Graca was demure and thoughtful. Blessed with her mother’s dark knowing eyes, she observed people carefully. She was frequently disappointed that life was not as she would have wished it — that the secret treasure she sought eluded her. Reading to her and consoling her were very serious matters indeed. As a consequence, one of my great joys was to make her laugh. Often, by the light of a single candle at her bedside she would study maps I found for her at Senhor David’s bookshop, rather as though they held the key to the mysteries of life. I predicted that our provincial city at the edge of Europe would become too small for her when she reached adulthood.
At night I sometimes read to the girls from the Torah, which Graca always enjoyed very much but which put Esther immediately to sleep — not always an easy thing, so it served a useful double purpose.
After our talk on the beach, things between Francisca and me grew easy and calm. The four of us weeded our flower beds and pruned the roses, sat crosslegged on our bed playing cards, and went to the river to watch the coming and going of ships. We planted four fruit trees given us by Grandfather Egidio in each of the corners of our garden, where Midnight had previously had his medicinal plants: a peach, a lemon, an orange, and a quince.
Francisca continued to knit her astonishing creations, selling some of the more modest examples at a clothing shop on the Rua das Flores. She also made dresses and shawls for herself and the girls, and waistcoats and suits for me — which made us infamous in the neighborhood.
I always spoke to the children in English, as I wanted them to have that advantage in life. Like me, they understood both languages without difficulty by the time they were five or six.
Once, when the girls were six and seven, we took them to London for a fortnight, handed them over to Mother and Aunt Fiona, and escaped to Amsterdam, where Papa had hoped to take me and where I had long since wanted to see the synagogue. The harmony of its wood and glass, and its simple silence, were thrilling to us both, and I was astonished to find many men and women with whom we could speak Portuguese, though their families had not been back to our homeland in more than two centuries.
Our family was a happy one, I would say, but more than that I began to perceive it as a metaphorical voyage made by the four of us, with additional travelers — like my mother, Benjamin, Luna, Senhora Beatriz, and even Grandmother Rosa — welcomed along whenever they wished. I still often thought of Daniel, Violeta, and Midnight, of course, at times with pain and guilt. Radiantly defiant of distance and death, they, too, stowed away on our journey — perhaps because so much of them continued to live inside me.
During the first years of my marriage, I learned nothing more of Midnight’s death and the loss of affection between my parents. Curiously, an odd, persistent doubt remained with regard to my father, as I had never glimpsed his body after his death. In many a dream I discovered him in the midst of crowds — at the marketplace in Porto’s New Square, at the Great Fair in London’s Hyde Park, in the synagogue in Amsterdam. He was alive, and he had absented himself from our family, believing he had caused enough misery.
Upon waking, the pain of him not knowing Francisca or my daughters would sometimes constrict my chest so badly that I’d have to jump up simply to breathe.
I occasionally gave in to the mad belief that these dreams of him might be true — that he had not died in Porto, that Sergeant Cunha had identified him mistakenly. Or lied.
I never mentioned my doubts to anyone but Francisca.
“Where would he have gone?” she had asked, sitting up with me in bed one night.
I could not say. But I had a better question: “Will he ever return?”
XXVII
Fairly early on in our marriage, Francisca and I developed a strategy to fool fertility into glancing the other way when we were feeling amorous. Yet despite all our many precautions, in early April of 1822, a child-to-be made its presence keenly felt every morning to my wife.
Remembering how she had suffered after the birth of Esther, I was furious with myself for allowing this to happen. In the past, I had sneered at couples who forswore the pleasures of intimacy, preferring abstinence. But now I dearly wished that we had listened to reason.
“Very well, perhaps we ought to have two beds,” she agreed when I told her that I thought it best that we abstain from now on.
“Absolutely right!” I declared, oblivious to her trap.
“But I am apt to become lonely at times,” she said sadly. “Would you mind me occasionally sleeping beside you?”
“No, that would be acceptable — occasionally.”
She knelt next to me. “And would you come to me if you grew lonely? We are friends, after all, and I should hate to think of you all alone and miserable.”
“Yes, indeed, I should tiptoe to your bed.”
“Now, in either of those cases,” she added thoughtfully, “I might then brush up against you. Accidentally, of course. The bed being so small, you understand. And if your flagstaff were to stand up — accidentally, I mean. What then?”
“Then you would have to fight me off.”
“And if I should endeavor to lose too swiftly,” she giggled, “would you be very cross with me?”
Wagging my finger like Mother, I told her, “Very well, you may be pleased, but I’ll not again play Jason to your Medea. If that enraged harpy dares set foot in our house again, this time I shall chain her to our bed.”
Smiling, she placed my hand over her belly. “We shall have ourselves another healthy child — now stop ranting and bring in more wood for the fire.”
Over the coming weeks, despite my grave reservations, I grew resigned to another baby, particularly as our girls were greatly excited about having a little brother or sister. The two of them scribbled lists of names and howled with laughter over the worst possible choices — Adalberto for a boy and Urraca for a girl. Witnessing their delight, I came to the conclusion Francisca’s pregnancy was a good thing, after all.
Then Francisca hemorrhaged. I was at my workshop, and Esther came running to fetch me. By the time we reached home, Benjamin, Senhora Beatriz, and a local midwife were already at Francisca’s bedside. She had stopped bleeding, but we had lost the child.
“It’s my fault,” she moaned as I kissed her tears away.
“No one is to blame. The important thing is that you get better quickly.”
That evening her condition took a turn for the worse and she lost consciousness. Neither I nor her father could rouse her. Esther again ran to fetch Benjamin. Thanks to his ministrations, Francisca awoke for a time, but she was so weak that she couldn’t keep her eyes open.
“I’m here,” I told her. “What may I get for you?”
She was very pale. “Sing,” she said. “Let me hear your voice. I do not wish to lie here in the dark without your voice.”
So I sang for her — all the Scottish, English, and Portuguese songs I had ever learned. I continued until daybreak, when she again lapsed into a deep slumber. When my voice failed, I spoke the poetry of Robert Burns, which is song to me even when recited.
Grandmother Rosa sat with Francisca for a time, gripping her hand between both of hers, as though to squeeze strength back into her. She and my father-in-law tried to lead me away from her so I might eat or sleep. They promised to stay, but I would not leave her. I asked only for hot tea so that I could continue to sing.
I was convinced that if I were to step away from her for even a moment, I would lose her forever. My father-in-law brought me my King of Diamonds waistcoat, which I put on, hoping to draw her toward life with all the beauty she had ever given me. Benjamin held my hand and whispered prayers over her for a time, writing secret inscriptions in Hebrew upon her forehead to protect her from harm. The girls took turns bringing me strong bitter tea made by Grandmother Rosa, their faces questioning and frightened. Esther scrambled up into bed and lay with her mother on occasion, whispering in her ear.
“You are my one true and good friend,” I told Francisca, “and you cannot leave me.” I was sure that I could
