Hunting Midnight

“No but’s, John. We must strike this bargain or I shall have to tie you down at night, just as Grandmother would like. Have we a deal?”

I nodded.

“John, this is serious. You promise me.”

“I promise.”

Mama took a deep breath and walked over to my window.

“Did you quarrel with Grandmother?” I asked.

“Indeed.”

Mama then told me of her mother’s diatribe and how she’d ended by saying, “I’ve no idea how my grandson came to be giving such a shameful concert in the street — indeed, I do not wish to know. I only expect that it will never be repeated.”

To which Mama had offered a surprising reply: “On the contrary, my John will make use of all of his gifts and explore them to their limits.”

Her voice was taut with determination when she repeated this to me. Apparently, she and her mother had then fought as only a parent and child can. But the outcome was favorable — Grandmother Rosa had fled. In fact, she was punishing us by refusing to join us for supper!

After our special St. John’s supper of grilled sardines, boiled potatoes, and roasted peppers, Mama listened patiently to all my excuses for having perpetrated what could only be rightly described as a theft. “Involving yourself in such a ludicrous escapade was foolish. And stealing another man’s property …” she remarked.

“But birds are living things. They were in cages. They were suffering.”

“I am aware of that, which is why I shall not punish you. What I don’t understand, John, is why you and Daniel painted the birds with such care, all the while knowing that you would give them away.”

“Daniel has odd ideas sometimes. I suppose he hoped that the birdsellers might see in our wooden substitutes the evil in their trade.”

Mama smiled at me then, the way she had when she’d come to my tarn for the first time, greatly moved by my permitting her an intimate knowledge of my world. Taking my hand, she touched my fingertips to her lips. “You know, John, I think Daniel wished to show the birdsellers how their cages rob dignity from everyone concerned — not simply from the birds.”

“That’s it — that’s it exactly, Mama!” I cried.

But a moment later I understood the depth of my failure. For the bird market would be up and flourishing next Tuesday as though nothing had happened.

“What’s wrong, son?” she asked.

When I explained, she said, “Nothing so evil can be brought to so swift an end. But you will have your victories.” She wagged her finger. “And without robbery, John — with words.”

“With what words?”

“You will convince them of their moral duty to free the birds — and not only that, but other things besides.”

“How do you know that, Mama?”

She squeezed my hand. “I know you. And I know what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it.”

*

After our dessert, Mama and I strolled through the city till after midnight. The evening was cool, and she draped her shawl over my shoulders. Several times strangers pointed to me and whispered, “There he is, there’s the child who is part bird….”

Pride shone in Mama’s eyes when she looked at me.

An elderly man with a crooked hand even patted my head and whispered to his wife, “They say this lad created a miracle today.”

At that, Mama led me away and fell into a brooding silence. When we reached home that night, she knelt beside me outside our front door and whispered, “You must never make a show of yourself. It is dangerous. You must be careful to whom you show your gifts.” She gripped me hard. “Remember to keep something for yourself. You have no need to always be so trusting. When in doubt, wait.”

Without giving me the chance to respond, she told me not to worry myself with her foolish chatter; she was simply missing my father. “I must be mad to talk to you like this,” she said, laughing. Turning the key in the lock, she sighed happily at finding our house just as we had left it.

Upstairs, Mama sat on my bed, and I laid my head in her lap. She combed my hair with her soft fingers and sang me “Barbara Allen”: In Scarlet town, where I was born …

At the tolling of one o’clock, she tucked me under the covers. I fell asleep with her playing me into the arms of Mozart on her pianoforte. Indeed, she must have played for many hours, for when I woke after dawn, I found her with her head resting on the piano lid, still in her clothes from the night before. A folded piece of paper had fallen on the floor. I picked it up and found two lines from Robert Burns’s “The Farewell” in my father’s handwriting:

With melting heart, and brimful eye,
I’ll mind you still, tho’ far away.

VII

My youthful affection for the United States was provided by Violeta, whose late clockmaker father had been born to Portuguese parents in Boston. She was the third-born of five children and the only daughter in the family. Now thirteen, she was the first in her family to wake and often the last to find sleep. She ate quicker than anyone I’d ever met, ran faster than all her brothers, and talked in rapid bursts. Her mother said that simply listening to her was enough to make her lose her wits.

Losing her father three years earlier had faded her already fragile appetite, paled her olive skin, and left her helpless to cope with persistent nightmares of falling into fire. It was feared that she would burn herself out like a candle and never see the sunrise of her twentieth year.

The goal on which she centered her hopes was to reach America. Her father had told her that the night sky there was a radiant blanket of stars spreading out across a darkness so black that it hurt the eyes and frightened the mind. Violeta loved the stars and the darkness.

It was Daniel who first embarked upon friendship with her. In fact, as I was being hustled away by my grandmother, he convinced the lass to allow him to accompany her to her cousin’s house on Rua do Almada, where she was to get some onions. Daniel told me that she squatted down and dug in the garden soil, unconcerned for the fate of her pretty shoes. Her lack of airs impressed him, and he found himself wholly charmed. As for her jade eyes, though he was unable to put his feelings into words and I am translating for him, their depth provoked in him speculations into who she was and who he might be now that they had met.

So enchanted was Daniel by the sight of Violeta digging in the dirt that he grew restless with pent-up energy. When he began jumping around, she turned to ask what silliness he was up to. “Shooing away flies,” he replied solemnly.

“Are you saying, young man, that flies are attracted to me?”

“No, no — they were attracted to … to … to …” he stammered.

He never added the word me to his sentence because Violeta touched her fingertip to his lips to silence him.

*

While Daniel was courting Violeta, Father returned from upriver. On his first afternoon at home, while I sat shivering with fear at the top of the stairs, Mother explained my activities at the bird market to him, softening the more morally dubious aspects of my conduct. Instead of stealing the birds, I had