Hunting Midnight (42 page)

“Do you still correspond with them? Have they visited you here?”

“I wrote letters, even though I was told not to. But I never received any reply. Manuela must have burned them.”

“Why would she do that?”

Violeta sighed. “When the children were older, Manuela sent them to boarding school. I might have stayed on in her home, but I risked confessing myself to her. We’d been like sisters. I did not tell her all I’ve told you, but I told her about how I’d earned my keep and intimated that I’d done other wicked things. When I was done, she told me I was to pack my things and leave her home immediately. I rushed to her husband for help, but he locked his door to me. I went down on my knees and begged, but he would not open it.”

“He must have been a hard man – to refuse you like that after all your service to his family.”

“Hard? He was only protecting his family from a whore and murderess.”

“You are much more than that.”

“Am I?” she shouted. “Am I really?”

“To me, you are.”

“You!” She spit her words at me. “You see me with eyes
clouded by a past that is long gone. It is gone, John. And the girl I was is dead! See that clearly before it is too late for you.”

She rushed to the doorway to her garden, then turned back, her whole body shaking with urgency. “Do not dare try to comfort me!” She shook her fist at me. “Let me finish, John, so I never have to speak of these things again.” Running a hand through her hair, she regained a measure of calm. “Two months later,” she said, “while I was working at a brothel near the river in Newcastle, Manuela’s husband sent word that he’d arranged work for me as cook and housekeeper to an old American widower named Lemoyne. I could have the job only on the condition that I never seek out their children. Lemoyne owned a dozen apple farms north of New York, along the Hudson River.” She gestured around the room. “This was his town house. I worked for him for four years till he died, a little over two years ago. In his will, he gave his farms to his sons. To me, he left this house and a small pension.”

“He must have valued your help.”

“Yes, my help.” She frowned. “And many other things
besides
.”

“When I first arrived, Violeta, you looked frightened. Why was that? Was it because I’m a man?”

“No, John. I thought the police had caught up with me.” She shook her head disconsolately. “A part of me has always hoped they’d catch me and punish me for all the evil I’ve done. I felt that very hope beating softly beneath my fear when I first saw you.”

“Violeta, you deserve so much more than you have.” I stood up and went to her, but she pushed me away. “You were forced into prostitution,” I pleaded. “You were violated and brutalized. Have you forgotten the way they sheared your hair?”

“Only because I told. If I had kept silent … It was my fault.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “I’ll not let you say such things about – ”

She reached up and slapped me with all that was left of her strength. “Get out!” she wailed. “Before it is too late, leave here! I do not want you here. Do you hear me? I’ve no place for you in my home!”

Knowing I would not leave her, she fell into my embrace, sobbing. I walked her up to her room. As we passed through her doorway, she asked, “Can someone contemptible earn the right to be happy – or to find peace?”

“You are not contemptible. Please don’t say that.”

She traced her fingertip across my cheek where she’d slapped me. “I am only speaking the truth.”

“The man you murdered might be one of the generous dead, like Daniel. Can’t you believe that’s possible?”

Her eyes opened wide. “John, he had two children. Would you forgive a woman who separated you from
your
two girls?”

In her room, I tucked her into bed. When she turned away from me on her side, I gathered up her hair to begin braiding it.

“No, don’t touch me. Just tell me a story.”

“Is that why you sent Daniel and me away that day in New Square? Did you regard yourself as unworthy of happiness?”

She made no reply. Perhaps because she was not looking at me, I found the courage to confess my betrayal at last. “Then I am unworthy too. Because I betrayed Daniel. I … I told him you might leave for America without him. The day we left you forever – the last day of his life. He became distraught. And he was drunk. He ran off to the river.” Violeta turned over to face me. “I tried to save him,” I moaned. “I’ve never tried so hard in my life to do anything. But I let him drown. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“Is that what you’ve thought all these years?” she asked, sitting up.

“Yes.”

“Oh, John, of all the people who loved Daniel, you did him the least harm. By the time you told him about my leaving for America, I’d already given him fair warning. He knew that I intended to go someday – with or without him.”

