There were weeks of a’s. Thousands of a’s marched through Smudge’s dreams. There was ink on his robe and ink on his hood and ink on his nose.
The snows fell silent as feathers on the monastery roof. The gulls flew south. The snows melted, the gulls returned to the island. The first bit of spring green poked up amongst the rocks. The monks had their yearly baths in preparation for Easter.
Smudge was working on his e’s. It was so hard to get that little enclosed space just the same in all the e’s without actually getting out a ruler and measuring but Brother Gregory wouldn’t allow that.
“You must develop your eye,” he said.
Brother Ethbert peeked into Brother Gregory’s cell to see how the Christmas Story was coming along.
“He’s only at the e’s,” Brother Ethbert told Brother Bede.
Brother Bede gathered his courage and went to the abbot.
“Dear Abbot,” he said, “it will be years before the Christmas Story is finished. Heaven forbid, but what if you never live to see it? Let Brother Ethbert do the lettering.”
What Brother Bede could not know is that an angel had come to the abbot. At least the abbot thought it wa s an angel. It was something between a great shadow from the pine tree outside his window and a kind of rosy glow that comes over everything when the sun sinks down at the end of the day.
Because he was a little hard of hearing and because angels tend to whisper in your ear, what the abbot thought the angel said was that he would live to see the Christmas Story finished. The abbot knew the longer it took, the longer he would live.
“Don’t bother me with details,” the abbot told Brother Bede and sent him on his way.
The little green lettuces sprung up from the warm earth. There were cockles and winkles in the rock pools. There were fresh peas in the soup and strawberries for dessert. The feast days came and went.
At last Smudge drew a perfect z. The top looked firmly in one direction while the bottom explored an entirely different direction. A firm and decisive line drew them together.
“Let us begin,” Brother Gregory said.
He took out his finest parchment. He set out his pots of paint: red ochre from the earth, the yellow of malachite, the brown of lichen, the green of verdigris, and the precious blue of lapis lazuli. In a secret formula known only to Brother Gregory the colors were mixed with white of egg, fish oil, and a smidgen of glue.
“You may rule the lines,” he told Smudge.
Smudge had practiced lines until everything he saw was divided into horizontal sections. The lines he drew were perfect.
Brother Gregory marked the places where his illustrations would go, which initials he would embellish, and where along the margins his flourishes would decorate the text. He indicated the pages on which he would paint miniature scenes to illustrate the Christmas Story.
Smudge’s hand trembled as he picked up his goose quill and dipped it in ink made of soot from slowly burning oak fires. Such ink would never fade. Smudge trembled, knowing that what he wrote would be there forever.
“And it came to pass,” Smudge wrote.
The A stood on its own feet, legs apart, just daring you to defy it. The n had a gently curved top and just the slightest indication of looking to the right. The d put a firm end to the word.
When the first sentence was completed, Smudge turned to Brother Gregory, terrified lest Brother Gregory find fault. Brother Gregory gave an ear-to-ear grin.
“Smudge, that sentence is not only perfectly formed, but it is unique! You have made a sentence with letters in a manner no one else has ever attempted.”
Brother Gregory took up his brushes. As he worked, he groaned, he sighed, his forehead was pleated with wrinkles.
Frightened, Smudge asked, “Is there something wrong, Brother Gregory?”
“It is a pleasure to do one’s best, Smudge, but there is also pain in the effort, for you always wish your work better than it is. Do you not find that is so?”
Smudge did. Wanting to make each letter perfect was a great strain, but when the well-formed letter stood there in all its black glory the pleasure was worth the pain.
There was no telling where Brother Gregory would find subjects for his drawings. When he was painting the scene of the stable where the Christ child lay, he studied the monastery’s farm animals, the chickens and sheep and the monastery donkey. Even the monastery cats and the mice they chased found their way into his paintings.
One day a fly flew into the cell and Brother Gregory put it into a border he was painting.
“The image of a fly in a sacred illumination?” Smudge was shocked.
“Ah, Smudge,” Brother Gregory said, “everything around us speaks of God’s glory and the ordinary and simple things most of all.”
It was on the Feast of Saint Ita that Smudge made a mistake.
To celebrate the feast day the monks had honey with their bread. Eager to return to work Smudge did not take time to wash his hands. He picked up his goose quill and began to form a new paragraph beginning with the letter B. It was one of his favorites, for he loved its bumpiness.
The quill clung to his sticky fingers and the bumps in the B were two different sizes. The top bump was big and generous and the bottom bump was puny and stingy.
“Oh, Brother Gregory!” Smudge wailed. “Just look at the mistake I have made! I have ruined your beautiful sheet of parchment.”
Brother Gregory frowned. He was as silent as the moment before a storm when the winds take a great gulp and get ready to blow. Smudge trembled.
Brother Gregory took up his brush. In the top bump he painted a flower in full bloom. In the bottom bump a delicate leaf.
“Always try to make an opportunity of your mistake, Smudge, and not a regret.”
On Christmas morning the abbot and the monks gathered in the chapel. There was a special feast in honor of the day: apples for everyone, whortleberry jam on thick slabs of bread, cider to drink instead of water. Brother Gregory stood before the abbot, the manuscript of the finished Christmas Story in his hands.
The ancient and stubborn abbot was relieved to find that though the story was finished, he, himself, was very much alive. Could angels make a mistake? Probably not, but surely they could change their minds.
He looked at the familiar words put before him. The first letter of each paragraph had a small and perfect picture of the story the paragraph told. All the other letters were shapely and flawless. In a sinful show of pride he told himself no other monastery could boast a manuscript as fine as this one.
The abbot marveled at how a handful of letters could be placed first one way and then another to form words and the words used to make thoughts. Without words, thoughts would disappear and the whole world would have to begin each day with no lesson learned. Without letters there would be no knowledge of the Christmas promise made and the Christmas promise kept.
Smudge (now known as Brother Cuthbert) became the monastery’s official scribe but he still looked the same. His robe still trailed on the floor, his sleeves covered his hands, his hood fell over his face. And like the rest of us, all his life he made mistakes.
Gloria Whelan, Smudge and the Book of Mistakes: A Christmas Story
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