“What’s in Africa?”
“Land for our vineyard.”
“But we have land upriver.”
Despite Mama’s arm around my shoulder, I was still shivering. Papa clapped his hands. “Come, get under the covers. You’re frozen.”
“In you go,” my mother said, lifting the sheet and blanket over me, smiling with renewed courage.
Papa sat down next to me and smoothed the red blanket of English wool over my chest and legs. Mama climbed in, put her arm under my head, and tickled my ear.
Tracing the stem of his pipe in the air, Father said, “I shall be taking a ship down the Gold Coast, past Angola to the very tip of Africa.” He dotted his destination with a jab. “The British have taken the Cape. Soon there will be thousands of men farming that rich land.”
“But we have seven acres upriver. You told me so.”
“Aye, son, that’s true enough. But at the Cape there are plots the size of Porto that the British government is selling for next to nothing. Imagine, John, within a few years, I shall have enough to purchase a hundred acres. Even two hundred, laddie. Here in Portugal, that will never be within my means.”
“You mean … you mean we might move to Africa?” I asked.
“Aye, but not right away, son. In a few years – if I find the right place. That is why I’m leaving now. Do you understand?”
I said I did, but I was confused.
“All will be well. Now, go to sleep like a good wee kelpie,” he said, kissing my cheek.
“But I’m hungry,” I exclaimed. “I think there’s a hole in my belly.”
“At four in the morning?” Mama asked.
“I want something sweet. I’m all sore inside.”
Papa laughed, then shook his head and said in his broadest Scots accent, “Dearest May, you cannot fight a lad who needs some porridge in his belly.”
Mama made me rabanadas. They watched me eat with great pleasure, my father sneaking bits of crust with his fork and robbing what I would permit. Mama was so happy she played us the First Prelude from Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” a piece that has always meant joy to me. Afterward, I was invited back into their bed. I fell asleep between them, nestling into the side of my dearest father, who held my hand under the covers and whom I wished to beg to stay with us and never leave.
*
Two days later, at just past eight in the morning, he was saying his farewells to us on the wharf. Dressed in a blue serge traveling coat, bristling with excitement, he kissed first me and then my mother. After lifting me up for a final twirl in the air, he doffed his hat to us and told us again not to worry.
Boarding his tall-masted English vessel, he was off for Lisbon, then Africa. I should like to say that he offered some final words of counsel to me, but I remember that all he said to us both was, “Do not think too harshly of me. I mean to do only well. That is all I’ve ever desired.”
*
And so my mother and I were left alone for nearly two and a half months, until late August. I should like to say that we prospered together, but through an alchemical process known only to those left behind by their loved ones, we turned all that might have shimmered gold to the basest lead.
I cannot say whether I truly desired to kill myself, nor can I say why I chose our rooftop. I only know that a few days after Papa’s departure, on a night of insomnia, I burned with fever once more. Daniel appeared at my bedside. Wearing a mask with a long snout and antlers, he said that my death would enable him to join God in heaven. I had no reason not to believe him.
It was nearly sunrise. I went up to the Lookout Tower, climbed through the dormer window in our roof, walked solemnly to the edge, closed my eyes, and jumped. I did not wake to find myself in heaven with my old friend as I’d expected. Instead, I was lying on the cold cobbles, and a man with a beard I’d never seen before was peering at me from an alarmingly close distance.
I had been discovered by a nearsighted vegetable peddler, who, after assuring himself that I was still breathing, banged on our front door till my mother was roused. On seeing me motionless, my eyes closed, she was certain her only child had been taken forever from her.
Dr. Silva, our neighborhood physician, later discovered that I had fractured my right leg just below the knee, bruised my left hip, and suffered lacerations to my forehead and hands. Once I had been stitched, salved, and bandaged, Mama explained to the physician, to Senhora Beatriz, and to anyone else who asked that I had momentarily fantasized I could fly.
I vehemently denied having seen Daniel when asked.
Over the next days, Mama kept vigil in my room while I recovered from my injuries. She grew so worried about me that she could not even play her pianoforte. Often, she would pick nervously at the pretty floral embroidery she sewed on the collars of her dresses.
We might have continued down this anxious road had my mother not discovered that by administering a half teaspoonful of a sweet-smelling liquid contained in a small amber vial marked Tr. Opii she could keep me calm and free of hallucinations all day. Who had recommended this admixture of opium to her, I never found out.
For me, the opium did indeed keep Daniel in his grave, but at the price of making me listless of mind, weak of body, and unbearably thirsty. I half-dreamed my life over the coming weeks, growing immeasurably frail, until I spoke in a whisper and desired only to lie in bed with the shutters closed. I felt like the center of me was now made of soft dark wool.
After a month of strict convalescence, my leg was strong enough to support my weight but, floating along in my drugged state, I refused to give up my crutches. Mama once said of this time that I was passing further each day through the Gate of Death. Yet she was too afraid to stop giving me opium. Panicked and alone, suffering from insomnia herself, she could not have been thinking clearly.
