Richard Zimler - Hunting Midnight

We sat for some time on the steps of the São Bento Convent, where he could work out the details of his plan while studying the marketplace.

“Here’s what we do, John,” he finally announced. “We’re going to wait here till that bastard leaves, then follow him.”

When I asked why, he leaned toward me menacingly and gave me one of his favorite rhymes: Raptado, embrulhado, e entregado … Kidnapped, wrapped, and delivered …

I was unsure if he meant me or the birdseller, but before I could ask, a hand clamped down on my shoulder. I looked up and, to my horror, discovered the preacher whom we’d seen a few days earlier.

Struggling free of his grip, I tumbled down the stairs, banging my elbow hard on the granite. The villain’s dark eyes glinted with mirth. Daniel stepped in front of me as my guard. “What the hell do you want?” he demanded.

The villain fixed his gaze on me over my friend’s shoulder. So transformed was his appearance from the last time we’d seen him that for a few bewildered moments I believed I had mistakenly identified him. Instead of his ragged fur-collared cape, he now wore an elegant scarlet dress coat with small pearls sewn into the wide lapels. On his head sat a black velvet hat, and his hair, exquisitely styled, cascaded in waves to his shoulders. He carried a silver cane under his arm.

“Blessings unto you, my child,” he said with heavy sincerity. He took a pinch of snuff from a silver box and inhaled sharply into both nostrils.

“Go away, you bastard!” Daniel demanded.

“Though we have never met,” he said, winking at me, “I am an admirer of yours.”

Removing his hat, he displayed its interior to us, then swirled his hand inside and extracted a foot-long indigo feather. Leaning forward, he offered it to me. “I have been watching you for quite some time, little one. So please accept this gift of heartfelt esteem. I, too, am most fond of God’s tiny winged creatures.”

I shook my head in refusal.

“Ah, what a shame,” he said sadly.

He placed the feather back in his hat and smoothed his hair off his brow. His hand was long and thin. It had never known labor.

“Let me explain, little one. There occasionally appears a face in the crowd that represents all those souls one would like to reach — a beautiful face that is symbolic of all in God’s creation. Do you understand what I am saying?”

I started to hiccup, which caused him to laugh.

“You are the son of James Stewart and Maria Pereira Zarco, if I’m not in error.”

“How … how is it that you know my parents?” I asked.

“I know who all the Jews are. That is one of my duties.”

“He’s not a Jew!” Daniel snarled. “Now leave us be.”

As though confiding a secret, he whispered, “It is your devilish soul I desire, little one. Nothing less.”

Daniel had had enough. He took a knife from his pocket and brandished it like a sword.

The preacher placed his hat on his head and made a deep purring noise, then meowed.

“I shall just say one more thing,” he said with a smile, “and then I shall leave you. Have you never thought of returning with your father to Scotland, dear John? No? Well then, be so kind as to tell your parents from me that that must be your destiny. Let them make plans now, before we meet again. As the Apostle Matthew has told us, The gate that leads to life is small and the road is narrow .”

“But I’ve always lived here. I’m Portuguese. I was born in Porto.”

He said nothing, merely crossed himself, then turned around in a slow circle and tapped the ground twice with his cane. His back was to us for a few seconds at least. Turning to face us, he opened his mouth. A bewildered yellow finch peeked into the world, struggling to emerge. The villain held the bird’s neck between his teeth, as though in a vise, about to bite down.

“Please don’t,” I pleaded tearfully. “Please …” In that very instant, I began to think of him as a necromancer, Papa’s word for an evil sorcerer.

I was sure he was about to commit an unspeakable act. But he wished to make a different point. Opening his mouth fully, he permitted the bird to fly away.

Daniel took a step back.

“You see what your friend Lourenço can do, little one? It would be unwise to doubt me. Though the holy delight of burning you in the squares of Portugal is no longer an option, I shall not accept the stain of your presence among us any longer.” He breathed in deeply to quell his rage. “Never forget, the smoke rising off your body is incense to all those of righteous belief.”

He produced a lighted candle from out of his hand. Twisting it in the air, it became a silver tostão coin. He held it up before us, then threw it at my feet. I let it clang on the steps, then picked it up. I was going to give it back to him, for I believed I might gain his favor by doing so, but he told me to keep it.

“You see,” he said, pointing first at me, then Daniel, “the Jew among us can always be found if we but leave a single coin in view!”

The crowd that had gathered around us howled with delight. An elderly woman stepped forward and threw an apple core at me, and several men began to shout at us.

I cannot say how long they had seen fit to witness this cruel encounter in rapt silence, but when I turned back, the necromancer was striding away from us.

Daniel took the coin from me and whispered, “Never mind, John, we’ll see that bastard swinging from a gallows someday.”

As a child, I knew nothing of Christian religious practice, having been strictly forbidden by my atheist father from attending weekly Mass with my mother and grandmother and only having witnessed a formal service on one occasion. Of that single visit to the Church of Mercy in the year of 1791, I confess that I own not a single recollection. This profound ignorance is due to no deliberate act of forgetfulness on my part, but rather to my extreme youth. For the momentous occasion in question was none other than my own rapid-fire Baptism.

Father had opposed my christening vehemently and refused to attend, preferring to sulk inside a cloud of pipe smoke in his study. It was, however, a religious duty insisted upon by my mother, who had fixed her most determined gaze at my father for days on end until, sensing his troops outmanned by this Medusan onslaught, he extended the white flag of surrender. The logic behind her offensive was this: She wished to spare me the unfortunate fate of a German girl with Humanist parents whom she had befriended as a lass and who had for years been referred to as “the infidel” and “the savage” by a good many children and adults for not having had her original sin erased with holy water.

Depending on whom you believe, she had either told my father, “I will hold this against you forever if you prevent it” (my mother’s version), or “I will have it done in secret and you will not know a thing until it is over” (my father’s).

As it happens, I was not only nearly completely ignorant of the Christian faith as a child but also of Jewish beliefs and history. All I knew for certain was that Moses was a prophet who’d had horns on his head. I owed this latter tidbit of knowledge to the Olive Tree Sisters, who’d shown me — when I was five — an engraving of the Lawgiver with two spikes poking from his brow. Graça had told me that all Jews had such protuberances thousands of years ago but that they had fallen off in successive generations from disuse. Luna swore that a few ancient members of this race had even possessed furry tails.

Soon after that, I learned there were no Jews to be found in Portugal. I discovered this when I asked Professor Raimundo, my tutor, if he could suggest a Jewish person I might follow, as I was eager to spot any sign of a tail or horns.