Richard Zimler - Hunting Midnight

One person who makes no appearance in Joaquim Rodrigues’s retelling of the incident is Grandmother Rosa. Yet she, too, played her part, since I continued my avian theatrics until I spotted her waddling forward through the crowd, an expression of abject horror on her face. When she stood in front of me, glaring like an incensed queen, it was only too clear that all was lost.

I took her hand and stepped like a miniature Moses through a parting sea of congratulations and pats on the head. A number of coins were offered to me, all of which my grandmother sternly obliged me to refuse.

On returning to my house, I discovered Mother beside herself with worry. “John!” she exclaimed, pulling me into her arms. “Thank God, you’re safe.”

Grandmother ordered me to go to my room, telling Mama, “Wait till I tell you what mischief he’s been making while you’ve been sleeping.”

Mama gripped my shoulders hard. “Nothing bad happened to you?” I shook my head. “Thank God for that. Don’t ever do that to me again, John.” She wiped her eyes. “I shall be up shortly to see you. Go and change those filthy clothes.”

I climbed up the stairs while Grandmother Rosa recited a list of my indiscretions over the past months, ending with what she referred to as a “circus show for all the early-morning riffraff.” I undressed and sat on my bed, then fell into a sound sleep.

I awakened to find Mama seated at the foot of my bed. She greeted me with a wistful smile. She’d been crying again. “John, I’ve been thinking of what I ought to say to you.”

I sat up and started to make excuses, but she hushed me with a hand laid gently to my chest. “Just hear me out. I want you to know that you had me frantic with worry. John, you are a bit like fireworks — volatile and bright and scattered. I cannot control you. Not even Papa can. I know that. So we must strike a bargain. Otherwise, I shall die of agitation. You must never leave the house before either your father or I have given you permission — not until you are much older. The streets are not as friendly as you think. You are never to leave the house without me knowing where you are — never! ”

“But I was going to — ”

“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:

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.