Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  “You’ll do no such thing!” I growled.

  Remembering our courtship, I took two hundred-reis coins from my fob pocket and placed them in her hands. “Listen to me, Francisca, I shall pay you for a waistcoat in any fabric you choose on the condition that it is sure to astonish everyone who sees it!” I caressed her cheek, which was my way of winning her over. “They’re the most stunning things I’ve ever seen.” I moved behind her and started to undo the laces on the simple dress she was wearing. “This will take just a minute,” I observed.

  She reached back over her shoulder to still my hand. “Not now – we haven’t time for that. Later, I promise. But we’ve our Sabbath supper, and Benjamin will be at Luna’s at any moment.”

  I slapped her bottom playfully. “I only wish for you to put on one of the dresses, you wicked-minded girl. The one with the butterflies. Please, it’s beautiful.”

  “But I shall die of embarrassment, John.”

  “Nonsense. It is good for us to be embarrassed at least once a week.”

  She snorted. “John, I assure you that philosophy is of no help to me at this particular moment. I shall cringe when they set their shocked eyes on what I’ve made.”

  I squeezed her tight, then bit the lobe of her ear so that she yelped. “Do it for your husband,” I whispered, “who feels nothing but tenderness for you.”

  “You do not feel particularly tender at this moment,” she observed.

  “That is just the tip of my emotions. I assure you the rest of me is as gentle as a rose.” I squeezed her tighter, then growled.

  When Francisca was dressed, I held the lamp up as she stood before our mirror, so we might both get a good look at her. I had never seen her look more captivating. The butterflies on her sleeves seemed ready to flutter away.

  “Admit it,” I ventured. “You chose that particular pattern for me.”

  Francisca bit her lip slyly, then grimaced. “The Sabbath is sacred to Benjamin and Luna. It may be considered an affront.”

  “Shush. Do you really think any God worth our while would take offense at a woman who has become a landscape of fluttering wings?”

  I pushed her toward the door and, when she continued to stall, lifted her into my arms and ran with her down the stairs, crashing into the walls on purpose, so that she could not help laughing and hollering. By the time I had deposited her inside Luna’s doorway, Benjamin had already arrived.

  The old apothecary leaned forward, his spectacles at the tip of his nose. “Goodness gracious me, Francisca. You are the meeting of heaven and earth, dear girl.”

  Luna started, as though remembering something long lost.

  “Francisca made it,” I announced proudly.

  Suddenly, Luna burst into tears and ran from the room.

  “What have I said?” I asked.

  “It’s me,” Francisca moaned, her shoulders slumping. “I’ll go home to change. I’ve offended Luna.”

  “No, no, no,” I said. I grabbed a candlestick and the three of us followed the sound of muffled sobs to the back of the house. We found Luna in the larder where she kept the wax for her sculpted fruit. She was sitting on the floor, sobbing, her knees pulled up to her chest. Benjamin squatted next to her and kissed the top of her head.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s my sister,” she said mournfully.

  I lifted her hands to my lips. “I miss Graça too,” I whispered. “Every day when I paint my tiles, I think of you and her both, and how you changed my life.”

  Luna fingered the hem of Francisca’s dress. “My sister never had an opportunity to meet you, my child. She would have loved seeing you at this moment.” She traced her fingers across the butterfly pattern. “It’s so unfair that she never saw the two of you married. How relieved and happy she’d have been that you found such a clever girl, John. Youth is incomparably beautiful, is it not, Benjamin? And they have no notion of it.”

  Benjamin smiled knowingly.

  *

  The next morning, rising to the challenge I’d issued, Francisca summoned me from bed before I’d fully woken and measured me for my new waistcoat, whacking me on the head whenever I yawned.

  The following Saturday, I woke to discover my present on her pillow, with a note that read, For dearest John.

  It was fashioned from shimmering lavender damask. Across the front she had painstakingly sewn rows of tiny diamonds in yellow and pink.

