The African placed his toy down beside his plate and sat at our table in a most dignified and erect manner. After receiving permission from Papa, he started to eat. Mama and I watched him closely, hoping to find him wholly wanting for manners.
He had strong but delicate hands, like those of a weaver, I thought. Though he managed his knife and fork with a certain darting elegance, he used his fingertip to prompt a piece of potato onto the tines several times. Mother raised her eyebrows at these actions, storing each faux pas as ammunition. But what really bothered her was that he never said thank you — not when he was invited to sit, when butter was passed to him, or even when his wine cup was filled.
To each of these gestures, he simply smiled.
My mother was squinting, a sure sign that she would be engaging him in a prolonged interrogation in the near future. I was ready to back her sword-and-shield in any quarrel, since my parents had always insisted on my thank-yous at every opportunity.
“My husband tells me, sir, that you are from southern Africa,” Mama announced.
“That is correct-correct, madam,” Midnight said, smiling.
“It is what?”
Papa took Mama’s hand in his and said, “Midnight often uses two words for emphasis, May.”
“Is that so? Well, then, where exactly are you from-from?”
Papa laughed at her witticism but stifled his mirth when she frowned at him.
“I was born near the Hill of the Sky.”
“The Hill of the Sky?” she repeated disdainfully, skewering a piece of potato with her fork. “And what might that place be?”
“That place might be a great-great mountain that glows blue in the sunset.”
“Blue? How is it blue in the sunset, sir?”
“It is very, very blue.” He nodded eagerly. “As blue as can be.”
My mother narrowed her eyes again and licked her tongue over her lips as though preparing to dine on our guest. “‘Very, very blue,’” she echoed sarcastically. “‘As blue as can be.’ Yes, it must have indeed been that.”
I realized her tactic was to point out the peculiarity of his remarks by repeating them. It was a clever strategy that had the opposite effect on me, since hearing his expressions a second time only convinced me that he possessed an agile and creative mind.
“And how old might you be, sir?” she continued.
It was then that he told us he was the age of the wildflowers that blossomed in the year of the hailstorm over Gemsbok Valley. Unreceptive to his obvious flair for description, particularly given that English was not his native tongue, my mother insisted on a clearer answer. “But in years, how old?” she prompted, slamming down her fork in irritation.
Midnight smiled and shook his head apologetically.
Father gobbled down a steaming half-potato. Fanning the burning heat from his now open mouth, he replied, “It is hard to say, my dear. His people are Bushmen. They do not count their ages in years.” He downed his wine in one gulp and sighed with relief.
“That’s absurd,” Mother replied.
Father wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Might I inquire how many steps it takes for you to get to your mother’s house from here?”
“Naturally you may. And I have no idea.”
“That is because you measure the distance in the minutes it takes you. A Bushman measures his age differently than we might like, but to him it makes all the sense in the world.”
“What rubbish!” she exclaimed.
“Ridiculous it may be, May, but perfectly suited to his life.”
They frowned at each other and said nothing more. “What is a Bushman?” I asked, for I had never heard that name.
Father poured himself more wine. “The Bushmen were the first people to inhabit southern Africa. They are nomads and hunters, and they wander for hundreds of miles to follow the great rains across the desert, savanna, and jungle. I assure you, having seen them in action, that no swifter and more accurate hunter lives anywhere on earth. But of late they have been killed by the hundreds and dispersed by the Dutch and the English and even other Africans.”
He looked tenderly at our guest, who was gazing forlornly down at his plate. “Midnight was but a wee lad when he was stolen from his people. His parents were killed in a raid by a Dutch commander called Nel, a fearsome brute who killed thousands of Midnight’s people. The lad was carried back to the farm of one of Nel’s officers and made an errand boy. After that, he was abandoned and left to fend for himself. Through his own tracking skills, he found his way back to his people. Years later, in another raid, his new kin were all murdered. He was a young man by then and was sold again, this time to a Yorkshireman named Reynolds, who had a nearby vineyard. That is where I met him. So you see, there are good reasons why he does not know his age in ways we might understand.”
“If they are all such great hunters, Papa, then how were his parents killed?” At the time I was pleased that I might be giving offense with this indiscreet question.
Father placed an imaginary arrow into an invisible bow, aimed it at our garden window, and let it fly. “The bow is of little use against a musket, John. Even you know that.” He winked at me then, and I understood that he had used the word even to chastise me. “It is not an equal match. But I assure you, laddie,” and here he emphasized the seriousness of his point by making a fist with his hand and holding it toward me, “that if the Bushmen were to meet the English on equal footing, Midnight and his kind would come away victorious every time. Just like the Scots.” He said it proudly, leaning back in his chair. “I have recently seen one of his people fell a gazelle at a hundred yards, with an arrow straight to the heart. No, any man who values his life would not wish to upset Midnight or his kinfolk.”
Our guest continued to hang his head, plainly troubled. Tiny wrinkles, like the spokes of a wheel, spread on his skin from his almond-shaped eyes.
“So what can you tell us of Africa, sir?” Mother said.
