Hunting Midnight
( Sephardic Cycle - 2 )
Richard Zimler
From the internationally bestselling author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon comes a novel of incomparable scope and beauty that takes the reader on an epic journey from war-ravaged nineteenth-century Europe to antebellum America. A bereft child, a freed African slave, and the rich history of Portugal's secret Jews collide memorably in Richard Zimler's mesmerizing novel — a dazzling work of historical fiction played out against a backdrop of war and chaos that unforgettably mines the mysteries of devotion, betrayal, guilt, and forgiveness.
Richard Zimler
Hunting Midnight
To all those who fought to end the abomination of slavery in the United States and southern Africa. And to Midnight and his people.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful thanks to my editor, Samantha Bruce-Benjamin, for her extraordinary passion, intelligence, generosity and hard work.
Thanks too, to Cynthia Cannell for her loyalty and enthusiasm, and to Kate Miciak for her faith and support.
It is sometimes a difficult job reading an early draft of a novel, and I am grateful to Douglas Herring, Ruth G. Zimler, Michael Rakusin, and Alexandre Quintanilha for their invaluable comments.
I am forever in debt to Laurens van der Post, whose books first started me hunting for Midnight, and to authors too numerous to name for their wonderful historical research.
Special thanks to Alex, who — like this book — links three continents.
Perface
Afierce wind was driving the rain in off the sea as I made my way home across the slippery cobblestone streets of my beloved city of Porto.
It was May of 1798, a month after my seventh birthday. Carefully tucked away inside my cane basket were two scrolls of indigo muslin that I had agreed to fetch for my mother — but only in exchange for a favor, I have to confess. If this rain were to splash so much as an inch of her fabric, she would grumble to herself all evening and refuse to make me my favorite sweet. Hence, not so much for the continued protection of the goods themselves as for the sake of my sweet tooth, I sought out shelter.
A certain inherited distrust of all things religious prompted me to choose Senhor David’s old bookshop, rather than the whitewashed chapel next door, as a place to wait out the storm. As I entered through the low doorway, David encouraged me to leave my basket behind his writing desk and to remove my sodden boots, which he dangled over the iron railing by his fireplace.
“Senhor David,” I asked, “may I go to the British Isles?”
“Off with you, lad!” he said, smiling.
I dashed over the creaking wooden floor to the musty back room where he kept his treasure trove of English books, which Father and I had referred to as the British Isles for as long as I could remember.
I ought to explain that although I was born in Porto, a provincial city of sixty-five thousand souls in the north of Portugal, Father had had the honor — as he so often referred to it — of having been born a Scotsman. I was not yet aware of it, but when I spoke English, I had a distinctly Scottish accent.
Of tightly packed shelving, mildew, and thread-legged spiders these British Isles were blessed in abundance but, alas, they boasted nary a decent window save for the small octagonal skylight in the low, sagging ceiling. The rain was pelting down on its yellowing glass, creating a pattering din, rather like mice scampering.
It was so dark that I could barely see my own hands, and I was just considering asking for a candle when the sun suddenly peeked through the clouds, illuminating a bookshelf against the wall. Stepping closer, I could see that one of the titles was embossed in glittering gold letters — The Fox Fables. As no author’s name was printed on the binding and since I was given to flights of fancy, I imagined that a clever fox had written them himself.
I shooed away Hercules, the calico cat whom Senhor David kept to chase off rats, plopped down on the sawdust of the floor, and opened the book. Inside, thick yellowing pages bore colorful drawings of dogs, cats, monkeys, elephants, and many other animals — a Noah’s Ark of sorts. I was so excited by my find that I could read only the opening sentences of each story. Wishing to inquire its price of Senhor David, yet dreading the prospect of a sum beyond my means, I stood up to consider my options. That was when a single sheet of blue-tinted paper, delicate as a butterfly’s wing, fell from the book’s pages, fluttering down to finally settle on my right foot.
I picked it up and glanced around surreptitiously. Senhor David was sitting at his desk, smoking his pipe, absentmindedly rubbing his hand over his bald head while studying a large map. Hercules had curled up in his lap.
I crept into the darkest corner of the room and saw that I held a letter written in elegant script, addressed to a woman named Lúcia. It began, My beloved, will you think me too bold if I were to say that I fallinto the arms of slumber each and every nightimagining your hand over my heart?
Next I read of moist lips, moonlight, fainting spells, and orange blossoms. I recognized the word seios — breasts…. What glorious, heart-stopping wickedness that portended! Many other words were unfamiliar to me, however. I’d need a dictionary to know how daringly shocking this letter might be. It was signed with a swirling flourish by a man named Joaquim. He even dotted the i with a wee heart.
I wondered if The Fox Fables had been a present from Joaquim to Lúcia. Perhaps it had displeased her and she had sold it to Senhor David, forgetting she had concealed her suitor’s letter inside. Since it bore no date, the two lovers might very well be grandparents by now. Though it was possible they were still unmarried and were at that very moment planning their next forbidden tryst at the top of the Clerics Tower, two hundred feet above the city’s streets.
