Violeta’s uncle limped along the streets, owing to the hunk of flesh that Fanny had happily ripped from his thigh. Papa strolled arm in arm with him, encouraging him to keep his lips moistened with drink. With the gin thus emptied, he steered the man off into a darkened alley, where he brought the glass bottle down squarely onto his head.
Goncalves collapsed to the cobbles but did not lose consciousness. He moaned piteously, “Everything is gone, all gone,” and began to weep.
Papa now informed the man of his true identity, explaining that he had had his shop smashed to pieces for hurting me and Violeta. “And I will have you reduced to kindling as well, unless you leave for Lisbon now and never return. That is your only choice!”
Goncalves was nursing his bleeding head in his hands and struggling to stand back up.
Papa squatted next to the limp wretch and held the glass spikes of the broken bottle to his face. “I shall put you on the next coach to Lisbon and even pay your way. But should you ever return to Porto, I shall take a bottle just like this one and twist it round your nose until you have neither nostrils nor mouth nor eyes.”
At precisely twenty-one minutes past seven by my father’s watch, Tomas Goncalves was gone forever from our city.
Without Goncalves and the income provided by his shop, Violeta’s family was rendered destitute in a matter of weeks, and all of the children were forced to go to work. Violeta became a wick-cutter at a workshop just off the Rua dos Ingleses. Inside that cavernous factory she worked from dawn to dusk, and all her wages were given directly to her mother, so she had nary a farthing to her name.
Saturdays and Sundays ought to have been her days of freedom and light, but as punishment for the “lies” that had lost her family its champion, her mother kept her imprisoned in their home. At times her ankle was even chained to her bed, I was told by Mama, who had witnessed this indignity herself. On these occasions she was made to embroider prayers on towels, for sale in the marketplace.
Perhaps owing to my father’s partial responsibility for their poverty, Mama never failed during those first difficult weeks to carry carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables to Violeta’s home on Saturdays. In this way, she said, they might at least partake of a warm and wholesome soup. She was the one who kept Papa and me informed about the lass. And it was she who told me as well that Daniel and I were forever forbidden from paying a visit to her house, for her mother maintained that we’d been a ruinous influence on Violeta’s life. Even so, I later discovered that he stood below her window all night on several occasions, trying in vain to get her to appear at her shutters. He ended this practice when he was told by Violeta’s younger brother that their mother beat her every time he was spotted in their street.
About ten weeks after her uncle’s disappearance, in September of 1801, Violeta’s mother even went so far as to call us curs who had spoiled her daughter’s innocence. The quarrel provoked by this assertion was to mark the end of Mama’s visits.
Upon informing me of this conversation, Mama added that she had been told prior to her outburst that Violeta would soon be starting additional work. Every Saturday she would be selling — at a stall in New Square — the embroidered goods she and her mother were sewing.
Mama gave thanks to heaven for this, since she saw it as our chance to help the lass. She encouraged Daniel and me to visit her there and offer her comfort. If anyone from her family was present, however, we were — under no circumstances — to allow ourselves to be seen by them. “If you take another risk with Violeta’s well- being, I shall never ever forgive either of you,” she warned us.
Daniel and I endeavored on numerous occasions over the next weeks to speak with Violeta at her stall, but whenever she saw us approaching, she seemed to choke as though she had swallowed poison. She would reveal nothing of her heart to us and would obviously have preferred to burrow down into the cobbles and bury herself rather than have to speak of her life.
As time went on, she grew more pale and drawn. Lice crawled freely over her bonnet, and I once spotted a red boil oozing pus on her wrist. Another time I saw what looked to be a burn on the palm of her hand.
The specific effects of her brutalized state on Daniel came as a surprise to me, likely owing to my youth; instead of conceiving a plan to kidnap her or blackmail her mother, as I might have expected, he began to inflict injury upon himself and others, frequently ending up in bloody fisticuffs with other boys and even with me. He hit me so hard once — as I was trying to drag him away from a young priest with whom he’d started a quarrel — that I awoke to find him sobbing over me and begging my forgiveness. “Look what I’ve done to you,” he wept.
He carried me all the way home. Cradled in his arms, I felt his strength enveloping me, as it had before our troubles began. I never told my parents what he’d done. I explained to Mama that I’d fallen off the cathedral wall while imitating a goose.
Soon, Daniel began to go to the taverns in the Ribeira district to beg gin, rum, and
Then, one moonless night, just before dawn, the lass slipped out of her house and tossed her pebbles at my window. She welcomed me outside with an embrace that was more solid than I had any right to hope for. When she laughed at my fear for her, I knew she had returned to me.
She removed her bonnet and let me scratch her hair, which was stiff with new growth. We spoke little on that first visit. Sitting on our stoop, she pointed into the sky and had me identify constellations as though she were tutoring me for an exam.
She began to visit me once a fortnight. I often suggested that we sneak off to visit Daniel, but she would not hear of it. “He would just ask me to flee with him. And I cannot.”
“But why can’t you go?” I dared to ask once.
She shook her head. “You are too young to understand, John. I cannot just run away. My family needs my wages. It’s my fault that my uncle is no longer supporting us.”
When I said that wasn’t true, she replied, “John, I’m afraid there are people whose fate it is to remain unhappy. Perhaps wickedness makes some of us undeserving of a better life.”
“But what of America?” I asked. “You told me you would really go there and that no one could stop you. Why not now?”
Hushing me, she told me we might remain friends only if I never spoke of her misfortune. I didn’t understand why she wished this, but on her insistence I swore to it.
Violeta, Daniel, and I continued to live our lives largely independent of one another throughout that autumn of 1801. The lad was hardly ever at home, and I grew tired of trying to coax him from the taverns. Even on Saturdays he would often get drunk rather than come with me to Violeta’s stall. He abandoned our art lessons as well, though I still loved my studies with the Olive Tree Sisters every Friday afternoon.
This wretched time reached its zenith shortly after the return of Daniel’s adoptive father, in February of 1802, a bitterly cold and rainy month. I was now almost eleven years of age, fearful of Daniel’s wild mood swings, and disenchanted with bird calls and most everything else.
As for Violeta’s occasional nighttime visits, they served only to agitate me, for she refused to discuss her plight.
Daniel’s father had returned to Porto because his relations in Newfoundland with a woman of French and Ottawa Indian blood had borne one too many fruits. The solution for him had been easy — he simply signed on for the next vessel back to Portugal and left without a farewell. He was of the opinion that unwanted children make all explanations useless.
Daniel already knew this, of course.
Senhor Carlos — for that was the man’s name — insisted that Daniel move back to their house. And despite all of Senhora Beatriz’s pleas and bribes, he refused to sign over the parental rights that had been given him when he and his wife adopted the baby given up by Senhora Beatriz’s daughter. He even threatened to appeal to a judge if she continued to keep the lad from him, insinuating that her Jewish background would hardly weigh in her favor. Furthermore, he was determined to take Daniel away with him the next time he set out to sea.
