Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  He would later tell me, “My heart was thumping so hard I could hardly hear a thing. But you’d have been proud of me, John, I didn’t make a single peep. And I didn’t ask her for nothing. What would have been the good of asking, anyway? Things’ll always be like they are.”

  When Senhora Beatriz left, he started carving again, using his knife with such force that he made a deep gouge in his woodpecker’s tail.

  *

  At home I discovered my mother and grandmother embroidering in our sitting room. Grandmother Rosa smothered me in her perfumed bosom, then asked after my new friend’s father, plainly intending to evaluate his station in life. Mama gave me a sidelong glance to say, Let me handle this. I begged her permission to leave, then ran to my room.

  From many such experiences of my childhood, I learned that Mama wished to keep me away from her mother. In addition, I almost never saw her two elder brothers, though they lived only thirty miles away in Aveiro.

  When she came to kiss me good night, I asked her to stay for a moment and to close the door. “Grandmother is still here and has fine hearing,” I whispered.

  Mama covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. After easing the door closed, she sat by me and placed her hand on my chest.

  My agitation banished all possibility of tact. “Are we Jews, Mama?”

  “Goodness! Where did that little cannonball come from?”

  “Something happened today.”

  “What? Tell me, John.”

  “There was a man preaching in New Square. He came to talk to Daniel and me. And he said that … that we were Jews.”

  “You and Daniel? He said you and Daniel were Jews? How odd!”

  “No, you, Papa, and I. Mama, he knew our names.”

  She gasped. “Who was he? Did you find out his name?”

  “Lourenço. He did not tell me his family name. I saw him once before. Then he had long oily hair and wore a horrid cape. But this time he was changed. He wore expensive clothes. And his hair was brushed. I think he’s a magician. Or a necromancer. He did tricks.”

  “John, he didn’t hurt you or Daniel, did he?” she asked anxiously.

  “No, but he said you ought to take me away from here – to Scotland.”

  “How perfectly odd. And what did you say?”

  “I said I was Portuguese – and that I was born here.”

  “Good for you. And then?”

  I sat up. “And then Daniel told him to leave, but he wouldn’t go. He said we would be burnt. He even held out a lighted candle to us.”

  She sprang up and clasped her cheeks, closing her eyes. “Goodness, oh, my goodness …”

  “And, Mama, he put a tiny finch in his mouth. He was going to bite its head off.”

  Taking out her silk scarf, she reached out to the wall, then dabbed at her forehead. I rushed to her and led her back to my bed. After a time, she regained her composure and caressed my hair.

  “Mama, we’re not going to be burnt, are we?”

  “No, of course not.” She frowned and shook her head. “He was a silly man. He was trying to frighten you. Some men like scaring children. They are wobbly in the head.” She took my hand. “So what’s this about a bird in his mouth?”

  “He must have bought it at the market. And he put it in his mouth when we weren’t looking. He was going to bite its head off, but then he let it fly away.”

  “Yes, well, it just proves that such men will do anything to frighten a child. Please, John, think no more of this. Let me do the worrying for us both. And if you see him again, you must run directly home, just as your father has told you. Do not dawdle or linger – not for anything. Now come, get back under the covers.”

  “Are we Jewish?” I asked again.

  She was fluffing my pillow. “I have answered that question already, John.”

  Her abrupt tone made me pout. Placing a kiss on my brow, she apologized.

  “John, if you were Jewish, don’t you think you’d know? Would it not be obvious that you were different from other people?”

  “I looked all over myself, and Daniel did too, but we could not find any scars or anything.”

  “Scars? What manner of scars?”

  “For my horns. And my tail.”

  She smacked the mattress. “Oh, please. Let’s not be silly now. You cannot truly have thought …”

  “But you know people think I’m strange – even Daniel thinks so.”

  “John, you are not in the least strange. You are the same as everyone else. Just as I am the same and your father too. Now, cease with such foolish talk.” She kissed my palm, then made it into a fist. “Keep that with you always.” She smiled gently. “You are the love of my life, John. You know that?”

