Hunting Midnight (56 page)

LIX

I
t is now the Seventeenth of October, 1825, and more than eighteen months since I last wrote of my life. For nearly two years we have been placing our requests for Midnight to write to us every week in one hundred and twelve newspapers. All the plates, vases, and ewers I’ve glazed and sold have gone into having them printed.

Mother contracted an agent in Portugal to rent out our home in Porto and sell our lands upriver, and with the proceeds we were able to purchase a comfortable Federal house in Greenwich Village with a view over the Hudson River. We moved there in August of 1824, and as there was room for Mama’s pianoforte, she had it shipped over from London that very month. By the end of September, she already had secured seven students, two of whom are gifted. She’s talking seriously these days about
founding
the music school she had first envisioned in London. She’s even trying to convince Aunt Fiona to come to New York and help her.

Morri still finds her teaching rewarding, though she had herself something of a shipwreck with the headmaster, who seemed for a time to have really fallen for her. After some weeks of tearful trouble, she reached land healthy and contented, however. She’s got better balance than anyone I’ve ever met – except for maybe her father.

Lawrence and Mimi are in one of Morri’s two classes. When I saw them there recently, Mimi said she hoped that I did not miss my arm too much. I let her and the other children touch my stump, which they found rather scary and marvelous. How they love being frightened when they know they’re perfectly safe!

Esther is studying violin and music theory with a demanding
but kindhearted professor from Cologne. Graça has proven herself something of a minor sorceress with languages and is already speaking beautiful French, thanks to the tutoring of a fine young man from Strasbourg.

Over the past several months, Violeta has taken all the Church Street children, as well as Esther and Graça, down to Castle Garden on moonless nights to learn the constellations. She is eager and patient with them, and it is doing her good to be able to teach them, my mother tells me. I am slowly doing my best to develop a new sort of relationship with her. Though we do not see each other, we send greetings and news through my daughters. Mama calls it a “paper-and-ink friendship,” guided from afar by what can never be. She says that that is sometimes all one can hope for. I am trying to rid myself of all expectations.

At the time we were suffering together, I did not realize that much of my urgency and desperation was prompted by the sudden absence Francisca’s death had created in my life. I see now what a brave effort Violeta made in trying to save me from my own foolishness.

I now have thirty-nine correspondents and a list of one thousand seven hundred and eighteen names and locations of blacks in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. My scroll reads not infrequently like the Old Testament:
Moon
Mary,
daughter
of
Augustus
and
Angola
Mary,
mother
of
William,
Sawmill,
and
Linda,
sister
of
Tina,
Claude,
Merchant,
and
Picker
Stephen
…

Frequent letters from Isaac and Luisa have given us news of River Bend, where Crow was indeed hanged shortly after our escape, at least if the rumors they heard in Charleston are to be believed. Shortly after our
sudden
departure,
as Luisa so nicely refers to our escape, Mistress Anne invested in new
stock
straight from the auction block. She had the rice fields back to full production within months.

Lily, Grandma Blue, and the others who had remained behind
were still in bondage. They are, of course, at the top of the list I am putting together. Morri has written to Lily to say we are all fine and that we miss her. We hope she has found someone to read the letter to her.

On realizing that I was not likely to return to Porto anytime soon, I began writing long letters to Benjamin, Gilberto, Luna Olive Tree, my father-in-law Egídio, and even Grandmother Rosa. Luna often sends sketches of fruit and flowers to me, and I return the favor with my drawings of the inhabitants of New York.

One day in September of 1824, there arrived in the post a slim manuscript written by Benjamin, entitled, “On the
Hidden
Meaning of Slavery,” whose dedication was made to me. In it, he gave readings of verses in the Torah to demonstrate that slavery was the last gasp of a dying world. The Lower Realms were shedding their skin like a snake, he theorized, in preparation for rising closer to the Upper Realms. The true and lasting evil of this practice, he wrote,
is
that
slavery
keeps
our
spirits
from
fulfillment
and
realization,
from
soaring
into
the
firmament
inside
each
of
us,
and
therefore
from
union
with
the
Lord.
As
such,
it
is
an
abomination
that
must
be
abolished
if
we
are
to
create
a
world
fit
for
the
Messiah.

In his accompanying letter, Benjamin told me that though the political situation in Portugal has calmed, he foresees a civil war before too long between those who favor a constitution and those who prefer an absolute monarchy.

In one of my letters back to him, I told him that I had seen Berekiah Zarco while fading from life on the road from River Bend to Petrie’s Landing. He told me that there was little beyond the scope of a powerful Jewish mystic – even traveling across time – and that he wouldn’t be surprised to meet Berekiah one day himself! He was certain that my illustrious ancestor had helped to save my life by reciting secret prayers over me.

I learned of Benjamin’s death just four months ago from Luna Olive Tree and can still not bring myself to write more than a few words about its significance to me. It is as though an eclipse has set not simply over our life together but over the hopes he had for a better world to come. I wonder sometimes if there is anyone left
to take over his mystical prayers and alchemy – who is
endeavoring
in a secret cellar somewhere to find the meaning in every moment.

