Hunting Midnight Read Free Page B

displeasure.
    “She was hurt,” I cried, “and her eye was nearly closed. It was big and puffy. Couldn’t you see it? It was wrong to have done that to her. The man, he was … he was a bloody poltroon .”I said these last words in English; it was my father’s term for a dastardly wretch, and I could think of nothing in Portuguese to equal it.
    Sensing in Tiago’s glare that he had not understood me, I frantically sought a worthy translation. He had other plans and grabbed my arm.
    “Come, son, I’m taking you back to your mother,” he said, his eyes glinting with righteousness.
    “If you don’t let me go …” I shouted.
    “Then what?” he laughed.
    I considered kicking him where the fabric in his tattered trousers hung suggestively forward, but sensed that this would only get me into deeper trouble.
    “Make fun of me if you like,” I declared, trembling, trying to imitate my father’s voice, “but if you don’t leave this lad alone …”
    Pity my youth, I couldn’t for the life of me think of a way toboldly conclude this exciting start to a sentence. And I still had not freed my arm from Tiago’s hairy grip.
    Daniel, however, made an end to my threatening sentence unnecessary. Rearing back, he hurled his stone right at Tiago’s tyrannical face, but at half speed, so to speak, giving the man ample chance to duck.
    The roofer dove to the ground, relinquishing his hold on me.
    “Go on!” Daniel shouted at me, waving furiously. “Close your goddamned snout and run, you little mole! You’re free!”

II
    S ometimes I think that hope is not all individual in nature, that it exists as an ether that suffuses into us at the moment of birth. Of late, I have even come to the unlikely conclusion that nature bestows upon us hands and feet, eyes and ears, so that we may work as loyal servants to this boundless mist of hope, performing when we can the delicate alchemy of turning it into tangible reality – giving it form and influence, so to speak. So when I found myself free from Tiago’s grasp, I served hope as well as my young heart knew how and bolted up the street, full of wild joy, paying no heed to the shouted commands behind me, wishing only to befriend the defiant lad who had helped me.
    I caught up to Daniel outside the city gates. “What are you following me for, caralho !”he snapped.
    Caralho was a rude reference to the male member. Many residents of Porto commonly ended their sentences with such swear words.
    At a loss for words, I trudged forlornly behind him. Finally, I piped up that I wished to thank him for freeing me from Tiago the roofer.
    “You’re a strange little mole,” he said.
    “No, I’m not,” I replied, wounded, because I was not yet aware that he was right.
    In a singsong voice, he then said, “Esquisito e pequenito, corajoso e faladoso …”
    It was a rhyme describing me, I was sure, and it meant, “strange and small, courageous and talkacious. ”This last word, faladoso in Portuguese, was plainly an invention of his own.
    I began to believe in that moment that he might be clever. He gave me a wily smile, his tongue darting out. One of his canineteeth was missing and made him look a bit daft. I knew nothing of Shakespeare then, but I can easily imagine now that Puck was penned with an actor of Daniel’s temperament in mind.
    He then told me of his fisherman father, who was away in Newfoundland. The lad was going to join him at sea in two years, after his fourteenth birthday. He said that his mother was a seamstress at a dressmaking shop on the Rua dos Ingleses, one of our most elegant streets.
    “She makes things for all the wives of the wealthiest merchants ,” he boasted. Sensing my suspicion that this was rather far-fetched given the state of his clothing, he added with assurance , “Ma sewed a dress for Queen Maria once. Long and purple, with lace everywhere. You never saw so much fabric. Shit, you could have clothed two or three cows in it.”
    I would have