“Sold? But how can that be? These letters,” I said, holding them up, “these damned letters must be forgeries! That’s the only possible explanation.”
He shook his head. “There is slavery in America even now. People of Midnight’s shade live in bondage inside Pharaoh’s empire of rice and cotton. They have been left behind by Moses.”
“But Midnight was no slave. He lived with us as a free man. Papa would never do … never do anything so … so – ”
Drawing in a deep breath, Benjamin said, “I could never bring myself to find Alexandria on a map, but I think it is a port town near Washington. That was where he was taken.”
“No, I cannot believe it. There must be some terrible mistake. Look, even I know that the slave trade in England has been outlawed for many years.”
“For two decades only. In 1806, when your father completed this transaction, the slave trade was still guaranteeing riches. Any African living in Britain without papers attesting to his free status might find himself kidnapped, shackled, and dispatched to the markets of America.”
“No, you are lying to me! Father could not have done this! Why are you hiding the truth from me? Was there an accident? Benjamin, did something terrible befall Midnight and Father in England?”
“John, please keep your voice down. The letters in your hands tell you all you need to know. They are … they are …”In his desperation, Benjamin closed his eyes and began reciting a prayer in Hebrew. After a time, he said, “I know I ought to have given them to you years ago, but I was so very frightened. You and Francisca and the girls were so happy. I said to myself, ‘Why must I ruin their lives? Midnight is gone and I shall try to find him by myself.’ I continued writing over the years to many men in England and America, but I had no better luck than James. It has been suggested to me that Midnight may even be dead. The African slaves … Dear boy, their lives are brief in America.”
My head was throbbing, and a stern voice was telling me that my nine years of happiness with my wife and children had been beyond contemptible; all the while, Midnight had been caged.
“But what could have made my father do such a thing?” I demanded. “I don’t think anything could make him do something so evil.”
“John, this is difficult for me. It is not my place – ”
“I shall not hold it against you. Tell me.”
“Your mother … your mother and Midnight – ”
“Out with it, man!”
“John, forgive me, but it seems that May and Midnight … that they … that they had shared a bed together as man and wife.”
Benjamin spoke some more, but I heard nothing. Time was ticking outside of me. I closed my eyes and could feel Father and Midnight by my side. Their presence bore down on my chest, suffocating me. Then I saw Francisca on her deathbed – pale and withered. I was singing to her: In Scarlet town, where I was born … Midnight had been in captivity all the while we had been raising our daughters – during every moment of happiness. I had betrayed him with my own good fortune.
Had my wife been taken by God to pay for my wickedness?
A wail rose from the depths of my being. I wanted it to shatter the roof and the Lookout Tower, to summon the dead from their graves – to shred my life into so many bloody strips that it could never be sewn together again.
XXIX
My daughters rushed down the stairs, summoned by my unholy cry. Benjamin calmed them, saying I’d had a spell of dizziness thinking of their late mother and had shouted in fright.
My usually dependable stomach heaved at that moment, obliging me to call for a basin – thrust at me by Graça just in time.
With his quick hands, Benjamin cleverly hid the letters under his cloak. I had a chance to reread them only after the girls were sent to bed again. When I’d finished, I took my father’s watch from my waistcoat pocket. It was half past one in the morning. I had just passed through an invisible threshold. I was no longer the person I had been.
“Benjamin, I beg of you,” I said quietly, “was the reason for Father’s betrayal truly as you said?”
“John, your mother and Midnight – must I tell you again what your father told me?”
In vain I studied his face for a sign of treachery. I said, “But what you’re saying is preposterous.”
“Nevertheless, it is what James told me.”
“I would have known. I would have been able to tell.”
“John, you were only a lad. You could not see what they hid from you.” He shook his head. “No child understands the ways of the adult heart. These things were beyond you. And not just you. I had not guessed.”
“For how long were they presumed to have been … to have been – ”
“Your father and I did not discuss that.”
“I cannot imagine Mother betraying Father in that way. And Midnight would never have been a traitor to him.”
“Perhaps not – I do not know. I can only repeat what I was told. John, there is one other thing, for I must unburden myself of all my secrets before I go. And I pray again that you do not hate me. You will recall that your mother left your home for several days after your father’s return from England. She was feeling sick. She went to stay with your grandmother.”
“Indeed, I remember well.”
He stood up and warmed his hands at our hearth for a time, plainly gathering his courage.
“It was then that she lost … she lost the child,” he said to the flames.
“What child? Speak plainly.”
“John, your father … he said your mother was with child by Midnight. A time came when she was having the sickness in the morning. She quit your home to be with your grandmother. It was then that she lost the child.”
“What? How can this be? This is insanity, Benjamin!”
“I only know what I was told, dear boy.”
“That she was with child – Midnight’s child?”
“Yes.”
“I cannot see how that is – did she lose it or was it killed?”
“I do not know.”
