She and I did talk at length about his offer several times, and I believe that my decision to stay was in some ways a relief to her. Not that she wished to leave me behind, but she needed to start a new life in a home unburdened by memory and grief – and by my expectations. We were learning to love each other again, but we needed to follow our own paths. I see that plainly now. Our house was simply too full of memories of Father and Midnight for her to bear.
*
By the beginning of November, Mama felt confident enough to book passage to England. She also had her pianoforte shipped off to Aunt Fiona’s home. On the day before she left, she asked me to fetch her menorah, which I had recently dug up from our garden. Gripping it tightly, she twisted off the round, scallop-edged base.
“I didn’t know it could do that,” I said in astonishment.
“Your father and I were the only ones who did.”
Reaching inside the hollow of the lamp’s stem, she pulled out a vellum scroll, which, once unfurled, revealed itself to be a colorful illumination. At its center was a gold-leaf square containing four neatly scripted lines of Hebrew writing, surrounded by garlands of pink and carmine flowers. At the very top was a peacock whose exuberant tail fanned across the top of the page.
I had never seen any design so stunning.
Allowing me to hold it, Mama said, “It was made by an ancestor of ours. His name was Berekiah Zarco. He was an artist from a family of manuscript illuminators who was born in Lisbon centuries ago and later moved to Constantinople. Berekiah was a very learned man, but that is all my father was able to tell me about him. This has been handed down in our family for many generations. I believe it is the cover for a book of European geography. At least, that is what your grandfather had been told by his parents.”
“Grandfather João gave it to you?”
“Yes, and now,” she said, smiling, “I am giving it to you.”
“To me, why?”
“It was always intended for you. I ought to have given it to you on your thirteenth birthday, but with all our problems … For better or for worse, I thought it best to wait. I was worried, too, that you were still upset at being half-Jewish and that this would only heighten your sense of exclusion. As I must leave you now, I wish to delay my gift no longer. I need not say how valuable it must be, nor that you must keep it a secret, since possessing Hebrew writing may still be a crime in Portugal, for all I know.”
“May I show it to Benjamin? He is able to read Hebrew.”
She considered that request. “You may, John, but only upon the condition that he never reveal its existence while a member of our family remains in Portugal.
“I feel I ought to give you some advice,” she continued, “but I find I have none to give. So I’ll only say that I am proud of you and love you. I am counting on you to do better in your life than I have. I’m sure Papa would wish the same thing if he were here.”
I was so sad and nervous that I could hardly speak.
“John, I mean what I say,” she said, almost threateningly. “I think most parents hope their children will grow up to copy their lives, but that’s the very last thing I want. I would very much like you to forget about me.”
“I could never forget you, Mama, so I’m not sure – ”
“John, that’s not what I was trying to say,” she interrupted. “It’s not that I want you to forget me – I just want you to disregard any expectations you think I might have.”
“I’ll try,” I answered.
“Good.”
“But what about you? Will you be all right alone in London?”
“The truth is, John, I’m of no use to anyone else right now. We both know I’m not the woman I was, so I think it’s better – and right, in a way – for me to be alone for a time. If you give me a few years by myself, I think I may be able to come back much stronger than I am now. Please be patient with me. I think that’s the only thing I have a right to ask anymore. Though perhaps, given my behavior, I’ve even forfeited that.”
*
The next morning at eleven, I said good-bye to Mother on the wharf. The last thing she did was to kiss both my hands and make them into fists. “You have my fondest affection with you always, my son.”
Her posture was stooped as she boarded, and I feared she might faint. We waved until she was far enough downriver that I was sure she could no longer see me – which was in truth not so great a distance, since she refused to wear her spectacles in public.
*
Several days later, feeling powerfully sorry for myself, I took Berekiah Zarco’s illustration to Benjamin. By the light of a single candle in his sitting room, he deciphered its lettering, which had been penned in what he termed Sephardic script – the box-style characteristic of Spain and Portugal. According to his translation, it read: The Bleeding Mirror: On the Need for the Jews and their Converted Brethren to Cast Out Christian Europe from their Hearts and Flee to Moslem Lands.
Apparently, it was not a geography book at all, but rather an argument in favor of an exodus of Jews from Europe to lands then under the control of Moslems. As for the term Bleeding Mirror, Benjamin reasoned that it might have been a metaphor for the Ten Commandments, which reflect God’s will, or the silver eyes of Moses.
It was signed on the back by Berekiah Zarco. In minuscule letters, a date and place of authorship had been scripted as well: The Seventh of Av, 5290 – Constantinople.
Benjamin told me that the month of Av was the sixth in the Hebrew lunar calendar and generally coincided with part of July and August. The year 5290 for Jews was equivalent to 1530 A.D. for Christians. Hence, this cover page was nearly three hundred years old.
That night I slept with the page under my pillow, next to The Fox Fables. The illustration did much to bolster my confidence in my decision to become an artist and apprentice to Gilberto, for I now envisioned myself continuing a centuries-old family tradition.
