Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  *

  In early November, maybe a week before most of the other River Bend folks left New York for their farms, I was strolling on Church Street when I saw a group of Negro children funneling out the door to one of those thin brick buildings they have up here, all of them shrieking like steam. While I was watching and smiling, out stepped a young black man smoking a pipe. That reminded me of my papa, so I guess I was staring, and he said to me, “What you looking at, girlie?”

  I wasn’t too happy with that girlie, so I corrected his grammar: “What are you looking at.”

  “What’s that you’re saying?”

  He seemed to be another one of those puffed-up Northern Negroes we’d met, who thought we were all just wormheads – and who claimed not to understand our Southern accents.

  I started to walk on. “You know how to read and write, young lady?” he called after me.

  I turned and sized him up. He was not half bad-looking if you squinted.

  “If I know how, what’s it to you?”

  He laughed at that and said, “Where are you from?”

  “The moon.” Imitating the nasal way the blacks around here speak, I said, “That’s why I got my peculiar pronunciation, don’t you know.”

  “What’s your name?” When I told him, he said, “Well, Morri, how’d you like to put your reading and writing to good use at teaching?”

  “I’ve never taught anyone anything.”

  “Good,” he said, laughing. “Then you won’t have to unlearn any bad habits.”

  “What would I teach?”

  “Reading and writing. This is a schoolhouse. Allow me to introduce myself – I’m the headmaster, William Arthur.”

  He came down the stairs to me and shook my hand.

  “You’re the headmaster? Why … why, you can’t be more than thirty years old!”

  “I’m twenty-seven. I never knew there was any age requirement, you see. If there is, you had better tell me about it, since this is my third year.”

  “Will you pay me?”

  “A regular wage every month. Can you start later this week?”

  “Why not today?”

  He laughed again. “Because I don’t need you today. I need you in two days. All you have to do is be here every morning at nine o’clock sharp and show the children how to read and write. Four hours a day. Two different classes of thirty. Think a young lady from the moon can do that?”

  “Well, I guess we’re going to find out, aren’t we?”

  *

  I was so happy about my new job that when I got home I told John we ought to get the adoption papers ready. It was what he wanted, and what my papa had wanted, and I was in the mood to make everyone in New York as happy as I was. Then John spoke about Papa as if he were dead, spoiling things good. I forgave him only because I saw in his eyes that we were the same in a way – since we’d likely wonder all our lives what had happened to him.

  *

  I grew fond of the children at my school right away, and they all flocked around me like I was made of sugar crystals. Maybe because I gave them things to read that they liked. Reading for them is different than it is for us. Adults love surprises and new things all the time. Children love repetition. They embraced the knowing what was coming next.

  When I told Randolph about the school, he enrolled Mimi and Lawrence. It made me smile like a loon just seeing them there – like all of us were made of moonlight. Pretty soon I had them and nearly all of the children – even the tiny ones – well on their way to knowing their ABCs. We had some poets among us too. There was a boy named Charles who wrote a whole epic about an ant, a mouse, and a rat who took a boat all the way to Africa. It was real good work.

  John came to my classroom after he adopted me, and it was real encouraging to have him there. He’d found good work to do – making a list of slaves and freed Negroes in South Carolina, so that all those folks could find one another when slavery finally ended. And we wrote a message to my father that John had printed once a week in more than a hundred newspapers.

  I realized I liked him more and more. I trusted him too, which was more important, the way I saw it. I could see why Papa was so fond of him.

  Pretty soon after I started teaching, William Arthur asked me and John to supper with him. That opened the gate between us as friends, and he invited just me to his rooms from time to time. John gave me his permission but said to be careful, since though I acted older I was still just what he called “a wee lassie.” Nothing happened between us though. I thought it might not ever happen.

  By the end of December, things got badly twisted between John and Violeta, because she finally told him what he might have guessed long before – that she’d never love him like he wanted. He and I went out to a tiny town on Long Island for a weekend, to escape from her and talk things out, and I saw how disappointment was taking all that man’s strength.

  It snowed on Monday morning, just before we headed back to the city. I slipped on the walkway when I ran to greet it. Lying there, watching those unstoppable flakes falling to the earth, opening my mouth to taste their wetness, I knew I’d never live anywhere it didn’t snow ever again.

  In January, John’s daughters and mamma came over from London to stay with us. You never saw so much commotion. Mrs. Stewart scared me at first, but I liked her iron affection for her son. And I liked that she wore her spectacles only when nobody was looking. That used to make me laugh when I was in my room alone. She said some real nice things to me right away and taught me how to cook, though a few of her recipes for codfish were just about inedible as far as I was concerned. She reminded me of Lily. I guess because she was a lot older than me and fierce as can be in defense of the folks she loved. I thought that John was real lucky to have her as a mamma.

