Hunting Midnight (14 page)

My heart swelled with fright. Daniel receded swiftly into the shadows, but the tips of his horns were visible as two glowing points of violet light.

“Is it Hyena?” Midnight whispered from his settee. He must have been watching me for some time. He approached me, naked. I could feel his heat radiating toward me.

“You there!” he called to Daniel. “We know who you are. We know your name and you are Hyena!”

The masked apparition ran away from us down the corridor and scurried up the stairs.

“Where is he now?” asked Midnight.

“I think he’s gone up to the Lookout Tower.”

The African took my hand and helped me to my feet. My body felt heavy and alien. Despite his having cared for me over the last few days, I wasn’t sure if I ought to trust him. In the unsettling darkness, he seemed a creature of shadows.

“The Time of the Hyena is on you,” he said. “He is a clever and powerful animal we have in Africa. He is fooling you. For Daniel is gone and you cannot win him back, no matter what you do. But Hyena is as good a mimic as you are. You are being tricked.”

I made no reply; I was confused.

Patting my shoulder, Midnight said, “Mantis will help us.” At that, he lifted the child’s rattle he had been carrying with him and shook it.

“Who is Mantis?”

“Mantis is an insect, and he is very, very small, but with
big-big
power. I shall need his help to frighten Hyena away and make him never return.”

Midnight went to the window and opened the shutters and mosquito screens. The moon was nearly full. Crescents of light fell across his back and legs. It was unsettling to see him naked, for the only man I had seen in this way was my father.

I noticed four lines of scars on Midnight’s back. When I asked him about them, he told me he had once been attacked by a wild beast but had escaped with his life. “Do you know what a lion is?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Lions kill hyenas. They are very, very strong. Now, will
you
be strong and come up the stairs with me to fight Hyena?”

I offered him my hand. His grip was powerful; I could not have escaped him even if I’d wanted to. He lit his wee clay pipe again and blew his sweet smoke in my ears and my mouth, just as he had done earlier. It warmed me to the tips of my fingers and toes. I could feel my heartbeat swaying me. My breaths came like wind across stones.

Turning from me, he drew the fumes deep into his chest in a single continuous stream that vanished somewhere deep inside him. I imagined it forming a swirling mist in his gut.

“Now we shall hunt Hyena,” he said, placing his pipe down on the table by the head of my bed.

“Do I have to?”

“I will not abandon you, John. Your friend Midnight will always fight alongside you.” He smiled. “Come. We shall find Hyena and tell him that he must leave.”

He led me through my doorway by the light of his candle and together we climbed the stairs. The door to the Lookout Tower was shut. I closed my eyes to try to calm myself. Time seemed to have come to a halt.

“Must we go in?” I asked.

“Yes. I came up here today to prepare the room for our hunt. It has to be now. We must face him like Bushmen and tell him that we know who he is and that he is an impostor. We must show him that we are lions and will devour him if he stays. And the time is now – that is why he appeared to you. When we go inside, all you are to say to him is, ‘I know who you are; you are Hyena.’ Nothing else. Nothing! He is a trickster. He is clever-clever. He will find your weakness if you say anything else. You understand, John?”

“I think so.”

Midnight reached for the handle.

“Wait!” I cried, but it was too late.

The door swung open. Daniel stood before us in his horned mask.

“We saw you from afar and are dying of hunger,” Midnight said to Daniel.

The African eased the door closed behind us. He placed his candle on the ground, then shook his rattle at the lad and said, “We know who you are; you are Hyena.”

Midnight’s eyes opened wide. A low rumbling commenced in his gut and increased in volume to a drumming sound so loud it shook the walls.

Daniel removed his mask. Pale and swollen, his skin looked as though it might drop off in clumps. He beseeched me to stop the Bushman from drumming. “Why have you betrayed me again?” he moaned.

I was tempted to plead for his forgiveness, but when Midnight
squeezed my hand, I spoke as instructed: “I know who you are. You are Hyena.”

