Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  With that, he stood up and shuffled, barefoot, out of my room.

  *

  In the morning, Papa took me into his bedroom, stood me in front of his mirror, and taught me how to shave. He was calm and steady and made no reference to his speech the previous night.

  When remembering him at this time in our lives, I sometimes think of Goya’s “Colossus.” Alone, seated under a crescent moon, his back to the viewer, the once-powerful giant turns around with a hopeful look, wanting to find a loved one waiting there to whom he can say a final farewell.

  Our last trip upriver was at the end of the first week in January 1809. We were forced to stop going after that because the war against Napoleon in Spain was going poorly and the blue light of warning had been posted at all our borders.

  Early March brought the arrival of General Soult’s twenty-five thousand French soldiers into Portugal, at our northeast fringe of mountains. After he took the town of Chaves, refugees began making their way to Porto. The poor carried their entire lives in wooden barrows.

  Benjamin and I gave out bread and honey to these downtrodden creatures now forced to sleep in our squares and on our beaches. Seeing them filled him with awe, as he said they were the Old Testament made present. When I asked what he meant, he said, “They are the Israelites in exile, and they were each and every one of them present at Mt. Sinai for the giving of the Ten Commandments. Don’t you recall? You and I were there too!” Summoning me closer to him, he whispered in my ear, “Moses’s teachings are for each and every minute of existence, John. Each time we see how the Torah is reflected in our lives, we stand again at the foot of Mount Sinai.”

  *

  By the Twenty-Second of March, we received confirmation that Braga, thirty miles to the northeast, had been taken. Late that morning, Father announced that he had made plans for us to leave the city. Three carriages belonging to the Douro Wine Company would be leaving secretly at three in the morning from a tiny wharf at the far eastern edge of the city, just below the Bishop’s Seminary. Mother and I were to go, but Papa was to remain behind.

  “It is time I fought,” he said. “If Porto falls, I shall join you upriver as soon as I can. Don’t worry, the French will not take me.”

  “Papa, this is sheer madness. You must come with us. I’ll not allow you to stay.”

  “Look who’s giving orders!” he joked.

  Despite his sudden good humor, he looked exhausted and reeked of brandy. I didn’t trust him to care for himself in the state he was in. “Papa,” I said, “if you refuse to come with us, then I shall stay too and fight alongside you.”

  “John, this is not a request. You shall wait for me upriver with your mother. I have not raised you these eighteen years to see you felled by a French bullet.”

  Mama agreed as Papa embraced me. I tried to push him away, but he held me firm and kissed my cheek.

  “Goodness, man, you might shave a little closer,” he moaned. “It’s still rough. The lassies will not like it.”

  Before he let me go, he took a hard look at me, perhaps imagining what I’d look like as a grown man. “Please be patient, son,” he said apologetically. “We shall be apart for only a short while.” He reached into his fob pocket and took out his gold watch with the mother-of-pearl face. The chain had been the one used by the witch to shackle him when he was a toad. “Hold on to this for me,” he said, handing it to me. “I shall want it back soon.”

  Then, as though embarrassed by his gesture of affection, he stood with his hands behind his back and stared out our window.

  I accepted his gift gratefully, but it troubled me. I looked to my mother for support in continuing to encourage him to leave with us, but she was so lost within herself that she said nothing.

  *

  I spent the rest of the day in a state of gloom. After supper, I bid good-bye to the Olive Tree Sisters, who were remaining behind, as they refused to leave their art collection unguarded. “If you don’t come back soon, John, we’ll never let you look at another Goya!” Luna warned.

  I also visited Benjamin with my father. His two sons had already left the city, but he had decided to stay put. “An apothecary is always needed after a battle,” he said, “so I am quite sure that the French will do me no great harm.”

  Mother went to see Grandmother Rosa, to tell her that Father had reserved a place for her in our carriage, but the windows of her home were boarded up. Neighbors said that she had already left for Aveiro to stay with her sons.