  After I nodded, she said, “Yes, it’s true, you’re not like every other child. But you do not have horns, and there will never come a day when I shall care a whit what anyone else thinks of you. Never!” She kissed my lips. “Now go to sleep. When your father returns from upriver, he will handle this Lourenço with the oily hair and canaries in his mouth.”

  These were the words I’d been waiting for; as I have said previously, I was of the firm opinion that my papa could resolve all problems.

  *

  Later, nearly asleep, I plainly heard Grandmother Rosa shout, “He said what to the child?!” I crept to the door to listen more closely, opening it a crack. “It’s Napoleon,” she continued in an enraged voice. “His victories are causing madness all over Europe. The Church isn’t sure how to slither its way into his plans.”

  After that, I could hear only frantic whispering. Then Grandmother Rosa shrieked, “Jewish, Jewish, Jewish!”

  At the time, I believed it the end to a long condemnation she must have made against this odd race.

  *

  The next afternoon, on my mother’s invitation, Daniel came to our home for the first time. He met me down the street, carrying a ragged flour sack with something rattling inside. When I asked him what it was, he gave me his wily smile and reached in, lifting out a likeness of the woodpecker that had died the day before. It was crudely carved and sanded only roughly, to be sure, and if asked I could have scripted a long list of its imperfections: wings too stubby, a beak too blunt … There was also a gouge on its tail that was clearly a slip, yet I thought it a wondrous thing.

  Mother served Daniel and me tea and a custard sponge cake on her blue and white windmill-pattern porcelain from Porto’s Massarelos Factory. Daniel had never drunk tea before, nor ever used a cup, by the looks of it. He gripped his in such a firm hand that I feared being hit by shrapnel. He bobbed his mouth into the steaming liquid only to wet his lips.

  Mother lifted her cup with her little finger at an aristocratic angle. I was trying to spot in her eyes whether she had yet heard any rumors of kinship between Daniel and Senhora Beatriz, but she was giving nothing away. “I’m so glad you could join us today,” Mama began. “John tells me you live in the Miragaia neighborhood – is that so?”

  “Yes.” Daniel snuck a look at me. He sensed subterfuge and looked eager to flee.

  “Your father, I believe, is a fisherman.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your mother a seamstress, am I right?”

  The lad nodded, then answered her subsequent queries in an equally voluble manner. Mama remained unperturbed. She enjoyed drinking tea with me on any occasion, so this was a treat for her, no matter how thin the conversation.

  Every time she looked down or away, Daniel pulled his lips apart so that the tendons on his neck stood out. It made him look like a turtle.

  As Mama handed me my cake, I decided to add some substance to our conversation. “Daniel has the best aim of anyone, Mama. You ought to have seen the villain after he got hit with his stone. The blood was running all the way down – ”

  Her hand went up. “Feel free to omit further details, John.” She turned to Daniel. “I should like to tell you that what you did was very brave. I shall not forget it. And I want you to know t
his: If you are my son’s true and loyal friend, you will always be welcome in this house. That I swear to you.”

  Mama’s voice quavered. She took a long sip of tea to compose herself. “I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you,” she said sweetly. “Let us eat our cake. I hope you both like it.”

  The lad held his fork in his fist while he sawed with his knife, concentrating fiercely. Mama gave a quick head shake when I looked at her, a signal for me to remain quiet about his difficulties. “And your grandparents, Daniel, are they living in Porto?” she asked.

  The lad looked up and asked, “My grandparents?”

  “Yes, do you see them often?”

  “No, not often.”

  “Do they live near you?”

  “No.”

  She let him return to his sawing. Her furtive glances at me indicated that she knew the truth. She’d either been told by Senhora Beatriz herself or had stitched rumors together into a recognizable pattern. I’d have wagered she was wondering if I knew.

