Hunting Midnight sc-2

by Richard Zimler

  That night she admitted my father back into their bedroom.

  I hoped that she had recovered from her initial shock and grief, but over the next week or so she seemed like a frail creature preparing for a long winter. She scurried about the house from task to task as though a pause to rest might prove her undoing. Once, she mistakenly prepared tea with oregano and another time left jagged pieces of shell in our supper of eggs, codfish, and potatoes. This indicated to me that her mind was on a great voyage elsewhere. Perhaps she was off to England to lay roses from our garden on Midnight’s grave. I know that I often daydreamed of doing precisely that, and I cannot believe that our thoughts were so different. We were always alike in so many ways.

  One afternoon in late January, I returned from fetching our ironed linens from Senhora Beatriz to find Mother sobbing at her pianoforte. She clung to its top as though in peril of falling into so deep an inner darkness that she might never return.

  I pried her fingers from the piano and held her to me. She leaned into my chest and wailed, shaking violently. She was so small and delicate; it was as though I had become her parent.

  Kissing the top of her head and breathing in the warm scent of her hair made me cry. It was a terrible moment, yet strangely comforting as an expression of our solidarity.

  “I must apologize for so many things,” she told me afterward, wiping her eyes. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Forgive you for what, Mama?”

  I expected her to say, for neglecting you these past weeks, since she had not offered me any comfort at all.

  Instead, she replied, “For Midnight’s death.”

  “But you had nothing to do with it.”

  “No, no, sadly, that is not true. I ought never to have allowed your father and Midnight to receive that cowpox vaccine. I ought to have made that expressly clear before their departure.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you see? They must have been feverish. It must have done something to them, after all. Why else would Midnight have run off during the storm? And how else could your father have failed to protect him? No, John, they must have both not been in their right mind.”

  This seemed perfectly ridiculous to me, as Father had never mentioned delirium or even mild discomfort. And Mama knew as well that Midnight often followed storms. Alarmed by her logic, I suggested that she rest.

  Later, I was standing at our back doorway, watching Fanny and Zebra gnawing on the same branch, when Mama shrieked. She had poured nearly a quart of boiling water down the front of her dress. Steam was rising from her bosom. When I yanked the kettle from her hand, I discovered it was nearly empty, which could not have been accidental.

  Mother looked at me in terror, realizing now that she had scalded herself badly. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted. With a lunge, I managed to prevent her from crashing onto the floor.

  I laid her on the sofa in our sitting room, placed a cushion under her head, then ran to fetch the Olive Tree Sisters, who roused Mother with a vial of salts. As I listened to them whispering to her, I understood that her rage had revealed itself in the only ways it could — first in small mad acts of hostility toward my father and me, such as cracking eggshells into our supper, and now by abusing herself.

  When Mama was awake, she suggested that I leave the room. It was at that precise moment that I began to believe she had stopped loving me.

  Over the next week, she locked herself once again in her bedroom, forbidding my father and me from entering.

  *

  Mother did stop loving me for several years, I think, though that is a damning thing to even suggest. Perhaps I should rather say that her fondness for me was placed in a box containing both her marriage and Midnight’s body and that the lid was firmly shut.

  I suppose it is possible that she was too fond of me and knew that I was the only one capable of penetrating her armor. If she let herself show her love for me, if she sought and welcomed my affection, she would have shrieked for days on end at the loss of all she had once held dear — her marriage, most of all. Anyone gazing at her pale gaunt face knew that suicide was a true possibility for her.

  It is ironic to think, of course, that she still could have loved me had she been willing to risk losing her sanity. Perhaps that is not something one can ask of another person.

  *

  Having heard my mother voice previously unspoken doubts about my father, I soon dared to accuse him of failing in his duty to protect Midnight. He begged my forgiveness, but I continued to rail at him even as he sought to reason with me. Finally, shamed by his tears, I allowed him to explain that he would never forgive himself for having let Midnight out of his sight.

  Father’s admission of regret did little to quell my emotions, unfortunately, and I was rude to him on a number of occasions, once even telling him that I wished never again for him to accompany me on my walks with Fanny and Zebra. I knew I was behaving abominably but simply could not control myself. The hurt etched on his face seemed a worthy counterpart to my own frustration and grief. But he never punished me or gave me anything more than a mild reprimand, telling me that time would heal all. “Aye, even your fury at me, lad.”

  I began to hide in my room during the worst of my depression, emerging only when he had left the house. I spent my days in solitude, reading and sketching. I never went to see the Olive Tree Sisters, Senhor Benjamin, or anyone else.

  One afternoon in mid-February, Papa tiptoed into my room while I lay nearly napping and sat at the foot of my bed. I didn’t open my eyes; even though I could hear him crying softly, I still refused to forgive him.

  Eventually he shuffled away.

  The terrible thing is that Father never came to me for help again. I missed my chance that day. And the regret I feel for withholding my love for him crowns me even today as a miser and a fool.

