On Saturday nights he played with a small band in dim rooms, in halls behind pubs, at parish dances where half the people wanted music and the other half wanted an excuse to drink and look at who they might kiss before the night ended. He was not famous. He was not even close. He was a boy with a saxophone blowing as if he wanted to force out of himself all the smoke, all the cold, all the unsaid things of a city that knew how to keep silent with stubbornness.