  Father, Mother, and I went to bed that night but scarcely slept, as we had to be awake at two o’clock. When Papa poked his head into my room to wake me, I said, “Are you sure you will not come with us? I’m so worried – I can’t think of anything else.”

  “No, I can no longer let other men fight for me. Portugal is my home now. I’m too old to go back to England or Scotland.”

  “You aren’t too old, Papa.”

  “I’m fifty years of age, John.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how tired I am.”

  “We all get tired, Papa. You work too hard, and you worry all the time. We could go to England and stay with Aunt Fiona for a time. I can find work there and you will be able to sit by our hearth and read. I shall support us all.”

  “That is a generous offer, son, and if times were different I might even take you up on it, but I am too old to change. You will understand when you are my age.”

  “But do you promise you will join us upriver?”

  “John, life is unpredictable. These are promises I cannot make, even if I wanted to.”

  “I’ll not leave unless you swear to join us.”

  “Very well, I promise to join you and your mother upriver.”

  He spoke too matter-of-factly for me to believe him. But before I could say any more, he pressed his lips passionately to mine, as though we were departing lovers. Then he clapped his hands together and said, “Now, get up and get dressed! In fifteen minutes we leave. There will be food in the carriages, even tea. I said that if there were no tea my son would turn into a Scottish monster of the lochs – a wrathful kelpiel!”

  I said good-bye to Fanny and Zebra, who would stay behind with Father, as they weren’t allowed in the carriages. I hugged them both and told them to take care of him. Fanny jumped up and stood on my shoulders just as she had on St. John’s Eve so many years before. Through my tears, I told them not to bark even once if they heard soldiers. By way of reply, they simply licked me. I felt as though I were leaving my heart behind with them.

  Mother, Father, and I bustled out of the house into the cold and windy darkness. I was carrying my musket and Father his pistol. He began to softly sing “Barbara Allen.” I joined in, and we held hands as we walked.

  Mother said nothing, though she glanced furtively at Papa – in grudging admiration, I think. She must have noticed that he and I had made an attempt toward reconciliation over the past weeks. I believed that she approved of this for me, but not for herself.

  Then Papa hummed a tune I didn’t know. Being good at melodies, I was able later to scribble it out in notation and send this transcription to Healy’s Music Shop in London. I received a reply naming the song as “Now O Now I Needs Must,” by the Elizabethan composer John Dowland. I would hazard a guess that Mama knew this tune equally well and that Papa hummed it for her benefit, as a last attempt to win her forgiveness. The lyrics must have closely mirrored his feelings and his hopes for the future on this occasion:

  Now O now I needs must part,

  Parting though I absent mourn.

  Absence can no joy impart,

  Joy once fled cannot return.

  Dear when I am from thee gone,

  Gone are all my joys at once,

  I love thee and thee alone,

  In whose love I joyed once.

  And although your sight I leave,

  Sight wherein my joys do lie,

  Till that death do sense bereave,

  Never shall affection die.


  Mama kept her eyes fixed on the ground as he offered this tune to the night. Her cool distance plainly silenced any last hope in him, for when he finished the song he attempted no other.

  After several miles we reached a cove guarded by mammoth oaks concealing three large carriages. Nine people were already on board. Father chatted with the driver while we acquainted ourselves with the other passengers.

  When the bells of the city tolled three, Mother and Father kissed each other on the cheek and he helped her up into her seat. I held Papa for a long time. My heart was pounding a warning to me about never seeing him again in this life.

  I inhaled the glorious scent of him and gave myself over to his warmth. At length, he held me away from him, smiled to hide his anguish, and handed me his pipe and pouch of tobacco.

  “Take this, my beloved John,” he said, kissing my brow.

  “But, Papa – ”

  “Take it and climb aboard. And think often of your father, who feels nothing but love for you. Be well, my son.”

  My steps into the carriage were the heaviest I had ever taken.