Midnight had never sailed beyond the borders of Africa, so asking him to speak of his continent was tantamount to asking him to speak of the world itself — which is why, I believe, he gestured up toward our ceiling and said, “In the heavens are the stars, who are the great and powerful hunters. They dance to bring back the sun, just as the Bushman dances to bring back the moon.” Opening his hands to my mother and lifting them toward her as though presenting her with a precious gift, he added, “And then there is Mantis, who steps down from the sky to the desert.”
My mother was clearly taken aback by his beautiful words, to the extent that I believed he had won her over. But she cleared her throat and replied curtly, “Yes, well, that was very pretty, I am sure, but I do not see what it has to do with Africa.”
“Africa is where these things are known. Africa is memory.”
It was as though a trumpet had sounded over the scene of a great battle, signaling all the soldiers to lay down their arms. None of us spoke. I believe each of us had a different reason for retreating into silence. To me, Midnight made no sense at all, but his words seemed magical — like those of a sorcerer. Mother had plainly concluded that this African was beyond salvation, a heathen who ought to have remained in his loathsome homeland.
As for my father, his eyes were gleaming with pride, as though he had welcomed Robert Burns himself into his home.
*
After a dessert of pears poached in wine and ginger, Father’s favorite sweet, he built a fire in our hearth and invited us all to sit with him.
Midnight declined and begged permission to climb the stairs to our Lookout Tower in order to view the city. Not to be rude, Papa withdrew with our guest for a few minutes. When he returned, he told us that the African was gazing through the yellow and red glass panels of the skylight as though they were a threshold to a future world. Earlier that day, on a tour of our house, he had been fascinated by their translucency and had said that we had managed to steal a piece of Mantis’s son, who was Rainbow, and place him within
our reach. Mantis, as we were to learn, was the chief god in the Bushmen pantheon.
Midnight’s words had elicited a murmur of delight from Father and a tut-tut-tut of disapproval from Mother. “I think he may sit there all night long,” Papa said now.
He then assembled his tobacco pouch, flint, and pipe, and reclined in his armchair. I fought to stay awake but was yawning shamefully. I smiled whenever Mama or Papa looked at me, as I did not wish to play Old Gooseberry and ruin their reunion by confessing how bad I was feeling.
And yet I soon succumbed to a paroxysm of sobbing, simultaneously bringing up my supper all over our Persian rug.
“It is all the excitement of having you home,” Mama said to Papa, fetching me a glass of water.
Papa felt my pulse. It was weak and dangerously quick. “You have been ill all day,” he said irritably. “You are brave, but foolish not to have told us.” He led me straight up to my room.
While I lay in bed, Mama grabbed Papa’s arm and turned her back to me. My hearing has always been first class, and I overheard her whisper, “God help me, I know he may be leaving us. It may even be what he wishes.”
Midnight then joined them in the corridor. After receiving permission from Papa, he sat on my bed and placed a moistened towel over my forehead. Mama stood behind him, her hands clutching at her handkerchief, ready to pounce on him if he in any way tried to hurt me.
*
For the next three days, I was delirious with fever. While drifting over waves of light and dark, I once glimpsed a burning horse galloping up our street. I tasted opium on my tongue at times. It tasted of the moon, but I cannot say why.
It seemed to me as though Midnight stayed with me the entire time. During periods of lucidity, I reasoned that I must have been hallucinating. Yet I later found out that he did indeed spend three straight days by my side, sleeping on the settee that he and my father positioned at the foot of my bed. He spoke to me in a mixture of English and his own language, full of clicking noises not unlike bird calls, until I almost believed I could understand what he was saying.
On four separate occasions, according to Papa, when I was given to chills, Midnight curled up behind me to warm me with his body heat. I remember one of these times clearly, and I am firmly of the opinion that he gave me something of his own self, although I don’t know how. I only know that something not easily explained was exchanged between us, because even now, decades later, there is a part of him that resides in me. If it had not been for his gift, I believe I would have succumbed then to the cold death wishing to claim me.
Several times I awoke from dreams of being buried alive to discover him placing his warm mouth directly over my nose. My mother later confessed that she was horrified to witness this the first time, but she realized that Midnight was simply sucking the noxious fluids out of me to clear my blocked breathing passages. Each time he completed such a treatment, she reported, I stopped wheezing and fell back to sleep.
Once, when I was still greatly congested, the Bushman puffed mightily at his tiny clay pipe and aimed the smoke into my ears, making them crackle like melting ice.
So impressed was Mother by his loyalty and care that she once brought his hand to her lips and kissed it, whereupon he smiled and said, “Hyena will not steal your son, Mrs. Stewart.”
Mother was too panicked to ponder what he meant. She only cared that his intention to see me well was firm.
To know how iron-strong gratitude can be, ask any mother whose child has been saved by another person. Over the course of these three days of precious care, Mama was won to Midnight’s favor forever.
On the third night Midnight sat me down on my bed, lit his small clay pipe, and blew sweet-scented smoke in my ears again. This made me feel as though iron gates were opening at my temples. Then he had me open my mouth. Puckering his lips, he directed a stream of smoke in there as well, then several more, each time instructing me to breathe in deeply.