“But then why did he look so shocked when I told him?”

“Don’t you see? He must not have guessed that you knew. He must have felt that I’d betrayed him by telling you. It was my fault, not yours.”

“Then I didn’t push him into the river?”

“No, John, Daniel jumped. And there was nothing you could have done to save him. Only I … only I could have done that.”

I closed my eyes and shivered, feeling years of hidden shame leaving me. The world had changed; Daniel had not despised me before his death.

Gratitude for this made me more determined than ever to unburden Violeta of her remorse. “We all deserved so much better,” I whispered. “You, me, and Daniel. But we had so little choice back then. There was nothing you could do either – nothing.”

She kissed both my cheeks and said, “You’re kind, but I cannot go on speaking of the past. I am too tired. Forgive me.”

I slept fitfully and descended into a dark, shuddering nightmare in which I was locked in the Lookout Tower during a frantic rainstorm. Midnight was nowhere to be seen, but he was
speaking
in his clicking language from inside my head, as though we had become the same person. When I awoke, I realized that he seemed to be progressively disappearing – at least in body – from even my dreams.

Near five in the morning, I again spotted Violeta in her garden, but I did not go down to her; I did not wish to make parting more difficult for either of us.

At breakfast, I found that I could not eat a thing. I sipped cup after cup of tea and nibbled at some toast and jam simply to make Violeta happy. She tried to make light conversation about the cool weather and other trifling matters. My boat was to leave at the tolling of eleven o’clock. At ten, my agitation was such that I wished to shatter all the windows in the house. Instead, I stood up to take her leave.

“But I shall accompany you to the wharf,” she said anxiously, as though there were no question of her remaining behind.

Even her wretched white bonnet was dear to me now. “I could not bear to wave to you from aboard ship,” I confessed. “Please, let us say good-bye here.”

I held her close until she could smile when I tickled her chin.
Her last words to me were: “John, my fondness for you is so deep that I shall save you from myself. You must not fall in love with me. And if you already are, then I beg you to use this voyage to turn your heart away from me.”

They say that suffering hardens us to life, but I felt then, looking into her jade eyes, that we had both been broken by it.

XXXVIII

W
e made sluggish sail and took five days to arrive in Alexandria. The town was more rustic than I’d expected, though it did boast many handsome residences and
counting-houses
. I had never seen such a concentration of black people before, and though many wore ragged clothing while working as shop assistants and laborers, several individuals I passed were smartly dressed. I believed this boded well for Midnight and was pleased to see such signs of prosperity.

I found lodging at Harper’s Boarding House, a wooden mansion on Fairfax Street, not far from the port.

My first destination after depositing my things was King Street, a busy main road running east-west through the city. According to the letters from Captain Morgan, it was here that the apothecary named Miller who had purchased Midnight maintained his shop prior to his death from yellow fever. I was hoping that a son, daughter, or wife might be able to give me some information.

On finding the address in question, I learned it was now Reading’s Estate Agency.

I sat by Mr. Reading’s desk and told him my story. Hoping that any added information I could give him might bring me closer to my goal, I mentioned that my friend might have been known in Alexandria as Tsamma, which had been his original name. “Tsamma is a kind of melon that grows in the desert,” I observed. “During the droughts, the people and animals of Africa drink its plentiful juice.”

Mr. Reading lit his cigar. From within a cloud of smoke, he raised his furry eyebrows and said, “A kind of melon?”

“Aye, that’s right.”

He fought to restrain his mirth, then, failing in this Herculean effort, laughed with such force that he nearly toppled from his chair.

Seeing my displeasure, Mr. Reading sat up straight and said with renewed seriousness, “I do apologize, Mr. Stewart. It’s just that a melon …” He cleared his throat. “Now, returning to your inquiry, I must tell you that the Africans are generally given good Christian names when they arrive at our market. Your Midnight may be called Washington, Adams, Jefferson, or Jackson by now.”

As for the Miller family, the estate agent had never met them. There had been an interim owner of the house, a ship’s carpenter by the name of Barrow, but he had no idea where Mr. Barrow lived or if Mr. Miller had had children or a wife.