  *

  Seven years later, before I was married, I told my bride, Maria Francisca, everything about this time in order to warn her that she was taking damaged goods for a husband. To my great surprise, she surmised that I had denied my father solace at that key moment, not so much to punish him, but out of a fear of losing him to death.

  I thought then that she was simply trying to ease my guilt, but I can see now that she was right; I did secretly fear that death was taking everything from me. I may have even reasoned that Daniel and Midnight had died because of my great affection for them, which meant that I — in some way — had caused their doom. Death avenged itself on me through them. For what, I could not be sure. Perhaps simply for my having been happy — but more likely for my wounding Daniel when he most needed my help.

  *

  In late February, Mother took sick with terrible stomach pains and went to stay with Grandmother Rosa for four days. During her absence, Father finally refused to tolerate my attitude any longer.

  “This has gone quite far enough,” he told me one morning, throwing open my door and striding into my room, his eyes flashing. “I had expected sadness and even rage, but not this stubborn refusal to return to the world.”

  Holding his nose, he said, “My God, John, it stinks like a hound’s rump in here! Can’t you smell it?”

  He threw open my shutters and mosquito screens. “This is shocking!” he shouted, lifting my brimming chamber pot from beside my bed. Carrying it carefully to my window, he hurled away its foul contents while crying sujidade — filth — in his Scottish accent. “John, I am wholly disgusted with you.”

  “Close the door on your way out,” I sneered, pulling the covers over my head.

  This infuriated him so viciously that he came to me, threw off my blankets, and grabbed me by my shirt with his fists, as though to pummel me. I desperately wanted him to do just that, so that I could hit him back. And yet I knew the only act that would have truly satisfied my rage would have been for him to descend like Orpheus into the underworld and bring Midnight home.

  “I hate you!” I shouted.


  He loosened his hold on me in defeat. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you. You are still so young. You will recover one day, just as you did after Daniel’s death.”

  “I do not wish to recover,” I replied, for at the time I imagined that surrendering my grief would mean giving up my last intimate hold on Midnight; my tears were all that bound us across the barrier between life and death. “As for Daniel, I have never forgotten him. And I never shall.”

  “No, and you will never forget Midnight. That is not what I am trying to — Oh, John. Do you think Midnight would have wished for you to lie here day after day as though there were no sun in the sky? He should have liked you to dance — to dance his death if you must, but to get up and get on your way just the same.”

  I knew then that I had underestimated Papa; he understood more about my kinship with Midnight than I had expected. I felt a single seed of affection for him growing anew in me.

  “Papa, do you not miss him?”

  “I miss him every day, John. But life … it is not what we might wish. We lose those we love, one after another. I have lost my parents and now I have lost Midnight. And your sadness, lad … It’s hard for your old father to bear. I do not appear downhearted to you now because I cannot indulge my emotions. I have a family to support. I have work to do, John. I must trudge on without allowing myself the luxury of despair.”

  I wept at how badly I had misunderstood his actions. “I am sorry about saying I hate you … and blaming you too. I could never hate you.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “John, I have grown to despise myself too. More deeply than I might ever have imagined. Perhaps more deeply even than you.”

  I promised then to carry out my duties once again, but I cannot recall what he said; so unexpected was his admission of self-loathing, so uncharacteristic was it, that I could think of little else all afternoon.

  *

  So many things about my parents’ marriage throughout that winter and spring were to prove so disconcerting that I began to suspect Father and Mother might not have told me everything about Midnight’s death.

  Unwilling to risk Mama’s fragile state of mind, I only questioned Papa. On several occasions I was reassured that my suspicions were totally unfounded.

  It is a testament to human resilience that I was soon able to peel potatoes, pump water, build a fire, make purchases at the market, and perform all the other tasks expected of me. Mother, too, emerged again, this time for good. That she was able to take on all the duties expected of a wife and mother speaks greatly for her strength of spirit.

  But I am fairly certain that she only imitated the spirited woman she once had been — that person had ceased to exist.

  “It is our fate in this life to keep walking no matter what,” she told me.

  *

  Not even my renewed strength could bridge the gulf between the three of us. Papa never told me another Scottish story, nor crept up behind Mama to surprise her with a kiss, and his trips upriver were no longer regarded as hindrances to our happiness. Mama never tried to make Papa laugh or reprimanded me for taking the stairs two at a time, and I never asked either for their advice on choosing a profession.

  It is now plain to me that once Father returned home alone, our destruction was inevitable. We had opportunities to alter the course of our destiny, but only if we had acted much earlier — if, for instance, I had made that fateful voyage to England with Father and Midnight. Had I gone, I am certain that I would have been able to prevent this tragedy. That is my most punishing regret. I can see the blood on my fingers even today.

  *

  In deference to Father’s request, Professor Raimundo and I recommenced lessons three months after Midnight’s death. I soon discovered, however, that I no longer had any patience for his pomposity.

  In mid-April, I found the courage to broach the subject with my mother over supper. “I cannot bear Professor Raimundo any longer, Mama. I should like to give studying on my own a try.”

