Balthazar
A bereaved scholar's compulsory sabbatical to a castle hotel blurs into something stranger when a painting of a Black king begins to mirror his stalled grief
Atek came to Amsterdam for a PhD in social sciences. Then his mother died two years into his studies. The funeral process was a blur. He flew back to Amsterdam after a week in Kenya and buried himself in studies. He told himself he’d grieve by studying hard because that was his mother’s motto. Just work hard. It was a relentless schedule, poor eating and little sleep and the burnout started to show up in his work.
His supervisor Marit van Dirk, a warm Dutch woman, flipped through the printed pages of his draft as her coffee sat untouched on the table
“ Atek, this is all narrative. You are trying to write yourself into the story and there is no analysis here”
He looked at the pages, he remembered writing them but now he could not recognise his own text.
“I was trying to make it accessible”.
“You are trying to write yourself into the analysis”, her voice was firm but empathetic. “Where is the analysis?”
Atek did not answer. She waited and then changed her tone.
“Are you getting any sleep?” she prodded.
He had not slept deeply in months but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“ I will revise the chapter……”
“ Nay,” she leaned forward, “What you will do is leave Amsterdam, take a break. I am serious. Go somewhere. Clear your head. The PhD will be waiting for you when you return.”
He had no idea where to go, maybe take the train to Belgium or Germany but at this time of the year, everywhere is cold and damp. He decided to ask Femke, a fellow PhD student, for options and instead she offered him a voucher that she had never fulfilled.
Three nights in an 18th century castle in a Dutch town he had never heard of called Zeist. The castle had been operating as a hotel since the 40s, elegantly maintained, smelling of old wood and lavender. The grandeur did not impress him but he liked the privacy. He could sleep, maybe watch a series and walk in the adjacent pine forest.
He had a restless first night and the next morning, woke up late to explore the surroundings, trying to map out a circuit for his walks and he happened upon a Surinamese restaurant that had just opened its doors in preparation for lunch. He walked in, drawing in the smell of roasted cumin and something sharp, peppery. The tables were covered in simple white table cloths with colored patterns and an Indian woman was behind the counter with her back to the door stocking a freezer with cans of soda. When she turned, she looked surprised to see a customer turn up this early.
He told her he was staying at the Castle.
“They have very nice food there! It is a star rated restaurant”, as if wondering why he would venture to her humble restaurant for lunch.
Atek said he wanted a taste of home and they talked about Asian cuisine influences in East Africa.
A second man walked into the restaurant, another traveler, a backpacker lugging a rucksack from Poland. He had the walk of a man used to carrying his life around in a rucksack, deliberate and weighted. He was a younger man but had the hazy eyes of a senior. He only wanted to drink water but the lady owner showing mercy offered him a meal and when he sat down to eat, it was clear he had not eaten for some time. The Pole was traveling through the Netherlands. When he learnt Atek was Kenyan, he said he knew Kenya. Not much really but he described the flag accurately. He said it was something he liked to pay attention to flags of countries during global sports events and he found the Kenyan flag royal. Atek had never heard it described in that manner.
The name of the restaurant was Baltazar- Surinamese Cuisine. A strange name and Atek asked about its origins. The lady wasn’t so sure but that her father named it, she said. After he migrated to Holland from Suriname her father had thought of it as a welcome place for travelers who had come far. .
When Atek returned to the castle, he stopped by the front desk to pick up his room key. The receptionist was not at her station. He looked around and noticed the large painting he had missed during his check in. It was a classic Dutch painting depicting a biblical scene. The three wise men arrive with gifts to see the infant Jesus. There was one character that was staring straight at him. A black royal. He was mesmerized and he could not seem to see anything else in the painting, not even the halo around the depiction of Jesus in a manger. The receptionist re-emerged and apologised for her absence and he asked her.
“Who is this painting by, is it Rembrandt or the other famous painter, Van Gogh?”
She said she did not know and would look it up. So she whipped out her phone and then exclaimed, “Ja, got it!” and she read out the details, “Rubens. The Adoration of the Magi.” She titled her head at painting. “That’s baby Jesus”.