  Daniel, stymied by his fork and knife, used his hand to lift a gargantuan piece of cake to his mouth, dripping custard on the table. I was about to divert Mama’s attention from him with a volley of questions about cake recipes, but she must have thought I was about to criticize him. She caught my attention by tapping the table, warning me with her stern eyes not to shame him. He remarked our coded glances, however, and grew self-conscious, biting his lip and placing his cake back on the plate. Then, for the first time in history, Mama picked up a piece of cake with her fingers and placed it in her mouth. To my utter astonishment, she proceeded to lick her fingertips.

  “Yummm,” she said. “My, that is good, isn’t it, Daniel? You can have more when you finish that piece. So eat up.”

  He smiled, then pulled his turtle face, which made Mama laugh.

  I suggested that the time had come for us to begin painting.

  “Not in those clothes, you don’t,” Mama warned, wagging her finger. “You, my son, are to wear your old smock. And I will fetch something for Daniel from the Lookout Tower.”

  “The Lookout Tower? Are you sure you wish to venture up there?”

  It was our storage room, up an ironwork spiral staircase from our second-story corridor. It boasted a huge octagonal skylight of red and yellow glass, through which there was a glorious view of the rooftops of Porto, but several panes leaked piteously. Recently, I’d discovered a dead lizard lying in a puddle.

  Mama folded her arms over her chest and glared. “You know, John, you must think me made of lace. I’ll have you know that when I was your age I was often just as filthy as you.” At that, she stuck out her tongue at me and laughed.

  I ought to have been pleased that she felt so at ease with us, but children tend to be shamed by singularity in their parents. When Daniel and I were alone, I apologized for her. He smacked me in the belly and said, “Your mother is the best, you idiot!”

  VI

  Mama watched us for a time from the back door while we painted our carved birds on the patio. Blessedly ignorant of Daniel’s plan, she was relieved that we were not up to mischief. Luckily, I knew nothing of his strategy myself or I’d have been tempted to own up to our proposed wickedness.

  I had never previously believed that I could be capable of making something lovely with my hands, but after a few hours we had crafted startling likenesses of a falcon, two goldfinches, and a wren.

  We applied ourselves happily to this work every afternoon until the evening of the Twenty-Second of June, the night before our secret dawn rendezvous at the Douro Inn with the bald birdseller, by which time we had twelve likenesses. Mother came into the garden to inspect our creations when they were nearly complete. She beamed with astonishment, her hands to her mouth, and made not a single mention of the streaks of paint covering our smocks and hands.

  “You two are the cleverest lads I believe I shall ever encounter,” she said proudly.

  “Only one problem, Senhora Stewart,” Daniel observed. “They have to be able to perch.”

  Mama suggested we hammer two short nails into each belly as feet, then tie a clasp fashioned out of wire to them. Upon receiving our approval, she rushed out to purchase these materials for us.

  When we were finished, we tested a jay on her index finger. It gripped perfectly. We gave it to her as a gift, reducing our lot to eleven. She kissed me, then Daniel. From a moment’s hesitation, I sensed the lad’s soiled face and fingernails rankled her. That his presence might have reminded her of a sorrow in her past never entered my mind for a moment. In any event, it was too late for her to hold herself back, for she was most fond of him already.

  *

  The next morning, just after dawn, I slipped into my father’s study, took out his inkstand and quill, and wrote a brief note informing my mother that I needed to leave early for my tarn and not to worry. Scripted as adultly as I then knew how, full of elegant curls and loops, I was hoping, of course, to be given credit at the very least for good penmanship. The things I did as a nine-year-old to test Mama’s patience … Suffice to say that she could surely have had a winning argument for chaining me permanently to a metal standard in her bedroom, just as the witch had done to my father after he’d been turned into a toad.

  I left the note on our tea table, then dashed outside to meet Daniel at the Douro Inn. Ten minutes after my arrival, I spied him trudging up the street, carrying our flour sack of painted birds on his back.

