The Jester

“Well, I thought it was funny” the jester muttered to himself as he walked home in the rain, umbrella blown inside out and discarded in the bin five minutes back. He knew that he’d been warned, but he didn’t really think it was that inappropriate. It was the kind of material that had gone down well in the past, he just couldn’t adjust to the new reality that faced him.

He honed his craft in a time when the rules were clear and his job was more or less spelled out for him. There were areas he couldn’t go, of course there were. He would never insult directly, and he would always steer clear of mentioning the Queen. But back then you could find the real comedy, if you spoke the truth a little bit. Well it made the laughs all that more genuine. And his old boss could take the joke, he appreciated it, it was a bit of a check for him.

The jester didn’t know what he’d do now. He didn’t go into this jestering game thinking he’d ever have to find a new job. He work hard through his apprenticeship, he learned his craft and honed his skills. He had become the master that he always wanted to be, making it to the peak of his field. He felt he was too old to find a new field now. What does a former jester do? There was no precedent for this.

He tried to resist the temptation to blame, he never believed in it. His was a game of stating the facts as they were, people made their own conclusions and laid their own blame. He was tactful, he was sensitive, and he never blamed. But now he couldn’t help it, he understood that things had changed but he felt there was finally some blame that he could lay. The new King was the problem, he was the source of the Jester’s trouble.

The new King was far too young for his post. “The young people these days”. The jester was muttering again. The King’s attention span was too short, his mind always off on something else, he wasn’t following the narrative that the jester was laying out. He didn’t want the jester’s nuance and he didn’t want anything that was too direct. How could you deal with that? He was too sensitive, his father had a thicker skin, everyone his age does.

Standing at the bus stop now, the jester had abandoned any efforts to stay out of the rain. Nothing could stop him getting any wetter now. Anyway, his mind was in some other place by now. It was circling around, his mind, on a journey that he wasn’t really conscious of. The jester’s mind had floated around above him and was starting to come back around in a circle. As the headlights of the approaching bus blinded him for a moment he almost stopped thinking all together. He saw it all more clearly now, he couldn’t change what had happened to him, but only how he reacted to it.

By the time he got back to his house the jester’s mood had changed entirely. He wasn’t muttering to himself any more. Talking to himself still. Yes. But it wasn’t muttering, he was running through his thoughts again and again. Each time he was surer about it. He didn’t need the King to tell his jokes to. Look on the bright side he told himself, out loud and subconsciously. The King could have killed him, back in the jester’s day, back with the old king, and the king before that, it was the kind of thing that happened. No the jester still had his life, and he still had his mind. He didn’t need a court and a King to tell his jokes, to ply his trade. He could do what he’d always done, he’d just need a new audience. At that stage he looked around his house, he looked at his big TV, at his awards on the mantle piece, and at his views across the city and to the harbour. He could carry on telling his jokes, he probably needed to find a cheaper place to live though.