  Thanks to Luna, who cherished a good game of cards, this marvelous creation became known locally as my “King of Diamonds” waistcoat, and for many years I never failed to wear it on my birthday, feeling rather like a present myself when I had it on.

  *

  From that day forward, Francisca and I were constantly on the lookout for unusual fabrics. We soon discovered a tumbledown shop at the back of a shipping office on the Rua dos Ingleses from which we could purchase woolens, cottons, and silks from India, Turkey, Persia, and even the west coast of Africa.

  I remember, in particular, the dress Francisca made for the Christmas ball at the Factory House, our British club, in 1816. I ought to add that she and I had refrained from attending such gatherings in previous years because of her pregnancies and the ceaseless labor involved in caring for infants. This was to be our debut, in a sense, as a couple – at least for the British community.

  As she had no desire to offend the more conservative guests, she insisted on a fabric that would not be too garish. In the end, she chose a soft cotton from Morocco emblazoned with black, olive green, and yellow twelve-pointed stars set against a background of lapis-lazuli blue.

  Francisca designed a low collar and long sleeves ending in ruffles for her gown, completing it with a long, extravagant train that I carried for her. The small buttons were also black and shaped into stars, carved from jet in the workshops of Bologna.

  When she put this dress on for the first time – her black hair pinned up, a pearl necklace around her neck – she naturally asked my opinion. The children were in their room sleeping, and I was reading the Edinburgh Review, wearing only my linen nightshirt and lamb’s wool sandals. When I swiveled in my seat to face her, my pipe dropped from my mouth, bounced off my leg, and tumbled to the floor. It wasn’t terribly amusing on a number of fronts, for aside from burning my inner thigh, I felt completely unworthy of her. There I was – absurdly dressed, almost naked – and before me stood a sphinx with a woman’s face and a peacock’s incomparable plumage. She wrinkled her nose and laughed, placing her hands on her hips in a very girlish gesture of impatience, and I realized in a reassuring instant that this radiant creature would always be my Francisca – and my dearest friend.

  *

  I wore my King of Diamonds waistcoat to the Christmas ball, of course, under a wide-lapeled coat of charcoal gray that Mama had made for me years earlier. Perhaps the two of us did look “fit for a lily pond,” as I overheard an elderly woman by the entrance remark to her gentleman companion, but I didn’t care; the disdain shown to myself and my mother after Papa’s death had freed me forever from worry over such spite. It is a glorious moment when we finally begin to enjoy our own individuality, and I now had the confidence to do so.

  We stood by ourselves for quite some time, drinking punch and feeling like discarded fish, but I soon insisted on dancing nonetheless. Thankfully, the few steps I knew were graceful and surefooted, owing to Mama’s patient instruction. Even though Francisca thought she might faint – indeed might have wished to as a means of escaping the sea of scrutinizing eyes – I led her through the dance without either of us putting a foot wrong.

  The first of nearly a dozen gentlemen to ask her for a dance came over and identified himself as the son of a visiting merchant from Manchester. Despite her resolute refusals, he would not relent. I found the enduring hope in his brown eyes so very touching that I agreed to intercede on his behalf, placing a series of coaxing kisses on her cheek. As much to prevent any further embarrassment for herself and me, she stood up
and walked off with the young man, seeming to draw the light of the room in her wake. All of the other dancers seemed mere shadows alongside her. Not a single man or woman in the room could take their eyes off her, though it is also true to say that a good many of them held fast to their scorn.

  I cannot honestly say that Francisca was the most sought-after woman that evening, for we continued to be shunned by the majority of guests and we were never invited to the Factory House ball again. But I have no doubt whatsoever that it was plain to everyone in attendance that she had the most proud and admiring husband by far.

  XXVI

  Benjamin, when preparing me for marriage to Francisca, once told me that if affection is to last, one must love the person one knows in the present as well as the one he or she may become in the future. I was not sure of his meaning until the early summer of 1819.

