Guys.
It's Christmas.
Just think...the last Creatopia post of 2013...*sniff*
Soooooo sorry I haven't posted in over a month. It was NaNoWriMo, and you know what that means. I can say it was at least a successful month, so at least I was working. But I'm back with a Christmas special, and the posting will be back full-swing this oncoming year.
So sit back by the tree, grab a glass of eggnog, and enjoy:
The
Bells of St. Nicholas
The thin hum of the choir hung in the air like a brewing
storm, yet a beautiful one, rising into the air as a golden cloud and
stretching out to paint the sky in its milky warmth. My boots struck each
cobblestone with a thick smack, the leather shattering the drifts of white and
sour yellow snow. My coat was heavy and held my head above my shoulders, for
the collar was high, and it took in many a crystal of wind as I pushed along.
I was beneath the shadow of the church, and my thick
gloves wound about the metal door handle. The gates into St. Nicholas’ were
shackled shut, despite the fact that the chorus of the masses was already
inside, probably because they took a back route. I huffed a great cloud of
breath into the air and fumbled through my coat pockets, searching for my key
ring.
How could they have begun to practice? I was their
director.
I came to that church out of obligation. The night was
dark and cold. I wanted peace and rest and a bit of drink, to sooth me, some
pipe-weed perhaps, and maybe a bath, but nothing could have convinced me in
that moment, as I yanked the heavy keys from my belt and fumbled shakily
through them, that I wanted to be at midnight Christmas Eve mass.
Nothing.
The key went into the keyhole and I bade the outdoors and
the looming carvings of the Virgin Mary in the arched gateway goodbye, entering
the warmth of the chapel and its peaceful, candlelit glow. I stomped my boots
off in the foyer, where were more statuettes and the guest book and a fireplace,
and marched, tussled, into the church itself.
The pews were stone, and the floor was wood, oddly
enough. The altar and stage were festooned with fine carpets and designs of
Jesus and Mary, today with Bethlehem in the background and the star high above,
the shepherds in the fields, the three wise men on their camels. The choir, in
their robes of black and crimson, stood in rows in their place behind the
altar, and the podium was empty. I moved through the central isle, towards my
place at the organist’s bench.
The light came from hundreds of candles laid about the
cathedral in many clever places, from within wall-carvings to on the altar to
on the pews themselves, for when we sang certain songs such as “O Come All Ye
Faithful” or “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” I had prepared the organ yesterday,
cleaned its pipes, shined its keys, made it ready for the eve of Christ’s
birth.
I had to continue to remind myself that it was, in fact,
the eve of Christ’s birth, so as not to just give up and go home.
Allow me to regale you with my tales of horror in trying
to arrange this service.
It started several weeks before Christmas Eve, when a
woman entered my office in the adjacent building, requesting that the song “The
First Noel” be removed from the usual evening’s midnight repertoire, because her
poor hearing had convinced her that the choir was actually singing “The First
Whore-el.” (Pardon my French, I promise that is what she said.) No matter how
many times I tried to convince her that even the idea of such a thing would be
absurd as well as blasphemous, she threatened to press charges, and I had to
have her ushered out of my office as she was shouting at the top her lungs.
Further proof of her hearing’s poor development.
Well, because she was shown the door quite quickly, she
decided to press charges anyways, and thus, I wound up paying five hundred
euros out of my own pocket because giving in the church was poor that week and
she blamed me for the incident.
All because of her incompetent ears.
Two weeks later, I was rehearsing with the choir when one
of the members had a stroke right there on the stage, and I had to rush them to
the doctor’s because half the choir members fainted out of horror at the head
injury on the stroked man and the other feigned weakness so that they would not
have to carry him.
I was there for six hours.
When I got back, it was two o’ clock in the morning, and
I received a thirty-minute lecture from Father Mohr on leaving the church
unlocked.
So then, on the eve of Christmas Eve, during dress
rehearsal, the choir was practicing, and things were finally going smoothly,
when the woman who sued came back and revealed that she was the wife of the man
who had a stroke, and she blamed us for putting too many candles in the room and
thus causing him to faint because of all the smoke.
Because smoke, apparently, causes one’s brain to bleed.
She, once again, threatened to press charges, and then I
lost it, because I just wanted the choir to finish working. So I told her she
was ridiculous for having such delusions and that if she had a problem with the
smoke she could extinguish as many candles as she wished.
Shocking news: she considered this an outright insult and
then ran, weeping, to Father Mohr and claimed that I had cursed her and her
family and disgraced her before the choir on purpose. Father Mohr then asked
that I leave the church, because she continued to shout fussed things at me
every time I tried to defend myself before him.
So I had until New Year’s to pack my things and go. All
because of one woman’s faulty ears.
I came into the church and made my way to the altar, past
it, to the organ, and found the choir rehearsing, and I grew incredibly angry
with every one of them, but furthermore Father Mohr, who was not in the room.
“WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, STOP THE SONG, STOP IT!” I shouted at
the top of my lungs to silence the choir, who had no director but sang
nonetheless. They looked confused. Had Father Mohr told them to go on with the
service without me? Was I to him a lame duck? “What is this nonsense? It is
common practice to not rehearse until the director is here?”
None of them spoke. They did not wish to tell me, I
feared, who had commenced their singing.
“It was Father Mohr, wasn’t it?” I grunted, coughing and
swatting away my warm puff of breath in the cold air. Again, silence. “If none
of you wish to confess, we will continue with rehearsal.”
I sat on the organ bench and took a deep breath. I needed
to be calm or the mass would not run smoothly. This is because Christ was born, I reminded myself. My fingers slid
smoothly over the keys of the instrument, and I was, for a moment, at peace.
But I still was not finished scolding.
“Now, you all probably know already that I will be
leaving soon, but that does not mean that you may pretend as if my job is
already nullified. That will happen when the year has turned 1819, and Austria
has seen me go to some other parish in some other country.” They nodded, not in
unison, but in a slow ripple. “Good. ‘O Come All Ye Faithful.’”
I began the organ’s introduction to the piece, immersing
myself in the smooth music, and the pipes resonated with a beautiful sort of
golden flow, like the wind of heaven blowing through the trees.
And then I was interrupted, once again, by Father Mohr.
He came in from a side door, carrying two ceramic mugs of
something and a smile that seemed plastic and faux stretched across his
once-shaven face.
“Hello, Franz,” he greeted me, strutting like a drunken
peacock up to the organ as I, irritated beyond anything you have likely
experienced in your life, stopped playing for what I hoped was the last time in
the rehearsal process.
“What is it? I have to practice, Father.”
“Oh, no need to be upset. I just came to bring you a
drink.”
He set one mug down on the organ, and I nearly beat him,
because I have a strict rule of absolutely NO drinks on the organ.
“What’s that?”
“Eggnog. Bottoms up.”
“You know I do not drink, Father.”
“Oh, it is not spiked. Trust me. Some kids in Germany
figured how to make it non-drunk friendly, and trust me, it is perhaps the most
soothing drink in Austria.”
I reluctantly took a sip and the warming egg, cream, and
nutmeg filled my throat and relieved the stress for a few minutes. I sighed
with peace and loved it, setting the mug back on the organ and forgetting my
rule. It was Christmas Eve. Exceptions could be made.
And then I remembered.
“Say, who told them to start rehearsing?” I asked him,
trying to stay polite. He smiled and set his drink down. “It’s usually the case
that the director need be there to…well…direct them.”
“Oh, I did,” he informed me nonchalantly. My brow
furrowed and my eyes thinned. “You are leaving soon, after all, I just wanted
to let them get used to having no leader until I hire a new director.”
I could feel my face flush and I really wanted to hurt
him. That comment stung in a way it should not have, but he said it with such
selfish, insensitive gusto that I felt myself die a bit inside.
“Thank you for the eggnog. Now get out.”
He looked only a little taken aback. “Fine then, I will
let you be. Oh, and one thing: you are fond of composing music, correct?”
I looked up at him with red eyes.
“Right, yes. So. I wrote some lyrics that I think you
might want to use.” He handed me a little piece of paper, with a short little
poem etched into it in black ink. “They are about Christmas. I hope you
consider them for a song someday. Who knows? Maybe it will spark some
inspiration.”
I continued to glare at him, for every word that came
from his mouth was even more insulting than the last.
“Good. That’s all.”
He turned and left on spindly little legs.
I watched him go and then slowly glanced at the choir. I
think a tear or two had come from my eyes, and my face was tomato-red. They all
got looks of understandable fear and pity, because they knew I was in a bad
mood and knew what I had been through the past few weeks.
They also knew that the guilt was on them, because not a
single one of them decided to speak up for me when that dreadful woman was
blaming me for all her problems.
I looked down at the paper.
Stille
Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles
schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das
traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder
Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in
himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in
himmlischer Ruh!
And that was it. A simple German poem. Nothing but
this, and I was so enraged that he had the NERVE to do such a thing. To ask me
to use his own garbage in my work.
I crumpled up the lyrics and swung my arm out with full
force, hurling the ball of paper on the ground.
And when my Christmas season could not get worse, I found
my knuckles gracing the mug of eggnog and knocking it off-balance. It fell over
and spilt onto my organ, the white liquid sliding into the cracks and crevices.
