Hunting Midnight sc-2

by Richard Zimler

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “He repeated that he needed to take you from Portugal. You needed to get out of ‘the cage’ he’d made for you, as he put it, which I thought peculiar, but he explained that he wanted you to see something of the world, to know there was a life beyond Porto. He said he’d failed to show you that, but he would make it up to you now. He spoke with great determination and hope, I would say.”

  “And then?”

  “A few minutes later he took a shot to his right temple. Be thankful that he didn’t linger.”

  “He died instantly?”

  “Yes.”

  The sergeant meant well in telling me this, I’m sure, but it was of no comfort. He told me then that the bodies of the men who had fought at the Bishop’s Palace, including Papa’s, were dumped by French soldiers in a pile in front of the cathedral and set ablaze.

  “Think well of your father. He died a brave man.”

  “Yes, but in dying … in dying he failed the test.”

  “Failed? I think not, John. You’ve never been in a war, but let me tell you something: All experienced soldiers know it’s largely a matter of luck. You don’t pass or fail a test given you by luck, son. No, the test, if that’s what it was, was doing what was expected of him — fighting. And I can tell you in that regard that he may not have been the best shot, or even the most skillful orderly, but he risked his life many times that day, sometimes recklessly, to give hundreds of people in Porto time to escape across the bridge — and to comfort his wounded and dying comrades. Would you really call that a failure?”

  *

  How to express my feelings at this time? Papa was dead and Mama in despair after learning of his fate. Fanny and Zebra were murdered. We had precious little money, and I had no way to earn a living. There was almost nothing to buy in the markets, and neighbors were eating boiled hide to keep from starving. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore, not even my identity.

  Since Papa’s body had not been buried, Benjamin and I recited prayers to ensure that his soul would not wander the earth.

  Once, I dreamed that he hadn’t been killed but had fled our family’s misery to a new life over the bridge. After that, I found I regretted having never seen him dead; I felt an urgent need to confirm with my own two eyes that he was gone — and would never again tell me a story of witches and monsters, or bring me stones from his trips upriver, or ask me to read to him….

  For Mama, the scent of him in her bed drove her mad. On the rare occasion when she emerged from her room, it was plain that she had hardly slept at all. Once, after she’d wept in my arms, she said, “Now James is having his revenge.”

  *

  I found that what I most desired now was to forgive Mama and be forgiven. I didn’t have the strength to continue living if it meant fighting with her. She must have felt the same, for she came to me one morning and promised to love me as she used to.

  We never again raised our voices or said anything cruel. Our peace was a good thing; I felt as though I’d ransomed the little that was still left of my heart.

  *

  I told her what Papa had said about taking us away to Scotland. “I don’t know, John,” she replied. “I’m not sure that even standing at the very top of the world would have helped your father and me. It might have only allowed us to see the mistakes we made that much more clearly. Perspective can be dangerous.”

  “But we could have made a new start in Scotland,” I insisted. “And you always said you wanted to live in Britain.”

  “That’s true, John. It might even now be best for us. Though I admit it scares me when I think of it.” Taking a long, slow look around the sitting room, she said, “At least here, everything is familiar to us.” Seeing my disappointment, she added, “John, I can’t claim to know how two people who’ve lost their way in life can find their way home again. Perhaps your father knew. Perhaps taking up arms taught him what he needed to do to fight for our marriage. He may have seen things more clearly than I could. I’m afraid I can’t offer you certainties anymore, and I’m sorry for that. I know you deserve more from your mother. I wish things were different.”

  “But you would have gone if he’d asked you?” It was vital for me to know that we’d have done what he asked and, at the very least, tried to begin again in a new place.

  “I don’t know, John. I think it would have been better for just you and your father to go. I’d have just ruined everything between you.” Her voice broke. “Like I … like I ruined so much else.”