  This was a most troubling time for me, for I’d begun to think constantly about the unfairness of death. Nights were the worst. Lying next to Francisca, the gratitude I felt at being with her led me to thoughts of dying before seeing her to old age and the children to adulthood. Trembling in the dark, afraid to embrace her lest I wake her, I was frequently unable to sleep.

  Perhaps due to the exhaustion caused by my insomnia, my feelings soon changed, however, and I began to believe that my obsession with death was a result of impositions being placed on me by my family: the need to earn a living, to care for the children, to encourage Francisca during her moments of doubt. I came to regard these as a threat to my very existence and the cause of my morbid state of mind. In my troubled state, I could not conceive of any way forward for the boy and man I used to be. They had vanished. Or so I thought. At times, I seemed to be looking through a window at all the things I would never get to do and see.

  I would frequently sit for hours in the Lookout Tower, watching the successive phases of the moon, allowing the glowing petals of red and yellow filtering through the restored colored glass of the skylight to fall across my body as though to camouflage me. Beneath all that beauty, however, I felt barren – that my life, just like the tinted moonlight, was nothing but a clever illusion. My shadow cast across the floor seemed that of a straw man.

  I tried to hide my feelings from Francisca – after all, no woman could react well to being cast as her husband’s jailer – which created distance between us. Despite the pain this caused her, she never mentioned my lack of enthusiasm. Pity the young husband who forgets that his wife may not be so different from him….

  One Sunday, after daydreaming all morning of a life with the Bushmen in the deserts of southern Africa, I decided we ought to journey to the beaches at the river mouth by donkey, as I had on occasion as a lad. By so doing, I hoped to compensate for my recent lack of attention to my wife and the girls.

  Just as I predicted, Francisca was skeptical from the very beginning. Making a sour face, she said, “Are you sure a two-hour ride atop a smelly beast is how you want to spend a day of blessed rest? Would you not prefer to sit in the garden and read?”

  “Your husband is game for adventure,” I declared.

  I can see now that a part of me wanted her to fail this test so as to have proof that she was holding me back. To my surprise, she agreed and slipped into the oldest dress she could find. Bedecked in black, she looked every inch the youthful widow, which did little to improve my disposition.

  “Black will fail to show any stains,” she explained to me with a cheeky grin.

  *

  I hired the best beasts I could find, at a stables near Cordoaria Park. We started off without a hitch. The two girls rode on Lídia, a sable-colored donkey with large, almond-shaped eyes. Francisca gripped the reins of a brown one named Filipa.

  “I suppose you were right all along,” she told me. “It’s going to be a pleasant journey.”

  So I am not mad, after all, I wanted to shout at her.

  I would have considered it cruel at my weight to sit on one of the diminutive beasts, so instead I walked alongside Lídia, while Graça gripped the reins in her tiny hands. I also held the blue croquet ball of which the child had grown fond of late; she refused to go anywhere without it.

  Unfortunately, the animal kingdom soon turned against us. Flies attracted to the infinitely patient donkeys began to swarm around the girls when we reached the riverside, where it was especially filthy. Despite all my attempts to swat them away, Esther began to fuss and cry. Desperate, Francisca covered the girl’s face and chest with her mantilla. Graça, unwilling to ride alone, then voiced her disapproval with a volley of piercing shrieks that might have summoned hailstones and frogs had there been but a single cloud in the June sky.

  While Francisca comforted Esther, I lifted Graça into her mother’s saddle so the three of them could ride together. Poor Filipa began to labor under the strain. Lídia was staring intently ahead, afraid to turn round lest I change my mind and demand my rightful place on her back. On we journeyed, me swatting and cursing, Francisca growing angrier by the minute, a red-hot I told you so burning in her eyes.

  After ninety minutes of this march toward doom, we reached my favorite cove by the river mouth, where Francisca and I decamped like weary soldiers recovering from a lost battle.