Midnight handed me his rattle and told me to toss it at Daniel’s chest, but I hesitated. When the lad took a step toward me, the African shouted, “Hit him with it! Throw it now, John!”

I tossed it at him. It hit against his shoulder and fell to the ground. But it changed its form as it fell to become a dark mantis, head proudly erect, arms raised in the air as though ready for attack.

Slowly, it began to crawl toward Midnight.

Daniel reached out to me in fright.

“Do not touch him!” Midnight warned me.

I repeated, “I know who you are. You are Hyena.”

Daniel lunged, and I jumped back. Midnight moved in between us, his back to Daniel. I could no longer see the lad, but I could hear him pounding his fists against the African’s back.

A great knot the size of my fist began to form at the midpoint of Midnight’s gut – at his center, so to speak – bobbing in and out, the focal point of his inner drumming.

The Bushman raised both his arms in the air and began to stamp his feet. Whipping round to face Daniel, he ceased his drumming. The Lookout Tower was alone at the center of the world.

The African leaned back and inhaled quickly. A low growl emanated from his chest, growing in intensity until the air itself seemed to vibrate. The smoke that he had stored in his gut spiraled from his mouth and rose to the skylight in a swirling ribbon. “Growl,” he ordered.

I did as he said. Our two voices rooted me to the spot. After a few seconds, Midnight roared with such animal ferocity and violence that he might have split the room in two.

It did not occur to me that Midnight must have woken the entire neighborhood until my father rushed into the room wearing a terrified expression.

Papa glanced between Midnight and myself with a startled expression, since we were both as naked as the day we emerged into this world. He demanded to know what in Robert the Bruce
we were doing in the Lookout Tower at this ungodly hour and, additionally, without a single thread of clothing to cover our manhood. “I hope you two have a proper explanation,” he warned, his voice threateningly deep.

“We are very, very much better now,” the African declared. “We have chased Hyena away. Hyena is always afraid of Lion.” He twirled the rattle. “And little Mantis told him that he was never to return to us. He will never bother your son again.”

“The
Bogle
is gone,” I said to Papa.
Bogle
was a Scots word for ghost.

“You nearly frightened me to death!” he cried as Mama appeared in the doorway, clutching a poker.

She gasped at our nakedness, then looked me hard and long in the eyes. I was sure I’d be punished, but instead she laughed as though Midnight and I were the funniest thing she’d ever seen. Then, through a process of transformation known only to the heart, she wept.

“There, there, May,” Papa said, kissing her brow. “
Everything
is fine now.”

Finally, she dried her eyes. “I am so sorry. You must all think me such a fool.”

We all assured her of the contrary, Papa adding rather charmingly that he would be eternally wed to such a fool with the greatest of happiness. Though her hair was a mess and her eyes red, I found Mama incomparably beautiful at that moment.

When she’d calmed down, she begged me to put on some clothing. “You can come back to bed with us tonight if you like,” she added.

“No, Mama, I should like to return to my room, if you don’t mind.”

“You would prefer that?” Papa asked, plainly surprised.

“Yes, if Midnight may be allowed to stay with me.”

“Of course,” Mama said, smiling at our guest, who was grinning infectiously from ear to ear.

She then surprised me by grasping Midnight’s hand and saying, “I sincerely hope that you will stay with us for quite
some time. If you still desire a place in our home, we shall fix the Lookout Tower for you to use as your own apartment. That is, should you forgive my previous rudeness.”

Tears filled Midnight’s eyes. “Yes, that would be very, very good indeed.”

Clasping his hand to her cheek, she added, “Thank you for returning John to me. I shall never forget your kindness. You will always be able to depend on me as though I were one of your people.”

