmistakeably a man on a mission; the hoods follow in his footsteps like loyal pages after their Good King Wenceslas.
I catch up with the group as Johnny’s knocking on the front door, the present—a medium-sized rectangular box in pink sparkly paper—tucked under his chin. I’m about to voice my misgivings about blindly handing out mysterious boxes to small children, when a middle-aged woman wearing a Santa’s hat and a tinsel boa appears at the ingress. Her face fairly sours when she sees who’s on her doorstep.
“Hello,” says Johnny, whose Christmas spirit appears indefatigable. “I’m ’ere to deliver—”
“Wait.” The woman squints. “Aren’t you the Irish bastard who stole my Playstation last month?”
Johnny is politely disarming. “I ’ave brought a present for yer daughter. A very merry Christmas to you, ma’am.”
The woman is pushing up her sleeves, a very un-merry scowl on her face, when a grubby little girl appears at her hip. Johnny’s gaze shifts from mother to daughter; he bends from his great height until he and the girl are at eye level.
“Are you Fei Ling?” he asks.
The child wrinkles her face. “Yes,” she says.
“Then this is for you,” says Johnny graciously, and places the present into Fei’s small hands.
“Don’t you open that,” says her mother automatically, but her plea falls on deaf ears. Fei is already ripping off the paper. Amongst the immutable truths I’ve learnt in my long existence is the fact it is not physically possible to separate a small child from an unwrapped Christmas present. Rankled, the mother turns her attention back to Johnny. “Flannery, isn’t it?” she says. “Aren’t you meant to be in jail?”
“Doin’ community service this time,” says Johnny. “On account o’ me good behavior.”
“Good behavior? Community service?” The mother snorts. “Well I tell you now, Johnny Flannery, you ain’t done this community any favours. You theivin’ shit, that Playstation cost us good money.”
“Mummy, look, it’s a Barbie,” says Fei.
“Can’t we let bygones be bygones?” Johnny tries, smiling the winning smile I’ve personally witnessed turn a one year sentence into six months.
“‘Tis the reason for the season,” chime the hoods, a little more uncertainly this time.
“I should call the cops on you right now.”
“Mummy-mummy-mummy-mummy, it’s a Barbie, mummy.”
Fei’s mother looks down finally at her child, who is fairly windmilling the plastic doll to get some parental attention. “Oh,” she says, softening a little. “It’s the one you wanted, isn’t it? What are you going to call her?”
“Barbie,” says Fei, in that tone that says: Don’t you know anything, Mum? “Her name is Barbie.”
Johnny, a man with well honed get-away skills, chooses this moment to start inching away from the door. The hoods follow his lead; and soon we’re all half-way down the street, back-patting and grinning and congratulating each other for a job more-or-lessly well done . . . and for the life of me, I can’t help but get swept up in their good cheer. What’s more Christmasy, after all, than bringing toys to small children?
“Okay, fairy-boy, where are we off to next?” says Johnny, flicking his fingers at my belly and Rudolf-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer’s nose. “We got a big night ahead of us.”
“Wait, there’s at least thirty presents in there,” I say, my good cheer faltering at the thought of the very long roads ahead of us, and the very short legs I have to traverse with them. “We really can’t—”
But Johnny’s already lucky-dipped another present from his sack. “Number 8 Hemmingway Close!” he declares, as the hoods cheer. “Ain’t that just past the pub?”
* * *
I am, as I’ve mentioned, nine millenia old and I’m used to seeing history repeat itself, practically ad infinitum (and certainly ad nauseum). There’s a saying that goes: there are no new stories ever written—and I feel now, more than ever, like we’re walking along a path already well-trodden. But Christmas has always been about traditions and signs and the curious little things mortals do to make sense of a world too bloody complicated for them to ever understand.
Babushka’s story is, of course, a story about apologies. When the three kings of the Nativity invite Babushka to join them as they follow their star-of-wonder, Babushka has other things to
do. Her house needs cleaning; the floors must be scrubbed; food must be cooked and, most importantly, she needs to find the right gift for the Christ-child. (And what do you buy for the son of a god, really?) And while Babushka procrastinates, the Christ-child slips away from her; he is gone by the time she finally reaches Bethlehem, her ungiveable gift clutched to her chest.
Babushka is still looking for him. She sublimates her guilt for failing him by leaving presents for other children—it is a sort of penance. A community service, in fact, that’s very much like the one Johnny does every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.
And, of course, the community service he’s performing now.
There’s a light snow falling as we walk the streets of Wickley—the kind of light snow you often see peppering the outermost branches of Christmas card Christmas trees, or sprinkled across the roofs of barn-yards and farm houses in pastoral idylls. (Not the usual sort of snow we get in Wickley, which predominantly comes in slush.) Johnny’s taught the hoods the dirty versions to some classic holiday favourites; they carol away merrily, the yellow hoodie taking the high notes that the two boys can’t reach.
Like Babushka before us, we do our rounds. This little boy gets a fire engine. This little girl, hiding behind her father, gets a book about origami. This family gets a hamper of small gifts: bits and pieces for the Christmas tree, a couple of CDs, and that special Tescos Christmas pudding that no one but visiting uncles eat. This little girl gets an astronaut’s helmet. This little girl gets a DVD of early Star Trek episodes, and gives us a traditional Vulcan salute as we leave.
After a dozen or so successful present deliveries, Johnny starts to regale the hoods with his unique take on the Christmas mythology.
“Parents invented Santa so’s little kids wouldn’t know where presents came from,” he explains, in the most paternal of tones. “He’s sort of like god, right, only fer little baby Christians.”
“Actually,” I say, still lagging behind the pack, “Santa is generally associated with Woden, who’s pure heathen.”
