Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  “Murdered who? I don’t understand.”

  “I need some whiskey,” she said, licking her lips. “May I fetch you some?”

  Once she had filled our drinking glasses, she sat curled over hers, sipping at it like a cat. I said nothing, waiting for her to speak. “Five years after I’d come to England,” she began again, “I woke to find a man lying beside me in bed.” She gazed down into her glass, then swirled the whiskey with her finger. “He had skin like milk. And fine blond hairs on his arms.” She licked her fingertip. “Many Englishmen are like that. But when I awoke beside him, I couldn’t remember anything about him or how he came to be there. I believed I was living in Porto and that my uncle had stolen into my room. I grabbed his walking stick. I hit him with it as he slept. I hit him too many times.” She raised her imaginary weapon over her head and brought it down with a whack of her hand to the table. “The blood trickled out of his mouth and I kept on hitting him, until his wife was a widow and his lads orphans. When I knew I had killed him, I did not regret it.”

  “You thought it was Uncle Tomás and that he – ”

  “No, no, when I saw his blood, I knew he was not my uncle. I remembered his name was Frederick, and that he had a wife and two sons. But I kept on beating him. His death was pleasing to me.”

  She leaned back and gnawed at her thumbnail. “My pimp took me to Liverpool to escape investigation. I changed my name, and I worked for another two years there – mostly at the docks.” She jumped up to refill her glass and mine.

  “How did you get away from him?” I asked.

  Sitting back down, she said, “Patience, John. I’m just getting to that. One rainy day in early spring, an elegant young woman disembarked from a ship and asked me where she might hire a hackney cab. She spoke with an accent that I recognized, so I answered in Portuguese. We laughed at the coincidence and I ended up accompanying her to her hotel. Her name was Manuela Silveira Dias. She was exactly my age – twenty-three. Her husband was English and they had just moved back from America. He was already living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with their two children. She’d been obliged to linger behind in Boston and now wanted to contract a governess. Before we separated that evening, she asked if I wanted the job, without even inquiring as to how I made my living.” Violeta looked at me incredulously. “Unforgivably irresponsible, don’t you think? What did I know of rearing children?”

  “She sensed something in you – something kind and purposeful. It’s what we all sense.”

  Violeta scoffed. “No, she just believed in the goodness of people – a bit like you, John. She was Jewish too, you know. Her ancestors had fled Lourenço Reis and his friends.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her I’d be her governess. She gave me her address. The next night I took a hackney from Liverpool all the way to Manchester. From there, I caught a series of coaches to Newcastle. With only the clothes on my back, I moved into Manuela’s home. My room was next to the children’s.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I had my own bed, and the sheets – Remember when Daniel moved into Senhora Beatriz’s home? ‘The sheets are smooth as moss!’ he told us.”

  I reached out for her hand, but she pulled it away and sat up stiffly. “I was never found by either the police or my pimp, though I worried constantly they’d discover where I was. John, tell me this – where does remorse live in you?”

  I believed she meant to ask me what my deepest regret was. “I wish I’d given solace to my father. It might have changed everything.”

  “No, where is it inside you? Where, John?” To my confused expression, she said, “Mine is in my eyes. When I gaze into a mirror, I see all my regrets staring back at me, as though they are all that I am made of. I tell you this – innocent blood never dries. And I’ll tell you something you can tell Midnight about hunting – guilt is the best hunter of all! Living with Manuela’s children came to mean everything to me. I could disappear into their world. That is what I have always been trying to do, in one way or another – blend into someone else’s life.”

  “Do you still correspond with them? Have they visited you here?”

  “I wrote letters, even though I was told not to. But I never received any reply. Manuela must have burned them.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Violeta sighed. “When the children were older, Manuela sent them to boarding school. I might have stayed on in her home, but I risked confessing myself to her. We’d been like sisters. I did not tell her all I’ve told you, but I told her about how I’d earned my keep and intimated that I’d done other wicked things. When I was done, she told me I was to pack my things and leave her home immediately. I rushed to her husband for help, but he locked his door to me. I went down on my knees and begged, but he would not open it.”

  “He must have been a hard man – to refuse you like that after all your service to his family.”

  “Hard? He was only protecting his family from a whore and murderess.”

  “You are much more than that.”

  “Am I?” she shouted. “Am I really?”

  “To me, you are.”

  “You!” She spit her words at me. “You see me with eyes clouded by a past that is long gone. It is gone, John. And the girl I was is dead! See that clearly before it is too late for you.”