Atek knew the story of three wise men from the bible but had never had a reference to them as Kings and never for certain, that one of them would be depicted as a black man in a 16th century Dutch painting. He never had any interest in the great masters of the Dutch Golden Age yet this painting had him captivated.
When he returned to his room, he opened his laptop and searched, “The Adoration of the Magi” and there popped the face again of this unknown African royal staring straight at him. He read through the reference and then stopped, startled. It was a description of three kings and the one holding an urn of myrrh in his right hand was named Balthazar!
That afternoon, he read up about the legend of Balthazar, celebrated in the Lowlands as the Patron Saint of Travelers.
The next morning he decided to take a long walk and explore the forest. It was a foggy morning and the visibility was limited but he was dressed warmly and the fresh cold air seemed to rejuvenate his senses. He walked for about half an hour lost in his thoughts before he suddenly felt a presence and stopped, looked around and there was no one.
Atek decided to continue walking, listening to the sound of his shoes crunching the ground and the ruffling of his jacket as his hands moved. The fog muffled all the sound and soon he could only hear his own breath and then he noticed the figure of another man walking ahead of him.
He could not make out the details because of the thickness of the fog but it looked like a male figure dressed in what must be a big black overcoat. He decided to slow his pace so that he wouldn’t catch up but the distance between them remained constant. Atek changed tact and decided to walk faster. The figure matched him. He slowed. The figure slowed. It was mirroring his pace.
The wind shifted and for a moment, the fog thinned, and Atek saw the man’s coat more clearly. It was not black but a dark blue, a heavy duty garment that had survived countless winters. The soft hat fell over the collar covering the neck.
Atek called out, “Hallo, meneer!”
The figure stopped. Did not turn. But it stopped.
Atek called out again, his voice constrained, “Hallo!”.
Silence. Then, very slowly, the figure bowed his head, without turning their back and continued walking. The fog closed and Atek was alone with the sound of his own breathing, frantic and uneven.
Atek hurried back to the castle.
That night, he dreamed he was walking through a forest with ancient trees, bare and stout. He came to a clearing. A figure appeared. His high school teacher was standing there, looking worse for wear with bloodshot eyes, disheveled clothes, like he’d been binge drinking.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” The teacher’s voice was surprisingly steady. He moved closer. “Keep your eyes open, you never know who you will meet here”.
Then he found himself walking. A flat road. Savanna grassland. Someone ahead of him keeping pace. He was not afraid. They arrived at the edge of an escarpment, across from it was a mountain. The man turned. It was the face from the painting.
Balthazar.
“Where are you from?” Atek asked.
“Moshi”
Balthazar pointed, “That is the mountain of myrrh”.
The mountain had its peak lost in the clouds. Atek stood at the edge of the escarpment. The drop was sheer. Across the valley stood the rocky face of the mountain.
Atek wanted to ask, what is this place? Why am I here? But the deep silence overwhelmed his urge to speak.
Balthazar had a bemused expression on his face and then his hand extended. It was a warm handshake. Solid.
“You will be okay”.
Atek woke up with the heat of the handshake still on his palm.
It was 3am and he started typing urgently.
The third day arrived, the last day at the castle and nothing unusual happened. That night, he could not recall his dream. Atek left the castle for the last time taking a hard look at the painting of the three Magi.
A few metres from the castle was the bus stop. He did not wait for long before the bus appeared and he dragged his wheeled travel suitcase to enter the doors as they swung open and the bus driver smiled at him and spoke in Dutch.
“Looks like someone has come from long travels”.
Atek was in his apartment in Amsterdam East resting on his bed when his phone buzzed. It was his colleague David.
“I am outside your door, Are you home?”
He opened the door and found David staring at him and then into the house before he asked quizzically,
“Hey bro, you good?”
“Yah, sure, what’s up?”
“Your curtains are all drawn and we have been trying to reach you for three days?”.