Papa thanked Midnight as well and kissed Mama many times. Then he hoisted me up over his shoulder and carried me
downstairs
, tickling me, pretending he’d caught a young monster of the loch, a
kelpie.
I was howling for him to stop, but he was merciless in his affection. Behind us, Mama was talking in hushed tones to Midnight, as though they had been intimate friends for ages.

Once I had been swung into bed, Papa ruffled my hair and said, “Now sleep. Enough of this excitement.” He raised his fists. “No more lions, hyenas, mantises, or anything else.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Good night, Midnight,” Papa said to our guest. “And thank you.”

“Good night, Mr. Stewart,” the African replied with a wave.

When my parents had gone, and long after Midnight was asleep, I remained awake, staring at his dark head, believing I could hear an almost imperceptible drumming coming from a strange landscape deep inside him.

XIII

I
awoke in the morning and discovered – to my
disappointment
– that Midnight had already left with my father. After breakfast, I took Fanny for a walk, having neglected her for weeks. At the wharf that day, I discovered that Daniel’s
drowning
had removed all desire on my part to swim in the river. I was completely petrified by the idea of being unable to see through the murky water, and though I presumed that I would soon overcome this fear, I was wrong; I would never again voluntarily enter the water. Not even Midnight could cure me of this.

The African and my father returned that evening, just before supper. On seeing me, Midnight gave me a hearty smile, which I returned in kind, but I was unsettled by everything that had happened to me in his presence. I began to feel the enormous power he had over me. One word of reproach from him would have dried my spirits to nothing.

We chatted for a while, mostly about Porto. He found the city most entertaining, particularly its residents. He held that the Portuguese spoke louder than any people he had ever known.

I stared at him all evening and barely spoke. I wondered if, in the tales of King Arthur my father had told me, Merlin might have been bronze-skinned and tiny. I tried to imagine the Bushman in his African homeland, a sparkling wand in his hand.

While wolfing down a gargantuan helping of baked apples, I commented on Midnight’s having again removed his shoes at our door. But instead of saying that I found this a primitive practice – as my parents expected – I declared that it was the height of civilized deportment, since in so doing he avoided tracking all manner of muck into the house. Father stared at me in
bewilderment
. Mother, however, knowing only too well my predilection
for mimicry, replied, “John, you may not walk in the house barefoot. You shall wear your shoes.”

“But the filth!”

“The filth stays! And your shoes as well. Midnight is Midnight and you are you.”

“That is very, very true,” the African agreed, laughing.

“Aye,” Papa seconded, “she’s trumped you, lad.”

I looked up at Midnight for some show of support, but he showed me an expression of helplessness in the face of our family disagreement.

Despite my parents’ firm disapproval, in the end I began removing my shoes at the door as well, and it is a practice I have kept to this day. I also request it of my family and all visitors, to the exasperation of many but to the great benefit of my home.

I remember adding that night, as my final protest against my parents’ wishes, “But with our shoes on in the house we must look like barbarians to him!”

This seemingly innocent statement of mine is one I have often remembered, as I believe I hit the truth dead center. Midnight must have regarded us all – my family included – as people living in dollhouses, leading porcelain and silk lives. How could he have not felt this when, as I later learned, his own early life had been one of two-and three-day hunts for giant beasts called eland; of treks through the desert sands in search of food, his water carried in ostrich eggs; of narrow escapes from Dutch muskets, English bayonets, and Zulu spears? Our Portuguese stage in comparison must have seemed tiny indeed, an African Old Testament drama reduced to the size of a European puppet show.

Not that I should have desired the life he’d had. Nor did he ever indicate disdain for ours, nearly always showing an amused curiosity when faced with things he didn’t understand. Not that he was perfect, but I believe that his unqualified acceptance of us speaks eloquently for his tolerant spirit and faith in everyone’s good intentions. None of us, I am sure, could have adapted to his Africa so graciously and happily.