  She rushed to the doorway to her garden, then turned back, her whole body shaking with urgency. “Do not dare try to comfort me!” She shook her fist at me. “Let me finish, John, so I never have to speak of these things again.” Running a hand through her hair, she regained a measure of calm. “Two months later,” she said, “while I was working at a brothel near the river in Newcastle, Manuela’s husband sent word that he’d arranged work for me as cook and housekeeper to an old American widower named Lemoyne. I could have the job only on the condition that I never seek out their children. Lemoyne owned a dozen apple farms north of New York, along the Hudson River.” She gestured around the room. “This was his town house. I worked for him for four years till he died, a little over two years ago. In his will, he gave his farms to his sons. To me, he left this house and a small pension.”

  “He must have valued your help.”

  “Yes, my help.” She frowned. “And many other things besides.”

  “When I first arrived, Violeta, you looked frightened. Why was that? Was it because I’m a man?”

  “No, John. I thought the police had caught up with me.” She shook her head disconsolately. “A part of me has always hoped they’d catch me and punish me for all the evil I’ve done. I felt that very hope beating softly beneath my fear when I first saw you.”

  “Violeta, you deserve so much more than you have.” I stood up and went to her, but she pushed me away. “You were forced into prostitution,” I pleaded. “You were violated and brutalized. Have you forgotten the way they sheared your hair?”

  “Only because I told. If I had kept silent … It was my fault.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I’ll not let you say such things about – ”

  She reached up and slapped me with all that was left of her strength. “Get out!” she wailed. “Before it is too late, leave here! I do not want you here. Do you hear me? I’ve no place for you in my home!”

  Knowing I would not leave her, she fell into my embrace, sobbing. I walked her up to her room. As we passed through her doorway, she asked, “Can someone contemptible earn the right to be happy – or to find peace?”

  “You are not contemptible. Please don’t say that.”

  She traced her fingertip across my cheek where she’d slapped me. “I am only speaking the truth.”

  “The man you murdered might be one of the generous dead, like Daniel. Can’t you believe that’s possible?”

  Her eyes opened wide. “John, he had two children. Would you forgive a woman who separated you from your two girls?”

  *

  In her room, I tucked her into bed. When she turned away from me on her side, I gathered up he
r hair to begin braiding it.

  “No, don’t touch me. Just tell me a story.”

  “Is that why you sent Daniel and me away that day in New Square? Did you regard yourself as unworthy of happiness?”

  She made no reply. Perhaps because she was not looking at me, I found the courage to confess my betrayal at last. “Then I am unworthy too. Because I betrayed Daniel. I … I told him you might leave for America without him. The day we left you forever – the last day of his life. He became distraught. And he was drunk. He ran off to the river.” Violeta turned over to face me. “I tried to save him,” I moaned. “I’ve never tried so hard in my life to do anything. But I let him drown. I wasn’t strong enough.”

  “Is that what you’ve thought all these years?” she asked, sitting up.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, John, of all the people who loved Daniel, you did him the least harm. By the time you told him about my leaving for America, I’d already given him fair warning. He knew that I intended to go someday – with or without him.”

  “But then why did he look so shocked when I told him?”

  “Don’t you see? He must not have guessed that you knew. He must have felt that I’d betrayed him by telling you. It was my fault, not yours.”

  “Then I didn’t push him into the river?”

  “No, John, Daniel jumped. And there was nothing you could have done to save him. Only I … only I could have done that.”

  I closed my eyes and shivered, feeling years of hidden shame leaving me. The world had changed; Daniel had not despised me before his death.

  Gratitude for this made me more determined than ever to unburden Violeta of her remorse. “We all deserved so much better,” I whispered. “You, me, and Daniel. But we had so little choice back then. There was nothing you could do either – nothing.”

  She kissed both my cheeks and said, “You’re kind, but I cannot go on speaking of the past. I am too tired. Forgive me.”

  *

  I slept fitfully and descended into a dark, shuddering nightmare in which I was locked in the Lookout Tower during a frantic rainstorm. Midnight was nowhere to be seen, but he was speaking in his clicking language from inside my head, as though we had become the same person. When I awoke, I realized that he seemed to be progressively disappearing – at least in body – from even my dreams.

  Near five in the morning, I again spotted Violeta in her garden, but I did not go down to her; I did not wish to make parting more difficult for either of us.

  At breakfast, I found that I could not eat a thing. I sipped cup after cup of tea and nibbled at some toast and jam simply to make Violeta happy. She tried to make light conversation about the cool weather and other trifling matters. My boat was to leave at the tolling of eleven o’clock. At ten, my agitation was such that I wished to shatter all the windows in the house. Instead, I stood up to take her leave.

  “But I shall accompany you to the wharf,” she said anxiously, as though there were no question of her remaining behind.

  Even her wretched white bonnet was dear to me now. “I could not bear to wave to you from aboard ship,” I confessed. “Please, let us say good-bye here.”

  I held her close until she could smile when I tickled her chin. Her last words to me were: “John, my fondness for you is so deep that I shall save you from myself. You must not fall in love with me. And if you already are, then I beg you to use this voyage to turn your heart away from me.”

