Hunting Midnight Read online

  Praise for Hunting Midnight:

  “Zimler is always an exhilaratingly free writer, free of ordinary taboos … Hunting Midnight shows Zimler now at the height of his powers. The plot is worked out beautifully.”

  London Magazine

  “Zimler’s writing is pacey and accessible without ever patronishing the reader; deeply moving without descending into schmaltz.”

  Martin Bright, Observer

  “Zimler has this spark of genius, which critics can’t explain but readers recognise, and which every novelist desires but few achieve.”

  Michael Eaude, Independent

  “I defy anyone to put this book down. It’s a wonderful novel: a big, bold-hearted love story that will sweep you up and take you, uncomplaining, on a journey full of heartbreak and light.”

  Nicholas Shakespeare, author of Bruce Chatwin and The Dancer Upstairs

  “An historically rich exploration of important ethical issues and an exciting read as well.”

  Peter Singer, bestselling author of Animal Liberation and One World: The Ethics of Globalization

  “Reading Hunting Midnight was like discovering a rare gem. Richard Zimler is a brilliant author with a touch of genius. I’ve never met a character who touched my heart the way John did …”

  Rendezvous Magazine (USA)

  “In his compelling and deeply moving novel, Zimler weaves a gorgeous tapestry of rich historical and imaginative detail, in which the human spirit transcends even the darkest abuses and betrayals. The unforgettable characters of Hunting Midnight will break and mend your heart.”

  Elizabeth Rosner 2002 Ribalow Jewish fiction prize-winning author of The Speed of Light

  “A wonderful novel that spans generations and crosses continents, told with an unforgettable narration. An epic story that through a quest for personal identity carries the reader into the mysterious world of the secret Jews of Portugal in the 19th century. Better than any history text I know, it contains all the ingredients of a bestseller, to the great delight of Zimler’s fans including me!”

  Esther Benbassa, author of The Jews of France and Sephardic Jewry

  “An earnest and deliberate thriller of family secrets, [featuring] florid prose, adventure and mystery.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  “Shocking … colorful … absorbing.”

  Publishers Weekly

  Some reviews of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon:

  “A fascinating novel with spellbinding subject matter.”

  Elle

  “Drenched in atmosphere and period detail.”

  The Wall Street Journal

  “Zimler [is] a present-day scholar and writer of remarkable erudition and compelling imagination, an American Umberto Eco.”

  Francis King, Spectator

  “A riveting literary murder mystery, his novel is also a harrowing picture of the persecution of 16th-century Jews and, in passing, an atmospheric introduction to the hermetic Jewish tradition of the Kabbalah.”

  Independent on Sunday

  HUNTING MIDNIGHT

  Richard Zimler

  To all those who fought to end the abomination of slavery in the United States and southern Africa. And to Midnight and his people.

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Perface

  I

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  II

  XXX: The Power of Silence

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV: Nigger Fate

  XXXV: Except for One Thing

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL: You’s Dead Even If You’s Alive

  XLI: Just Like Mamma and Papa

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV: We Were on Our Own

  XLV

  XLVI

  XLVII: Why Can’t Midnight Talk?

  XLVIII: A Whole House of Memories Just Got Too Filled Up

  XLIX

  L: My Vengeance Is Here

  LI

  LII: Seventeen Lives in My Hands

  LIII

  LIV: Everything Had Always Been Waiting

  LV

  LVI

  LVII

  LVIII: They Embraced the Knowledge of What Was Coming Next

  Postscripts

  LIX

  LX: Giving of Ourselves to the World

  LXI

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful thanks to my editor, Samantha Bruce-Benjamin, for her extraordinary passion, intelligence, generosity and hard work.

  Thanks too, to Cynthia Cannell for her loyalty and enthusiasm, and to Kate Miciak for her faith and support.

  It is sometimes a difficult job reading an early draft of a novel, and I am grateful to Douglas Herring, Ruth G. Zimler, Michael Rakusin, and Alexandre Quintanilha for their invaluable comments.

  I am forever in debt to Laurens van der Post, whose books first started me hunting for Midnight, and to authors too numerous to name for their wonderful historical research.

  Special thanks to Alex, who – like this book – links three continents.

  Perface

  Afierce wind was driving the rain in off the sea as I made my way home across the slippery cobblestone streets of my beloved city of Porto.

  It was May of 1798, a month after my seventh birthday. Carefully tucked away inside my cane basket were two scrolls of indigo muslin that I had agreed to fetch for my mother – but only in exchange for a favor, I have to confess. If this rain were to splash so much as an inch of her fabric, she would grumble to herself all evening and refuse to make me my favorite sweet. Hence, not so much for the continued protection of the goods themselves as for the sake of my sweet tooth, I sought out shelter.

  A certain inherited distrust of all things religious prompted me to choose Senhor David’s old bookshop, rather than the whitewashed chapel next door, as a place to wait out the storm. As I entered through the low doorway, David encouraged me to leave my basket behind his writing desk and to remove my sodden boots, which he dangled over the iron railing by his fireplace.