I tucked the letter into the pocket of my breeches, took a snootful of musty air into my lungs to rouse my courage, and marched to Senhor David. Handing him the book as innocently as my racing heart would allow, I dropped into his large palm all the copper coinage then in my possession: precisely four five-reis pieces. Judging from his wrinkled nose, this grand sum of twenty reis was not nearly enough. I begged him to let me pay for the book a little each week, giving him a helpless look, as was my wont when entreating an adult.
“I simply can’t, John,” he said, shaking his head. “Were I to conduct business on credit, I would soon be a pauper.”
“Please, please, please — I shall have the rest of the payment for you in one month,” I whined, clueless as to how I might fulfill such a promise but unwilling to see the beautifully illustrated fables escape my possession.
I might have simply left with the letter, of course, but I could not imagine owning it without the book. That would have been robbery.
Knowing he was about to refuse again, I called upon my theatrical gifts and assumed the air of a destitute orphan. Senhor David laughed, since he had seen this coming. As recompense for my effort, however, he agreed to my offer with a pat on my head, though by way of a warning he said, “Should you fail to abide by our agreement, I shall take you as payment, whereupon, make no mistake, I shall have my wife boil you in a stew for supper!”
“Being mostly bones and beak, I’d taste like a seagull,” came my reply, which pleased David so much for some reason that he laughed again and pulled up a stool for me, instructing me to examine my new purchase while waiting for the storm to pass.
And so I began to read the first few fables, most memorably “Mouse, Frog, and Eagle,” whose moral is: He that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.
When the sun returned for good half an hour later, I thanked Senhor David, slipped on my boots, and raced home. After receiving high praise from Mother for taking such good care of her cloth, I too
k the stairs two at a time to my room, where I and the letter could be alone.
I paid for my treasures one month later, just as I had promised, with coins earned helping Papa to clean his study and our storeroom.
I slept with the book and the letter under my mattress for months. The two objects became as inseparable in my mind as Joaquim and Lúcia themselves.
It is more than likely that my mother and father discovered the letter while tidying my room, but they never mentioned it. Years later, I gave it to my bride — along with The Fox Fables — as my wedding gift.
Upon her death, I clung to them as though they might save me from a shipwreck. I have them with me still.
*
Since my purchase of The Fox Fables, I have jeopardized my eyesight with thousands of evenings spent reading by my hearth or in bed by the light of a candle. Long acquaintance with the art of storytelling has made me aware that a tale such as the one I am about to tell ought to have a man or woman of universal sympathy or special bravery at its heart. And yet I feel myself wholly lacking for such a role. Furthermore, I am unsure of my own talents in giving an accurate account of the events that brought me from Portugal to America.
I therefore feel that the proper and most honest way to begin is with a lad of twelve named Daniel, whom I had the good fortune to meet by accident some twenty-four years ago. It was he who would set in motion the ripples that would later carry me across the Atlantic Ocean to America. If I am worthy of the central place in this story that I shall come to occupy later on, then it is, in part, due to the courageous example he set.
As I prepare to write of Daniel and many other things besides, I find myself speculating on what secret messages may flutter out of the pages of this tale of mine and fall at your feet. I can only hope that whatever reaches your hands encounters a receptive heart and an unbiased soul.
I
I
Though a child of tattered clothing and bad manners, Daniel has always held a special place in my heart. Had our life together been an adventure novel, he would have continued to train himself through many hours of candlelit study to become a great sculptor, revered far and wide, by the last page. But life, as Father used to say, is at best a game of Pope Joan played on a slanted table with the dealer hiding all the best cards up his ruffled sleeve. And so my friend was prevented from accomplishing such wonders.
Had fortune smiled upon him, or more importantly, had I, John Zarco Stewart, greater strength in my arms, then my own life might have gained by proximity as well. After all, we sometimes only realize the effects we have had on our loved ones years later.
*
I met Daniel in June of 1800, when I was nine years old. More than two years had passed since I’d discovered The Fox Fables in the British Isles. I was heading out early, fortified only by a cup of tea and a crust of corn bread that I’d smeared with honey and gobbled — to my mother’s great displeasure — in an instant.
My destination was a wee lake — or tarn, as Papa called it — far beyond the walls of our city, in the wooded hinterland along the road to Vila do Conde. It was a wondrous spot for watching all manner of birdlife, especially just after the dawn. I was at the time, and still am today, a great lover of those handsome creatures of feather, air, and light — a keen appreciator and imitator of avian song as well. Back then, if I could have begged a beak and wings from God, I surely would have considered becoming one.
I was already approaching the granite steps at the end of our street that led down to the riverside neighborhood when raucous shouting reached me from a nearby alley. Racing there at top speed, I discovered Senhora Beatriz, a widowed washerwoman to whom we gave our soiled sheets every Wednesday, splayed on the cobbles outside her house. Whimpering like a beaten dog, her bony knees were drawn protectively into her belly. A periwigged brute in the livery of a coachman was standing threateningly over her, his countenance distorted by rage.
“You careless bitch!” he shouted, fairly spitting out the words. “You pilfering, lying Marrana.”
