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friend as a worthless mutt. I didn’t know why she used this particular expression, but her words clung tight as a tick to me even then. As a child I was not aware of just how many residents of our small city knew that my father was a foreigner.
    That worm in the woodpecker ’ s throat is what ’ s made him ill , I reasoned, pushing my face right up to the cage, wishing to be able to extract the hideous thing.
    The proprietor had given up on trying to knock Daniel on the head and was explaining the advantages of thrushes over larks to an old man with smallpox scars on his cheeks. I pulled Daniel’s sleeve to make him look closer at the bird and said, “See what was inside him?”
    While we stared through the mesh, the worm seemed to turn solid – to become a splinter. All this time I had failed to take note of the creature’s hesitant breathing, but when it ceased, I remarked its absence easily enough. The woodpecker’s eyes remained open but were no longer staring into our world. I called to him, then banged on the cage.
    “Hey, stop that now!” the proprietor ordered.
    Daniel began exhorting me to leave. Just then I realized that the worm was, in truth, the poor bird’s tongue.
    Before we left, Daniel asked again if we could have it, now that it was dead. The proprietor told him that if we would leave and never return, Daniel could open the latch and take him.
    As Daniel lifted the woodpecker out, he said in his most proper voice, “I hope I may count on your presence here on St. John’s Eve. I’ll have silver then for buying a healthy bird.”
    “I’ll be here, though I doubt the likes of you will ever save enough coins for one of my beauties. Now, go away!”
    We placed the woodpecker in a small sack that we begged at a cobbler’s stall. I wished to bury the unfortunate creature, but Daniel said we’d need him to do our painting properly. To my series of ensuing questions, all he’d say was “Hush up, John, I need to think.”
    We sat for some time on the steps of the São Bento Convent, where he could work out the details of his plan while studying the marketplace.
    “Here’s what we do, John,” he finally announced. “We’re going to wait here till that bastard leaves, then follow him.”
    When I asked why, he leaned toward me menacingly and gave me one of his favorite rhymes: Raptado, embrulhado, e entregado … Kidnapped, wrapped, and delivered …
    I was unsure if he meant me or the birdseller, but before I could ask, a hand clamped down on my shoulder. I looked up and, to my horror, discovered the preacher whom we’d seen a few days earlier.
    Struggling free of his grip, I tumbled down the stairs, banging my elbow hard on the granite. The villain’s dark eyes glinted with mirth. Daniel stepped in front of me as my guard. “What the hell do you want?” he demanded.
    The villain fixed his gaze on me over my friend’s shoulder. So transformed was his appearance from the last time we’d seen him that for a few bewildered moments I believed I had mistakenly identified him. Instead of his ragged fur-collared cape, he now wore an elegant scarlet dress coat with small pearls sewn into the wide lapels. On his head sat a black velvet hat, and his hair, exquisitely styled, cascaded in waves to his shoulders. He carried a silver cane under his arm.
    “Blessings unto you, my child,” he said with heavy sincerity. He took a pinch of snuff from a silver box and inhaled sharply into both nostrils.
    “Go away, you bastard!” Daniel demanded.
    “Though we have never met,” he said, winking at me, “I am an admirer of yours.”
    Removing his hat, he displayed its interior to us, then swirled his hand inside and extracted a foot-long indigo feather. Leaning forward, he offered it to me. “I have been watching you for quite some time, little one. So please accept this gift of heartfelt esteem. I, too, am most fond of God’s tiny winged creatures.”
    I shook my head in refusal.
    “Ah, what a