that Daniel’s drowning had removed all desire on my part to swim in the river. I was completely petrified by the idea of being unable to see through the murky water, and though I presumed that I would soon overcome this fear, I was wrong; I would never again voluntarily enter the water. Not even Midnight could cure me of this.
The African and my father returned that evening, just before supper. On seeing me, Midnight gave me a hearty smile, which I returned in kind, but I was unsettled by everything that had happened to me in his presence. I began to feel the enormous power he had over me. One word of reproach from him would have dried my spirits to nothing.
We chatted for a while, mostly about Porto. He found the city most entertaining, particularly its residents. He held that the Portuguese spoke louder than any people he had ever known.
I stared at him all evening and barely spoke. I wondered if, in the tales of King Arthur my father had told me, Merlin might have been bronze-skinned and tiny. I tried to imagine the Bushman in his African homeland, a sparkling wand in his hand.
While wolfing down a gargantuan helping of baked apples, I commented on Midnight’s having again removed his shoes at our door. But instead of saying that I found this a primitive practice — as my parents expected — I declared that it was the height of civilized deportment, since in so doing he avoided tracking all manner of muck into the house. Father stared at me in bewilderment. Mother, however, knowing only too well my predilection for mimicry, replied, “John, you may not walk in the house barefoot. You shall wear your shoes.”
“But the filth!”
“The filth stays! And your shoes as well. Midnight is Midnight and you are you.”
“That is very, very true,” the African agreed, laughing.
“Aye,” Papa seconded, “she’s trumped you, lad.”
I looked up at Midnight for some show of support, but he showed me an expression of helplessness in the face of our family disagreement.
Despite my parents’ firm disapproval, in the end I began removing my shoes at the door as well, and it is a practice I have kept to this day. I also request it of my family and all visitors, to the exasperation of many but to the great benefit of my home.
I remember adding that night, as my final protest against my parents’ wishes, “But with our shoes on in the house we must look like barbarians to him!”
This seemingly innocent statement of mine is one I have often remembered, as I believe I hit the truth dead center. Midnight must have regarded us all — my family included — as people living in dollhouses, leading porcelain and silk lives. How could he have not felt this when, as I later learned, his own early life had been one of two-and three-day hunts for giant beasts called eland; of treks through the desert sands in search of food, his water carried in ostrich eggs; of narrow escapes from Dutch muskets, English bayonets, and Zulu spears? Our Portuguese stage in comparison must have seemed tiny indeed, an African Old Testament drama reduced to the size of a European puppet show.
Not that I should have desired the life he’d had. Nor did he ever indicate disdain for ours, nearly always showing an amused curiosity when faced with things he didn’t understand. Not that he was perfect, but I believe that his unqualified acceptance of us speaks eloquently for his tolerant spirit and faith in everyone’s good intentions. None of us, I am sure, could have adapted to his Africa so graciously and happily.
I trailed him like a newborn duckling over those first weeks, delighted by his prancing gait, elfin grin, and woolly peppercorns of hair. I adored filling his pipe, helping him buckle his shoes, and leading him through the city by the hand. I listened in awe to his stories of the African desert while seated at his feet. I felt as though I had found a living treasure. I’d not have traded knowing him for a king’s ransom in gold.
During those first months with Midnight, Mother, Father, and I tested his near-boundless patience by embarking upon separate projects with him — to varying degrees of success.
My mother’s project was to familiarize him with Portuguese social etiquette, though she made it clear that by virtue of saving me he had forever won the right to behave as he wished in our home. She was encouraging and open with him, in a way I had never seen her with anyone else, never once raising her voice at him in anger — something I wish I could say with regard to myself. These lessons in etiquette were only for those times when we went out with him in public. They were for both his benefit and ours, since Mama was of the opinion that the quicker he could mix on equal footing with Europeans the easier his life would become.
Midnight had learned much in the way of European manners while working as a servant in the Cape Colony, but there were still rules to be learned in order to prepare him for his new life in a city far larger than any in southern Africa. Among the most essential were learning to stroll with my mother on his arm, tying a cravat without cutting off the blood flow to his head, referring only in code to bodily functions, and bowing to ladies upon making their acquaintance.
These lessons were given in English, as Midnight was never able to learn Portuguese in any depth. Nevertheless, he did well with the few social phrases he needed for the drawing-room parties my parents occasionally asked him to attend. These stock phrases were ghastly, in my opinion, and his favorite was especially awful:
In the end, the Bushman mastered all of my mother’s social graces with admirable aplomb save for two: wearing a cravat, which was torture for him and a practice that he gave up after a first year of effort, and saying his thank-yous. The very concept of this latter commonplace nicety baffled him, and he could never safely conclude when to express his thanks and when not to.
In the hopes of avoiding any unpleasantness that might result from this confusion, Mother wrote out guidelines that she read aloud to us one evening while Midnight and my father sat smoking by the hearth:
Part I: Midnight was never to be forced to express his gratitude at home. His thanks would be assumed by everyone.
Part II: When in public with one of us, a signal would be given to Midnight at the moment he was to thank a person outside the family.
Part III: When he was alone in public, Midnight was to say
This last instruction led, at times, to comic results, as when Midnight would forget the rules and thank Papa for simply locking the front door or Mama for avoiding a dog dropping in the street. Regrettably, this difficulty also provoked some disagreements as well. The one I would most prefer to forget happened only a month after he came to stay with us. Midnight and I had just purchased custard tarts with powdered cinnamon at our favorite pastry shop on the Rua de Cedofeita when, not four paces from us, a large woman in a ruffled dress of crimson tripped on a dislodged cobble. She fairly flew through the air, shrieking like Lilith, as my Grandmother Rosa used to say, and would have fallen flat on her face had Midnight not — with his harelike reflexes — dashed forward and reached for her, serving as a human barrier. It was a triumph against all odds, since she outweighed the African by forty or fifty pounds. Unfortunately, in pressing against him, the wayward woman crushed Midnight’s tart against his chest, leaving a yellow custard stain on the beautiful blue brocade waistcoat my father had bought for him.
Unperturbed, Midnight steadied the woman, who heaved a sigh of relief in the best operatic tradition and patted her brow with a white silk handkerchief pulled from her bosom. Before I could stop him, he exclaimed, “Thank you so much,” in all sincerity, but our matron believed herself cruelly ridiculed.
“Unhand me, sir!” she exclaimed.
As she stared contemptuously at Midnight, I tried to make amends. “He is thanking you for the honor of being able to assist you to your feet and see you safely on your way.”
She stared at us as though we had insulted her again. And I shall never forget what she said: “Keep your ugly black paws off me, you monkey!”
She spoke this sentence in Portuguese, of course. Hence, Midnight was blessedly ignorant of the precise meaning of her words.
Enraged she evidently was, but not nearly as cross as I. For though I had overheard neighbors gossiping about Midnight, no one had yet spoken of him rudely in my presence. Before I could squash the rest of my tart in
