Free The Story of Silent Night by Paul Gallico

t was the following morning, which had dawned crisp and clear, Christmas weather with the snow lodged a foot high on the sloping roofs of the houses, that an important gentleman in a blue frock coat, flowered waistcoat, white stock, beaver hat, and woollen muffler wound about his neck, crunched the five miles that separated the tiny hamlet of Arnsdorf from Oberndorf. By a side door he entered the Church of St. Nikola, took off his coat and sat down at the organ to run through the programme of hymns for the midnight Mass that evening.
    His name was Franz Gruber, a dark-haired man of about thirty-one, with a pleasant face and somewhat long nose, cleft chin and a touch of humour about his mouth. The world had never heard of him but in the small ponds of the two neighbouring communities he was a very large frog indeed. In Arnsdorf, which was hardly more than a wide place in the road, he was the schoolmaster and sexton and in Oberndorf-on-the-Salzach, the organist. By day he taught the children of Arnsdorf in the schoolhouse where he lived above the single classroom, and as sacristan of the church functioned at baptisms, weddings and funerals as well. On Sundays and holidays, when there were services, he went to Oberndorf to provide sacred music.
    He flicked his coat-tails, adjusted the organ bench and pulled out the stops. Then, with eyes closed and head thrown back in anticipation of the first thunderous chords he would evoke, he trod the bellows pedals and pressed the keys. But no music issued from the pipes, only a soft, breathy sigh. Something was very wrong.
    Before Gruber had time to investigate this unhappy phenomenon he heard a sound by the door and turned to see his friend Joseph Mohr, the young priest, himself a musician. Mohr was in Oberndorf on a temporary basis as assistant to Father Joseph Nostler, the permanent priest of St. Nikola, who was out at the time.
    Gruber said, “Grüss Gott, Joseph,” and then, “Heavens! What’s happened to the organ?”
    Mohr—he was then twenty-six, with merry eyes and a gay, boyish air which somehow did not seem to match the long and sombre soutane—raised his arms in a helpless gesture and said, “A catastrophe! Come along and I’ll show you. When old Nostler finds out he’ll blame that on me too.” The priest and his assistant did not get on.
    He led Gruber to the loft behind the gilded stand of pipes and pointed to the hole and the rip leading from it in the worn leather bellows. “I discovered it this morning after early Mass, when I sat down to play for myself a little. A mouse must have gnawed a hole during the night; look, there are the droppings. At the first pressure the whole thing gave way. Look how old and rotten it is—it should have been attended to long ago,” and then he added, “It’s hopeless.”
    Gruber inspected the damage with genuine anguish. “And the organ-mender won’t be coming up from the Zillertal until the snows have melted in the spring,” he cried.
    A Christmas Eve Mass without music was unthinkable. He fingered the split leather and said, “Here’s a fine fix! What’s to be done?”
    Rather timidly, as the two men walked back into the church to contemplate the now mute and useless organ, young Father Mohr said, “Well, I had an idea while waiting for you to come, I have written a little poem. Here . . .” and he produced a bit of paper from his soutane and then, coughing and correcting himself, “Well, actually not a poem, perhaps, but some words for a song and it seemed to me that if . . .”
    The schoolteacher, startled, said, “A poem?” and then smiling at his friend said, “That doesn’t surprise me. You were always more of a poet than a preacher and a singer, perhaps even more than a poet. Why you ever chose the cloth . . .”
    The shy and pleasant expression faded from Mohr’s face as he replied shortly and with grim asperity, “It was chosen for me.” And Gruber regretted his levity, remembering the strange story