  Having adopted a strategy of changing the subject whenever a decision needed to be reached, she replied, “Eat your soup.”

  “I find him so tedious that I could cry at times. I’m sure he is impeding my progress.”

  “John, you are nearly a man and you may do as you please,” she said matter-of-factly.

  That’s when I said for the first time in many weeks, “I miss Midnight. I miss him every day.”

  Mother would not look at me.

  “Don’t you miss him greatly?” I inquired, leaning toward her in my eagerness. “Remember that first supper we had with him? When he told us that Africa was memory. Do you recall how mad you and I thought he was?”

  Without a word, she put down her spoon, stood up, and glided to the stairs. I called after her to apologize, but she refused to turn around.

  *

  I would not speak again of Midnight to either my mother or my father for another year.

  I admit that I couldn’t understand why she would not talk to me of him, if even for a few secret minutes. I could not fathom how we had come to this.

  It will seem absurd, but whenever we referred to that time of night when the minute and hour hands of a clock point straight up toward the heavens, we never again spoke of midnight, but only of twelve o’clock.

  XXI

  I was to be sixteen years of age at the end of April and, having dismissed my tutor, I soon settled into a new and solitary pattern of study. I did little else requiring concentrated effort, the only exceptions being my lessons with the Olive Tree Sisters on Fridays, and my study of the Torah with Benjamin on Sunday afternoons.

  Outside events soon dramatically altered our lives, however. It was Napoleon who impinged on the quiet independence of our city, just as he would on that of every town in Europe.

  Britain’s only remaining allies on the Continent were Russia and Portugal, and so it was to our unfortunate outpost that the French Emperor now turned his attention.

  Prince João, our Regent, was the head of our monarchy. In August of 1807 the French and Spanish ambassadors demanded that he declare war on England, give use of his fleet to French forces, confiscate goods from English vessels, and imprison all British subjects in his kingdom. While negotiations dragged on, the British citizens of Portugal were given valuable time to prepare for departure.

  Father told Mother and me that we would not be fleeing Portugal. As subjects of the Portuguese crown, she and I would be safe under French occupation, and he had never maintained any direct commercial connection to His Majesty’s government or any British firm. He believed that his employment in the Douro Wine Company, the single most important mercantile enterprise in Porto, guaranteed him a measure of safety.

  We argued with his logic, but he would not give in.

  In truth, there seemed nothing for him to return to in Britain. He had obviously decided that he would live or die, suffer a broken marriage or rebuild it, in Portugal.

  Then, on October the Twentieth, the guillotine fell on the oldest of European alliances: Prince João declared war on Britain. But the surprise was to be on him — Napoleon and his Spanish lackeys had made plans to betray their treaty with Portugal and divide the country between them. A mixed French and Spanish army comprising eighteen thousand troops commanded by General Junot crossed our border at the end of October.

  A convoy of ships was sent from England to collect the British wishing to flee Porto, where many of their families had lived for generations. William Warre, as British Consul, was the last to embark. As the ship set sail, he raised his fist to those of us left on shore, but Mama only frowned when I told her of his defiant gesture. “It’s easy for a man to preach courage when he runs no risk,” she said. She then told Father and me that we were to bury all of our valuables in the garden.

  Having never experienced occupation before and having heard Professor Raimundo praise the French as honorable people, this seemed a laughable precaution. Unwilling to risk rankling her, however, I did as she aske
d. She and I wrapped her few rings and necklaces in linen towels, along with our silver, including her beloved menorah. We deposited them into tunnels that Father and I dug underneath the rosebushes.

  Then we dug other pits more haphazardly, burying knickknacks of little or no value. Our reasoning was that the French would discover these swiftly and remove their nearly worthless contents, leaving undisturbed the more important hiding places.

  “And the pianoforte,” I said, “how shall we hide it?”

  Mama moaned.

  “Don’t you worry, May, I shall take care of it.” Papa reached out to reassure her, but she yanked her arm free. In the end, we carried it up to his study, turned it over on its back, and buried it beneath books and papers.

  Late that afternoon, when neither of my parents was at home, I also took the precaution of burying Midnight’s belongings, along with Daniel’s masks, his talisman, the jay we had carved and given to Mother, and the tile of a triton that the Olive Tree Sisters had given me when I was only nine. I did this in secret, as I feared that my parents would say that these keepsakes were not of sufficient value for such precautions.

  *

  On the Twenty-Ninth of November, when French and Spanish troops were only a day’s ride from Lisbon, Prince João and the rest of the royal family, together with our ministers and much of our aristocracy, left for Brazil.

  The news reached Porto that the royal family carried aboard their ships more than half of the coinage of Portugal. The miracle that day was that none of their vessels, thus loaded, plunged directly to the bottom of Lisbon Harbor.

  *

  We ought to have at least been able to bless the dreadful roads of the Portuguese countryside for slowing the progress of the enemy marching toward Lisbon. And yet we could not. The French officers and their mixed army were made so miserable by their tortuous advance that they compensated for it with pillaging and murder.