  “And, May,” Father said to Mother through the carriage window, “I shall always carry the burden of guilt, so it is not necessary for you to do so. Only one of us need be condemned. I release you.”

  Papa retreated several paces and shouted to the driver that he could get on his way. We were off, and I could no longer hold back my sorrow. As my father waved to me, I could see his tears freely falling as well. Leaning out my window, I shouted, “We shall return to you and all will be well, Papa.”

  How I wish I could have said something more important – words that might have changed his mind. When I looked at Mother, she was gazing at the moonlight playing like silver fishes across the water, afraid to look at me.

  *

  Two days later we found ourselves lodging in a dank cottage on the north bank of the Douro River, seven miles from Regua. Mother was in a foul temper due to the dirt and soot, and the first thing she did upon arrival was embark on a cleaning frenzy.

  We survived for four weeks on turnips, potatoes, and kale, doing our utmost to stay dry and healthy, as the weather had turned wet and windy. But we were safe, and that was all that mattered.

  *

  While we were upriver, the French descended on Porto, sounding their trumpets as though about to enjoy themselves. As far as I can determine, Father had spent his first days after we left preparing himself for battle, practicing with his pistol in the garden, hoarding bread, drinking whiskey, and tending to Fanny and Zebra, whom he allowed to sleep in his bed.

  Senhor Benjamin had boarded up his apothecary shop and moved into his cellar. He had no idea how to use a firearm, but he kept an old rusty sword with him that had been in his family for many generations. It had a silver handle, of course – just right for a Jewish alchemist, since the goal of their work was not to create gold but to find the silver essence in all of God’s creations.

  The Olive Tree Sisters continued sketching and molding their fruit by day. At night, they shared the same bed, clinging tightly to each other. As Jews, they wondered if they would be burned alive, since the French officers were rumored to be viciously anti-Semitic. If this did come to pass, they resolved to ask to be bound together.

  In response to a call to arms that fateful morning, Father joined a line of Portuguese troops already positioned at the Olival Gate, very near our home. Shortly after the fighting began, however, the cannonading of the French guns and superiority of their musket power proved too much for the city’s defenders. The men fell in heaps, moist red roses blooming on their chests.

  The battle at the Olival Gate was lost within minutes. Miraculously, Father had only taken a grazing shot to his leg. Peeling a musket free from the death grip of a lost comrade, he rushed with several other men to the eastern defenses, near the Bonfim Church, where fighting had now begun. A terrific battle was fought there for nigh on four hours, during which time perhaps ten thousand more of the city’s residents were given time to flee through Porto’s gates. Papa soon came to the conclusion that he would be of greater use as a diligent orderly than a poor marksman and served in this capacity for most of the struggle. By just after eleven o’clock, it was clear to one and all that their cause was lost. Some two hundred men, Father among them, retreated to the Bishop’s Palace.

  Hundreds of French cavalrymen then led the greater part of the infantry into Porto. A few brave residents continued firing pistols from their patios and windows, but they were soon silenced. Papa and the other soldiers who had reached the palace were well-aware that their cause was lost, but they hoped to hold off the French forces as long as they could, to give the people of Porto more time to escape.

  Cannons were soon hauled by French troops onto the plaza in front of the palace, where they fired away mercilessly.

  The pontoon bridge across the Douro River was the only way of escape, and thousands fled in that direction. To the deafening roar of Gallic drums, the French cavalry charged down from the upper town to the river, firing indiscriminately and slicing their way through the terrified crowds with their swords. At the sight of the enemy, Portuguese artillery stationed at the Serra do Pilar Convent on top of the cliff on the opposite bank opened fire. It was then that the bridge surrendered to the weight of the terrified people it had been made to carry. With a wicked groan, it split apart, tossing two or three hundred into the river. There was no hope for them, even for able swimmers. They met their end in the greedy arms of the river, just as Daniel had seven years earlier.

