New York - The Novel

Streets looked to Salvatore like a department store. But there was no doubt about the elegance of the people in evening dress who were entering it. He even noticed a silver Rolls-Royce gliding to rest near its entrance.
    Salvatore hadn’t been to this part of town before. He knew the busy streets of the Financial District and the waterfront, but he seldom had any reason to go north of Greenwich Village. At the bottom of Fifth Avenue,he had seen elegant ladies go in and out of their houses, but the sight of such crowds of people in evening dress was new to him.
    As they went inside, Salvatore gasped. The vast auditorium with its mighty chandelier was like a celestial palace. A massive curtain of gold damask hung across the stage, and on the huge curved proscenium, he saw the names of great composers. Beethoven he’d heard of, Wagner he hadn’t. But there, for all to see, was the name to make every Italian swell with pride: Verdi. And it was Verdi’s
Aida
that was being performed tonight.
    He soon realized that Caruso, sensibly, had not given them expensive seats, where everyone would be in evening dress. They were both in suits and clean shirts, of course—his father had even put on a tie—but as they made their way through the throng, Salvatore couldn’t help noticing that the patrons of the opera were looking at them strangely. When he blacked the boots of the rich businessmen by day, they were friendly enough. But now that he was invading their home territory, several of the men gave him and his father cold glances. A woman quickly pulled her gown away, lest it be contaminated by their touch, while her husband muttered, “Damn Italian wops.”
    “They like our opera, Toto, just not us,” his father remarked sadly.
    When they found their seats, they could see that their neighbors were simple Italians like themselves, perhaps also the recipients of Caruso’s generosity. His father began to chat to them, but Salvatore was thinking about the way the rich people had looked at them. And he continued to brood about it until the curtain went up.
    The plot of
Aida
was easy to follow, especially, he thought to himself wryly, if you were Italian and could understand the words. The Princess Aida, a captured slave in Egypt; her lover, the hero Radames. The love triangle completed by the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh. But with what grandeur Verdi handled the simple theme! What majestic marches, what haunting scenes. With his magnificent voice, thrilling as any tenor, rich as any baritone, Caruso the hero had the audience enthralled. As for the production, the Metropolitan Opera had provided a new staging that season, of unrivaled magnificence. As Salvatore responded to the music and drank in the scene, he sensed that all the splendor of his native Mediterranean, from Italy to Africa, was here. He felt profoundly stirred.
    But perhaps the most moving moment for the boy came at the end, when the hero, condemned to death, is walled up in a huge tomb. Thedark walls, dimly lit by stage lights, towered above him, hard and immutable, closed as fate. And then, suddenly, he discovers that his lover Aida, whom he thought had betrayed him, has hidden in there, choosing to share his fate. It was then, as the two lovers began their final, haunting duet in the darkness, that Salvatore glanced at his father.
    Giovanni Caruso’s face was tilted up. It was quite an ordinary face—broad and dark, the face of a working man from the Mezzogiorno. Yet seen in profile, it seemed to the boy that it was as fine as that of any Roman noble. And in the faint light, Salvatore could see that his father’s face, though perfectly still, was wet with tears.
    He would have been most astonished to know that, in her box, a fashionable lady named Rose Vandyck Master had already risen to retire, before the opera’s end.

    It was the following spring that Salvatore had his only quarrel with his brother Paolo. It happened when they were on their usual rounds in a crowded office, shining shoes.
    It was amazing how fast people seemed to forget the financial panic of the previous fall. Business had been good. The men in the office were obviously making money, and if they were in a good mood, they might even give the boys a dollar tip before they left. On this occasion, after they’d finished half a dozen shoes and been paid, one of the men, who was busy on the telephone, stretched out his hand and gave Salvatore a dollar just as they were going out of