Atek noticed for the first time that the curtains were all drawn and the lights in the house were on during the day. The air was stale, as if the room had remained closed for a number of days.That seemed odd. He never drew the curtains even at night.
“I wasn’t around, I had gone to this castle in Zeist to clear my head for three nights”
David continued looking around the house like an investigator.
“Your neighbours swear you never left the house, I ran into the Dutch old lady on the ground floor, you know the snoopy one, she wondered why your curtains remained drawn?”
“That’s because I was in Zeist?”
David was still staring at him,
“Did you get any missed calls? “
Atek looked at his phone and the only recent call was from David ten minutes ago. The other messages were three days old, the last from the supervisor Marit saying, “ I hope you have left Amsterdam”.
Atek looked around the living room and there was his jacket slung on the couch. He picked it up and rummaged through the pockets and found nothing. He brought the jacket to his face. It smelt damp.
“I swear David, stop looking at me like I am crazy”
“Is that your suitcase?” David asked without missing a beat. On the corridor was a small black travel suitcase leaning on the wall.
“It looks like you were leaving but never left”. Atek walked to the suitcase and opened it. His clothes were still neatly folded and a toilet bag sat on top of them. Had he packed the suitcase and never left?
Next to the suitcase were his sports shoes. He picked them and looked under the soles. He turned to David holding the shoes who stretched out and took the shoe, examining its sole closely. “Okay, this is definitely not Amsterdam soil”.
‘See? I told you I was walking in a forest in Zeist.” Atek insisted.
“Yah but how come you didn’t answer any phone calls. Look, I’m not making you doubt your sanity but something is not adding up?”
Atek did not offer a response.
“Your brother Ian has been trying to reach you. He said something about a family Zoom call. Your mother’s second anniversary. You missed it”.
Atek went cold. He’d completely forgotten. How could he?
“Your sister panicked. She thought something had happened to you”.
Atek felt his chest tightening. The Zoom call was his suggestion and he had confirmed it with Ian a week before. And then, what happened? Where did the memory of these past days go?
David was watching him carefully: “Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should talk to someone. A counselor or—”
“I’m fine, I will call them and explain everything”.
David looked at him, “You better. They sounded shook?”
Both men stared at each other before David broke the gaze.
“ I have to run. I will be back tomorrow morning. Call your people, Okay?”
After David left, Atek sat down heavily. The second anniversary. How could he have missed that? How did he forget about a mother he had been thinking about every day for two years since her passing?
He looked at his laptop. There were many tabs open. He checked them.
“Kasteel Korchekbosch, The Adoration of the Magi, Balthazar, the legend of the Patron Saints of Travelers”.
He noticed he had been writing, continuously, twenty pages of text. The title on the document was “Dear Mama”. It was raw, stream-of-consciousness writing to her. About her. For her. The words were his.
“Mama, I didn’t cry at your funeral because I was afraid if I started I would never stop...”
The voice was his, but this kind of unrestrained vulnerability, this was new. Where did it come from? He kept reading until he came to the final line on page twenty.
The mountain of myrrh. You have to keep walking toward it, not away from it. You will be okay“
His hands hovered over the keyboard. Page twenty-one was blank. He needed air. He stood up, walked to the window, drew back the curtain.
On the street below: cyclists, a tram pulling up to the stop. Amsterdam moving at its regular pace.
Then he saw him.
A man in a long black overcoat and black furry hat, hurrying along with a heavy anchored gait on the sidewalk under an umbrella. The man lowered the umbrella, folded it, and entered the tram.
He sat by the window. As the tram began to move, the man looked up.
Their eyes met. Those hazy eyes.
Atek stepped back from the window, his heart pounding.
It was the Pole. The backpacker from Baltazar restaurant. The one who described the Kenyan flag as “royal.”
The tram moved past. Atek rushed back to the window, but the blue and white tram had disappeared around the corner.
He stood there, breathing hard, staring at the empty tram stop.
Was it him? Was he losing his mind?
He returned to his laptop.
Stared at the blank screen.
Page twenty one.
His fingers floated over the keyboard.
Then, he started typing.
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