*
I survived on my own over the next years by clinging to a routine of work with Gilberto. I found him a sterner taskmaster than I’d first imagined, yet also affectionate and unfailingly honest. During my apprenticeship with him, I’m quite sure he often considered strangling me, but in his critiques of my designs, he never sought to belittle me. Even after ten hours in each other’s company, we often still took pleasure in walking by the river in the evening or in sipping brandy at a nearby tavern. He was – and is – a very good man.
Mother wrote to me assiduously over those first years of separation, sending news on a weekly basis. In the spring of 1810, she joined a small congregation of Jews whose ancestors had hailed from Spain and Portugal. Having never before attended a proper synagogue ceremony, she found it most confusing. Furthermore, she regarded herself as wholly inferior to the others, knowing next to nothing of Jewish ritual. She was particularly shocked to discover that she and the other women were required to sit separately from the men. In her own family, her mother had not only lit the Sabbath candles but also recited many of the prayers.
One very positive note was that she had easier access to music for her pianoforte and had been able to attract six young students, two of whom she considered gifted. Along with her embroidery skills, which were highly esteemed, these lessons afforded her a steady income.
I was less diligent in my letter-writing and would sometimes let a fortnight pass without sending word to her. Oddly enough, I believe we became closer through our correspondence than we had been since I was nine or ten years of age. Her renewed devotion to me emerged in her joy over the progress I was making in my apprenticeship and her keen interest in my silly stories of life in our quiet land. I even began to notice that the passion in her heart, dormant for many years, was blossoming again. Often she would scribble out the themes of a new musical work by Beethoven that she had just purchased, writing to me of the emotions it inspired in her.
It’s a paradox, but I think I’ve reached home again in a foreign country, she once wrote to me. I’m discover
ing what it is I want to do with my life – and learning who a little Jewish girl from Porto has grown up to be.
*
About a year after her arrival in London, she visited Swanage to place a pebble from the surrounding grounds on Midnight’s gravestone, as was the Jewish custom. The minister of the parish church had been in the town for only two years and knew nothing of an African who had died in the vicinity, however. The body had probably been placed in an unmarked grave. This upset her greatly, but she realized in the end that Midnight was safe wherever he was and that he would not have cared, since all the earth to him was home. She wrote to me that we would surely both meet him again on the Mount of Olives and that he would be wearing an elegant scarlet waistcoat and breeches, but no shoes. Carrying his quill and hollowed ostrich egg shell, he would be very, very pleased to see us. That was what mattered now.
*
In my work, I devoured all that Master Gilberto could teach me about potting and tile-making. When he allowed me to begin making my own designs, my first project was a tile panel illustrating a comic sketch of Goya’s – a monkey painting the portrait of a donkey. Over the next two years, I transferred many of his works to tile and even painted some of his figures on vases and teapots. Then I began to execute works of my own inspiration based on the stories Midnight had told me. Gilberto purchased my first tile panel – nine squares depicting a great white feather falling into the Bushman’s outstretched hand.
*
Over her first three years in England, Mother offered all manner of excuses for being unable to return home for an extended visit, until I realized what ought to have been obvious from the very beginning: Absence was not increasing her fondness for Porto one whisker and she would not be making the journey home anytime soon. I read between the lines that she was fearful of the emotions that seeing our house and Grandmother Rosa would stir in her.
So in October of 1812, I inquired if she would like me to visit, and she replied that she missed me each and every day and that my coming to London would be a solemn blessing. As the idea of passing a winter fighting my way through the frigid English rain was unacceptable to me, I begged permission from Gilberto to visit her for two months that spring. I was now less than half an inch shy of six feet in height and wore my hair long, tying it with a black velvet ribbon in back, which I regarded as terribly dashing.
*
In the world beyond my immediate surroundings, Napoleon’s dream of European conquest all but died in November of 1812, when, starving and frozen, his troops retreated from an ill-advised attack on Moscow. Within eighteen months his throne in Paris would be handed to Louis XVIII. In consequence, another French invasion of Porto was impossible – for the time being. Yet I refrained from unearthing the mementos of Midnight and Daniel I had buried. Like Mother, I had no wish to confront such vestiges of my past.
XXV
I set sail for London in time for my mother and me to celebrate my twenty-second birthday together. I was filled with trepidation, principally owing to a glorious complication that had occurred just before I left.
I had been out strolling when I caught the eye of a lass standing on her second-story balcony. She had long black tresses and darkly glowing eyes. Playfully, she lifted the edge of her royal blue mantilla and held it over her mouth, as though it were a veil. I could easily have believed her a sorceress of the forest, born during Midnight’s Age of the First People.
Before I could call out and ask her name, she crossed her arms over her chest, pirouetted round, and disappeared inside her house. I waited for two hours, but she failed to emerge.
The next evening at sundown, I found her seated on a stool on the street beneath her balcony, selling plants and flower bulbs. She didn’t see me, as she was painting a pot a fiery orange. Her hair sat in a swirl atop her head, except for delicate ringlets by her ears.
“Good evening,” I said gallantly.
Startled, she dropped her brush onto her skirt.
“Shit! Look what you made me do!”