  The girls were happy enough by now, as the ocean was magnificent and the breeze much cooler, but nothing I did could rouse a smile from Francisca. I built sand castles with Esther, whose chubby little hands poked and patted with glee, and even overcame my fear of the water for a few minutes to lead Graça giggling into the frigid foam at the edge of the surf. All this time, Francisca refused to talk to me. After we had eaten our picnic and had begun packing up our belongings, she finally said, “I refuse to ride those donkeys back. My bottom is black and blue.”

  “I can’t abandon them here.”

  She took off her bonnet and shook her long black hair loose. “John, you will please explain yourself to me,” she said impatiently.

  “Whatever do you mean?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

  My theatrical talents had apparently improved little since childhood. Frowning, she shoved me, so hard that I almost fell. “Tell me what is wrong with you!” she screamed.

  I was shocked to speechlessness, then shouted, “Me?! Nothing is wrong with me. It’s you – you’ve been acting as though your tongue were cut out. And now look at how you’re behaving!”

  I hated the way I was speaking to her, but I was powerless to stop myself.

  “You can be sure there is much more to this than any silence of mine,” she countered, a prosecutor’s certainty in her voice.

  “I thought we could have a pleasant day, an adventure, that is all. But apparently nothing is possible for us anymore. Nothing!”

  I had hardly wished to speak so frankly, but I suppose the truth has a mind of its own.

  “Nothing possible for us …?” Her great dark eyes flashed dangerously. “You, sir, have gone too far. I shall not move from this place until I know precisely what has caused your foul mood these past weeks.”

  I searched through my bag for my pipe to stall for time.

  “Do not fear me, John. I may be angry, but I am still your friend,” she said sharply. “And you will never find a more loyal friend – never. Of that, I can assure you.”

  “I am not questioning that,” I replied, insincerity making my voice sound hollow.

  “Then what is it?”

  Seeing her dressed in the widow’s black, I envisioned the future I most feared. I said, “It’s the weight … the weight of being a father, of having a family for which I am responsible. There are moments when I simply cannot breathe. I’m sorry. It’s terrible of me, but I imagine escaping – somewhere, anywhere …”

  I felt as though I’d been walking in the African desert of my daydreams for months – crossing miles of sand and bushland simply to get here, to this wee cove with Francisca and the children. I was so confused. I seemed to be in two places at once.

  When my wife finally looked back at me, h
er eyes were moist. “Is that all it is, John – the weight of having a family? Is that truly all that has been troubling you these past months?”

  “That’s enough, I should think – a father who doubts his capacity to care for his family, who does not know where he is or what he is doing, who fears that death may come for him at any moment. I feel as though I’ve lost my way.”

  “Nothing more, are you sure?”

  “What more could there be, Francisca? Isn’t that enough for you?”

  She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed with relief, tears rolling down her cheeks. “There could be much more, John. You could have given your heart to someone else.”

  I realized with knife-edged clarity what a silent monster I’d been. I’d thought nothing of her welfare. “Oh, God, where have I been?” I kissed my apologies over her brow and cheeks. “Francisca, I’m sorry. It’s just that I do not understand how a man can be both in love and still feel the things I feel. I never expected it. Can you forgive me for being such a fool? There are still so many things I do not understand – about myself most of all.”

  I wiped away her tears with my thumbs, a gesture that triggered a memory of Midnight doing the same for me. I felt his strength inside me, deep down, drumming in my gut.

  Neither of us spoke for a time. Francisca studied me closely, then said, “We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger.”

  “What … what was that?” I stammered in astonishment.

  “We saw you from afar, John, and we are dying of hunger.”

  “Why do you say that? How did you know I was thinking of him?”

  “John,” she explained, “there is a certain look you get when you are remembering Midnight, as if you are gazing far off toward a darkening horizon. When you spot him there, your eyes open wide, perhaps in response to the great light in him that you have always told me about. I thought that hearing his greeting now might reassure you that I mean you no harm. I wanted to remind you that I am not so different from him. Our affection for you makes us almost brother and sister, in a sense.”