Hunting Midnight (12 page)

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

T
he 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.

I was soon to discover that he, too, was uncertain of his age, since his people dated their births by referring to natural events in the world. When we spoke of it, he offered a response that astounded me: “I might be the age of the wildflowers that blossomed in the year of the hailstorm over Gemsbok Valley. The whole of the valley was very, very green, you see.” He circled his hands in the air, then brought them together and opened them in a swirl of blossoms. “As bright and as colorful as a desert oasis of flowers.”

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 Midnight 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?”

Mama bit her lip while considering whether to voice her opinion. I was about to lie to avoid a crisis when she said, “James, please be reasonable. John and I have not come to know him yet.”

“If he were a friend from London, May, would you be so reticent?”

“I do not know.” She waved a dismissive hand in the air. “The point is moot, James, because John is right. He is too dark to be English, and the neighbors may not be so … so generous as you and I.”

I sensed she had made a tactical error by mentioning the partiality of our neighbors. Father cared not a whit for their opinions on guests in our home or anything else.

He inhaled too sharply on his smoke, causing him to cough. After clearing his throat several times, he sought to trump her by saying, “I should like you to know, May, that Midnight was a subject of the British Crown in the Cape Colony.”

Mama sat down on one of our Windsor chairs, moving it beside mine as though to present a common defense of hearth and home. “That, dear husband, does not make him British.”

“Well, then, damn the British and damn the neighbors both! And damn you, May, for being so clever.”

Papa puffed away demonically and came near to suffocating us in his angry cloud of smoke. But when he spoke, it was with renewed tenderness. “I have learned that he is a very good man. So I will enter into a contract with you both. If, after three weeks, you still find him disagreeable, I shall pay his way back to the Cape and you will never see him again.”

“It is only that he could not have come to us at a worse time,”
my mother observed, sensing she had given more offense than she had intended. “Otherwise, I would happily welcome him into our home.”

“On the contrary, May, a better time could hardly be found. As I was telling you.”

“Yes.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I only hope you are right.”

“Three weeks is all I ask. Is that too much to give a husband who has been away for far too long and who has missed his wife and son terribly?”

These words weakened Mama’s resolve, and my own as well. She and I agreed to his request.

Papa stroked my hair. “Do not fear, John,” he said, patting my head, “for I am home now and you shall get better. I shall see to that if it is the last thing I do.”

These words chilled me, since they implied that a long war might be necessary to win me back to health. Even so, I was pleased that he filled his pipe a second time and continued to caress my hair, for his soothing scent and touch brought him finally home to me. I gulped down my tea and held the warm cup to my temples to ease the throbbing. I prayed for Daniel to stay away.