I was charmed that she had uttered a curse word. “I heartily apologize, young lady,” I said, offering my handkerchief to her with what I hoped was a winning smile.
“But I shall ruin it,” she said, plainly considering me daft to even suggest it.
My next reply would provide Luna Olive Tree and Mama with mirthful shrieks of laughter for many years. I held out my offering to her with redoubled sincerity and said, “I should not mind you painting all of me orange, if it meant being touched by you everywhere.”
How in God’s name I could have said such a ridiculous thing, I do not know. Incensed, her dark eyes flashed ominously. She bluntly refused my handkerchief and wiped her fingers on her apron instead.
Humiliated and tempted to rush away, I tried my best to turn the conversation toward a safer topic. “It is a lovely sunset – all that pink and gold.” Receiving only silence by way of a reply, I cleared my throat and shifted my weight to my other leg in what I hoped was a gentlemanly manner.
“You are standing in my light,” she said, not even deigning to look at me.
As the sun was behind her and my shadow fell in the opposite direction, I presumed she was joking. Encouraged, I gave a small laugh and launched another inane volley her way. Looking at her plants, I said, “I wonder if one might eat a tulip bulb. Some people call them batatinhas, you know – little potatoes. Do you suppose they are poisonous? Perhaps if they were cooked.”
“Sir,” she declared, “if I knew they were poisonous, you may be assured I would offer one to you at this very moment.”
My eyes filled with tears at her harsh words.
“Oh, sir, what have I done?” she exclaimed.
Burning with shame, I ran off.
I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cursed all women as daughters of Lilith, queen of the demons. Then I took off my clothes and scrutinized myself in Mama’s old cheval mirror. I was far too tall and pale. I wondered if a mustache might improve matters.
I made myself stay at home the next evening, but the day after saw a return of my blind courage and I risked approaching her again. At sundown, I found myself carrying a red damask shawl to her that I had purchased for a small fortune on the Rua das Flores. When she appeared on her balcony, she stared at me, and this time it was her eyes that welled with tears.
I tied two knots in the shawl and tossed it up to her. She caught it eagerly, then dropped her black mantilla to me.
She wore my shawl about her shoulders and flapped it like wings. Then she rushed inside.
By the next morning, I could stand no more insomnia. Begging Gilberto to be patient with me, I walked to the house of my tormentor once again, waited till the tolling of nine o’clock, and knocked on the door. I had practiced an eloquent speech for her parents all through the night, including impressive references to philosophy and art, but when a short man with a grizzled beard and long gray hair falling about his shoulders came yawning to the door, I fumbled my greeting.
“Speak up, son!” the man said gruffly.
“There is a young lady … a young … girl who appears on your balcony in the evenings. She sells flowers in the street as well.”
“My daughter Maria Francisca.”
“Yes, yes, that must be her. But … but perhaps if I begin again … My name is John Stewart. I am sorry to inconvenience you with my coming so early to your door.”
“No, no, I am pleased.” He smiled. “And starting with your name is always a splendid idea. But before we proceed any further, I should like to know precisely what your interest in my daughter might be.”
“Well, sir, I … I intend to marry her.”
I cannot explain why I dared to make this reply, except that I truly meant it.
Francisca’s father laughed. “You are not the first to suggest that,” he said. “But it is much more important” – here he reached for my arm to lead me inside – “to be the last.”
He introduced himself as Egídio Castro da S
ilva Martins. He had only three or four crooked teeth in his head, but large friendly eyes and a sweetly puckered mouth. He told me that he was a flower seller and that his shop was near St. Anthony’s Hospital.
A painting of Francisca’s mother hung above the mantelpiece. I saw that her daughter had inherited her thick black hair and mysterious eyes. They both looked like women who knew how to keep secrets – and create them too. Senhor Egídio told me she had left him ten years earlier when Francisca had been seven. He made a fist and shook it at her. “You done me wrong, you wicked woman!” he bellowed.
After I commented on her likeness to their daughter, he looked bemused and said, “As you can see, I well understand your dilemma, son.”
About his daughter’s future, he made it quite plain that he would allow her to make her own decision with regard to a husband. I then explained that I wished to invite her to stroll with me along the riverside.
“I shall put that proposition to her this afternoon, young man, and if you will return at eight this evening, you will have an answer.”
I thanked him for his help and then confessed that I had to leave in four days for two months in England.
“Perhaps it is a good thing,” he reassured me. “You will get to know each other over the next evenings, if Francisca agrees. And if a true bond of affection develops between you, one that is not severed by weeks of separation, then we all might be inclined to believe that a promising future awaits you.”
“And one other thing, sir …”
“Don’t be shy, son,” he said, slapping my back.
“I should only like to add that my Father was Scottish and my mother, though Portuguese, is of New Christian origins. I am, in short, half-Jewish and half-Scottish. I wish to make that plain from the outset. I shall understand if you consider it an obstacle, but I can assure you that – ”
Senhor Egídio held up his hands and smiled.
“Son, all that matters between the young is loyal affection. The rest is simply decoration.”
Hunting Midnight Page 26