“John, that’s not what I was trying to say,” she interrupted. “It’s not that I want you to forget me — I just want you to disregard any expectations you think I might have.”
“I’ll try,” I answered.
“Good.”
“But what about you? Will you be all right alone in London?”
“The truth is, John, I’m of no use to anyone else right now. We both know I’m not the woman I was, so I think it’s better — and right, in a way — for me to be alone for a time. If you give me a few years by myself, I think I may be able to come back much stronger than I am now. Please be patient with me. I think that’s the only thing I have a right to ask anymore. Though perhaps, given my behavior, I’ve even forfeited that.”
The next morning at eleven, I said good-bye to Mother on the wharf. The last thing she did was to kiss both my hands and make them into fists. “You have my fondest affection with you always, my son.”
Her posture was stooped as she boarded, and I feared she might faint. We waved until she was far enough downriver that I was sure she could no longer see me — which was in truth not so great a distance, since she refused to wear her spectacles in public.
Several days later, feeling powerfully sorry for myself, I took Berekiah Zarco’s illustration to Benjamin. By the light of a single candle in his sitting room, he deciphered its lettering, which had been penned in what he termed Sephardic script — the box-style characteristic of Spain and Portugal. According to his translation, it read:
Apparently, it was not a geography book at all, but rather an argument in favor of an exodus of Jews from Europe to lands then under the control of Moslems. As for the term
It was signed on the back by Berekiah Zarco. In minuscule letters, a date and place of authorship had been scripted as well:
Benjamin told me that the month of Av was the sixth in the Hebrew lunar calendar and generally coincided with part of July and August. The year 5290 for Jews was equivalent to 1530 A.D. for Christians. Hence, this cover page was nearly three hundred years old.
That night I slept with the page under my pillow, next to
I survived on my own over the next years by clinging to a routine of work with Gilberto. I found him a sterner taskmaster than I’d first imagined, yet also affectionate and unfailingly honest. During my apprenticeship with him, I’m quite sure he often considered strangling me, but in his critiques of my designs, he never sought to belittle me. Even after ten hours in each other’s company, we often still took pleasure in walking by the river in the evening or in sipping brandy at a nearby tavern. He was — and is — a very good man.
Mother wrote to me assiduously over those first years of separation, sending news on a weekly basis. In the spring of 1810, she joined a small congregation of Jews whose ancestors had hailed from Spain and Portugal. Having never before attended a proper synagogue ceremony, she found it most confusing. Furthermore, she regarded herself as wholly inferior to the others, knowing next to nothing of Jewish ritual. She was particularly shocked to discover that she and the other women were required to sit separately from the men. In her own family, her mother had not only lit the Sabbath candles but also recited many of the prayers.
One very positive note was that she had easier access to music for her pianoforte and had been able to attract six young students, two of whom she considered gifted. Along with her embroidery skills, which were highly esteemed, these lessons afforded her a steady income.
I was less diligent in my letter-writing and would sometimes let a fortnight pass without sending word to her. Oddly enough, I believe we became closer through our correspondence than we had been since I was nine or ten years of age. Her renewed devotion to me emerged in her joy over the progress I was making in my apprenticeship and her keen interest in my silly stories of life in our quiet land. I even began to notice that the passion in her heart, dormant for many years, was blossoming again. Often she would scribble out the themes of a new musical work by Beethoven that she had just purchased, writing to me of the emotions it inspired in her.
About a year after her arrival in London, she visited Swanage to place a pebble from the surrounding grounds on Midnight’s gravestone, as was the Jewish custom. The minister of the parish church had been in the town for only two years and knew nothing of an African who had died in the vicinity, however. The body had probably been placed in an unmarked grave. This upset her greatly, but she realized in the end that Midnight was safe wherever he was and that he would not have cared, since all the earth to him was home. She wrote to me that we would surely both meet him again on the Mount of Olives and that he would be wearing an elegant scarlet waistcoat and breeches, but no shoes. Carrying his quill and hollowed ostrich egg shell, he would be
In my work, I devoured all that Master Gilberto could teach me about potting and tile-making. When he allowed me to begin making my own designs, my first project was a tile panel illustrating a comic sketch of Goya’s — a monkey painting the portrait of a donkey. Over the next two years, I transferred many of his works to tile and even painted some of his figures on vases and teapots. Then I began to execute works of my own inspiration based on the stories Midnight had told me. Gilberto purchased my first tile panel — nine squares depicting a great white feather falling into the Bushman’s outstretched hand.
Over her first three years in England, Mother offered all manner of excuses for being unable to return home for an extended visit, until I realized what ought to have been obvious from the very beginning: Absence was not increasing her fondness for Porto one whisker and she would not be making the journey home anytime soon. I read between the lines that she was fearful of the emotions that seeing our house and Grandmother Rosa would stir in her.
So in October of 1812, I inquired if she would like me to visit, and she replied that she missed me each and every day and that my coming to London would be a solemn blessing. As the idea of passing a winter fighting my way through the frigid English rain was unacceptable to me, I begged permission from Gilberto to visit her for two months that spring. I was now less than half an inch shy of six feet in height and wore my hair long, tying it with a black velvet ribbon in back, which I regarded as terribly dashing.
In the world beyond my immediate surroundings, Napoleon’s dream of European conquest all but died in November of 1812, when, starving and frozen, his troops retreated from an ill-advised attack on Moscow. Within eighteen months his throne in Paris would be handed to Louis XVIII. In consequence, another French invasion of Porto was impossible — for the time being. Yet I refrained from unearthing the mementos of Midnight and Daniel I had buried. Like Mother, I had no wish to confront such vestiges of my past.
XXV
I set sail for London in time for my mother and me to celebrate my twenty-second birthday together. I was filled with trepidation, principally owing to a glorious complication that had occurred just before I left.
I had been out strolling when I caught the eye of a lass standing on her second-story balcony. She had long black tresses and darkly glowing eyes. Playfully, she lifted the edge of her royal blue mantilla and held it over her