  “Senhor David,” I asked, “may I go to the British Isles?”

  “Off with you, lad!” he said, smiling.

  I dashed over the creaking wooden floor to the musty back room where he kept his treasure trove of English books, which Father and I had referred to as the British Isles for as long as I could remember.

  I ought to explain that although I was born in Porto, a provincial city of sixty-five thousand souls in the north of Portugal, Father had had the honor – as he so often referred to it – of having been born a Scotsman. I was not yet aware of it, but when I spoke English, I had a distinctly Scottish accent.

  Of tightly packed shelving, mildew, and thread-legged spiders these British Isles were blessed in abundance but, alas, they boasted nary a decent window save for the small octagonal skylight in the low, sagging ceiling. The rain was pelting down on its yellowing glass, creating a pattering din, rather like mice scampering.

>   It was so dark that I could barely see my own hands, and I was just considering asking for a candle when the sun suddenly peeked through the clouds, illuminating a bookshelf against the wall. Stepping closer, I could see that one of the titles was embossed in glittering gold letters – The Fox Fables. As no author’s name was printed on the binding and since I was given to flights of fancy, I imagined that a clever fox had written them himself.

  I shooed away Hercules, the calico cat whom Senhor David kept to chase off rats, plopped down on the sawdust of the floor, and opened the book. Inside, thick yellowing pages bore colorful drawings of dogs, cats, monkeys, elephants, and many other animals – a Noah’s Ark of sorts. I was so excited by my find that I could read only the opening sentences of each story. Wishing to inquire its price of Senhor David, yet dreading the prospect of a sum beyond my means, I stood up to consider my options. That was when a single sheet of blue-tinted paper, delicate as a butterfly’s wing, fell from the book’s pages, fluttering down to finally settle on my right foot.

  I picked it up and glanced around surreptitiously. Senhor David was sitting at his desk, smoking his pipe, absentmindedly rubbing his hand over his bald head while studying a large map. Hercules had curled up in his lap.

  I crept into the darkest corner of the room and saw that I held a letter written in elegant script, addressed to a woman named Lúcia. It began, My beloved, will you think me too bold if I were to say that I fall into the arms of slumber each and every night imagining your hand over my heart?

  Next I read of moist lips, moonlight, fainting spells, and orange blossoms. I recognized the word seios – breasts…. What glorious, heart-stopping wickedness that portended! Many other words were unfamiliar to me, however. I’d need a dictionary to know how daringly shocking this letter might be. It was signed with a swirling flourish by a man named Joaquim. He even dotted the i with a wee heart.

  I wondered if The Fox Fables had been a present from Joaquim to Lúcia. Perhaps it had displeased her and she had sold it to Senhor David, forgetting she had concealed her suitor’s letter inside. Since it bore no date, the two lovers might very well be grandparents by now. Though it was possible they were still unmarried and were at that very moment planning their next forbidden tryst at the top of the Clerics Tower, two hundred feet above the city’s streets.

  I tucked the letter into the pocket of my breeches, took a snootful of musty air into my lungs to rouse my courage, and marched to Senhor David. Handing him the book as innocently as my racing heart would allow, I dropped into his large palm all the copper coinage then in my possession: precisely four five-reis pieces. Judging from his wrinkled nose, this grand sum of twenty reis was not nearly enough. I begged him to let me pay for the book a little each week, giving him a helpless look, as was my wont when entreating an adult.

  “I simply can’t, John,” he said, shaking his head. “Were I to conduct business on credit, I would soon be a pauper.”

  “Please, please, please – I shall have the rest of the payment for you in one month,” I whined, clueless as to how I might fulfill such a promise but unwilling to see the beautifully illustrated fables escape my possession.

  I might have simply left with the letter, of course, but I could not imagine owning it without the book. That would have been robbery.

  Knowing he was about to refuse again, I called upon my theatrical gifts and assumed the air of a destitute orphan. Senhor David laughed, since he had seen this coming. As recompense for my effort, however, he agreed to my offer with a pat on my head, though by way of a warning he said, “Should you fail to abide by our agreement, I shall take you as payment, whereupon, make no mistake, I shall have my wife boil you in a stew for supper!”

  “Being mostly bones and beak, I’d taste like a seagull,” came my reply, which pleased David so much for some reason that he laughed again and pulled up a stool for me, instructing me to examine my new purchase while waiting for the storm to pass.

  And so I began to read the first few fables, most memorably “Mouse, Frog, and Eagle,” whose moral is: He that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.

  When the sun returned for good half an hour later, I thanked Senhor David, slipped on my boots, and raced home. After receiving high praise from Mother for taking such good care of her cloth, I took the stairs two at a time to my room, where I and the letter could be alone.

  I paid for my treasures one month later, just as I had promised, with coins earned helping Papa to clean his study and our storeroom.