I trailed him like a newborn duckling over those first weeks, delighted by his prancing gait, elfin grin, and woolly peppercorns of hair. I adored filling his pipe, helping him buckle his shoes, and
leading him through the city by the hand. I listened in awe to his stories of the African desert while seated at his feet. I felt as though I had found a living treasure. I’d not have traded knowing him for a king’s ransom in gold.

During those first months with Midnight, Mother, Father, and I tested his near-boundless patience by embarking upon separate projects with him – to varying degrees of success.

My mother’s project was to familiarize him with Portuguese social etiquette, though she made it clear that by virtue of saving me he had forever won the right to behave as he wished in our home. She was encouraging and open with him, in a way I had never seen her with anyone else, never once raising her voice at him in anger – something I wish I could say with regard to myself. These lessons in etiquette were only for those times when we went out with him in public. They were for both his benefit and ours, since Mama was of the opinion that the quicker he could mix on equal footing with Europeans the easier his life would become.

Midnight had learned much in the way of European manners while working as a servant in the Cape Colony, but there were still rules to be learned in order to prepare him for his new life in a city far larger than any in southern Africa. Among the most essential were learning to stroll with my mother on his arm, tying a cravat without cutting off the blood flow to his head, referring only in code to bodily functions, and bowing to ladies upon making their acquaintance.

These lessons were given in English, as Midnight was never able to learn Portuguese in any depth. Nevertheless, he did well with the few social phrases he needed for the drawing-room parties my parents occasionally asked him to attend. These stock phrases were ghastly, in my opinion, and his favorite was especially awful:
Madam
,
not
even
the
full
moon
over
a
dark
horizon
could
be
more
radiant
than
you
are
tonight
….

In the end, the Bushman mastered all of my mother’s social graces with admirable aplomb save for two: wearing a cravat, which was torture for him and a practice that he gave up after a first year of effort, and saying his thank-yous. The very concept of
this latter commonplace nicety baffled him, and he could never safely conclude when to express his thanks and when not to.

In the hopes of avoiding any unpleasantness that might result from this confusion, Mother wrote out guidelines that she read aloud to us one evening while Midnight and my father sat smoking by the hearth:

Part I: Midnight was never to be forced to express his gratitude at home. His thanks would be assumed by everyone.

Part II: When in public with one of us, a signal would be given to Midnight at the moment he was to thank a person outside the family.

Part III: When he was alone in public, Midnight was to say
thank
you
whenever anyone spoke more than a few words to him or did anything in his presence, even if it seemed to him highly unlikely that such an action merited his gratitude.

This last instruction led, at times, to comic results, as when Midnight would forget the rules and thank Papa for simply locking the front door or Mama for avoiding a dog dropping in the street. Regrettably, this difficulty also provoked some
disagreements
as well. The one I would most prefer to forget happened only a month after he came to stay with us. Midnight and I had just purchased custard tarts with powdered cinnamon at our favorite pastry shop on the Rua de Cedofeita when, not four paces from us, a large woman in a ruffled dress of crimson tripped on a dislodged cobble. She fairly flew through the air, shrieking like Lilith, as my Grandmother Rosa used to say, and would have fallen flat on her face had Midnight not – with his harelike reflexes – dashed forward and reached for her, serving as a human barrier. It was a triumph against all odds, since she outweighed the African by forty or fifty pounds. Unfortunately, in pressing against him, the wayward woman crushed Midnight’s tart against his chest, leaving a yellow custard stain on the beautiful blue brocade waistcoat my father had bought for him.

Unperturbed, Midnight steadied the woman, who heaved a sigh of relief in the best operatic tradition and patted her brow with a white silk handkerchief pulled from her bosom. Before I could stop him, he exclaimed, “Thank you so much,” in all sincerity, but our matron believed herself cruelly ridiculed.

“Unhand me, sir!” she exclaimed.

As she stared contemptuously at Midnight, I tried to make amends. “He is thanking you for the honor of being able to assist you to your feet and see you safely on your way.”

