A hug means "I love you".

With a small wooden stick in his right hand, Louis rattles all the metallic objects he finds as he runs through the streets, on his race from his house to the square. The clanging fills his childish soul. The crude chimes give him a hodgepodge of feelings, a mischievous joy with a form of delightful enjoyment he cannot yet identify. From time to time he stops and with his improvised drumstick he resonates some lamp post, tapping at different heights.

A broad smile, very white in high contrast to his skin tone, seems carved on his face. The people in the neighborhood watch him pass by and smile too. Perhaps they are infected by the tender image: a child who fills the street with metallic tinkles. Maybe they are remembering their own childhood: the inner child smiling bursts out, seeing a child smiling.

Louis is seven years old, running towards the square. It is the time when the workers and employees return from work. Just the right time when, with his street act, he can pick up a few coins to take home. Through his worn-out shoes he can feel the warmth of the asphalt. There is only one more street to go to meet his three friends. There they are. It is Friday.

The stage is set. Four wooden crates lift the four little bodies off the floor. An old hat is used to collect the tips. They sing children's rounds.

"Three blind mice,
Three blind mice,
Look how they run,
Look how they run..."

They sing in chorus, but they also use the canon technique: one voice is delayed each time and enters, with the same lyrics and the same melody in a different time than the other singers. The white voices produce a white effect on the crowds in the square. For the hurried passers-by it is worth standing there, mesmerized, listening to four little children sing with such dexterity.

The children have done it many times. Louis knows the effect he produces when he has finished singing his verse and pronounces words that do not exist, lexicons that he invents each time he sings. Those present laugh at the witticism and then have the impulse to leave more coins in the old hat.

Watching them toss coins Louis lets out his mischievous, wide, white-hot smile. His eyes are distracted from watching the hat and rise above the silhouettes of the spectators to see the green canopy of the trees. From the green of the trees his gaze rises to the bewitching blue of the sky and gets lost in the shapes of the white clouds. As she plays with the clouds her throat continues to accompany the chant that repeats, to infinity, in the chorus.

When all the passers-by have made sure they have heard the entire repertoire and continue on their way, the children descend from their improvised platform. It is time to count coins: the serious game of counting the winnings.

"One for you." "Another one for you. "One for you." "This one for me." It's not Louis the counting child. He listens to the jingle of the coins and admires how they fly from the counting boy's hands to land near everyone's pile. Louis has his pile between his legs. He pulls out beads as he imagines the look on Mom's face when he hands them to her.

Mom embraces him, first with astonishment, then her gaze becomes tinged with the varnish of sadness. She looks at him, seeming to suffer for not being sure which path awaits this son who does not seem to be affected by poverty, a fiercer poverty since her husband abandoned the family.

She thinks that, although it was only recently that she heard him cry in the cradle, "He will learn things unimaginable to me, good things," she consoles herself. Looking at the joyful face of her little boy, her heart quiets as if she feels a soft, minty breeze, as if blown by a nearby muse.

Later, as the night grows darker, sacredly dark, Louis lies on his bed and reminisces about the day. The songs he has sung in the street come back to lull him to sleep. Before sleep overcomes him, looking at the lights outside, he imagines himself climbing onto a fully lit stage. He imagines himself surrounded by musicians, friends whom he embraces. He knows that with each hug he wants to say "I love you". As a child Louis knows that the world is wonderful. Life opens up before the sleeping child.

The next morning he will remember that he dreamed he was an adult and that a golden trumpet was shining in his hands.