“Now,” said he, funneling the smoke through his fleshy lips toward the ceiling, “did your nigger have any scars or marks?”

He used this word
nigger
so easily that I started.

“None that I recall, except for a small nick on his brow.”

“Was he branded?”

“Good God, I hope not.”

“Well, could you describe him?”

“He was a small man, five feet or so in height, with handsome bronze skin, and a broad flat nose, very dignified, with – ”

“A broad flat nose, you say?”

When I confirmed this, he grinned. His rudeness was bringing out the Highlander in me. “So, Mr. Reading, what have I said this time to cause such hilarity?” I snarled.

“All the saltwater niggers have broad flat noses, Mr. Stewart.”

“‘Saltwater’?”

“From Africa.”

“Mr. Reading, they are all from Africa, I would have
presumed
.”

“In that you are quite wrong, sir. Some are bred locally. Most, in fact, as the slave trade was halted by a damnable act of Congress some fifteen years ago. Most of our niggers were born right here in the United States. And I’m afraid, sir, that you’ll have to arm me with a better description of yours if I am to help you spook him from his hole.”

Sickened by the ease with which Mr. Reading spoke so crudely about Negroes, I thanked him and took my leave. I spent the rest of that morning on the sagging mattress of my hotel room drawing Midnight. This proved much harder than I would have thought, no doubt owing to the stifling heat, which obliged me to strip off my clothes and sit panting by my window for the frail wisps of breeze coming in from the ocean.

My sketch captured his puckish side, which is why, I suppose, so many of the people I showed it to later that day said, “Oh, you’ve got quite a rascal there, haven’t you!”

At first, I took this as an endearment. Only slowly, when several frowned disagreeably, did I begin to understand that they meant something akin to ne’er-do-well. I was forced to conclude that a great many people in Alexandria had such feeble
imaginations
that they could not conceive of a high-spirited African as anything but an affront or threat.

To no avail, I spent the rest of the afternoon showing my sketch to more than twenty shopkeepers along King Street and Washington Street.

A quick-talking carpenter named Friedlander did finally recall that Mr. Miller had a daughter named Abigail. A half hour after our talk, he tracked me down at Hall’s Dry Goods and said that he now remembered that Mrs. Abigail Miller Munson lived on Queen Street. Indeed, he had already confirmed that she was presently at home. Taking the address and giving my thanks, I rushed away.

Mrs. Munson’s wooden house was painted in pleasant tones of cream and pink. Upon answering my knocks, she smiled with endearing modesty and led me through double doors into her sitting room, offering me the place of honor at the end of her
rose-colored
sofa.

Abigail Munson was thirty, I would have guessed, though the worry lines on her forehead made me consider that she’d had a hard life. Her eyes were clear and kind, and her movements – quick but careful – indicated that she was probably the mother of little children.

Large, colorful maps of the American colonies hung on the walls
in gilded frames, which I admired while she poured coffee into cups of crimson-glazed porcelain. When I lifted my cup to have a closer look, she said worriedly, “I do hope there’s nothing wrong.”

“No, no – it’s just that I’m a tile-maker and potter. And your porcelain is lovely.”

“What a kind thing to say, Mr. Stewart, thank you,” she said in her lilting voice. “My husband imported this set from France for me. It was one of my wedding presents.”

Mrs. Munson took a dainty sip and then explained to me that Mr. Friedlander had been less than honest with me at first, owing to my manners and accent, both of which had been described to her as downright vexing. Thinking better of his judgment, he had then sent a clerk to her home to ask if he might give the Scotsman her name. She had agreed to see me, since she welcomed the chance to meet a foreigner and had nothing to hide. “Of late, we in the South have been so vilified in the Northern press that you will have to forgive us if we are less than fully hospitable.”

“Most understandable, under the circumstances.”

I explained the purpose of my visit and thanked her for seeing me. She was eager to have a look at my sketch. When I unfurled it for her, she said, “Why, I do indeed remember that face! Midnight, you say. I do not believe my father called him that.” She looked out her window to the garden. “Though I cannot recall just now. Samuel – might it have been Samuel?”