  I slept with the book and the letter under my mattress for months. The two objects became as inseparable in my mind as Joaquim and Lúcia themselves.

  It is more than likely that my mother and father discovered the letter while tidying my room, but they never mentioned it. Years later, I gave it to my bride – along with The Fox Fables – as my wedding gift.

  Upon her death, I clung to them as though they might save me from a shipwreck. I have them with me still.

  *

  Since my purchase of The Fox Fables, I have jeopardized my eyesight with thousands of evenings spent reading by my hearth or in bed by the light of a candle. Long acquaintance with the art of storytelling has made me aware that a tale such as the one I am about to tell ought to have a man or woman of universal sympathy or special bravery at its heart. And yet I feel myself wholly lacking for such a role. Furthermore, I am unsure of my own talents in giving an accurate account of the events that brought me from Portugal to America.

  I therefore feel that the proper and most honest way to begin is with a lad of twelve named Daniel, whom I had the good fortune to meet by accident some twenty-four years ago. It was he who would set in motion the ripples that would later carry me across the Atlantic Ocean to America. If I am worthy of the central place in this story that I shall come to occupy later on, then it is, in part, due to the courageous example he set.

  As I prepare to write of Daniel and many other things besides, I find myself speculating on what secret messages may flutter out of the pages of this tale of mine and fall at your feet. I can only hope that whatever reaches your hands encounters a receptive heart and an unbiased soul.

  I

  I

  Though a child of tattered clothing and bad manners, Daniel has always held a special place in my heart. Had our life together been an adventure novel, he would have continued to train himself through many hours of candlelit study to become a great sculptor, revered far and wide, by the last page. But life, as Father used to say, is at best a game of Pope Joan played on a slanted table with the dealer hiding all the best cards up his ruffled sleeve. And so my friend was prevented from accomplishing such wonders.

  Had fortune smiled upon him, or more importantly, had I, John Zarco Stewart, greater strength in my arms, then my own life might have gained by proximity as well. After all, we sometimes only realize the effects we have had on our loved ones years later.

  *

  I met Daniel in June of 1800, when I was nine years old. More than two years had passed since I’d discovered The Fox Fables in the British Isles. I was heading out early, fortified only by a cup of tea and a crust of corn bread that I’d smeared with honey and gobbled – to my mother’s great displeasure – in an instant.

  My destination was a wee lake – or tarn, as Papa called it – far beyond the walls of our city, in the wooded hinterland along the road to Vila do Conde. It was a wondrous spot for watching all manner of birdlife, especially just after the dawn. I was at the time, and still am today, a great lover of those handsome creatures of feather, air, and light – a keen appreciator and imitator of avian song as well. Back then, if I could have begged a beak and wings from God, I surely would have considered becoming one.

  I was already approaching the granite steps at the end of our street that led down to the riverside neighborhood when raucous shouting reached me from a nearby alley. Racing there at top speed, I discovered Senhora Beatriz, a widowed washerwoman to whom we gave our soiled sheets e
very Wednesday, splayed on the cobbles outside her house. Whimpering like a beaten dog, her bony knees were drawn protectively into her belly. A periwigged brute in the livery of a coachman was standing threateningly over her, his countenance distorted by rage.

  “You careless bitch!” he shouted, fairly spitting out the words. “You pilfering, lying Marrana.”

  Marrana was a new word to me. Later, my tutor informed me that it meant both swine and converted Jew, an epithet that had confused me, since I had never heard Senhora Beatriz described as anything but a good Christian soul. Indeed, I had only the vaguest idea of what a Jew might be, for though my grandmother had spoken to me of them on two or three occasions, I had not learned anything more than a few legends in which Jewish sorcerers always seemed to be foiling the work of nefarious kings with their magical prayers.

  The villainous coach driver now finished his diatribe by snarling, “I’m going to sell you for glue-making, you lazy whore.”

  Then, after kicking Senhora Beatriz several times, he grabbed hold of her thinning hair, preparing to pound her head against the cobbles.

  My heart was battering against my ribs and I began to feel dizzy. I wondered whether I ought to let loose a scream and if it would be able to fly over the rooftops separating my father from me and shake him awake. In those days, I was fully convinced that – at nearly six feet in height – he possessed unsurpassed power to restore order to the entire world.

  I would surely have given voice to this bloodcurdling shriek if out of nowhere a rock hadn’t caught our brute straight on his cheek. It had been hurled so perfectly and with such righteous force that our evildoer staggered back in shock. Falling to one knee, he seemed puzzled by what had happened, until he spotted the culprit stone sitting innocently at his feet. Looking around for the willful David who had dared to challenge him, he soon fixed me with an enraged stare. In my frilly white shirt, black-and-red-striped breeches, and buckled boots, I was a most unlikely enemy. I even had angelic bangs back then and what my father referred to as “doelike” blue-gray eyes. Nevertheless, I took several steps backward and began to hiccup – a reaction provoked by shattered nerves that I had suffered many times before.