  They say that suffering hardens us to life, but I felt then, looking into her jade eyes, that we had both been broken by it.

  XXXVIII

  We made sluggish sail and took five days to arrive in Alexandria. The town was more rustic than I’d expected, though it did boast many handsome residences and counting-houses. I had never seen such a concentration of black people before, and though many wore ragged clothing while working as shop assistants and laborers, several individuals I passed were smartly dressed. I believed this boded well for Midnight and was pleased to see such signs of prosperity.

  I found lodging at Harper’s Boarding House, a wooden mansion on Fairfax Street, not far from the port.

  My first destination after depositing my things was King Street, a busy main road running east-west through the city. According to the letters from Captain Morgan, it was here that the apothecary named Miller who had purchased Midnight maintained his shop prior to his death from yellow fever. I was hoping that a son, daughter, or wife might be able to give me some information.

  On finding the address in question, I learned it was now Reading’s Estate Agency.

  I sat by Mr. Reading’s desk and told him my story. Hoping that any added information I could give him might bring me closer to my goal, I mentioned that my friend might have been known in Alexandria as Tsamma, which had been his original name. “Tsamma is a kind of melon that grows in the desert,” I observed. “During the droughts, the people and animals of Africa drink its plentiful juice.”

  Mr. Reading lit his cigar. From within a cloud of smoke, he raised his furry eyebrows and said, “A kind of melon?”

  “Aye, that’s right.”

  He fought to restrain his mirth, then, failing in this Herculean effort, laughed with such force that he nearly toppled from his chair.

  Seeing my displeasure, Mr. Reading sat up straight and said with renewed seriousness, “I do apologize, Mr. Stewart. It’s just that a melon …” He cleared his throat. “Now, returning to your inquiry, I must tell you that the Africans are generally given good Christian names when they arrive at our market. Your Midnight may be called Washington, Adams, Jefferson, or Jackson by now.”

  As for the Miller family, the estate agent had never met them. There had been an interim owner of the house, a ship’s carpenter by the name of Barrow, but he had no idea where Mr. Barrow lived or if Mr. Miller had had children or a wife.

  “Now,” said he, funneling the smoke through his fleshy lips toward the ceiling, “did your nigger have any scars or marks?”

  He used this word nigger so easily that I started.

  “None that I recall, except for a small nick on his brow.”

  “Was he branded?”

  “Good God, I hope not.”

  “Well, could you describe him?”

  “He was a small man, five feet or so in height, with handsome bronze skin, and a broad flat nose, very dignified, with – ”

  “A broad flat nose, you say?”

  When I confirmed this, he grinned. His rudeness was bringing out the Highlander in me. “So, Mr. Reading, what have I said this time to cause such hilarity?” I snarled.

  “All the saltwater niggers have broad flat noses, Mr. Stewart.”

  “‘Saltwater’?”

  “From Africa.”

  “Mr. Reading, they are all from Africa, I would have presumed.”

  “In that you are quite wrong, sir. Some are bred locally. Most, in fact, as the slave trade was halted by a damnable act of Congress some fifteen years ago. Most of our niggers were born right here in the United States. And I’m afraid, sir, that you’ll have to arm me with a better description of yours if I am to help you spook him from his hole.”

  *

  Sickened by the ease with which Mr. Reading spoke so crudely about Negroes, I thanked him and took my leave. I spent the rest of that morning on the sagging mattress of my hotel room drawing Midnight. This proved much harder than I would have thought, no doubt owing to the stifling heat, which obliged me to strip off my clothes and sit panting by my window for the frail wisps of breeze coming in from the ocean.

  My sketch captured his puckish side, which is why, I suppose, so many of the people I showed it to later that day said, “Oh, you’ve got quite a rascal there, haven’t you!”

  At first, I took this as an endearment. Only slowly, when several frowned disagreeably, did I begin to understand that they meant something akin to ne’er-do-well. I was forced to conclude that a great many people in Alexandria had such feeble imaginations tha
t they could not conceive of a high-spirited African as anything but an affront or threat.

  To no avail, I spent the rest of the afternoon showing my sketch to more than twenty shopkeepers along King Street and Washington Street.

  A quick-talking carpenter named Friedlander did finally recall that Mr. Miller had a daughter named Abigail. A half hour after our talk, he tracked me down at Hall’s Dry Goods and said that he now remembered that Mrs. Abigail Miller Munson lived on Queen Street. Indeed, he had already confirmed that she was presently at home. Taking the address and giving my thanks, I rushed away.

  *

  Mrs. Munson’s wooden house was painted in pleasant tones of cream and pink. Upon answering my knocks, she smiled with endearing modesty and led me through double doors into her sitting room, offering me the place of honor at the end of her rose-colored sofa.