Hunting Midnight

We knew not what agonies these men might be suffering, but the oldest among us sniffed at the air for the unforgettable scent of burning flesh that they remembered from their youths, when prisoners of the Inquisition were burnt alive in Lisbon and other cities.

Additionally, with the king and his supporters claiming absolute sovereignty, many of us believed that a French occupation was inevitable, as the great forces at play in that country would wish to ensure that our newly reinforced monarchy was friendly to their interests.

Quite literally overnight, we were all afraid to voice opinions in public on any subject, no matter how trifling. I never let an English word pass my lips in the street. Luna, Benjamin, and I no longer celebrated Sabbath supper together. Instead, Esther and Graca took turns lighting the candles and I spoke our prayers. We kept our shutters and curtains closed in the evenings.

I also obliged the girls to put away all the scarves, shawls, and dresses their mother had made for them and to wear only the most modest clothing, as the clergy preferred. As a further precaution, they carried rosaries and whispered an Ave Maria at every opportunity, even to acknowledge a sneeze.

After being warned by some secret Jews that my name had come up in gossip about Marranos being considered for arrest, I also began making weekly confession, and — with a mixture of spite and juvenile amusement — fashioned tales of adventure involving much intemperate whoring. One of the elderly priests to whom I unburdened my sins quizzed me about the details of my escapades with great eagerness, plainly astounded that I could service so many women. I assured him that it was unusual for me as well, but that I was feeling most inspired by our King’s successes against the dastardly reformers and Jews threatening our moral foundations!

Two days after the nullification of our constitution, I witnessed a tumultuous gathering of hundreds in New Square, crosses and effigies of saints carried aloft like swords and shields. Both liberals and Marranos were denigrated as enemies of the Portuguese nation and Christ. These were slanders I had not heard since Lourenco Reis’s death, almost nineteen years earlier. Owing to this climate of folly and persecution, Benjamin in particular lived in fear, as it was common knowledge that he gave Torah lessons to anyone desiring them. Indeed, on June the Eighth, he simply vanished, though neither soldiers nor bailiffs had come for him, as far as anyone knew. I tried to learn if he had been jailed, but my inquiries were mocked by both prison officials and clerks at City Hall. Along with other neighbors, I helped board up his shop and home.

On the night of his disappearance, I dreamed of becoming a flame, then fading to nothingness. All the next day I kept imagining that this nightmare had been a portent of things to come and that my daughters would soon be orphans.

Three evenings later, while I was rereading Violeta’s letter for what must have been the dozenth time, there was a knock at the door.

“Who’s there?” called Graca. She was sitting near me, studying a map of Europe.

As there was no answer, I jumped up and opened the door a crack. It was Benjamin, cloaked from head to foot in black.

XXVIII

The girls rushed forward and clung to Benjamin, kissing his cheeks. He feigned a groan at being attacked. His eyes were tired and his gray hair stuck out in a dozen directions. Several days’ growth of white beard stubbled his chin.

“I’m sorry I was unable to get word to you,” he said, removing his spectacle case from his waistcoat pocket.

“Where have you been?”

“A secret. The less you know the better.” He scrutinized me over the rims of his spectacles. I must have been grinning, for he said, “What is it, lad?”

“Just that I shall always think of you that way — two eyes of glass and two of owl.”

He laughed. Esther moved her chair next to his and held his hand. When Graca asked if he had been in prison, he replied, “Happily, no. I have been helping to ensure the victory of Cyrus. I must return shortly to my hiding place, however, and it is better that you do not know where I am or how I am to accomplish these things.”

Cyrus was the ancient Persian ruler who, upon conquering Babylon, emancipated the Hebrew people, permitting them to return to Palestine and build their temple anew. Benjamin intended this as a reference to Dom Pedro, the King’s elder son and a champion of democratic reforms. Benjamin believed if Pedro won the throne from his younger brother, Miguel, he would usher in a Golden Age for Portugal and the Jews. Tens of thousands of our brethren exiled by the Inquisition would find their way home from Constantinople, Amsterdam, and other cities in the diaspora.

For a time, Benjamin sat and talked of trifles with the girls, who prepared us rabanadas. When our stomachs were filled, they bid our guest good night, for I had matters to discuss with Benjamin that I preferred them not to hear.

Before sending them on their way, he asked them to sit very quietly, then pressed his fingertips to their closed eyes so they might see the inner colors always residing inside them and thereby gain courage from the secret universe to which they each had access. He had them do the same to him. “Now our inner landscapes are joined,” he told them. “Neither you nor your father can ever escape me!” At that, he bared his teeth and growled, a trick he had learned from Midnight.

When they were safely ensconced upstairs, I told him that I had received a letter from an old friend.

“Who, dear boy?”

“Violeta, the lass whose uncle … whose uncle hurt her so badly.”

“I remember well the prayers we said on her behalf. Where is she now?”

“In New York, of all places. She wrote that she’d been in London as well.”

“‘Weep not for the dead nor brood over her loss. Weep rather for she who has gone away, for she shall never return, never again see the land of her birth.’”

I hazarded a guess: “Isaiah?”

“Jeremiah,” he replied, shaking his head.

“In any event, there’s no need for Jeremiah or anyone else to pity Violeta. She wrote that she has been fortunate, and she has invited me to execute a tile panel in her home. I think she has come into money.”

“Will you go?”

I shrugged. “It’s awfully far.” I stood up to take my pipe and tobacco pouch from the mantelpiece. “And it’s undoubtedly a bad idea to revisit my past.”

“Virginia cannot be so very far from New York, can it?” he asked.

Inside a cloud of smoke, I laughed and said, “I fear I dismissed Professor Raimundo long before reaching American geography.”

As though revisiting a faraway memory, he looked away and added, “My goodness … Midnight … after all these many years.” He sighed and shook his head. “That would truly be something, finding him, wouldn’t it, dear boy?”

Thinking Benjamin too tired to know what he was saying, I replied, “Dearest Midnight has been dead for seventeen years. The only place we shall find him now is in our dreams.”

“Dead? Perhaps not, John. But … what have I said?” The apothecary jumped to his feet. “Dear boy, forgive this old man his wandering thoughts. It’s my mind…. You will see when you are my age. You cannot trust your own thoughts. It’s like living with an impostor.”

His dramatic denial convinced me that he was concealing something. “It would seem your thoughts have not wandered anywhere but toward some hidden knowledge you may have. Tell me what you meant,” I said hotly.

“No, no, I meant nothing.” Relying on Ecclesiastes to save him, he said, “A fool’s tongue is his undoing. Forgive me.”

“Benjamin, this is not a time for quotations from the Torah. You obviously cannot stay long. Now, what’s this about Virginia and Midnight? Tell me now!”