She stared at us as though we had insulted her again. And I shall never forget what she said: “Keep your ugly black paws off me, you monkey!”

She spoke this sentence in Portuguese, of course. Hence, Midnight was blessedly ignorant of the precise meaning of her words.

Enraged she evidently was, but not nearly as cross as I. For though I had overheard neighbors gossiping about Midnight, no one had yet spoken of him rudely in my presence. Before I could squash the rest of my tart in
her
bosom, Midnight recited one of the flattering phrases he had learned from Mother: “That dress, though most lovely, is but a pale shadow of your own beauty.”

Now
we
are
fried
for
sure!
I thought. I did not expect, however, for her to burst into hot tears, perhaps owing to Midnight’s
near-perfect
Portuguese, which left her completely nonplussed. Her sobbing served to draw a crowd, since the people of my homeland – like the English – gather around misfortune like vultures to a dying lamb. Soon, Midnight and I found ourselves surrounded by gawking faces.

“I’ve seen that monkey before,” one man said, pointing at the Bushman. “He belongs to Stewart the Scotsman.”

“He ought to be caged!” another shouted.

This latter judgment brought out the Highlander in me, and I let loose a flurry of epithets that Daniel had taught me, the choicest of which was that the woman in question plainly had the mind of a camel, since even a simpleton knew that monkeys had hands and not paws. I elaborated on this by stating that it was obvious that she had crashed headlong into my friend like a driverless carriage and caused him to stain his waistcoat, as anyone who was not blinded by stupidity could see, since her offending forearm – the size of a stuffed capon – was smeared with telling yellow stains.

Comparing the sobbing woman to either a camel
or
a carriage
or
a capon might have been acceptable, but saying all three so
forthrightly in one sentence served not to win me admiration as a child of advanced vocabulary, as it might have, but rather condemnation as a rude and impudent cur. A man wearing a shearer’s apron stained black with grease even dared to grab my arm and shake me. “You little sod,” he said. “I ought to beat your bottom here in the street!”

This affront roused Midnight from his anxious confusion. Advancing toward the man, he said, “Please, sir, let the lad go.”

Blood shone in the moon-whiteness of the African’s eyes. It was lucky for our shearer that the Bushman carried no knife; he might have killed the man that day as quickly as he would have a jackal coveting his child.

Midnight’s few words quieted the crowd, probably because he spoke them in English, which tends to intimidate the Portuguese. Or possibly it was because no one expected him to be able to speak any language at all – or to dare to defy a Portuguese man.

The shearer let me go, but only so he might confront
Midnight
. Yet as he strode forward, the African – to my great surprise – hoisted me over his shoulder. I do not know if he intended this as the brilliant coup it was. Likely, he simply wished to protect me. Whatever the case, the shearer was not about to fight a man carrying a young lad.

Midnight walked with me through the parting crowd without saying a word. After he turned the corner, he put me down. “The gemsbok is not bothered by ants, tortoises, and hedgehogs,” he told me.

“What’s a gemsbok?”

“A noble animal, a kind of deer. He has a crescent horn on his head.” He held my chin in his hand. “John, this may come as a surprise to you, but you are not a crocodile.”

“Sorry?”

“You must not let yourself be provoked so very, very easily.”

Midnight spread his hands like a fan atop his head and crouched into a posture of expectancy, as though he were an animal listening for a far-off call. His nostrils flared and his fingers wiggled. He sniffed at the air, scenting something upwind.

This, then, was a gemsbok. He was imitating it. Or, as he would tell me later,
inhabiting
it.

“This is how you must act,” he said. “No more shouting at strangers.”

His criticism shamed me. “But that woman was rude to you! She said horrible things.”

He made no effort to answer or comfort me, which struck me as heartless. Frustration cast tears down my cheek. Still he would not move. Finally, I gave in and imitated him, placing my own fanned hands atop my head and making believe that I, too, was a gemsbok.