Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  Father told Mother and me that we would not be fleeing Portugal. As subjects of the Portuguese crown, she and I would be safe under French occupation, and he had never maintained any direct commercial connection to His Majesty’s government or any British firm. He believed that his employment in the Douro Wine Company, the single most important mercantile enterprise in Porto, guaranteed him a measure of safety.

  We argued with his logic, but he would not give in.

  In truth, there seemed nothing for him to return to in Britain. He had obviously decided that he would live or die, suffer a broken marriage or rebuild it, in Portugal.

  Then, on October the Twentieth, the guillotine fell on the oldest of European alliances: Prince João declared war on Britain. But the surprise was to be on him – Napoleon and his Spanish lackeys had made plans to betray their treaty with Portugal and divide the country between them. A mixed French and Spanish army comprising eighteen thousand troops commanded by General Junot crossed our border at the end of October.

  A convoy of ships was sent from England to collect the British wishing to flee Porto, where many of their families had lived for generations. William Warre, as British Consul, was the last to embark. As the ship set sail, he raised his fist to those of us left on shore, but Mama only frowned when I told her of his defiant gesture. “It’s easy for a man to preach courage when he runs no risk,” she said. She then told Father and me that we were to bury all of our valuables in the garden.

  Having never experienced occupation before and having heard Professor Raimundo praise the French as honorable people, this seemed a laughable precaution. Unwilling to risk rankling her, however, I did as she asked. She and I wrapped her few rings and necklaces in linen towels, along with our silver, including her beloved menorah. We deposited them into tunnels that Father and I dug underneath the rosebushes.

  Then we dug other pits more haphazardly, burying knickknacks of little or no value. Our reasoning was that the French would discover these swiftly and remove their nearly worthless contents, leaving undisturbed the more important hiding places.

  “And the pianoforte,” I said, “how shall we hide it?”

  Mama moaned.

  “Don’t you worry, May, I shall take care of it.” Papa reached out to reassure her, but she yanked her arm free. In the end, we carried it up to his study, turned it over on its back, and buried it beneath books and papers.

  Late that afternoon, when neither of my parents was at home, I also took the precaution of burying Midnight’s belongings, along with Daniel’s masks, his talisman, the jay we had carved and given to Mother, and the tile of a triton that the Olive Tree Sisters had given me when I was only nine. I did this in secret, as I feared that my parents would say that these keepsakes were not of sufficient value for such precautions.

  *

  On the Twenty-Ninth of November, when French and Spanish troops were only a day’s ride from Lisbon, Prince João and the rest of the royal family, together with our ministers and much of our aristocracy, left for Brazil.

  The news reached Porto that the royal family carried aboard their ships more than half of the coinage of Portugal. The miracle that day was that none of their vessels, thus loaded, plunged directly to the bottom of Lisbon Harbor.

  *

  We ought to have at least been able to bless the dreadful roads of the Portuguese countryside for slowing the progress of the enemy marching toward Lisbon. And yet we could not. The French officers and their mixed army were made so miserable by their tortuous advance that they compensated for it with pillaging and murder.

  Once the soldiers reached their final destination and passed through the gates of the Portuguese capital on the Thirtieth of November, ecstatic crowds of Jacobins and Francophiles mobbed them, the women even tossing roses from balconies. After being toasted in the taverns and streets, they snoozed in the plazas and gardens, dreaming most likely of their loved ones back home. Asleep or not, these homesick, harassed, and murderous invaders were our new rulers.

  XXII

  Throughout the next seven months of occupation, all was reasonably calm in Porto. Our wine trade with England, though prohibited, continued unabated and guaranteed the city a small measure of financial security. Our ships made their way first to northern ports such as Rotterdam, where their cargo was loaded onto other vessels headed for Portsmouth and Southampton. Post failed to reach us from Britain, however, and so we received no direct news of our compatriots who had left months before.

  My parents were too absorbed in their silent warfare to care. They hardly ever saw each other, since Papa spent most of his time at work. Of the two, he had changed the most since Midnight’s death. His hair was now closely cropped, gray at the sides and thinning on top. His cheeks were gaunt and his blue eyes, so radiant when I was young, were distinctly cold and distant.

  I only once talked seriously with either of them about what had happened to our family. It was on my seventeenth birthday, and I woke up in a foul mood, intent on making life difficult for everyone. Father had told me three weeks earlier that the moment he was given permission to travel upriver again, I would be learning to survey lands, test soils, and plant vines. He had decided that I would earn my keep in the wine trade. Even though I planned to fight him, I recognized that I had better choose a profession swiftly. But I had no idea how I could put my love of art and books to profitable use.

  As a special birthday treat, Mama made rabanadas for breakfast. Papa gave me a blue silk cravat that had belonged to his father. Then, as always, he escaped to his office.

  As soon as he was out the door, I asked Mama, “Tell me the truth – do you hate Papa?”

  She frowned in distaste. “Hate your father? Such odd ideas you have sometimes, John.”

  “Mama, you never talk to him anymore. You used to play music for him. You used to smile at him secretly, when you thought no one was looking. Have you forgotten?”

