Exceptional The Authorized Hidden History of Santa Claus Santa's Little Secret, Part One by Jay Squires Christmas Story contest entry

“Buenos Dias, Abuelita,” the spry old gent said, his nostrils aquiver above his frothy white mustachios that tumbled over either side of his mouth like fuzzy parentheses. “Good morning, Grandmamá,” his brother chimed in. He was identical in size and in all other respects, save for his younger sibling’s generous nose, which was aquiline—his own being straight and blade thin, like their father’s. “I’m gonna tell Papá, José. You know what he said about English.” “Oh, my boys, my boys!” In the midst of their bickering, their grandmother opened her arms and drew the boys into an embrace. “You’ll do no such thing, Gustav. Spanish is such a warm and sunny language.” She pulled back and gazed, smiling first at one and then the other. “I must look a fright! I’ve been up since six, making blueberry muffins and chocolate chip cookies.” “Nummm,” said Gustav, and he pulled away from her and began jumping about, his hands making quick, but tiny clapping movements. Just then, a deep voice resonated from the doorway: “Pipe down, boys!” And to Anya—“You have the patience of a saint for these rapscallion grandchildren of yours!” “Papá!” the boys cheered and they scrambled, giggling, across the kitchen and into his arms. It’s not too soon for me, as the authorized historian for these newly discovered lost chapters in Santa’s life, to step in and soften the mystery for my readers. Starting with these three. I can tell you that they were quite a sight, the three of them, embracing this frozen winter’s morning, with such love for one other. A stranger, studying them from afar, as on a city street, for example, might assume they were elderly brothers, reuniting after many years apart.  The hair of all three was snowy white and combed straight back. The brothers had their white moustachios, commonly called handlebars, while the ends of their father’s moustachios were like tributaries joining with the foamy river of his long, white beard, hanging well past his chest.  Now, this is where I’d have you pay close attention: You see, thirty years separated the father from José, his youngest son, and he was twenty-seven years removed from his eldest son, Gustav. What would have been beyond the ken of that fictional stranger watching them from the street, however, was that two hundred and some odd years (234 for the lovers of exactitude) separated the one sibling from the other. Yet, regardless of the number of years the oldest was from the youngest, and the two from their father, age differentials do tend to blend together when they’re measured in centuries. That’s what made the authentication of this history so difficult, yet so fulfilling. To resume, I’ll just let the natural chronology of this story play out, and I’ll step in only when the truth gets so muddied it demands clarification: “Good morning, my Ajdin,” Anya said, brushing an errant strand of white hair from her forehead with the back of her hand, her fingers still sticky with cookie dough. She was an almost elfishly tiny, joy-filled woman, blessed with ageless, porcelain-smooth skin and eyes so purely blue that when she craned her neck to look up at the world, she projected an unguarded, exposed vulnerability. I use projected advisedly because there was a perennial, river-like quality, flowing uninterruptedly beneath. While it went largely untested, if the need presented itself, Anya would have been fiercely protective of her loved ones. “Come, sit down, the three of you. I’ll pour the milk and fill us a tray of cookies and muffins. Everything is still warm. We’ll have a lovely morning.” The boys let out a whoop at the mention of sweets, broke away from their father, and raced to the kitchen table where they sat with expectant smiles, their hands folded obediently on the tabletop. Ajdin watched all this with a dismissive smile. He carried the smile to his mother and added a what-can-a-father-do shrug. “I was,” he said, “hoping I would find Papá Nicholas here ….” “Normally you would, Son. One whiff of my cooking will bring that old man chuffing from a mile away, even when he’s out feeding the reindeer or cleaning out their stables. But then, you know how it is this time of year; it’s hard to get him to slow down.” “Truly, Mamá, I know …. It’s what I want to talk to him about.” “Oh, that,” she said, simply. She poured two glasses of milk and carried them to the table, placing them in front of the boys. She winked at them. “The cookies are coming.” Returning to the milk jug, she filled two more glasses. She motioned to her son and he came across the kitchen and draped an arm over her shoulders. She leaned herself into him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and pulled herself into a confidential hug. “You’re still worried about him, aren’t you?” she whispered. “Well, I know what I heard, Mamá. He was disoriented.”  “You told me that before, son. I know I pooh-poohed it at the time, but what did you actually hear him say? And to whom?” “To Donner and Blitzen. They were the closest to him.” “But what?” “That they had to hurry, Mamá! I remember his words. ‘Get up on your feet, Donner!’ he said. ‘We must hurry, Blitzen!’ And he let out that jolly laugh of his that drops into such unexpected places, and he went on with, ‘We’ve got a whole world full of eager boys and girls who will think they had been naughty if we don’t arrive in time.’” “Well, he would be right to say that, Ajdin!” “But, Mamá, the boys and I were hiding under the huge pile of empty bags in the rear of his sleigh. He had just climbed aboard after his last delivery. His last delivery! It was nearly dawn. Happily, Rudolph knew the route and headed back home.” “My goodness,” Anya said—and added. “Oh, dear!” He pulled away from her and holding a shoulder in each of his strong hands, he gazed down at her face. “And with just two more days till Christmas!” “Tonight then,” she said, resolutely. “Tonight, when we have our cocoa in front of the fire … yes, we’ll talk about it tonight.” “But will he listen? He’s had a full year and still hasn’t accepted us.”  “But to have the three of you appear so unexpectedly at our door … and with such a claim.” She turned to the sound of one of the boy’s throats being cleared and smiled at them. “Okay, José, I’ll get you scamps your cookies in a minute. Just give your papa and me a moment more.” Then she looked up again at Ajdin and whispered, “It will be different tonight—you’ll see. “If you hadn’t been there, Mamá, I don’t think he’d have let us in.” “Well … he was shocked by your words—both of us were—but no! He wouldn’t have let you freeze. He’s not made that way.” “It’s the way he acts around us. We’re like guests who have outworn their welcome, but he's too polite to show them the door. Still ...  you must have tried to convince him, Mamá ….” "I’ve tried countless times." She glanced briefly at the boys, and assured that their slap-a-hand game on the tabletop meant their minds were engaged elsewhere, she continued, “I think his memory from a year ago has gotten dimmer.” She shook her head. “His memory lapses do worry me, Ajdin.” “The problem is …” Ajdin began, laboring over choosing the right words, “if he has failing memory of the fairly recent past … how can I convince him of—of what he did centuries and centuries ago? His action that linked him with me … and his grandchildren? Forever!” “We must try, though, Ajdin. As long as I have that memory—and I do!—we must try!” ~          ~          ~ And so, the boys, José and Gustav, sat expectantly at the feet of their grandmother and grandfather. The fire that blazed in the fireplace behind them warmed their backs and they could see the fire’s reflection and their own in Grandpapá’s and Grandmamá’s spectacles. Their cups of cocoa warmed their hands and their bellies and left traces of chocolate clinging to the bottoms of their moustachios. Ajdin’s chair was angled so that he could address his mother and father while keeping an occasional eye on his boys who were his pride, but who weren’t blessed—God love them!—with long attention spans. Ajdin took a deep breath and began: “Papá, I—I understand how difficult it is to accept me as your son and Gustav and José as your grandsons.” “No, oh-ho-ho, Let me tell you what was difficult, Ajding,” the portly old fellow, who couldn’t help but punctuate most of his sentences, however serious their intent, with a roll of laughter, said …. “It’s Ajdin, dear—not Ajding,” Anya corrected. “Ah, yes, my apologies. Ajdin. And I was saying …” and then, with a few blinks, he lapsed into a long, silent smile. “You were telling Ajdin what was difficult, Nicholas.” “Ah, yes, ha-ha-ha-ha-ho-ho-ho,” and his belly did shake, just like the poem said it did. “What was difficult,” he went on, after unpursing his lips, “was introducing Rudolph to the rest of the team as their new leader during the great winter fog of—of twenty-four. Was that—?” he stopped and for another moment looked helplessly at Anya—“Was that seventeen-twenty-four or eighteen-twenty-four? There have been so many … I—I just can’t …” Anya snuck a glance at Ajdin. “Nineteen-twenty-four, dear. But you do remember the actual night that it happened? The night you introduced Rudolph to the rest of the reindeer, Sweetheart?” “Oh-ho-ho—Dasher and Dancer won’t let me forget that! Every Christmas eve they remind me. They didn’t like being replaced by Rudolph at the lead.” “But that’s what they remembered and reminded you of. Do you remember it?” “Well … I ha-ha …” he stammered, flashing a quick-to-fading smile, until that disappeared. “My … what an odd thing to ask ….” They all waited for what was a reasonable time for a simple answer. “So, Papá,” said Adjin, quickly noting his father’s three rapid blinks behind his spectacles at the use of his title, “you are saying it was more difficult introducing Dasher and Dancer to a new ranking system than to accept that it was your forgotten son and grandsons at your door a year ago?” “It’s just that, ha-ha-ho-ho, you’d think I would remember having a son and … and you, Ajdin, having these two strapping lads, ho-ho, yes and …” He held his head in his hands and rocked comically, side-to-side. “Oh, it’s all so very confusing.” The boys giggled and bumped their shoulders off each other’s, tauntingly. “Do—do—do you remember, Dear Anya?” Nicholas asked. "You would—I mean, you should really, ha-ho-ho, remember—I don’t mean seeing them at the door, ha-ha-ho-ho—of course, you remember that—but-but do you actually remember giving—giving birth to …” and with those words, his voice trailed off. “No, Nicholas, God never graced you and me with a child.” Here, her face reddened. “Though, God knows it was never for a want of trying.” “Well, see?!” He reached over and patted Adjin’s arm. “You’ve made a mistake. That’s all. You’re looking for another who—who resembles—who looks like, ho-ho-ho, like—” “No, Papá.” “You must listen to Ajdin, Nicholas.” “Papá, I am your son. It’s just that I’m not … Mamá’s birth-son.” Nicholas’s eyes grew large behind his spectacles as he stretched his arms out to José and Gustav. “Come here, Lads,” and the two scooched up to him, one to each knee. “I’m sorry you’re hearing this. You are good boys, ho-ho-ho, and I know Santa will be good to you … but your father is mistaken. Now, he’s a good man, your father is … a fine man … and a man can be good, you understand, and still be mistaken ….” “Boys …” Adjin said, with a gentle sternness to his voice, “José, Gustav, go back to your cocoa. Now—please.” He waited for them to begrudgingly return. “Papá,” he added, and he swallowed. “You were young, then, and a very lonely Bishop of Myra. You must have been tortured by your guilt. You might have even doubted at the time that God could forgive you for your straying from the Church, but the proof of His forgiveness—the true proof that He forgave you—well, it has to be the centuries upon centuries that He bequeathed to you for doing all the good things you would do.” “But noooo!” Nicholas protested. “You’re mis—” “You don’t remember Jazmin?” Ajdin interrupted so abruptly he’d have sworn something in his father’s eyes seemed to flicker recognition, but just for an instant. “Jazmin was my Mamá. She told me so much about you when I was growing up. She said you were so handsome.” “But then, ho-ho,” Nicholas broke in, “look at me … ha-ha-ho-ho, does this look like the face of one who was ever handsome?” Anya gave him a playful jab to his shoulder. “Oh, but you were handsome, Nicholas. To me you still are, but you were truly handsome back then. I remember like it was yesterday.” “Oh, Anya—dear!” “Yes—yes, Nicholas.” She rested one hand atop the other just beneath her throat, and pink crept up from under her fingers to suffuse her neck and cheeks. “You were out strolling beyond the gardens of the church grounds. And I saw you—oh, so regal in your white robe. So unapproachable, I thought, and yet—yet … so … I don’t know, so lonely. So sad.” “Anya,” Nicholas whispered, and he seemed about to say more but then he retreated into himself. “You don’t remember, do you, my first words to you … and yours to me?” Nicholas removed his spectacles. “Dear Anya, isn’t it enough for me to remember all these wonderful years we’ve shared together … here?” “Oh, dear Nicholas, yes! It’s been beautiful. But God seems to have put up a heavy curtain to conceal from you all that happened before our time here. And our time on the other side of the curtain was beautiful, too.” She smiled warmly at Ajdin. “Your child … from behind that curtain—” “But you said you didn’t—we didn’t have—” “I didn’t give birth to any. But I do love my son …” She nodded toward Ajdin, then smiled down on the boys who appeared to be preying on every word. “… him and his children.” She leaned in and gave Nicholas a hug. “Did you ever miss the two of us having children, my Dear Nicholas?” “Oh, but we do! We do have children, Anya! Millions and Millions of children. And I love them all. I only visit them once a year, but I keep them all in my heart until the next one.” Anya gazed at Nicholas with deep love and patience. “And yet, Nicholas, you’re excluding the one child who stepped out from behind that curtain and is right here in the room with you?” “No, it’s just—it’s just that he, um, he’s mistaken, Anya ….” “Nicholas, my love, I know you better than anyone on this earth.” “Oh … I think that’s fair to say, oh-ho-ha-ha-ha!” “Then, hear me out, Nicholas. I think I know what—deep, down deep inside you—what’s keeping you from accepting Ajdin as your son and José and Gustav as your grandsons. And it’s not at all that you’re suspicious of their motives … that they might have something to gain financially by—” “Financially! Fin—ha-ha-ho-ho-ho—financially!” Nicholas held his belly as if trying to keep it from bouncing out of control. “It is funny, isn’t it? That he would not ask for anything, but to choose to live, year-round, here at the North Pole with you and me? So, you’re not suspicious of their motivations, then, are you, Nicholas?” Without another word, Anya rose and left the room, returning moments later with a pitcher of steaming hot chocolate from which she refilled each now empty cup, smiling at each of her loved ones in turn. She replaced the empty pitcher on the floor beside the double-sized chair she occupied with Nicholas and she continued without preamble: “Do you know what I think, deep down, is the reason you are so slow to accept our new family?” Nicholas sipped his cocoa and gazed over the brims of his spectacles at this puzzle of a woman he loved so much. “I think it’s because—now you must listen and not interrupt, Nicholas!