Lights in the Darkness

With the Thanksgiving tables of Merryweather cleared of gluten, dairy, race and ethnicity, animal cruelty, and any reference to the Deity, the real distraction from the cold, wet, and gloomy parts of the year got underway: the annual Oh, Noel! Lightfest, hosted by The Strange Fruit Sisters.  (For the sake of the ignorant, the Strange Fruit Sisters is the local and colloquial moniker for a sizable band of rare Ruthenian Catholic nuns who, when not stringing multicolored lights through giant rhododendrons, hocking funnel cakes, and drugging camels so that they will be amenable members of the petting zoo, repent and pray at the--ahem--Sorbo-Ruthenian Women’s Monastery of the Blessed Charles of Austria and the Servant of God Zita Of the Exarchy of Blainesville.  These renunciants had garnered their nickname since their monastery (Eastern Christendom not having nunneries or convents, apparently) subsists in the midst of an overgrown, impenetrable, and abandoned orchard of persimmons, figs, seaberries, mulberries, jostaberries, and everything else that is not easily picked and shipped.  The previous owners (a branch of the nefarious Smiths--more of them in time) had donated it to the sisters in the hopes of a tax write-off--and a bribe to the Almighty.) 

  

The Oh, Noel! Lightfest, born a few years back, quickly became a staple event of the winter shopping season, with seniors from Helmut, Gardenburg, and Segue braving the nighttime roads in 14-passenger buses just to ooo! and aah! at all the lights.  (And Oh, Noel! was a far more wholesome Adventide outing than the Weihnachten Wine-Night-Out, which attracted the same crowd that had been watching the Christmas-movie marathon playing over and over on the Romance Channel since Halloween.) 

But not all of the seniors making the trip this year to Oh, Noel! came in a rickety lift bus operated by some non-profit.  No, a spiffy kingfisher blue Lombardia (the sole luxury vehicle produced by the Soviets), after safely navigating the black, ice skimmed to a stop by the main gate and dispensed a pair of gentlemen: the well-aged Geoffrey Durant-Dupont and his inevitable Teutonic shadow, the already familiar Andreas Stackenwalter.  These two oldsters stood a moment, both to let the blood flow to their heads (at a certain age one starts to stand with care) and to take in the scene.  As Herr Stackenwalter was scanning both the parking lot and the line of hot-cocoa holding attendees shuffling through the entry gate,  a young and devout volunteer was politely working her way up and down the queue came uip to them as they joined the line and handed them a flyer, a convenient map of the funland beyond; Andreas eyed her efficient progress up the line with care, while Geoffrey perused the offering.  "I did not know that we had an exarch," he said.  "Well, better an exarch than a heresiarch," he concluded, although not as hypocritically as in the past.  Since he had escaped the sticky clutches of Marjorie Mayfield, his religious observance--formerly standing in the back of church on Christmas and Easter--had widened and deepened.

"Did you ever meet Zita?" he asked, referring to the lady whose name graced the convent (or women's monastery, if you prefer).  Herr Stackenwalter as a German count had to have rubbed a few be-titled shoulders, but Andreas only grunted, having lost castle, his tapestries, and any feudal rights with the invasion of the Soviets.  (He had managed to hold on to his title and his posture.)   As the queue into the festival ambled on, Geoffrey did as well, but verbally.  "I did, in passing, outside of the gates of Solesmes, when mama was hiding herself there with the sisters.  She said that she was making a Lenten retreat..."

"But in truth she was hiding from..."  Andreas said, loosely recalling the story.

"Oh, those Albanians."  Now Andreas grunted significantly.  "Mama'd gotten a good deal on some of their crown jewels and the Reds thought that they should be returned to 'the people'.  That reminds me: I should break up Queen Géraldine's amethyst spray before the current regime gets wind of it."

"But Her Imperial Majesty?"

"Oh, Zita was a positive angel," Geoffrey said, taking an eco-friendly disposable cup of cocoa from the mittened hands of another volunteer.  "She would have made a lovely nun, but with eight children...You know, she dressed in black her whole life, you know, in mourning for her husband."  (The Blessed Charles who shared the billing on the marquee.)  "If ever I'd had a wife..." and as his wish trailed off, Andreas grunted again, ambiguously, and gave another scan down the line of shivering merry-makers.

But as they came to the gate, all of his watchful scrutiny bore some strange fruit indeed.