  “John, people change. We are not as young as we once were.”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Listen, we’ve all made mistakes. I have … your father has. But I do not hate him.”

  “What mistakes have you made?”

  She looked at me as though I’d spoken a foreign language. “John, it may be your birthday, but you are still very young and I’ll not have you talk to me like that.”

  “How was I talking to you?”

  “Like a prosecutor. I am not on trial here, as far as I know.”

  “Perhaps you ought to be. Perhaps a trial would be fitting for both of you.”

  “That is quite enough.”

  She was trembling, and though I was dreadfully ashamed of myself, I could not control my anger. I pictured Mother’s pianoforte, which at that moment seemed an extension of her most private self. I wanted to wound her there, where it hurt most. I picked up a plate. I imagined going upstairs and smashing it into the ebony wood, making deep gouges that could never be repaired.

  I secretly wished for her hatred to scar me as well, which is probably why I lifted the plate over my head and brought it down over my skull. As I have had ample opportunity to learn, despondent people do desperate things.

  Luckily, the plate didn’t do any serious damage. I felt for blood and looked at my hand – nothing. Mother turned and saw the shattered pieces of porcelain scattered over the floor. Agitation made her astonishingly unobservant, and she didn’t notice the pieces of pottery still in my hair, which is why she started to lecture me on my carelessness.

  I interrupted her. “Damn it, Mother, can you not forgive him?”

  “Do not raise your voice at me, John Zarco Stewart!”

  “Can you not forgive Father? Answer me now or I shall break all the pottery in our house! Every damned windmill on every last plate. I promise you that.”

  “You … you’re confusing me – like always. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mama, we both know that he ought to have protected Midnight. But he didn’
t. And Midnight is dead. Father is alive. Can we not forgive him? I’ll try if you will.”

  “John” – she frowned, shaking her head – “there is so much that you do not know….” She closed her eyes.

  “Mama, tell me what you are thinking. I promise not to interrupt.”

  She asked for my hand. “You always had beautiful fingers. Even as a baby.” She smiled wistfully. “When you were very tiny your hand was no bigger than a plum. And your fingers …” She looked at me tenderly and caressed my cheek, which she had not done for months. “Each of them was so delicate, so finely made … all perfectly formed.”

  “Is there nothing you can say to me about Papa? Can you not forgive him?” I asked again.

  She sighed with exhaustion. “It’s not a question of forgiveness. People grow older. You cannot expect us to feel about each other as we did when you were little.” She dropped my hand and stared ahead sadly. “No, he is not the same man I married, and I am surely not the same woman he courted. People change.”

  “What you are saying, Mama, is that you do not love him anymore.”

  She looked shocked. “John, what do you know about love?”

  “As much as you do.”

  She pursed her lips as though I were being absurd, which infuriated me. I pounded the table and shouted, “I loved Midnight and you loved Midnight. I loved Father and you loved Father. Not in the same way, I know, but are we so different from each other?”

  “John, must we speak of these things?” she pleaded in exasperation.

  “Yes. I have not spoken of Midnight for far too long. It is as though he never existed.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if he never had. Or if he had remained in Africa.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Well, it surely would have been better for him, don’t you think?”

  I was left speechless. It was the last time I would talk of him with either of my parents for many years.

  *

  The month of May arrived with a series of proclamations from the French general Junot, informing us what a loyal friend of Portugal he was and how delightful his reign would be. Then Napoleon made a fatal error. He took the Spanish royal family captive, handing their crown to his brother Joseph. The courageous people of Madrid rose up in revolt and sent the occupying army fleeing for the hills. News of this tremendous victory soon reached other cities and towns, provoking uprisings across Spain that soon decimated the French and had them wondering if a hasty retreat to Paris might not be in order for all their battalions.

  This proved most fortunate for us, since a provisional government in the Galician city of Corunha soon ordered all Spanish troops to leave Porto. Not only that, but in a glorious show of solidarity, they also made all the French soldiers leave as well.

  *

  A provisional government headed by our elderly bishop, Dom António de Castro, was soon established in Porto. The British, who had been waiting for an opportunity to approach a friendly local authority, sent seventy ships to us, manned by ten thousand troops, including a thousand Portuguese soldiers previously regimented in England. Led by Sir Arthur Wellesley, who was later made Duke of Wellington, the first of these vessels cleared the sandbar guarding our river mouth on the morning of the Twenty-Fourth of July. Wellesley himself arrived on the H.M.S. Crocodile, a name that made me think of Midnight and his stories. How excited he would have been to see a flotilla of tall-masted ships flying the Union Jack and sailing upriver to our wharf!

  The British and Portuguese troops disembarked to great applause. I glimpsed Wellesley myself that day, seated atop a great white charger in Ribeira Square.

  By the next day, however, most of these British soldiers were on their way to Figueira da Foz, halfway to Lisbon, where they planned to begin chasing the Gallic plague from Portugal.