  At first I thought those daughters of his weren’t much alike. Esther was always rushing around and giggling. You never saw a child’s fingers move so fast as when she was playing her violin. It made me all nervous sometimes that she might hit a lot of wrong notes. She talked fast too, so that you couldn’t understand half the words she was saying and had to ask her to start all over. Esther brings me back to when I was just little. We have secrets and giggle all the time. Graça is slower. She studies her maps and most everything else as if there’s something there that’s going to change the whole wide world. I grew fond of her right away, because we both liked silence and observing things. Esther took more getting used to, but like I say, she ended up tugging me all the way to fondness with her excitement. I like it when they knock before coming into my room. It’s like we’re family, but I still have my rights to be alone and not always be so friendly. They’ve got plans for going away with me, all the way to Africa. I told them I’d take them, and maybe I would, but the truth is it’s enough for me to stay in one place that’s safe.

  *

  In early June of 1824, after being courted real sweet for months by William Arthur, I found myself in his rooms on Chambers Street one evening, fiddling with a silk cushion on my lap while we talked about the school. When he took the cushion away and kissed me, I just about fainted.

  There were some things about him I wasn’t too sure of. And I liked having the power to say no more than just about anything else. I tried to go slow. But he just loved doing things quick. So sometimes after that night in June I’d lie with him for a time in his bed and then rush on home before John and Mrs. Stewart would begin worrying about me. William and I were as fond of each other as two people can be who are a bit unsure of what their lives together are going to mean. The only thing missing from my life were the people who were dead or stuck back at River Bend. I missed Crow and Lily and Weaver and Grandma Blue. And Mamma. I wondered if my papa was with her now, or if he was still somewhere in our world. I wondered if they could see the good things that were happening to their Memoria. I wondered that nearly all the time and knew I always would.

  Memoria Tsamma Stewart, June the Twenty-Seventh, 1824

  Postsc
ripts

  LIX

  It is now the Seventeenth of October, 1825, and more than eighteen months since I last wrote of my life. For nearly two years we have been placing our requests for Midnight to write to us every week in one hundred and twelve newspapers. All the plates, vases, and ewers I’ve glazed and sold have gone into having them printed.

  Mother contracted an agent in Portugal to rent out our home in Porto and sell our lands upriver, and with the proceeds we were able to purchase a comfortable Federal house in Greenwich Village with a view over the Hudson River. We moved there in August of 1824, and as there was room for Mama’s pianoforte, she had it shipped over from London that very month. By the end of September, she already had secured seven students, two of whom are gifted. She’s talking seriously these days about founding the music school she had first envisioned in London. She’s even trying to convince Aunt Fiona to come to New York and help her.

  Morri still finds her teaching rewarding, though she had herself something of a shipwreck with the headmaster, who seemed for a time to have really fallen for her. After some weeks of tearful trouble, she reached land healthy and contented, however. She’s got better balance than anyone I’ve ever met – except for maybe her father.

  Lawrence and Mimi are in one of Morri’s two classes. When I saw them there recently, Mimi said she hoped that I did not miss my arm too much. I let her and the other children touch my stump, which they found rather scary and marvelous. How they love being frightened when they know they’re perfectly safe!

  Esther is studying violin and music theory with a demanding but kindhearted professor from Cologne. Graça has proven herself something of a minor sorceress with languages and is already speaking beautiful French, thanks to the tutoring of a fine young man from Strasbourg.

  Over the past several months, Violeta has taken all the Church Street children, as well as Esther and Graça, down to Castle Garden on moonless nights to learn the constellations. She is eager and patient with them, and it is doing her good to be able to teach them, my mother tells me. I am slowly doing my best to develop a new sort of relationship with her. Though we do not see each other, we send greetings and news through my daughters. Mama calls it a “paper-and-ink friendship,” guided from afar by what can never be. She says that that is sometimes all one can hope for. I am trying to rid myself of all expectations.

  At the time we were suffering together, I did not realize that much of my urgency and desperation was prompted by the sudden absence Francisca’s death had created in my life. I see now what a brave effort Violeta made in trying to save me from my own foolishness.

  *

  I now have thirty-nine correspondents and a list of one thousand seven hundred and eighteen names and locations of blacks in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. My scroll reads not infrequently like the Old Testament: Moon Mary, daughter of Augustus and Angola Mary, mother of William, Sawmill, and Linda, sister of Tina, Claude, Merchant, and Picker Stephen …

  *

  Frequent letters from Isaac and Luisa have given us news of River Bend, where Crow was indeed hanged shortly after our escape, at least if the rumors they heard in Charleston are to be believed. Shortly after our sudden departure, as Luisa so nicely refers to our escape, Mistress Anne invested in new stock straight from the auction block. She had the rice fields back to full production within months.

  Lily, Grandma Blue, and the others who had remained behind were still in bondage. They are, of course, at the top of the list I am putting together. Morri has written to Lily to say we are all fine and that we miss her. We hope she has found someone to read the letter to her.

  On realizing that I was not likely to return to Porto anytime soon, I began writing long letters to Benjamin, Gilberto, Luna Olive Tree, my father-in-law Egídio, and even Grandmother Rosa. Luna often sends sketches of fruit and flowers to me, and I return the favor with my drawings of the inhabitants of New York.