  How many drowned that day, no one can say for sure. I only know that I have it on good authority that scores of corpses washed ashore downriver, attracting a cloud of gulls the likes of which had never been seen before. Among the dead were Senhor Tiago the roofer and Senhor Policarpo’s wife, Josefina, along with her two children. Bloated, gray-eyed bodies were still being pulled from the river three days later, and for years afterward fishermen complained of lines constantly becoming tangled in boots, wigs, and even skulls.

  *

  So horrific were the next three days of violence that I do not believe any inhabitant of Porto will ever be able to think of the French again and not wish for revenge. The Olive Tree Sisters, like many women, were viciously raped by gangs of soldiers. Graça hemorrhaged on the night of the Twenty-Ninth, fell into a coma, and died in her sister’s arms the next day. Luna’s spirit was broken – precisely in half, I’d say. I shall never forgive what was done to them.

  As for Benjamin, just after the French broke through the city’s defenses, he heard someone in his sitting room. Tricked by a cry for help shouted in Portuguese through his locked cellar door, he rushed upstairs carrying his rusty sword, where he was confronted by a young French soldier.

  This young man’s triumphant grin unleashed the warrior in Benjamin, and when the Frenchman squeezed the trigger of his gun only to have it misfire, the apothecary lashed out, fatally wounding his foe in the neck. Benjamin then raced to the riverside. As this took place before the collapse of the pontoon bridge, he was able to scurry across to the far bank. He continued to make his way south and hid in the woods along the road to Espinho, returning to the city only after five days of hiding. Twice during his escape, a regiment of Gallic soldiers came within a hundred yards of him, and twice he lay facedown in the soil, silently reciting Hebrew prayers for the soul of the youth he had killed.

  *

  My beloved Fanny and Zebra were not so fortunate. I never saw either of them again.

  I would wager that on the morn of the great battle, Papa let them out into our garden, as I found a plate of bones there, most probably some chicken he had scrounged. When French soldiers broke the hinge of our front door, both dogs would have breathed fire like Scottish dragons – and been summarily shot, I have no doubt.

  But I found no blood. Possibly it had seeped into the garden soil. Their bodies must have been tossed onto dung heaps with the rest of the fallen and set ablaze.
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  I only hope they were not made to suffer.

  *

  Mother and I left our rural refuge for Porto on the Third of April, when news reached us of the sacking of the city. As there were no barges to take us downriver, we set out on foot. I would never have believed Mama would be able to walk such a distance – sixty miles, at least – but she was driven onward by terror, as though a burning metronome were beating inside her. Every day we walked from cockcrow to midday, at which time, with the sun highest in the sky, we rested by the side of the road, in the spring shade afforded by pine trees. Then we continued on till sundown, finding shelter in farmhouses and barns.

  The peasants we met were kind, displaying the generosity one often encounters by accident. One old woman sat in a field munching raw cabbage and watching the night sky with me. She told me that the stars were not hunters, as Midnight had said, but rather seeds scattered by God. The earth itself was one such seed.

  Gazing at the Milky Way, I wondered where Violeta was. I dearly hoped that she had escaped Portugal to America.

  Eleven days after we had started out, we spied the Clerics Tower from a clearing several miles outside the city. Mother and I burst into tears.

  *

  Our house had been ransacked and all my mother’s porcelain destroyed. The skylight in the Lookout Tower had been shattered, and rain had soaked through to the upper floor of the house.

  We hadn’t the heart to dig under the rosebushes, so we were unaware that our silver and jewelry were safe. The pianoforte was undamaged, still buried under books.

  Grandmother Rosa’s house remained safely boarded up, and Senhor Benjamin, who had returned home by now, told us that he had heard she was still in Aveiro and that all was well.

  Father was missing. Mama and I searched frantically for anyone who might have seen or spoken to him, and we finally found a neighbor up the street who’d spotted him leaving our house at dawn on the morning of the Twenty-Ninth. No one saw him again after that.