I walked to the foot of the stairs. I looked up, thinking of my daughters safe in bed. What an inheritance I had given them! My thoughts carried me into the past – to just after Father’s return from London. I stood outside the locked door to my parents’ bedroom, where Mother had hidden herself away – to ensure that I would not notice her pregnancy.
I despised Benjamin at that moment, just as he had feared. “Mother was often given to agitation,” I said crossly. “Her sickness was simply a loss of equilibrium brought on by – ”
“John, say what you will. I am only repeating what James told me. He swore me to silence. I must tell you that. I am breaking my vow to tell you.”
I wondered then if Grandmother Rosa had known about Mother. I doubted it, since she would certainly have used it as a weapon against us if she had.
Benjamin handed me a glass of wine.
“John, despite your anger at me, and despite any errors in judgment an old man may have made, do you think you might permit him to give you some advice?” When I agreed, he said, “If you ask your mother of these things, I’d tread lightly.”
I shook a fist at him in a fresh burst of rage. “She will be the one who will have to tread lightly! I have been lied to all these years.”
“Even so, she is apt to react badly to you knowing. She would not have wished that for anything. She will be terribly angry with me.”
I threw my glass into the fire. “Damn her! You’ve done the right thing. Damn them all!”
“Calm yourself. The girls.”
“My girls have been cheated out of their grandfather by his own selfish perfidy. Not only that, but they might have grown up with Midnight. Goddamn it, don’t you see how Papa cheated us all – even himself!”
“John, I have been cheated as well, do not forget. Midnight and I …” Benjamin’s voice faltered. “Well, let us just say that I lost a powerful partner for my true work. He … he was like a son
to me.”
Filled with remorse, I apologized for my disrespectful words. I saw now what had to be done. “Benjamin, I must go to London now to speak to my mother. Afterward, I’ll take a ship to New York. Violeta will not mind putting me up there for a few days. And then I shall go to Alexandria and Charleston. If Midnight has been living in slavery these seventeen years …”
The world suddenly seemed to darken and I felt very weak. “I cannot understand any of this,” I kept repeating. Yet I was beginning to see how each link of the past met its neighbor perfectly. I now had the explanation for the collapse of my family that I had so long sought. What a fool I had been to believe that the answer would bring me solace!
I wondered then if Mother had known of Father’s betrayal of Midnight. If not, and if she had been in love with the African, then she probably believed that Father had murdered him.
“Benjamin, you are absolutely sure that my father knew that my mother and Midnight had … had been together?”
“Yes. It made him insane with anger and grief, and he fell into evil. Later, as these letters indicate, he was consumed by regret. John, your father could not live with what he had done. He was utterly lost, dear boy.”
Benjamin looked wholly beaten. I poured some wine into his empty teacup. I swigged mine directly from the bottle, fully intending to get drunk.
“Your father loved no one so much as you,” he said. “I think I ought to remind you of that.”
I laughed bitterly. “That means nothing when compared to such a betrayal.”
“You are wrong, John. You must remember that he was devoted to you.”
“Not so devoted as to prevent his selling Midnight.”
“That was his fatal error. But it did not prevent his wishing the best for you.”
I laughed again and took another long swig. “When exactly was it that he confided in you?”
“Just before he was killed.”
“He gave you the letters then?”
“Yes, just as he gave you his pipe and his watch. It is what men do before they end their own lives. They make gifts of what they possess.”
“What are you saying?” I was suddenly trembling with rage again.
“John, your father … Lost men sometimes seek out the Angel of Death. He hoped, I think, that sacrificing himself would compensate for what he had done. And so he remained behind and fought in a hopeless battle. That, dear boy, is why he gave you his things.”
This made unbearable sense. I recalled the moral of the fable “Mouse, Frog, and Eagle,” the tale I had read in Senhor David’s bookshop when I was seven: He that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.
After I’d taken several more healthy gulps of wine, Benjamin slapped my hand playfully and took the bottle from me, placing it on the mantelpiece. Seeing nothing but fond affection for me in him, I knew then that he had intended all along to tell me these things tonight, as he might need to stay far from Porto for a long time. He had feigned his accidental revelation on hearing that Violeta was now living in New York, then acted his befuddlement. He may even have regarded her being in America as a sign.
I didn’t begrudge him his pretense. I was grateful that he told me in any way he could. “Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For everything. You have shown nothing but kindness to me these past years.”
“I am the one to give thanks.” He beckoned me to sit by him. It was then that he told me how Midnight had helped him rid the world of Lourenço Reis, the hateful preacher. My suspicions that Benjamin was responsible for the murder were finally confirmed, though he would give me no details. He didn’t want me to ever be able to reveal the truth if I were taken prisoner by the Church or the Crown.
Thinking of both this secret and the ones related to my family, I said, “You wanted to tell me about my father and mother for many years, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I was stronger when I was younger and could carry these secrets alone. Now I am old, dear boy. I needed to rid myself of them to be able to move forward and help Cyrus. But listen, John, secrets are not like mortal men – they can remain dangerous twenty, fifty, even a hundred years after they are conceived. So be careful. And forgive me.”