This time the smoke was not tobacco — or not only tobacco. I do not know what weed, leaf, flower, resin, or combination thereof was in his glowing bowl. Years later, I spoke to a man in London who had lived for a decade in southern Africa and who told me that hashish is used in some of the Bushman rituals. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this information, but I am certain that Midnight’s smoke had the effect of deepening the beating of my heart at first, then lulling me into a soft slumber. As the bells of the St. Bento Church were tolling two in the morning, I woke to see an animal face peering at me from the darkness of the corridor. At first I thought it was Fanny, but when I took a step toward her, I realized it was Daniel, wearing one of his horned masks.
My heart swelled with fright. Daniel receded swiftly into the shadows, but the tips of his horns were visible as two glowing points of violet light.
“Is it Hyena?” Midnight whispered from his settee. He must have been watching me for some time. He approached me, naked. I could feel his heat radiating toward me.
“You there!” he called to Daniel. “We know who you are. We know your name and you are Hyena!”
The masked apparition ran away from us down the corridor and scurried up the stairs.
“Where is he now?” asked Midnight.
“I think he’s gone up to the Lookout Tower.”
The African took my hand and helped me to my feet. My body felt heavy and alien. Despite his having cared for me over the last few days, I wasn’t sure if I ought to trust him. In the unsettling darkness, he seemed a creature of shadows.
“The Time of the Hyena is on you,” he said. “He is a clever and powerful animal we have in Africa. He is fooling you. For Daniel is gone and you cannot win him back, no matter what you do. But Hyena is as good a mimic as you are. You are being tricked.”
I made no reply; I was confused.
Patting my shoulder, Midnight said, “Mantis will help us.” At that, he lifted the child’s rattle he had been carrying with him and shook it.
“Who is Mantis?”
“Mantis is an insect, and he is very, very small, but with big-big power. I shall need his help to frighten Hyena away and make him never return.”
Midnight went to the window and opened the shutters and mosquito screens. The moon was nearly full. Crescents of light fell across his back and legs. It was unsettling to see him naked, for the only man I had seen in this way was my father.
I noticed four lines of scars on Midnight’s back. When I asked him about them, he told me he had once been attacked by a wild beast but had escaped with his life. “Do you know what a lion is?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Lions kill hyenas. They are very, very strong. Now, will you be strong and come up the stairs with me to fight Hyena?”
I offered him my hand. His grip was powerful; I could not have escaped him even if I’d wanted to. He lit his wee clay pipe again and blew his sweet smoke in my ears and my mouth, just as he had done earlier. It warmed me to the tips of my fingers and toes. I could feel my heartbeat swaying me. My breaths came like wind across stones.
Turning from me, he drew the fumes deep into his chest in a single continuous stream that vanished somewhere deep inside him. I imagined it forming a swirling mist in his gut.
“Now we shall hunt Hyena,” he said, placing his pipe down on the table by the head of my bed.
“Do I have to?”
“I will not abandon you, John. Your friend Midnight will always fight alongside you.” He smiled. “Come. We shall find Hyena and tell him that he must leave.”
He led me through my doorway by the light of his candle and together we climbed the stairs. The door to the Lookout Tower was shut. I closed my eyes to try to calm myself. Time seemed to have come to a halt.
“Must we go in?” I asked.
“Yes. I came up here today to prepare the room for our hunt. It has to be now. We must face him like Bushmen and tell him that we know who he is and that he is an impostor. We must show him that we are lions and will devour him if
he stays. And the time is now — that is why he appeared to you. When we go inside, all you are to say to him is, ‘I know who you are; you are Hyena.’ Nothing else. Nothing! He is a trickster. He is clever-clever. He will find your weakness if you say anything else. You understand, John?”
“I think so.”
Midnight reached for the handle.
“Wait!” I cried, but it was too late.
The door swung open. Daniel stood before us in his horned mask.
“We saw you from afar and are dying of hunger,” Midnight said to Daniel.
The African eased the door closed behind us. He placed his candle on the ground, then shook his rattle at the lad and said, “We know who you are; you are Hyena.”
Midnight’s eyes opened wide. A low rumbling commenced in his gut and increased in volume to a drumming sound so loud it shook the walls.
Daniel removed his mask. Pale and swollen, his skin looked as though it might drop off in clumps. He beseeched me to stop the Bushman from drumming. “Why have you betrayed me again?” he moaned.
I was tempted to plead for his forgiveness, but when Midnight squeezed my hand, I spoke as instructed: “I know who you are. You are Hyena.”
Midnight handed me his rattle and told me to toss it at Daniel’s chest, but I hesitated. When the lad took a step toward me, the African shouted, “Hit him with it! Throw it now, John!”
I tossed it at him. It hit against his shoulder and fell to the ground. But it changed its form as it fell to become a dark mantis, head proudly erect, arms raised in the air as though ready for attack.
Slowly, it began to crawl toward Midnight.
Daniel reached out to me in fright.
“Do not touch him!” Midnight warned me.
I repeated, “I know who you are. You are Hyena.”
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