  She hid her eyes from me for a time, then picked up her embroidery, but her hands were trembling. I took them in my own and sat with her. It was good to feel the closeness and warmth we could still have together — it was like an old dream I thought I’d never have again. Then a startling revelation pulled me to my feet. “Mama, don’t you see? If Papa was making plans to take us to Scotland, then it meant he was willing to give up the idea of having his own vineyard.”

  “Yes, I suppose so, John.”

  She plainly didn’t grasp the deeper meaning of this. “He was willing to give up even that to win back your love!” I declared. “He’d never go upriver again and leave you all alone. He was going to give up everything to be with us and have another chance.”

  Mama’s face turned ashen. She moaned when I touched her, then leaned limply against me. “No more, John,” she begged. “Please, I can’t hear any more of what might have been.”

  *

  We spent those first grief-stricken weeks repairing our home. Unable to beg more than a few turnips and beans and some rotten cabbage, we were now starving most of the time.

  My mother appealed to colleagues who had worked with Father at the Douro Wine Company, where all our savings had long been invested, but we were informed that access to his accounts was impossible. We could not dig up our silver and sell it, even clandestinely, for we could not risk the French learning of our hoard.

  *

  The French married us to misery and remained our unwanted guests until three weeks after my eighteenth birthday, May the Twelfth, 1809. On that date, enshrined in the history of our city, British and Portuguese forces under Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, expelled them for a second and final time from Porto. Our city was free.

  *

  As soon as she felt brave enough to leave the house, Mama met again with the directors of the Douro Wine Company to discuss Father’s investments. We knew that selling the deeds to our land upriver could prove lucrative, and Papa’s former employer was the obvious choice for a buyer. Mother offered them all our holdings, but their counteroffer was far less than my father had originally paid. This seemed to us a great betrayal, but the bitterest surprise was yet to come. When she asked under what capacity I might be contracted to work for the Douro Wine Company, as had been her late husband’s wish, she was told in no uncertain terms that I would never be hired, even if perfectly qualified! And so Mama came to learn the level of animosity Papa’s colleagues had harbored against him for his wish to own a vineyard. They also had never forgiven him for bringing what they called a “giant monkey” to their offices.

  Our humiliation reminded me of Father’s warning about not counting on anyone for assistance. Surely he had known of the seething resentment felt by some of his colleagues. I finally understood why he’d wanted his own land and to be lord of his own destiny so badly.

  *

  In early July, Mother read me a letter from Aunt Fiona, inviting us to share the small house in London that she’d recently bought. When she finished, she folded up the correspondence. “Now, John,” she said, “it’s like this. You know I’ve always hoped for a chance to live in London. Now that the worst has happened, it has become a real possibility for us. Your aunt Fiona is a considerate woman and she would not invite us to England if she did not want us there. I wasn’t sure at first, but now she and I are both convinced that it would be for the best.”

  “Mama, did you become convinced
of this after hearing of Papa’s last wishes?”

  “I don’t know, John. I’m not sure I know my own mind anymore.”

  The bitter irony of our being able to go to Britain now that my father was dead made me ache with longing to see him.

  “John, please,” she said imploringly, “I beg you not to think about what your father would want. Once, a long time ago, you were haunted by Daniel and what you thought he wanted. You ended up jumping from our rooftop. Please don’t make that mistake again. You mustn’t listen so closely to the dead. Don’t think about what Papa would want. Or even what I want, for that matter. Think only about what would be best for you.”

  “I don’t know what there is for me in England,” I told her. “Whatever shall I do in London?”

  “Continue your education, for one thing.”

  “How? We’ve no money for that.”

  “We shall find a way. Trust me.”

  No sooner did she request that of me than I realized this was precisely what I could no longer do. It even occurred to me that Father had meant Mother, too, when he instructed me to trust no one.

  My feelings came down to this: Not only had her marriage failed, but she had also withheld her love for me for years, for reasons I could not fathom. Until I learned the truth, I might forgive her and love her as I always had, but I could place no deep faith in her.

  “I would prefer to stay,” I declared, largely to spite her.

  “We shall see,” she said, standing up and walking to the stairs. “We shall both think about what we want and then talk again.”