“I do, Benjamin. You can be sure of it. And I shall be careful. If nothing else, I have learned that these past years. You know, Father could have journeyed to the United States to find Midnight. He might have tried, at least.”
“He was given to believe it was hopeless.”
“And what do you believe?”
His shoulders sagged. “It’s been so many years – nearly two decades.”
“Midnight could not have been more than thirty or thirty-five when I knew him. He would be in his late forties or early fifties if alive.” I tried in vain to picture him with gray hair. “Do you remember when he saved me from Hyena?”
“I know what you are thinking, dear boy – Hesed.” When I asked what that meant, he replied, “It’s Hebrew, John. It is the idea that good deeds require compensation.”
I spoke then of the dream I’d had in which I found myself reduced to a flame and then nothingness. I was now of the opinion that it was a reminder of how lost I’d become since Midnight’s death.
Benjamin smiled. “On the contrary, John, unless I am greatly mistaken, you can at this very moment see your road ahead clearly. For the great mystery of your dream is this: You yourself will light the way. The heart of the Lord, which is your own, is where the very last flame resides, and it will illuminate your path.”
His encouragement only served to irritate me, since I did not wish to talk in metaphors.
“The fall and rise of the sun, the phases of the moon – these are events that also occur inside ourselves,” he continued.
I sighed impatiently.
“No, you must listen to this, John – it’s important. The rise of the sun occurs inside each of us, or else we could not even dream of it. This, as I have told you many times, is the essential reciprocity of movement that marks the boundary between each person and the world. All that you do in your life affects all that is done here on earth and in all the other realms. This is one of the greatest mysteries of all. No, I cannot tell you whether you ought to go, but I will tell you this: If you succeed in freeing Midnight, then you will not only set an entire universe free, as the Torah tells us, but in so doing you will also be helping to repair all that has been broken since the very beginning of time.”
“Benjamin, even if I find him, I might not be able to buy him back.”
The apothecary laughed. “Tell me where in the Torah it says that Moses asked permission of Pharaoh before leading the Hebrews from slavery! Robbery, John, may be the holiest of acts in certain circumstances.”
“If only Daniel were here to help me.”
“Daniel? Have you not heard a single word I’ve said? Though he is long dead, he lives inside you, dear boy. You will summon him to the fore when he is needed. Of that I am certain.”
“And my daughters – what shall I do with them in my absence?”
“Leave them with your mother and your aunt Fiona. They will flourish together. And they will love you all the more for trusting them.”
I shook my head, for I considered myself unequal to the task. I was afraid that the girls would resent my absence. They were too young to be without at least one of their parents.
“John,” he said, “it is only natural that you are unsure. You have just discovered these things now. You will go to England and speak with your mother. Only then will you decide. Do you remember what Midnight always said upon parting?”
“Go slow.”
“Precisely. Scorpions may be hiding under every rock. There is no crime in waiting a few days to decide how you will proceed.”
Quoting a proverb of Solomon, I said, “A bird that falls from its nest is a man far from his home. I know nothing of America.”
“Ah,” he laughed. “But that’s where you have an advant
age being a Jew. You shall bring bread with you on board your ship and make all the world into your eruv – your symbolic home.”
“That’s absurd, Benjamin.”
“Indeed so. But a man who wishes to save a world makes recourse to absurd tricks.”
“There may not be time to wait. What if Midnight is in danger?”
Benjamin’s countenance turned grave. “Make no mistake, if Midnight is alive, then he is most definitely in danger. That is the nature of slavery. I shall tell you another thing: As long as one man or woman remains a slave, then the Messiah will not come. For we shall make our own paradise or not have it at all.”
*
Benjamin must have guessed that I would want to go to America after reading the letters, for he now took out of his cloak pocket the child’s rattle that Midnight had used to fight Hyena. Father had apparently saved it and given it to him.
“You give this to Midnight, along with a blessing from me. Tell him that I have continued our work all these years – and that I searched for him. He has never left my thoughts for a single day.”
A few minutes later, he threw on his cloak, hugged me, and started on his way. As I stood in my doorway, my heart was racing as though to impel me to beg him not to go. But I discounted my thoughts of death and eternal separation as a symptom of fear.
*
How does a good man do evil? Sometime after the tolling of two, I saw that I might ask the question not only with regard to Father but also in relation to Midnight and Mother – if they had been guilty of betrayal.
It seemed to me that the three of them had done me a great wrong. Their lies had pulled up my anchor and cast me out to sea; their secrecy had left me shipwrecked. They willingly sacrificed me so that they might continue their secret lives.
I resented them all, but it was at Father that I silently hurled all my curses. He was a blackguard and a poltroon. And I despised him.
*
I awoke to the dawn, choking, seized by panic: I had never dug up all the keepsakes I’d buried before the first of the French invasions – including Midnight’s feather. I had to make them mine again before leaving for London.
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