“In Africa, he was called Tsamma. Perhaps it was changed to the European name most phonetically similar.”

She leaned toward me, her eyes radiant. “I am sure now, it was Samuel. But it must be at least fifteen years ago.”

“Seventeen, I believe.”

“I was a girl when he came. My father needed an assistant. A friend of his suggested this man Samuel. As I recall, he was a mute. That was a shock to us all.”

“Mute? No, the man I’m searching for spoke quite well. At least, when – ”

I might have continued, but the possibility of his having had his vocal chords cut by slave-traders chilled me to silence.

“I can see this is difficult for you. Would you like more coffee?” she asked.

“No, thank you. Mrs. Munson, when your father passed away, Samuel was sold. At least, that was what I was told. Do you know where he was taken?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Or who purchased him?”

“I don’t believe I was ever told.”

“Would anyone recall?”

“I have two brothers, sir, but they are both considerably younger. They were just boys. I don’t think either would know. But I will ask.”

“I’d very much appreciate that.” Though I smiled, I was unable to hide my disappointment.

“Mr. Stewart, I’m sorry I’ve been of so little help,” she said sweetly. “I wish there was more I could do.”

“Is there anyone else you know who may have taken an interest in Samuel?”

“I do not think so. He worked in the back room of Father’s workshop. No one saw him.”

“And was he in good spirits, you’d say?”

“Yes, I believe so. Though he kept to himself. He was able to write and often did so in a memorandum book. I remember that clearly. Once, he wrote me a poem. Though I cannot recall what it said. It was most unusual to see a Negro writing, as you can imagine.”

“And the book he wrote in, do you have it?”

“No, I’m afraid I must disappoint you again. I cannot imagine where it’s gone.”

“I … I taught him to write.”

“Did you?” she beamed. “How clever of you!”

“He was the clever one.” I shaded my eyes with my hand to hide my emotion.

She came swiftly to me as though to comfort a fallen child. In imploring tones, she said, “Oh, Mr. Stewart, no matter what you have been told, no matter what you have read, not all of us are dead to feeling with regard to the slaves. I myself have two good friends of the Negro race, more valuable than any other property I have ever owned. They have been of incalculable help to me in raising my children. Mr. Stewart, I beg you to understand.
Many of us can plainly see that slavery is wrong not only for the Negro but for the white race as well. It is an evil.”

When she dabbed at the corner of her eye with a lace handkerchief plucked from her sleeve, it struck me that she was acting – and had been from the very beginning.

“The slave trade is a terrible thing,” she declared. “I believe that with all my heart. But it is too late for us.” She hung her head in sorrow and took a deep calming breath. “Slavery has been with us these past two centuries. It would be suicide to end such a tradition. In the North, there is industry and all the wealth it provides. Here, with our tobacco farms and small port, we could not make do without the labor of the Negro. That is what the editors of the North fail to comprehend.” She clasped her hands together as though to recite a fervent prayer. “We would perish without our traditions and our values. They are the ark we ride in. And yet the Northerners would wish to see us drown in a sea of blood. I do not believe that a Scotsman, of a race that has suffered for so long under the English, can see that as fair.”

Mrs. Munson agreed to send word to my boardinghouse of any helpful information that might be given her by her brothers. I left her house confused, wondering whether any of what I’d seen and heard had been genuine.

That evening, rain came down in dark, thunderous sheets, fanfared by lightning. Closing my eyes and recalling the first time Midnight left our home in Porto to follow a storm, worry consumed me. I spent the next hour hunched over my desk, writing again to my children. I told them that Alexandria was a beautiful city with a handsome wharf and that I was doing well. I also apologized again for leaving them and said that I would be back as soon as possible. I wrapped up two pairs of filigree silver earrings that I’d purchased at a jewelry shop that afternoon – roses for Esther and bells for Graça – and placed them carefully in the envelope.

After picturing them wearing my gifts, I began another note, this one to my wife: