those days, she'd been sweet. And her favorite words for her son had been "my sweet boy."
Toby resembled her in face and manner, and he'd never ceased to be proud of that, no matter what had happened. He never ceased to be proud of his increasing height, and he took pride in the way he dressed to wring the money from the tourists.
Now as he walked through the streets of New York, trying to ignore the great booming noises that accosted him at every turn, trying to weave amongst the people without being knocked about, he thought over and over again,I was never enough for her, never enough. Nothing I did was ever enough. Nothing. Never had anything he had done been enough for anyone, except perhaps his music teacher. He thought of her now and he wished he could call her and tell her how much he loved her. But he knew he wouldn't do this.
The long dreary day of New York suddenly switched dramatically to evening. Cheerful lights went on everywhere. Store awnings sparkled with lights. Couples moved swiftly along to movie theaters or to stage plays. It wasn't hard to realize that he was in the Theater District and he loved looking in the windows of the restaurants. But he wasn't hungry. The thought of food revolted him.
When the theaters let out, Toby took up his lute, set down the green velvet lined case, and began to play. He shut his eyes. His mouth was half open. He played the darkest most intricate music by Bach that he knew, and he saw every now and then, through a slit of vision, the bills piling in the lute case, and heard even here and there applause from those who stopped to hear him.
Now he had even more money.
He went back to his room and decided he liked it. He didn't care that it looked on rooftops and a shiny wet alley below. He liked the real bedstead and the little table, and the large television that was an infinite improvement on the one he'd watched all those years in the apartment. There were clean white towels in the bathroom.
The next night, on the recommendation of a cabbie, he went to Little Italy. He played on the street between two busy restaurants there. And this time he played all the melodies he knew from the opera. Poignantly he played the songs of Madame Butterfly and Puccini's other heroines. He went through stirring riffs and wove together the songs of Verdi.
A waiter came out of one restaurant and told him to move on. But someone interrupted the waiter. It was a big heavyset man in a white apron.
"You play that again," said the man. He had thick black hair and only a little white at the sides over his ears. He rocked back and forth as Toby played the music fromLa Bohme, and attempted again the most heart-wrenching arias.
Then he moved on into the gay and festive songs ofCarmen. The old man clapped for him and wiped his hands on his apron and clapped some more.
Toby played every tender song that he knew.
The crowd shifted, paid, and filled out again. The pudgy old man stood listening to all of it.
Over and over the pudgy man reminded him to collect the bills out of his case and hide them. The money kept coming.
When Toby was too tired to play anymore, he started to pack up but the pudgy old man said, "Wait a minute, son." And he asked him to play Neapolitan songs that Toby had never played, but he knew them by ear and it was easy.
"What are you doing here, son?" asked the man.
"Looking for a job," said Toby, "any kind of job, dishwasher, waiter, anything, I don't care, just work, good work."
He looked at the man. The man was wearing decent trousers and a white dress shirt open at the neck with the sleeves rolled just below the elbows. The man had a soft fleshy face, graven with kindliness.
"I'll give you a job," said the man. "Come inside. I'll fix you something to eat. You've been out here all night playing."
By the end of his first week he had a little second-floor hotel apartment downtown, and a fake set of identification papers saying that he was twenty-one (old enough to serve wine) and he had the name Vincenzo Valenti because the name had been suggested to him by the gentle old Italian who had hired him. A real