  “Hey, there you are!” he hollered when he saw me.

  Joy rose up in me, and though he motioned for me to stay put, I could not help myself from running to him. He smacked the top of my head playfully, and when I yelped, he did too.

  The hot scent of onion was radiating from him; for breakfast, he sometimes ate one boiled and sliced onto a piece of stale bread. I insisted he eat an apple I’d pilfered from our fruit bowl, but he shook his head. “My stomach’s all grumbly,” he said, frowning.

  Making a circle with his mouth, he blew onion breath in my face. While I held my nose, he began to explain his plan to me in a hushed voice. I immediately had grave doubts, since I believed my parents would be furious, but I didn’t speak of them; I was unwilling to spoil things. Then, while I was on the lookout, the birdseller’s covered wagon appeared. With a shout, he brought his horses to a halt by the inn, and he and his wife ventured inside.

  “Now!” Daniel whispered to me.

  We ran to the back of the wagon, where we untied the knots of the canvas flap and jumped inside. The cages were piled one on top of another. Feathers flew as the birds began flapping and chirping, rankled by the disturbance. I was frightened that the parakeets and other exotic species might die if we carried out our plan, but Daniel declared, “Better a death in the forest than jailed.”

  One by one we opened the doors to the cages and coaxed the birds free. A good many were reticent, and others were plainly fearful. It took much cajoling, but soon fifty-seven birds, by our count, had flown off to their new lives. Daniel’s expression was one of fixed determination throughout. He worked with the swift, assured movements one might expect of a wood-carver. Only when all of the birds had been freed did he permit himself to smile and raise his fist in triumph. “Good work, John,” he whispered.

  Covered with feathers, feeling the golden weight of freedom in my hands, I smiled back. Yet a pulse of worry was throbbing at the back of my head. If we were caught, the birdseller would cane us to our knees, and my mother would never live down the shame. I could already hear the lecture my father would give me upon his return: I thought that any son of mine would know better…. I’d likely never be allowed a dog.

  The astounding thing was that I truly did not care a damn. I didn’t regret my rash behavior, even if it meant my demise.

  Though the birds were now free, we did not rush away, for there was still the last part of our plan to bring to fruition. Daniel handed me five of our painted birds, keeping six for himself. We began placing them in the cages, twisting the wir
e feet of each wooden creature around its perch so that it posed in a lifelike position.

  Most people would have considered it a waste of time to carve and paint our birds only to give them away, but gift-giving was Daniel’s unspoken motivation; he wished not only to right a terrible wrong but also to create for the world something beautiful.

  As he was fixing the last carving in place, we heard the birdseller and his wife coming.

  “Hurry!” I said.

  In his haste, Daniel dropped the woodpecker. It fell with a dull thud to the bottom of a wicker cage.

  “Merda! Shit!”

  “It will be a good selling day,” the wife said. “No fog this morning.”

  By the time Daniel had a firm grip on the bird, they were stepping up to their seat in the front of the wagon. The birdseller shouted an obscenity at his horses and lashed them away. I fell back against the wooden frame of the wagon and grabbed hold of the canvas in order to steady myself. Daniel was making wild, incomprehensible hand gestures.

  “What do we do now?” I mouthed.

  “Depenados e prontos para a panela!” he mouthed back. We are plucked and ready for the pot!

  Had I been thinking clearly, I could have simply jumped out of the wagon at that moment, for it had not yet reached full speed. As for Daniel, he was not about to end this adventure just yet; he thrived on danger, after all.

  On we rattled, now at a full gallop. Daniel motioned for me to crawl as quietly as I could to the back of the wagon. I did as he commanded, and together we reached the edge. After a few moments, he lifted up the flap and peered out.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “We have to jump.”

  “Jump?”

  The cobbles were flowing away from us like a cascading river of stone. I shook my head vehemently. There was a carriage about fifty feet behind us that would undoubtedly crush us under its wheels.

  “Go!”