Hunting Midnight by Richard Zimler Read Free Book Online

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 ofthe 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.
    “Happily, we can no longer observe that stubborn race,” he’d replied, rooting in his ear with the long curling nail of his little finger. “There are no Jews left in Portugal, for the wise men of our Church had the foresight to cleanse the monarchy of such heathens long ago.”
    To my further inquiries, he told me that in 1497 the Jews had been converted upon threat of death and made into so-called New Christians. Beginning in 1536, those New Christians who continued to practice their old religion in secret were arrested and placed in dungeons by Inquisitors, prosecutors sanctioned by both Church and King.
    Professor Raimundo had been noticeably put out by my questions and resorted to frequent pinches of snuff to steady his nerves. Sneezing, he had added that the Inquisition had – unfortunately – been stripped of much of its power some fifteen years before my birth. Even so, Jews were still forbidden from founding a community in Portugal. As to what practicing Judaism might entail, he rested his hands on his ample paunch, grimaced in distaste, and replied, “They stubbornly refuse to believe in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, the prayers they speak in their temples are nothing more than blasphemies against the Son of God and the Virgin.”
    In my innocence, this seemed a reasonable assertion. Jews were plainly a disagreeable people.
    Being a monstrously insistent young lad, I then asked if there wasn’t even one last member of this tribe in Porto whom I might secretly study. Inhaling another dusting of snuff, Raimundo snapped, “Not that I am aware of, but you would do well to ask your mother.”
    I considered that a strange comment, but since he refused to utter another word on the subject, I resolved to do as he suggested.
    When I asked her, she calmly replied, “No, John, there are neither Jews nor New Christians residing in Porto at the present time.”
    She presumed that Raimundo might have wrongly believed her familiar with such matters since the home we lived in, which had been in her mother’s family for generations, was at the heart of what had once been a small Jewish