The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
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out, not nursing his voice at all. His throat was fine, he felt that he could sing forever. In 
the months he had not been able to sing he had often thought about singing, planned 
out how he would phrase lyrics differently now than as a kid. He had sung the songs in 
his head with more sophisticated variations of emphasis. Now he was doing it for real. 
Sometimes it would go wrong in the actual singing, stuff that had sound good when he 
heard it just in his head didn’t work out when he tried it really singing out loud. OUT 
LOUD, he thought. He wasn’t listening to himself now, he was concentrating on 
performing. He fumbled a little on timing but that was OK, just rusty. He had a 
metronome in his head that would never fail him. Just a little practice was all he needed. 
Finally he stopped singing. Tina came over to him with eyes shining and gave him a 
long kiss. “Now I know why Mother goes to all your movies,” she said. It was the wrong 
thing to say at any time except this. Johnny and Nino laughed. 
They played the feedback and now Johnny could really listen to himself. His voice had 
changed, changed a hell of a lot but was still unquestionably the voice of Johnny 
Fontane. It had become much richer and darker as he had noticed before but there was 
also the quality of a man singing rather than a boy. The voice had more true emotion, 
more character. And the technical part of his singing was far superior to anything he had 
ever done. It was nothing less than masterful. And if he was that good now, rusty as 
hell, how good would he be when he got in shape again? Johnny grinned at Nino. “Is 
that as good as I think it is?” 
Nino looked at his happy face thoughtfully. “It’s very damn good,” he said. “But let’s see 
how you sing tomorrow.” 
Johnny was hurt that Nino should be so downbeat. “You son of a bitch, you know you 
can’t sing like that. Don’t worry about tomorrow. I feel great.” But he didn’t sing any more 
that night. He and Nino took the girls to a party and Tina spent the night in his_bed but 
he wasn’t much good there. The girl was a little disappointed. But what the hell, you 
couldn’t do everything all in one day, Johnny thought. 
He woke up in the morning with a sense of apprehension, with a vague terror that he 
had dreamed his voice had come back. Then when he was sure it was not a dream he 
got scared that his voice would be shot again. He went to the window and hummed a 
bit, then he went down to the living room still in his pajamas. He picked out a tune on the 
piano and after a while tried singing with it. He sang mutedly but there was no pain, no 
hoarseness in his throat, so he turned it on. The cords were true. and rich, he didn’t 

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