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I don’t remember her very well. Nana Clara died when I was four. Bits and pieces, snatches of stories and old photos are all I have. She lived in a crowded apartment in The Bronx. There was a mirror in her living room. I thought it was lovely and very romantic. It had an ornate frame and a painted border surrounding the reflected image. The border depicted a fairy-tale kingdom complete with a castle, thatch-roofed houses, a pond with ducks and geese and a twisting trail through the woods.
I’m sure it was dreadfully ugly and, had I seen it at fifteen or twenty, I’d have thought it was an atrocious waste of wall space, but at four I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I dreamt about that mirror. I envisioned myself on horseback along the wooded trail. I saw myself passing the pond and entering the castle.
“I don’t get this,” Richard said. He was hurt and he didn’t hide it well. “You can’t wait until the spring. I could go with you in the spring. We could make a real vacation and…”
“I really need to go now. I have two weeks of vacation time and… well … I won’t be gone long. I’ll be back before Christmas. You’re busy this time of the year. You’ll hardly miss me.”
“I will miss you,” Richard pouted.
“I’ll be back in no time,” I promised.
I flew from JFK to Schiphol, took the train to Amsterdam Central, spent one night in a hotel near the railroad station and then headed away from the familiar city. I really didn’t know what I was looking for. I had this vague idea of taking photographs of some of the earliest Roman settlements in Northern Europe so I headed toward Nijmegen to see well-documented Roman era ruins, but once I was in the car by myself, I realized that, with no one to lie to, it was time to tell the truth — I was searching for a missing piece of myself, the part that died with my great grandmother and disappeared when the mirror was trashed or sold or donated to a charity by well-meaning relatives.
I had arrived on Thursday, December 3 and was in Nijmegen by December 5. It was Santa Day. The day St Nickolas rewards good children and ‘Black Peter’ kidnaps the bad, taking them back to Spain. As sunny Spain didn’t seem like a punishment in a cold climate country, I presumed that Spain was code for a harsh life of slavery. What I didn’t get was the whole ‘Black Peter’ character. Was ‘Black Peter’ black because he was a Moor or because he was covered in fireplace soot? Was he the representative of the devil and St. Nickolas the stand-in for God? I asked a few locals, adding to my list of theories, but never getting a definitive answer.
Black Peter was everywhere. I saw him in store displays and made of chocolate covered marzipan in the window of a bakery. My American sensibilities were more than a little freaked out by a girl dressed in black face handing out cookies outside a department store, but I’ll admit to enjoying the traditional tiny, round, crunchy bite of cinnamon and sugar that was the traditional sweet of the holiday.
I spent that weekend exploring the Roman ruins, going to the outdoor market, walking along the river Waal and visiting the bicycle museum, but I knew that I would not find what I was looking for in Nijemgen. I also knew that I didn’t know exactly what I needed to find.
On Monday, I quizzed a helpful attendant at the visitors’ bureau and heard about a walk through the historic town of Battenburg. It wasn’t far off the highway. The day was clear and the air was cold — perfect driving weather. I told the owner of the B & B not to expect me back until late and I headed out for a road trip.
At one time Battenburg had been an important city. It was a commercial center and even minted its own money. Now, with the 12th century castle in ruins, it was a sleepy village of 17th, 18th and 19th century thatched-roof houses retrofitted with satellite dishes, Wi-Fi and all the other comforts of the 21st Century.
The historic walk was marked with small signs, all in Dutch. It seemed that no one but local school groups or regional tourists followed the path from the building that had been the mint, to the mayor’s home, and along the frozen pond surrounding the castle ruins. I didn’t let the language get in my way. I simply strolled from building to building, somehow ‘knowing’ what the signs said and I feeling very much at home.
The modern village of Battenburg was a wealthy, suburban, commuter town, a bedroom community. I followed the historic walk and circled outside it finding nothing that marked a commercial center — no shops, no restaurants, not even a café for coffee — nothing. It was odd. Judging from my limited experience in Amsterdam and Nijmegen the Dutch didn’t like to go far for a coffee or a beer.
The town seemed to be asleep and that led to my whimsical thoughts of it being ‘enchanted.’ As if it were a princess in need of a kiss to wake up. I took photos of the castle, but found myself concentrating on the ducks and geese that waddled across the frozen water. They seemed unaffected by the magical spell the ruins cast in my direction.
I knew the houses were occupied. I saw smoke rising from chimneys. I saw a computer on a desk by a window. I saw cars parked beside thatched roofed cottages. A cat peered at me from behind curtains in a thick glass window. But I walked the cold, narrow streets alone. With nowhere to go for lunch or a coffee, I got back into my rented car and drove until I found an ordinary town with cafes and restaurants full of people. I had lunch and read my guidebook, turning the pages with a mechanical rhythm.
I ordered a second coffee. It was getting late in the day and the early evening darkness fell like a heavy coat over the sky. I got back into my car and, in the darkness, found myself heading back toward Battenburg instead of Nijmegen. Once again, I parked outside the church closest to the highway and strolled toward the castle and the oldest part of the village.
As I turned away from the road the darkness seemed to thicken into heavy drapery. I pushed through it as one would push through theater curtains and behind the darkness I saw a bonfire burning near the pond. I heard music and laughter and the hum of voices all speaking at once. The path sloped down and there, by the edge of the pond by the castle, was a celebration of Santa Day. Wooden torches lit the pathway and people called out to me in some archaic Dutch dialect, “Hello Claartje. What took you so long? Come by the fire and have a sweet…”
Their hospitality was real, but everything else was a fantasy from the fairy tale books of my childhood. I let myself float between what I knew to be real and what could not possibly exist. We toasted St. Nickolas with hot, spiced wine, sang impossibly familiar old songs and feasted on smoked fish and sausages as the fire burned low. Then everyone strapped wooden blades to the bottoms of their shoes and skated on the pond, chasing the birds from their roost along the castle wall. One proud goose, refused to budge and we skated around her. Warm tears ran down my face as I looked up at the castle and saw candles blazing in the windows.
I woke up in the last pew of the relatively new Protestant church a few blocks from the road where my car was parked. Sunlight streamed in through the Spartan windows. A grounds keeper shot me a curious glance as I walked out into the daylight and blinked at the ruins and the geese on the frozen pond. My hands were freezing. Reaching into my pockets for my gloves I found cinnamon-scented crumbs.
Back in Nijmegen I tired to resolve the obvious conflict between what I remembered and what could not possibly have happened. I resisted the desire to drive back to Battenburg, telling myself I’d be sorely disappointed because I would, without a doubt, find a sleepy, commuter town with cars outside every cottage and the glare of computer screens in every window. But I could not shake the feeling that I’d finally gone into Clara’s mirror and discovered the magical world I had always known was there.
The next day I left Nijmegen, armed with a list of other Roman-era ruins and castles. But on the way out of town, I stopped by the bakery where I’d seen Black Peter in marzipan and chocolate only a few days before. The shopkeeper was putting a new display in the window.
“Do you still have any of the Black Peters or those cookies from Santa Day?”
“All gone. You missed them. You’ll have to come back next year.”
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