Too weak to write me a last letter, the old apothecary had asked Luna to tell me that he was proud to have counted me among his friends and that – after I brought Morri to New York – he had seen me seated at the right hand of God in one of his visions. I was to always remember that each and every one of us was silver in the eyes of Moses.

Mama and I spoke a
kaddish
prayer for him, of course. And on the evening we received news of his passing, I set my flint to the seven candles of her menorah and let it blaze in my bedroom window all night long. It seemed essential to commemorate his departure from our world with light.

So it was that we reached October of 1825.

Three days ago, on the Fourteenth, at five in the afternoon, there was a knock on our door. Esther, who was practicing her violin in the sitting room, answered it and shouted, “Papa, you’d better come inside!”

I was in the garden, putting in some autumn bulbs – not an easy task with only one arm. With my fingers filthy with dirt, cursing the disturbance, I stomped into the sitting room.

He was removing his shoes in the doorway. I guessed it was him from that wee gesture and from his silhouette. No one else could have had that form.

He took a step inside the house. His eyes held the rains of the desert.

For a time I could not speak. My body seemed to be merging with everything around me. “We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger,” I whispered.

He repeated my words. Then, in a delicate and lilting voice, he began to sing “The Foggy, Foggy Dew,” changing the lyrics for our reunion:

And
every,
every
time
I
look
into
his
eyes,
he
reminds
me
of
the
olden
days
…

In my broken whisper, I joined him:
He
reminds
me
of
the 
summertime.
And
of
the
winter
too.
And
of
the
many,
many
times
I
held
him
in
my
arms
…
.

I ran forward and fell at his feet, hugging his beautiful belly, breathing in the scent of him, which I now knew I had dreamed of all these twenty years of separation. I was sobbing and shaking. But I did not wish to regain my composure; my spirit was simply too full to be contained, and there was no need to restrain it any longer. In his arms, I could be what I most desired.

He ran his hands over my head, then bent down and kissed my brow. I reached up and gripped his hand, as if to assure myself that he was real. “Yes, I am here,” he said.

Esther came and knelt beside me.

“It’s Midnight,” I whispered to her.

“I know.”

I stood up then and asked the question that I had been afraid to voice all my adult life. “Can you forgive me?”

He grinned. “There is nothing to forgive, my wee gemsbok. I am very, very glad to see you. Thank you for coming to find me.” He reached up and touched my cheek. “You look the same as when you were a lad. Just a trifle taller,” he said with a laugh.

“I lost my arm while escaping with the slaves from River Bend.”

He patted the stump. “That’s a very bad thing. I’m sorry. We shall dance for your loss. But truly you will be just fine without it. I expect you’ve discovered that by now, as you were always so quick to learn.”

I nodded. I held his shoulder for support and began to weep again. I must have been quite a sight.

As I had not been able to think properly, Esther said to Midnight, “Morri is alive and is at her school. She has been waiting for you.”

And so it was that Midnight and his daughter were reunited at our home that very afternoon. After they had cried together, I gave him his old rattle and the hug sent to him by Benjamin. He was overjoyed to receive them, but distraught at the news of the apothecary’s death. We spoke of Benjamin and the Olive Tree
Sisters for a time, and I told him how Graça was killed. Morri had already told him about Weaver’s sad fate. Of Father, all I told him for now was that he was long dead, killed during the French occupation of Porto. Midnight wept silent tears upon hearing that and shook for a time as I held him, reassuring me that he did not either hate him or remember him with anger. Then he smoked his pipe by our hearth and spoke to us of his disappearance and how he had come to find us.

I had been concerned about his seeing my mother for the first time, of course. And things were indeed difficult between them initially. I imagined that they would have much to talk about and would need many weeks to ease themselves into a new form of friendship. But there was time now.

I suppose I shall never be absolutely certain of what I desire for them. And sometimes when I see them together I still think of my beloved father and all that might have been.

I could not bear to be apart from Midnight that first afternoon as he spoke to us of his vanishing from River Bend. I sat close by his side and draped my arm over his shoulder. He kept his hand on my leg, which was a great comfort. Morri sat at his feet. All around was my family.

To our astonishment, the Bushman told us that the Indians were responsible for his disappearance. Way back in 1814, five Creek men had ridden in to River Bend, and in exchange for a fortune in hides, Big Master Henry had permitted Midnight to try to cure their dying healer. In this effort he was wholly successful, and this had, naturally enough, won him renown among the Creek clans in the South. Then, in December of 1820, the pregnant wife of a chief in the mountains of Georgia took gravely ill. This clan head was the son of the mighty chief whose healer had been cured six years earlier by Midnight. He
dispatched
a party to River Bend immediately, to exchange more hides for permission to bring the Bushman temporarily to
Georgia
. Times had changed, however. The Indians were losing power and territory every day. Dealing with them in a civil manner was no longer regarded as a necessary evil by the settlers
and planters. Master Edward ordered the Creek emissary off his plantation and said that under no circumstances would he consider losing Midnight for even one day.

At this point, the Indians asked no more favors. Four warriors on horseback took Midnight on the Twenty-First of January from Porter’s Woods, as he was chasing honeybees flying to their hive. The men covered their tracks carefully and raced with him off to Georgia. They met no opposition along the way,
particularly
as they were heavily armed and rode across back trails used infrequently by whites.