  One day in September of 1824, there arrived in the post a slim manuscript written by Benjamin, entitled, “On the Hidden Meaning of Slavery,” whose dedication was made to me. In it, he gave readings of verses in the Torah to demonstrate that slavery was the last gasp of a dying world. The Lower Realms were shedding their skin like a snake, he theorized, in preparation for rising closer to the Upper Realms. The true and lasting evil of this practice, he wrote, is that slavery keeps our spirits from fulfillment and realization, from soaring into the firmament inside each of us, and therefore from union with the Lord. As such, it is an abomination that must be abolished if we are to create a world fit for the Messiah.

  In his accompanying letter, Benjamin told me that though the political situation in Portugal has calmed, he foresees a civil war before too long between those who favor a constitution and those who prefer an absolute monarchy.

  In one of my letters back to him, I told him that I had seen Berekiah Zarco while fading from life on the road from River Bend to Petrie’s Landing. He told me that there was little beyond the scope of a powerful Jewish mystic – even traveling across time – and that he wouldn’t be surprised to meet Berekiah one day himself! He was certain that my illustrious ancestor had helped to save my life by reciting secret prayers over me.

  I learned of Benjamin’s death just four months ago from Luna Olive Tree and can still not bring myself to write more than a few words about its significance to me. It is as though an eclipse has set not simply over our life together but over the hopes he had for a better world to come. I wonder sometimes if there is anyone left to take over his mystical prayers and alchemy – who is endeavoring in a secret cellar somewhere to find the meaning in every moment.

  Too weak to write me a last letter, the old apothecary had asked Luna to tell me that he was proud to have counted me among his friends and that – after I brought Morri to New York – he had seen me seated at the right hand of God in one of his visions. I was to always remember that each and every one of us was silver in the eyes of Moses.

  Mama and I spoke a kaddish prayer for him, of course. And on the evening we received news of his passing, I set my flint to the seven candles of her menorah and let it blaze in my bedroom window all night long. It seemed essential to commemorate his departure from our world with light.

  *

  So it was that we reached October of 1825.

  Three days ago, on the Fourteenth, at five in the afternoon, there was a knock on our door. Esther, who was practicing her violin in the sitting room, answered it and shouted, “Papa, you’d better come inside!”

  I was in the garden, putting in some autumn bulbs – not an easy task with only one arm. With my fingers filthy with dirt, cursing the disturbance, I stomped into the sitting room.

  He was removing his shoes in the doorway. I guessed it was him from that wee gesture and from his silhouette. No one else could have had that form.

  He took a step inside the house. His eyes held the rains of the desert.

  For a time I could not speak. My body seemed to be merging with everything around me. “We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger,” I whispered.

  He repeated my words. Then, in a delicate and lilting voice, he began to sing “The Foggy, Foggy Dew,” changing the lyrics for our reunion:

  And every, every time I look into his eyes, he reminds me of the olden days …

  In my broken whisper, I joined him: He reminds me of the summertime. And of the winter too. And of the many, many times I held him in my arms….

  I ran forward and fell at his feet, hugging his beautiful belly, breathing in the scent of him, which I now knew I had dreamed of all these twenty years of separation. I was sobbing and shaking. But I did not wish to regain my composure; my spirit was simply too full to be contained, and there was no need to restrain it any longer. In his arms, I could be what I most desired.

  He ran his hands over my head, then bent down and kissed my brow. I reached up and gripped his hand, as if to assure myself that he was real. “Yes, I
am here,” he said.

  Esther came and knelt beside me.

  “It’s Midnight,” I whispered to her.

  “I know.”

  I stood up then and asked the question that I had been afraid to voice all my adult life. “Can you forgive me?”

  He grinned. “There is nothing to forgive, my wee gemsbok. I am very, very glad to see you. Thank you for coming to find me.” He reached up and touched my cheek. “You look the same as when you were a lad. Just a trifle taller,” he said with a laugh.

  “I lost my arm while escaping with the slaves from River Bend.”

  He patted the stump. “That’s a very bad thing. I’m sorry. We shall dance for your loss. But truly you will be just fine without it. I expect you’ve discovered that by now, as you were always so quick to learn.”

  I nodded. I held his shoulder for support and began to weep again. I must have been quite a sight.

  As I had not been able to think properly, Esther said to Midnight, “Morri is alive and is at her school. She has been waiting for you.”

  *

  And so it was that Midnight and his daughter were reunited at our home that very afternoon. After they had cried together, I gave him his old rattle and the hug sent to him by Benjamin. He was overjoyed to receive them, but distraught at the news of the apothecary’s death. We spoke of Benjamin and the Olive Tree Sisters for a time, and I told him how Graça was killed. Morri had already told him about Weaver’s sad fate. Of Father, all I told him for now was that he was long dead, killed during the French occupation of Porto. Midnight wept silent tears upon hearing that and shook for a time as I held him, reassuring me that he did not either hate him or remember him with anger. Then he smoked his pipe by our hearth and spoke to us of his disappearance and how he had come to find us.