—I think it’s because it was hard enough for you to own that you left the church with whom you’d pledged your fidelity, but that you succumbed to a woman’s feckless charms—I mean mine, Nicholas—and you led a double marriage, though, of course, ours couldn’t be recognized by the church. “Your soul must have been torn asunder by your infidelity to the church while not allowing yourself to live fully and openly with me. For years you lived this double life, and as I said we were childless ….” She chuckled. “At long last, at least I know I was the barren one.” “Anya …” Nicholas cautioned, offering her a barely perceptible nod in the boys' direction. “I think it was your second wandering away from your allegiance, this time your allegiance to me, that made you accept—wrongly, of course—that God had surely, now, abandoned you to your sinful ways. But as Ajdin, in his wisdom said … the proof that God had not abandoned His child was the long life He granted you … and apparently me .… My goodness! and all of the good you have done for all of these centuries. And the further proof of God’s love for you, Nicholas—this I truly believe—is the fact that He has wiped from your memory any trace of your initial wandering from the Church … and of course, later from me. I believe that is the reason you don’t remember Jasmin.” “Anya,” Nicholas now pleaded. “The children!” And he gave them and Ajdin a sheepish grin. But Anya plowed forward with her narrative. “I loved you hopelessly, Nicholas, even when I smelled the spices of another woman on your clothing. And I know Jasmin loved you just as hopelessly when she birthed your son, our son, Ajdin.” Now, Ajdin, who had been silently moved by Nicholas and Anya’s exchange, decided it was time to add his narrative to the story. “When I was old enough to hear from my mother’s lips about my heritage, I began at once to pester her about my father. I’d seen other fathers in the villages, playing with their children. Where was my father? “That was when Mother explained I needed to give up all hope of having a father. My father was a very powerful person in the Church. But not more powerful than the Church itself. She went on to explain that when she began to grow large with me in her belly—which to my immense, but uneducated imagination, as a child, meant that a religious spell had been cast upon her by the Bishop of Myra—that he, my father, realized the danger to Mother and me if the Church discovered it was he who cast that spell. That was when he left Mother, never to return.” “Oh, my poor, poor Nicholas,” Anya broke in, “you must have been tortured by the guilt of all this: your self-imposed rift with the Church, and—how could you suppose otherwise?—with God, and your departure from Jazmin, whom you dearly loved, and your son whom you would never be able to bounce upon your knee. “That was the broken Nicholas who returned to me, whom I showered with my love, and though I saw the dark secret in your heart, I vowed never to give you reason to stray again. It took an entire summer, autumn, and winter to make you fully mine once more.” Ajdin gave Anya a long penetrating look. “Did Papá ever mention Mother—mention Jazmin to you?” She smiled at Nicholas, who blinked behind his spectacles. “You never mentioned Jazmin. I never mentioned knowing about your straying. We carried on as though only a slight pause had existed between us.” “Then, let me step back behind the curtain, Papá, and tell you about my life with Mother … and later with my sisters. I’m telling you this, Papá and Mamá, because it has a bearing on our lives today and reveals our part, I truly believe, in God’s master plan.” Anya took one of Nicholas’s hands he had clasped atop his ample belly and held it in hers. “We really need to hear this, Papa.” Whenever she used “Papa” like this, it was always with the deepest, most personal affection. “Ajdin is our son ….” Out of what appeared to be subdued desperation, Nicholas said, “But it’s late. The fire is dying. Maybe another time. Look—the boys are shivering.” “Gustav, toss a log on the fire for your grandpapá,” said Ajdin. Gustave did as he was told and soon the fire was licking up the sides of the log, snapping and popping and spitting tiny embers onto the hearth. “Tell us, Ajdin,” Anya said, giving Nicholas’s captured hand a squeeze. End of Part I Recognized Author Notes As sometimes happens to me, what starts out as flash fiction ends up being a novel. Hang in there please for the payoff.

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