Hunting Midnight

his finger at the words and sounding them out.

In this way, we read key paragraphs of military drama from Herodotus, Ovid, and Josephus at least a dozen times each. Midnight’s favorite was far and away Strabo’s account of the Roman general Pompey’s defeat at the hands of King Mithradates of Pontus. Estimating that we read this one at least once a week for two years, I would say that we relived this unusual battle more than one hundred times, to the point where we could recite it by heart. It never ceased to delight Midnight how Pompey’s superior forces were defeated by nothing more than honey. For while encamped on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, at a place called Trabzon, his troops gorged themselves on combs made by bees that had collected the poisonous pollen of rhododendron blossoms. Those who ate only a little were given to the wobbly walk and slurred speech of men who have downed several drams too many. Those who ate their fill were rendered mad or insensible. In their debilitated condition, they were slaughtered by Mithradates’s forces.

Midnight and I referred to it as the Battle of the Mad Honey.

This inspired such mirth in him because, to his people, honey was the single most delightful thing in the world, a harbinger of health, good luck, and joy. As a youth, he would smoke the bees out of their hives to steal their treasure. Honey was also Mantis’s favorite food. It was wisdom — and sunlight — given form. To imagine that it might be able to change the course of history in a military battle … This was so unexpected that he never ceased to be astonished and delighted by the notion.

*

My father’s plans for Midnight were responsible for his long journey from Africa to Europe. Papa had made the acquaintance of the Bushman while on an extended visit to a newly established vineyard belonging to a stern Yorkshireman named Reynolds a day’s ride from Cape Town. Midnight was referred to as a servant in the man’s home, but there was not a drop of liberty to his terms of employment.

Just after Papa’s arrival, a terribly ill Dutchman from a nearby property turned up at the vineyard, seeking medical help. Over the next three days, Father watched Midnight cure the man of advanced pleurisy by applying poultices of mashed herbs to his chest and administering sweet-smelling infusions. On the fourth day, the Dutchman was fit enough to return home.

Several days later, through a ritual of smoke and dance, Midnight then cured — in Papa’s presence — a youthful Zulu woman who had been possessed by an evil spirit. My father would not have bet a farthing on her recovery, yet recover she did.

With little faith in the merits of European medicine, having recently witnessed its barbarous methods foisted upon me, Papa realized that this was the man to help his ailing son — if he could convince him to return to Portugal. It proved a surprisingly straightforward task; Midnight wished to seek out medical men in Europe who might help him discover which plants might be used to combat the illness of chills and blisters that had already killed thousands of his people, since nothing he or any other local healer had yet tried was of any use. Upon further inquiry, my father learned that this particular affliction was smallpox.

Midnight’s rationale for seeking help in Europe was based on the notion that the disease had been brought to Africa by the Dutch and English. He reasoned that the plant extracts needed to combat it would be found in its place of origin. When and if he found the medicinal plants he was looking for in Portugal, he would return to Africa with them.

Papa proposed to Midnight that he grow in our back garden any specimens that might prove useful to his experiments. He let it be known as well that it would certainly be appreciated by Mama if Midnight could at the same time restore a part of our small rectangle of land to its glory days before my birth. Back then, my Grandfather Joao had coaxed all manner of colorful blossoms, including some rare Turkish roses, from its soil.

The last part of Papa’s plan, which he had not yet mentioned to Midnight, was that he wished for the African to serve as a companion to my mother and myself during his periods of absence, there still being the necessity of his traveling upriver to survey lands every six to eight weeks.

Only one obstacle to Midnight’s leaving Africa with my father remained: He was a slave belonging to Reynolds, and the Englishman would not let him go for any price. Not only did he treasure the Bushman’s considerable medical skills, but he also greatly valued his talents as an interpreter. Mrs. Reynolds, a frail woman of Swiss extraction from Geneva, who feared all manner of local illnesses, would permit no talk of Midnight’s possible sale. My father and the Bushman were therefore forced to plan an escape.

Having given Reynolds a false date for his return voyage to Europe, Father journeyed alone to Cape Town on horseback at the appointed time: precisely three days before Reynolds and Midnight were to make their monthly visit to the city for supplies.

My father registered under a false name at the Black Horse Tavern, where, growing more anxious and ill- tempered with each passing day, he awaited Midnight.

It was customary for the Bushman to be given one entire night to spend as he wished while his English employer relieved himself of his Calvinist wife’s religious constraints at an infamous brothel. Except that this month — smelling a foul Scottish trap — Reynolds didn’t go to Cape Town and he forbade Midnight from leaving the homestead. And so the night that Papa and the Bushman had agreed upon for their rendezvous came and went. The following evening as well. At which point, my father, gravely disappointed, made plans to leave two days later on a Dutch vessel.

The next evening at sundown, however, while Father sat sipping a gin at the Black Horse, Midnight stepped inside, huffing and puffing, naked from the waist up and barefoot. He carried a small sack containing medicinal herbs, a quiver with arrows, a bow, and an ostrich egg recently emptied of its last drop of water. A ruckus followed, because no kaffir, as the expatriate Europeans referred to the indigenous peoples, was allowed inside such an establishment. Seeing that he was not about to reverse this absurd ruling, Papa led Midnight outside, where the Bushman promptly imbibed so much water from a civic well that his belly swelled to near bursting. He then explained calmly that he had come directly on foot all the way from his farm, twenty miles by Father’s reckoning. That might have been extraordinary enough, but he had accomplished this feat in little more than three hours, judging by the angle of the sun at departure and arrival, running most of the way.

Papa realized that Reynolds might already be in furious pursuit of Midnight, so they set off immediately on the first available boat, a schooner that took them not to Europe but to a nearby outpost, where supplies of wheat, barley, and cloth were unloaded. They remained in the only inn there under false names, though Midnight, as an African, was obliged to sleep on the floor of the stables. A few days later they were able to book passage on another Dutch ship headed for Holland.

After my father told me all this, I asked if he had indeed found suitable land in Africa, since he had mentioned nothing about it since his return. “I’m afraid not, John,” he replied. “The land is good, but there is no political stability at present, and there won’t be for some time to come. If I were to purchase land there, two years from now those same acres might belong to a Zulu chief or Dutchman. But do not fear, we shall get our vineyard here, sooner or later. That I promise you.”

Then I asked the more troubling question: If Midnight truly was Mr. Reynolds’s property, then was it right for my father to have helped him escape? “Is that not a form of robbery?”

“Aye, I asked myself that more than once, laddie.” He took my hand. “But before I answer, I want to put a question to you. Is it right for one man to own another?”

I wasn’t sure how to reply.

“Does not the bird market of Porto enrage you, laddie?” he continued. “How much more of an infamy is it when men and women are bartered, when such miserable conditions are foisted upon reasoning beings?”

My hatred for the traffic in birds was such that it was unnecessary to say an additional word on the subject. From that moment on, I knew where I stood.

XIV

Violeta had not yet vanished from Porto, and one Saturday afternoon Midnight and I hid around a corner to watch her selling her embroidered prayers in New Square. The Bushman was charmed to learn that such a young lass knew nearly all the constellations in the sky. When I told him of the terrible fate that had befallen her, he said, “Likely she is being haunted now by Hyena, just as you were, John.”