For years afterward, I considered that she had been exaggerating my nearness to death, as I was not aware of my own pitiful state in any conscious way. But when I spoke to Luna Oliveira about that time, she said that she, too, had been convinced that I would soon be joining Daniel. She said that losing him and Violeta had shattered my young heart.
*
While I was struggling to remain in our world, Father sent us advance notice of his return. He had already reached Lisbon and had decided to spend three nights there in order to conduct some business for the Douro Wine Company, shave his beard, and rid himself of his seagoing odor. The letter was two days in arriving, however. It was on the very next day, the Twenty-Ninth of August, that he was to dock in Porto, around noon.
Mother and I feared that we would fail miserably in making a good first impression, so on the morning of the great day, at precisely eleven o’clock, she administered a dose and a half of her tincture of opium. I became so disoriented that, in order to appear healthy, I ran upstairs at the last minute, punctured my finger with a pin, and rubbed blood into my pale cheeks.
The ship was late, and it was not until well after one o’clock that we saw it sailing up the Douro. As the Somerset dropped anchor, Mama lifted herself on the tips of her toes to catch a glimpse of Papa. When he appeared on deck, she gripped my hand so tightly I winced in pain.
He had not come alone. With him was a wee dark-skinned man, no more than five feet tall. Months later, I found out his original name, which was Tsamma, the word in his language for a particular melon from the Kalahari Desert. This fruit was of special importance to his people and, indeed, to all the creatures of southern Africa, as its liquid-sweet flesh sustained one and all during periods of drought. But he was introduced to me as Midnight.
XII
The first thing I noticed about Midnight on the wharf that afternoon was his coloring, which was not pure black – as his name might imply – but bronze. The second was his diminutive stature, for he was clearly only a shade taller than my mother. This might have been the expected size of a lad with some growing yet to do, but he was surely a man of twenty-five or even thirty years of age.
More than that he could not say.
Midnight smiled broadly at me as he walked onto land, his gait sprightly, as though he enjoyed the simple act of walking as much as he might a rousing ball game. His eyes – dark and slightly slanted in the Oriental manner – seemed to harbor some secret amusement of which only he was aware. In my apprehension, I mistook this as an indication that he found me comical in some way, which irritated me. Though frail as a paper doll and drowsy, I kept my eyes wide open and my posture stiff. Midnight kept smiling at me as he and Papa approached, and I remember thinking, He is frightfully ugly and I do not like him. I hope he will not try to touch me.
I looked up at my mother, who wore an expression of dread.
Turning away from her, I noticed that Midnight’s ears, tucked close to his head and tapering upward, were like those I’d seen at the Olive Tree Sisters’ house in images of Pan. His black hair was wound into tight clusters, like small balls of wool.
Papa, after kissing my mother and me and saying that he had missed us enormously, introduced his African visitor. He said that he intended, if we agreed, for Midnight to stay with us for “a few short weeks.” Dumbfounded, Mama ventured no reply.
Midnight lifted her hand to shake it, a bit more vigorously than might have been considered appropriate, and said, “Good day, Mrs. Stewart. We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger.”
There was no trace of humor in his voice; on the contrary, he spoke with veneration, as though in the presence of royalty. My father explained that it was the traditional greeting of Midnight’s people.
My mother replied, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” mentioning nothing yet about his proposed stay with us.
I refused to shake his hand and said nothing at all when he told me that he was most happy to meet me after hearing so much about me from my father. I kept my arms locked behind my back and my mouth sealed tight in spiteful silence.
Papa looked at me crossly. That was when Midnight seemed to notice a stain or crumb on my face. Only later did I realize he had remarked on an L-shaped scar that I incurred in my tumble off our roof. With a worried look, he reached down to me. I flung my right hand up to prevent his fingers from touching me, but I wasn’t quick enough. He held my chin in his hand and his fingers were cool. He stared at me. He had eyes like moons.
“The lad is indeed most ill,” Midnight said, looking up at my father with concern.
Papa knelt in front of me and grimaced in fear. “How badly has it gone with John?” he asked my mother.
“I shall tell you at home.”
“Tell me now.”
She ignored him and asked if Mr. Midnight would be accompanying us to our house.
“Yes,” Papa said, slapping his hat against his hip in anger, “I just told you that that was my intention.”
“Then let us proceed,” she said tersely.
It was a tense walk from the riverside to our house. Mama, who had been planning to fall into Father’s arms and cede all her worries to him, swiftly abandoned that course of action. She spoke only when spoken to, and then only in monosyllables. Father held her hand as though afraid she would vanish if he let go. He stole worried glances at me and looked increasingly glum, undoubtedly convinced that our lives had grown more desperate than he had ever feared. I was painfully self-conscious and tried not to look at Midnight, who pranced along beside me.
Once at home, Mother ordered me to take our guest into the garden, in such a frigid tone that I dared not protest. As we stepped outside, Midnight said, “Your father tells me that you have been seeing a friend of yours who died.”
Furious, I refused to answer, because I was not of the opinion that sharing this secret with strangers was within my father’s rights.