Marrana was a new word to me. Later, my tutor informed me that it meant both swine and converted Jew, an epithet that had confused me, since I had never heard Senhora Beatriz described as anything but a good Christian soul. Indeed, I had only the vaguest idea of what a Jew might be, for though my grandmother had spoken to me of them on two or three occasions, I had not learned anything more than a few legends in which Jewish sorcerers always seemed to be foiling the work of nefarious kings with their magical prayers.
The villainous coach driver now finished his diatribe by snarling, “I’m going to sell you for glue-making, you lazy whore.”
Then, after kicking Senhora Beatriz several times, he grabbed hold of her thinning hair, preparing to pound her head against the cobbles.
My heart was battering against my ribs and I began to feel dizzy. I wondered whether I ought to let loose a scream and if it would be able to fly over the rooftops separating my father from me and shake him awake. In those days, I was fully convinced that — at nearly six feet in height — he possessed unsurpassed power to restore order to the entire world.
I would surely have given voice to this bloodcurdling shriek if out of nowhere a rock hadn’t caught our brute straight on his cheek. It had been hurled so perfectly and with such righteous force that our evildoer staggered back in shock. Falling to one knee, he seemed puzzled by what had happened, until he spotted the culprit stone sitting innocently at his feet. Looking around for the willful David who had dared to challenge him, he soon fixed me with an enraged stare. In my frilly white shirt, black-and-red-striped breeches, and buckled boots, I was a most unlikely enemy. I even had angelic bangs back then and what my father referred to as “doelike” blue-gray eyes. Nevertheless, I took several steps backward and began to hiccup — a reaction provoked by shattered nerves that I had suffered many times before.
I intended to scurry off if he threatened me, but instead, he turned to gaze at an urchin on the other side of the street. The lad looked at least three years my senior and wore a ragged shirt and soiled breeches. So filthy were his bare feet that they looked like roots pulled from the soil. His head was shaved.
This was the early summer of 1800, and despite the dawn of a new century, it was still a time when children never spoke to adults without first being invited to do so. A rock hurled by a miserably clothed waif at a liveried coach driver in the service of a man of riches was tantamount to heresy.
The injured man stood up with difficulty, dabbing at his cheek with his fingertips. Staring in disbelief at the blood left on his hand, he lurched forward. “You little son of a bitch!” he sputtered. Summoning his flagging strength, he hurled the stone with a grunt.
The weapon sailed over and past its youthful target and rebounded off the granite facade of the house belonging to Senhor Aurelio, the shoemaker. That was the last act our evildoer was going to attempt that day. His eyeballs rolled back in his head and he crumbled to the ground, his head meeting the street with a dry thud that did not sound promising.
I was shivering with fear and anticipation. I had never felt so alive. Imagine — a rock hurled by a filthy urchin felling an ugly brute not two hundred paces from my house!
Senhora Beatriz was sitting up now, her arms clasped around her belly as though protecting an unborn child. She was shaking her head in confusion, plainly trying to understand what had happened. Blood flowed from her bottom lip to her chin; one of her eyes was swollen shut and would later grow infected. It became a milky marble with a cloudy gray center for the rest of her days.
Daniel rushed to her, but she waved a trembling hand to halt his advance. “Go home,” she said, wiping her mouth. “We’ll talk later. Leave before there’s more trouble. Please.”
He shook his head. “I will not. At least, not until that shit gets swept into a dung heap,” he said, pointing to the villain.
Daniel’s accent gave him away as a resident of one of the crumbling riverfront neighborhoods. I was
jealous of the way he seemed made for Porto, a city that had its share of gentlemen’s clubs and formal gardens but had at its heart a labyrinth of dark alleyways patrolled by peddlers, waifs, and petty thieves.
“Daniel, pay attention to me,” Senhora Beatriz replied, drawing determined breaths. “You must leave the city. Two days from now we will meet at your home. Please, before there’s trouble …”
The senhora would have pleaded further, but neighbors were beginning to gather. Very shortly, a group of men — some still in their night clothes, a few of them bare-chested — had formed a circle around the fallen driver.
“Is he dead?” Senhor Tomás asked his brother-in-law Tiago the roofer, who was holding the back of his hand to the man’s nose to see if he could detect breathing.
Various neighborwomen were now rushing to the aid of Senhora Beatriz, lifting her to her feet and making inquiries about the man and what had so incensed him.
I moved closer to the group of men. “No, he’s still alive,” said Tiago disappointedly — a perfect start to a new day of gossip would have required a murder, of course.
Senhora Maria Mendes, who was built like a bull, pushed her way through the men and spat in the insensible villain’s face.
“Pig!” she yelled.
“And you there, son!” shouted Tiago the roofer at Daniel. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing throwing stones at people?”
“Now wait a minute,” came Senhor Paulo the tinsmith to the lad’s defense, “he was only helping Senhora Beatriz.”
“But with a stone the size of an orange?” cried Senhor Alberto.
“Had I a knife, I’d have slit the driver’s throat!” exclaimed a man hidden from me.
“Gouged his eye out!” declared another.
Hunting Midnight sc-2 Page 1