  Guarding Porto at this time was a militia of amateur soldiers outfitted with arms by the British. I trained with this reserve force and learned how to fire a musket and, to my surprise, found being a soldier quite to my liking. Through much practice, I became as good a shot as any of the other recruits, and I was praised by our sergeant for my swiftness in loading and firing. Happily for all concerned, however, I was not called upon to fight.

  *

  In his campaign to oust the French, Wellesley’s fleet reached Figueira da Foz on August the First, then marched toward Lisbon along the Atlantic coast. His troops quickly defeated the enemy at Roliça and Vimeiro – with such swiftness, in fact, and with so many hundreds of casualties, that rather than be further humiliated, the French rushed to sign the Convention of Sintra, by which they agreed to leave Portugal.

  Thereafter, the fighting moved to Spain, where the combined British and Spanish forces hoped to push the French into their own territory and corral them there. The only problem was a numerical one: Napoleon himself crossed into Spain that November, leading no less than two hundred thousand troops. His objective was to throw all his power at these Iberian upstarts and subdue them once and for all. Though we in Portugal were free of fighting for the moment, we understood that the worst was yet to come.

  XXIII

  From August to December of 1808, I went upriver with my father every month for at least a week at a time in order to learn his trade. After a time, however, Father began concentrating his instructions on surveying and mapmaking. It was now his solemn intention that I ought to put my drawing lessons to good use by becoming a draftsman.

  Throughout October and November I made good progress, and in early December Papa told me he was satisfied that I would now be able to find employment either as a junior draftsman or even surveyor’s assistant for the Douro Wine Company. When we were not involved in our lessons, Father remained withdrawn. I sometimes heard him leave Macbeth’s Castle at two or three in the morning in our carriage, to visit a nearby brothel, I guessed. This bothered me, but not nearly as much as I thought it would. Though his adultery put to rest my hopes of a reconciliation with my mother, I reasoned that if he no longer loved her, then he might as well find some small consolation elsewhere.

  When we were not at our work, Papa was generally morose. I should have liked to beg him to simply play cards with me or tell me a story set in the Scotland of his youth. I yearned to build a bridge to him, to prevent him from plunging deeper into his own misery. Indeed, I fooled myself for months that this bridge would be provided by our new relation as master and apprentice. I tried to shine as his student, so that he might remember I was his son.

  *

  Father did reach out to me once, however, just prior to Christmas week, our last night in Macbeth’s Castle.

  “I shall give you your presents now, if you don’t mind,” he said, patting my thigh. “Rather than in Porto.” After retrieving a small wooden case and a fabric pouch from his room, he handed them to me. “For all your hard work.”

  Inside the box I found a glistening razor with a bone handle and handsome badger-bristle brush. Father had often said that teaching a lad to shave was a necessity, so he would never have to submit his face to the dirty fingers of a barber nor risk disfigurement through a drunken slip of the hand.

  Winking, he added, “You will appear more handsome to the lasses once you have shaved yourself properly. You know, John, I am heartily proud of you. I do not believe I say that enough.” His voice caught in his throat. “I am not even sure you wish to hear it. But I am very proud indeed.”

  I was greatly moved and told him I was forever grateful he was my father.

  In the fabric pouch were my first pair of proper trousers, which had only recently come into fashion in Portugal. “Papa, they’re wonderful,” I assured him, and he smiled in a way I had not seen for ages.

  “Life moves fast, son. I see that now. Tomorrow is here before we have taken a good look at today. So the important thing is to think out the consequences of what you do. Think them out in advance. That’s why we have been working so hard at this new trade of yours. To make sure you are prepar
ed for your future.”

  He had begun to fill his pipe, and I asked if I might prepare it for him. It had been years since I had asked to do this. He was taken aback but nevertheless handed me his tobacco good-humoredly. I did my work with renewed affection and respect for him, then clamped the stem of his pipe in my jaws in imitation of his technique, cupped the bowl in my hand, and lit it with kindling from the fire. I had never before taken a serious puff, and I almost choked.

  Instead of thanking me, or even laughing at my incompetence, Father looked upset. Trying to hide his unhappiness, he said I needed practice at smoking but it was not a habit I ought to take up for another year or two.

  I was at a loss to understand what I had done wrong until, lying in bed that night, I recalled how Midnight would often share a pipe with him at the fireside.

  *

  That night my father came into my room and woke me.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, sitting up.

  He sat by my side. His candle created stark hollows of light and dark on his face. I imagined he had again suffered his nightmare of being alone in our house, with the rest of us dead.

  “I almost forgot, John,” he said.

  I held his arm. “Forgot what, Papa?”

  As he leaned toward me, I smelled brandy on him. Panic seized me and I rushed to speak, but he interrupted me. “Expect nothing from anyone, son. Then you will never be disappointed.”

  “Papa? Papa, what’s wrong?”

  “Just listen to me, lad. Expect nothing. For though you may, if you are lucky, get some assistance in your life, it will not come from the people from whom you most expect it. They will nearly always disappoint you. I advise you to always remember that people are small beasties, son. In Britain and Portugal both.” He gripped my foot through the blanket. “Listen to me now, lad! Always do what you need to do. Always work hard. Be selfish if you have to be. And count on no one. No one!”