Richard Zimler: Hunting Midnight

Thinking of him now, I wonder what it is I’d like to leave behind after my death for my descendants, just as he left his illuminated cover page for me. Perhaps I would choose the sketch of Midnight I made in Alexandria in order to find him. I think that anyone looking at it would recognize that I had done the best I could to capture the beauty of one person with my modest skills.

The Olive Tree Sisters would say that I’d succeeded in inhabiting my sketch. Perhaps I am indeed good enough now to execute the tile panel of the field slaves. We shall see.

When I was seven, I learned from The Fox Fables that He that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.

But what about good? Might it somehow be able to restore life?

I cannot say, of course, but I’ve begun to suspect that goodness is the only miracle within reach of human hands: He that pursueth good may join together what has long been separated.

I knew that the moment I saw Midnight standing in my doorway.

And what of that generous old fox who wrote down his fables so that a mischievous seven-year-old lad from Porto might one day find them? Might he have meant to tell me all along: He who has been snared and hunted, when set free, may accomplish so much more ….

I do not wish to leave behind my daughters, Morri, Midnight, and Mother, but if I knew I was about to depart from this life, I would feel I had accomplished something. That is, I think, what we all need to know.

We believe we are creatures of time, space, and a specific place, when we are nothing of the sort. Over the last nights, I have sat in the dark, facing Jerusalem, and seen that plainly. I have felt myself falling free of this body, shedding it like a phantom limb. Borders open and I am outside myself, drifting like music. I do not know where I am. I am nowhere. And I know I am no different from Midnight.

Indeed, I am every pitch and every chord. We all are, or we could not hear them in our ears when no music is being played. Everything out there has a cognate inside. Every last atom.

Hope has made full use of me. Not that I am finished. No, I think I’ve a further journey to make. Though I am not yet aware of its nature, I can feel the pulling on me of forces greater than myself. Of the world, if you will. Or of my daughters, who carry their mother and me inside them and who no doubt wish for me to remain with them for a while longer.

I do not believe that there will be life everlasting to follow, nor that we shall rise on the Mount of Olives when the Messiah comes. For the secret is this:

The Messiah is here now and we are already living on the Mount of Olives.

That is the most important lesson I learned on my journey, while hunting Midnight.

And so, life is written in the present tense, out of ink bequeathed to us from the past. Death too. Genesis and Exodus are taking place inside us all at this very moment. Even Christ’s Passion. And it is a good thing that they are, for we would not want to wait. Why would we?

Eat the night!

It was the angel Raphael who said to Tobit, “Write down all these things that have happened to you.”

And to give thanks, just like Tobit, that is what I have done.

Father, you may come back to us now. We shall journey forward together and you may take hold of my hand. We shall beg forgiveness from Midnight. I know you are a good man, just as I know you committed a monstrous act. I have the letters you wrote to try to make amends, and I am aware that you regretted what you had done. I do not know what the lesson of your life and death may be, except that we may all do terrible things when the Time of the Hyena is on us.

Perhaps evil such as you have done cannot be forgiven, not even by the one you have wronged, since it is an abomination against life itself. But if we are very lucky, then we may banish it from the present tense and consign it forever to the past. Midnight reassures me that we have. He remembers you fondly.

If you are dead these many years, Papa, as must truly be the case, then I still say this to you, since you have always dwelt inside me:

We have seen you from afar and we are dying of hunger.

You are redeemed and may go now in peace.

John Zarco Stewart

New York, the Seventeenth of October, 1825

Richard Zimlerwas born in Manhasset, New York. After gaining degrees in Comparative Religion from Duke University and in Journalism from Stanford University, he worked as a journalist. In 1990, he moved to Porto, Portugal, where he has taught journalism for the last twelve years, both at the College of Journalism and the University of Porto. He has published three novels since 1996: Unholy Ghosts, The Angelic Darkness, and The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon which was named 1998 Book of the Year by three British critics and was a bestseller in eleven countries, including the USA, Great Britain, Australia and Italy. Zimler has won many prizes for his writing, and has lectured on Portuguese Jewish culture all over the world. He reviews books for The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Literary Review (London) and Livros (Lisbon). When not writing, he enjoys gardening at his weekend house in the north of Portugal.