The choir and I all watched with horror, and the organ made several swishing,
hissing noises, the pipes resounding once again with a sizzling sound.
My fingers trembled. I knew what had happened, but I had
to test to be sure.
I pressed down on a key. And it made no sound.
I slammed down on as many of the keys as I could, and
none of them worked, they were all silent or made creaking noises, grunting out
nasty belches but not providing music.
The organ was broken.
I just sat in frozen anger. We could not sing that mass,
for our music was gone. I was going to be fired and had to search for yet
another job in another country, no doubt. I had been outright insulted by the
priest not once but twice and the choir was already ready to work without me.
I grabbed my sheets upon sheets of music with furious fingers
and shoved the bench out from under me, sending it clattering to the floor. I
marched into the isle and threw the pages into the air, letting them drift down
into the pews and burn to crisps on the candles. The flames leapt and the music
was destroyed.
I dropped to my knees and screamed with anger, tears
splattering onto the wooden floorboards. We were several minutes from mass and
the music was gone and the choir was shuddered silent.
So I decided to take the easy way out.
I jumped to my feet, shoving the tears from my face, and
screamed now at the choir.
“GO HOME! GO HOME ALL OF YOU!” They jumped at my voice.
“This is service is gone! There is nothing to worship tonight! Go feed your
families and enjoy this STILLE NACHT!”
And when I said that, I stopped. I froze. Where had
I heard that before? Stille nacht…stille nacht…STILLE NACHT…
I rushed forward, up to the altar, and picked up the
crinkled poem. Sure enough, there it was: stille
nacht, the first phrase on the paper.
And like that, the tune rushed to my head. Note after
note, it filled my senses, and I took a quill pen to a blank sheet and wrote
them down, each one different, until there was a simple song scrawled in my
nasty etchings on the page.
The choir had not moved. I wiped away more tears and then
spoke again, this time a smile coming on.
“Never mind. This will be no stille nacht.”
About ten minutes following, they knew the tune, and the
people began to enter through the door. They filled the pews and grabbed their
candles, a few of them in the center isle brushing the ashes of old paper onto
the wooden floorboards.
And while I was recently despairing, it was then that I
had come up with an idea, and the choir smiled with newfound hope.
The bells rang.
Father Mohr stepped up to the podium and the service
begun. He seemed unawares as to our new developments.
The doors were shut but the cold air filled the room. A
Christmas tree stood in one corner, its red glass ornaments reflecting the
candles and the heads and the pews, and its needles falling onto the floor
slowly, one by one. The deep shadows on the statues of the Virgin Mary made her
seem thin and weary save for her face, which was illuminated and looked soft
despite being made of stone.
And when we began to worship, Father Mohr stepped out of
the way. I rose up and spoke to them as a fellow sufferer.
“Tonight there will be no repertoire,” I said, and the
looks on the faces were confused. They gazed upon me with befuddlement and some
whispers slithered through the masses. Music was always the piece of steadfast
culture, the untouchable worship. “But we have prepared a song.”
And I began to sing. Even in my time of anger I sang.
Stille
Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles
schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das
traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe
im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in
himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in
himmlischer Ruh!
And the crowd just listened. Then I turned and, though
there was a moment of silence, I lifted my hands to the air and the choir
joined in, singing the same tune, the song a beautiful harmony, its notes
soaring into the belfry and into the air of the village outside, into Austria’s
sweet night. The music of God.
Even the snow must have wept.
When I turned around I saw something wonderful, a sight I
never saw again, one that lifted my soul as well as my voice.
Every man, every woman, every child, each one lifted
their candle to the air, singing along with us, waving their little flames to a
synchronized hymn.
And I remembered once more. Christ was born on that day.
And then, in our love and in our warmth and in Father
Mohr’s awed face and in the glow of God’s flame, we sang it in another
language.
Silent night, holy
night,
All
is calm, all is bright.
Round
yon virgin, mother and child
Holy
infant, so tender and mild.
Sleep
in heavenly peace,
Sleep
in heavenly peace.
I forgot about having to go. I forgot about my
grudge against that dreadful woman and Father Mohr. I simply sang.
When mass was over and the people had left, throwing out
their candles and thanking me time and time again for such a wonderful time,
the priest spoke with me and decided, seemingly gladly, to let me keep my job.
And there was no crazy screaming woman there to drown me out. He thanked me for
using his lyrics and I almost thanked him for giving them to me but I thought
otherwise.
And I went out into the cold that night knowing that no
matter how bad it can get, the birth of Christ is always the birth inside.
I did not lock the church that night.
............
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. :)
c. Taylor Ward 2013. All rights reserved.
