time his mother tormented him with this story, Johnny kept listening to her in silence. He didn’t dare contradict her, fearing to make her suffer. He had heard her crying next to himself at night and he had wondered why the Davies family hadn’t come to Port Royal to help them.
He came to know the truth once he reached adolescence. William Joseph Davies had never accepted his daughter’s departure to a part of the world where the idea of civilization was relative. By the way, Anne had kept in touch with her family, at least till her husband’s disappearance. She had then stopped replying to the letters coming from London. Johnny had thought that would last for a while, waiting for better times. But when he had found her burning the letters, he had understood that any link with the past was broken.
He got dressed very fast that morning. He tidied his dark locks up in front of a mirror whose borders were oxidized, then he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. The scar on his left cheek got thinner till it became quite an invisible line. Some black and dirty spots had appeared on his teeth: he put a finger into a small basin next to him and brushed them with force.
When he had finished, he went down the stairs like his mother had done just a moment before; he believed he would find her on the landing coinciding with the back of the Pàssaro do mar, doing the tiding up. She was there in fact. She was singing a song. He greeted her quickly; Bartolomeu’s voice called her after a while.
“Anne, come here”, he said, in his strange Portuguese accent. Even if he was a very odd man, he was the only one who had offered her a place where to live and something similar to a job. He had also tried hard to convince Bennet Avery to hire an apprentice at his workshop.
Johnny opened the door and ran into the alley stretching outside the inn, getting deep into Port Royal’s frantic life.
***
A crowd was assembled in the streets. They were walking among the junk stalks of sellers or they were chatting lively under the house windows. There were every kind of people, from prostitutes blinking in front of the inns, to the sea wolves guffawing between them, to the British navy soldiers pushing carelessly every people coming in front of them.
Wiping his forehead beaded with sweat, Johnny turned into a side street getting down to the port. In that way he would avoid the messy crowd of the people going to the market. He had just to get over the ancient Spanish area, then…
Damn it!, he thought. He bit his lips without realizing it.
Alejandro Naranjo Blanco was the last person he wished to meet. He had made up a gang with some other boys, tormenting everyone passing through that area. They didn’t look favourably on anyone. The English people above all. That was because Port Royal had been a Spanish fortress before the British conquest.
Their frictions had started when a sword had been ordered to Avery. He was a very good carpenter, but also a very capable and known blacksmith. He had appointed Johnny to deliver it and the boy had entered into the Spanish area, without even thinking about it. Alejandro’s gang had immediately assaulted him. The boy had tried to defend himself, but Alejandro had jumped on him, taking out a knife and leaving a memory of their meeting on his left cheek.
When he stopped in the middle of the street, Johnny felt again the burning sensation of liquid warmth he had had soon after the cut. He touched his scar, starting from the cheekbone and going down to his lips. He could hear his mother then: This place is dangerous, that’s why I keep worrying about you! And are you fighting against people of your age, now?
“Shut up”, he muttered to himself.
“Who are you talking to, amigo?” Alejandro was waiting for him a few steps behind. He hadn’t entered the area yet and the boy had already found him.
“Let me go, gordo”, Johnny replied. He knew that calling Alejandro a fat boy wasn’t a good idea.
Yet just meeting him made his blood boil into his veins. “This is not your neighbourhood yet. I can come back from where I came from and take another way.”
“Of course.” The Spanish boy didn’t seem to react to the offense. “But you were always getting through this area.”
“Are you looking for a pretext to quarrel?”
“Maybe.”
Johnny moved forward cautiously. “That’s just what I dislike about you. Don’t provoke me.”
Alejandro’s smile widened into a much deeper line, parting his fatty face in two.
“How is your father?”, he asked.
Johnny’s feet refused to go on. He clenched his fists. That bastard knew exactly where to hit.
“Have they searched into any shark’s stomach?”, he went on. “Or he might have run away with a bitch he met anywhere. He had perhaps got bored of your mother. And of you. What do you think about it, pendejo?”
He wished he could jump on him and settle the question all at once. But he forced every nerve of his body to let go.
“I’ll tell you again for the last time”, he cut it short. “I don’t feel like…”
He could hardly finish the sentence. Something flew next to him. It was a stone. He turned his eyes behind his shoulders, even if his brain answered faster. Taking him by surprise had been just an excuse to let the other members of the gang catch him on the wrong foot. Johnny saw three guys running to him.
“I’m ready this time.” His voice revealed a certain amount of confidence, as Alejandro changed his expression. His smile had turned into a grimace of gloomy hesitation. He then took out a flat-top knife, reminding a bit a barber’s razor.
One of the boys tried to hit him with a stick. Johnny heard it hissing near his ears. The boy tried to come close to him, wanting to make a lunge. He couldn’t. His rival was punching faster and faster. Suddenly Alejandro pushed him from behind, making him hit the boy who had attacked him first.
“ Hijo de puta!”, the boy shouted and hit him with his elbow on the face.
Johnny wasn’t surprised. He instinctively plunged the sword into the thigh. The boy fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Alejandro on his side started attacking him again: he took out the knife and tried to hurt him. He was aware of that and could move away just in time. The stroke hit the boy who had thrown the stone, hurting his shoulder. The two guys started to insult each other at once, giving up the fight. The last member of the gang kept looking at them apart, as if stupefied.
And then Johnny suddenly understood.
The time of revenge had come.
“I’ll return the favour, gordo”, he sentenced and hurt the Spanish boy in his eyebrow. He saw a stream of blood dripping from his eye, dimming his sight. He decided to take advantage of it and beat a retreat.
He turned on his heels and rushed to the direction he had come from, leaving behind him the very rancorous shouts of his aggressors.
***
“I’m late”, he apologized, opening the shop door suddenly. He was panting, his chest was dancing under his clothes. The elbow stroke he had got gave him a strange nose accent.
“I