  These were conciliatory words, but I understood from her tone that her mind was already made up.

  XXIV

  The series of seemingly trifling events that was to greatly influence my decision to remain in Portugal and my choice of profession began when Senhor Gilberto, a local potter, paid a visit to Luna Olive Tree in mid-July, some eight weeks after the French had been expelled from Porto. At the moment of his knock, she had just discovered some drawings of sphinxes and other mythological beasts I had made when I was eleven. In the right lower corner of the first, which depicted a griffin swooping down onto the Clerics Tower, her sister Graça had inscribed affectionately, John — January 1802. Fulfilling the potential we recognized in him. But needs discipline.

  “Clever little illustrations,” Gilberto told Luna, once he’d taken a closer look. “Who did them?”

  “John Stewart. A lad on our street. The one we gave your tile of a triton to years ago.”

  Chuckling, Gilberto said, “He has good taste, this boy!”

  “Indeed, except for admiring your work, he has always shown sound reasoning.”

  “Ouch!” He feigned an arrow in his heart and pulled it free, then laughed again. “Is he still here in Porto?”

  “Yes, but his father was killed by the French. And he needs work, poor boy.”

  *

  The two of them came to my house later that afternoon. I was relieved to see Luna again, as she had dressed in black and not taken a single step outside since Graça’s funeral. We kissed tenderly, as an even greater bond of affection had developed between us since her sister’s death.

  After she introduced Gilberto to me, I complimented him on his work and told him that his tile was still buried under the weeds in our garden for safekeeping.

  When we were all comfortably seated on our patio, Gilberto made his proposal: Having seen my drawings and recognized a certain talent, he was prepared to employ me as an apprentice for a period of three years. During this time I would earn a small salary and have the right to fire as much pottery as I liked for my own use. He would work me hard but he would teach me valuable skills, and I would never want for a line of life. If all went well, he would either take me on as his junior partner on my twenty-first birthday or provide a loan for the establishment of my own enterprise, as long as I agreed to do business at a distance no less than three miles by coach from his own shop.

  “This is a most exciting prospect,” said Mother, “but I have my doubts as to its practicality. Of late, we have been considering a move to England, to live with my late husband’s elder sister.”

  I felt none of Mama’s doubt; so strong was my desire to remain in Porto and learn a solid trade that I knew I would accept Gilberto’s generous offer.

  “Shall I be allowed to work on my own designs?” I asked.

  “Codfish cakes!” Luna exclaimed. “Where are your manners, lad?”

  Gilberto placed a calming hand on her arm. “Not at first, John. I would not think it wise for you to begin too hastily. But after six months or so, you might start to add your own touches — I don’t see why not.”

  “Senhor Gilberto, before we enter into any agreement, I want to tell you some things about myself — to avoid later misunderstandings, you understand. I would not want dearest Luna’s fondness for me to blind you to my defects. First and foremost, I am stubborn. And despite Mother’s entreaties and her stellar example, my manners are far from perfect. Also, unlike many Portuguese, I do not dislike the Spanish. I am most partial to Velázquez, Ribera, and Goya. I hate narrow-mindedness, and I am half-Jewish.”

  Gilberto took my arm. “Goya, you say? I have seen his prints at Luna’s house, and his gifts are so great that they frighten me on occasion.” Then he announced, “I’d like to follow John’s sensible speech and say a few words about myself.” Here, the good potter declared himself surly in the morning, neglectful of his own personal cleanliness at times, and inordinately proud of the beautiful things he could make with his hands. He concluded by stating for the record, “I make a special effort to sing off-key when I am with people I do not like and who are wasting my time.” Leaning to the side as though to fart, he added, “And I sometimes have piles that make me howl when I use my chamber pot.”

  I laughed for the first time in ages. Even Mama was won over by his effort to make us smile. I was so fond of him already that I would have started my apprenticeship the very next day, but my mother explained that we needed to discuss moving to England and would give him an answer in a week.

  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 i
t 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.”