Fanny waddled toward us, her tail wagging. Despite my stern look of warning, she took an immediate liking to our guest and was soon licking his hands and face. He giggled and spoke to her in bizarre clicking sounds.
“Leave her alone. She only understands my whistles.”
He stood up. “Does she do many tricks perhaps?”
“Only one. She bites strangers!” I snapped.
He laughed at that, his broad shoulders jiggling. Drugged to a trance, perfumed like a princess, irate as a bull, and ornamented with a red ribbon at my collar, I must have been a truly wretched and risible sight. I naturally believed that this was why Midnight kept looking furtively at me as he stepped through the tangled mess that was then our garden, accompanied from behind by a very curious Fanny.
I stepped quietly back inside to eavesdrop on my parents. Mama was speaking in hushed tones of my fall from the roof. She delicately suggested that it might not have been an accident. She then went on to mention that, as a consequence, she had been administering a spoonful of tincture of opium to me every morning. At that, the trap sprung, and Papa accused her of trying to poison me. “You have rendered him drug-damned, you foolish woman!”
“I am fighting for him in the only way I know how,” Mama cried. “It’s so easy for you to criticize me, but what would you suggest I ought to have done?”
Shortly afterward Papa apologized, and my parents went to their room. Hearing no further quarrel or conversation, I presumed my father unable to keep his travel-induced slumber at bay any longer. Grumbling to myself about their neglect of me, I returned to our garden, where I found the African sitting on his heels in the middle of a profusion of shoulder-high weeds, his eyes closed, breathing softly.
Loudly, so that he might hear and take offense, I said, “That must be the way Africans sleep. They don’t even have sense enough to lie down.”
His eyes remained closed, though I saw a smile cross his lips. Thoughts of murder entered my mind.
Dragging myself inside, I slumped down on the Persian rug in our sitting room, propped my head on one of the cushions my mother had recently embroidered with tulips, and dozed off. Doors opened and closed in my dreams. Mice scattered. The ceiling swelled and seemed to press against my chest.
I awoke a short time later with a dull ache in my belly. And my head … A devilish sprite was tightening a rusted winch in my neck.
Papa soon came bobbing down the stairs, too cheerful by half. “Hello there, John, how’s my laddie?”
I sat up and stretched. “Fine, Papa. Tired.”
I was not as overjoyed to see him as I imagined I would be, for he seemed greatly changed. His eyes seemed too blue, his long hair too tightly tied at the back. Being young, I didn’t know that after a long absence a period of readjustment is often necessary. It seemed likely that I would never love him again as I had before.
“So what do you think of our Midnight?” he inquired.
“He is very dark,” I answered.
My father laughed. “Why, yes, I suppose he is. Sable of color compared to a pale Scotsman like you.”
Mama came down the stairs, pinning up her hair. She smiled at Papa, who winked at her. He took one of his pipes from a rack on our mantelpiece, a meerschaum beauty carved with the head of a bat that had been purchased in Glasgow many years earlier by his father. Removing his tobacco pouch from his waistcoat pocket, he sighed. “It is good to be home.”
Mama announced that she would make us all some tea. “To give you two time alone,” she beamed, whereupon she left us for the garden to pump water into her kettle.
Papa graciously invited me to sit next to him on the blue and green brocade armchair usually reserved for Mama.
“I expect Midnigh
t is still in the garden,” he said, leaning toward me and filling the bowl of his pipe with a pinch of tobacco. “I’m sorry you’ve been a sad kelpie. I shall try to make it up to you now that I am home.”
“I have been just fine,” I replied.
“Aye, I can see how fine you have been. And I know what medicine your mother has been giving you.” He brushed some fallen tobacco off his breeches. “Don’t think I don’t know every hair on your head. I shall be counting them later to make sure none fell out while I was gone!” He smiled gently. I did my best to share his mirth, but the rusty winch was tightening at my neck. “I understand, too, you have lost your appetite. I’m not pleased by that, John. Now, what would you say if we stopped giving you your medicine? Do you think you might suffer again that … that particular problem of yours?”
The possibility that I would not have access to my spoonful of opium filled me with worry.
“Well?” he prompted.
“I shall try very hard not to see or hear Daniel,” I told him, loath to spoil his homecoming.
“Midnight may be able to help, you know. What is your opinion of him so far?”
“I have no opinion, Papa.”
“But surely you do.” He pointed the stem of his pipe at me. “Out with it, lad.”
Since being sent to bed was probably the worst that would happen, and since I should not have minded going to sleep, I said, “I do not like him. I think he’s ugly.”
“But why, lad?”
“I cannot think why he is here,” I answered. “You must admit he is strange.”
Papa puffed away thoughtfully, then said, “To one of your wee birdies he would surely seem not so different from you or me.”
I was not so sure.
Mama returned to place her windmill-patterned teacups and saucers on our round wooden table. “Just waiting for the water to boil,” she said. “Are you having a pleasant chat?”
I nodded and Papa kissed her hand. Then he turned to me and said, “Son, if he is a friend of mine, is that not good enough for you?”
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