91Čȱ¬

The story runs from a cucumber frame through a mouth-organ and a bar of soap, to the Emperor Maximilian.
I was the youngest of six brothers, three of us at home- the older ones had already left. Some of my elder brothers had studied music, learned to play an instrument, but when my turn came, family financial problems intervened; I was not offered any musical education. Just as well, perhaps, because I was tone-deaf.
First Bosun, then Colin, learned to play the mouth-organ, becoming quite proficient, experimenting with bass-harmonicas, reading sheet music, playing duets and eventually forming the melody section of a small amateur band, ā€œThe Happy Harmonicsā€. I loved to hear them practice, but whenever I tried to sing along with them, the resultant discord had me banished from the room.
I compensated by learning the words of all the songs they played; this gained me little satisfaction, and I longed to be able to join in the fun. Eventually, I was offered a bone. A reed on one of the instruments broke, and I was given the discard to play with. At the end of our back garden, behind the vegetable patch, was a cucumber frame. The glass was broken, it was choked with weeds, but the concrete surround made a comfortable, and sufficiently remote, seat for me to experiment. Gradually, over some months, with written instructions on which numbered note to play, I managed a few simple melodies, and, to my surprise, and my brothersā€™, I found that I could hold a tune.
A war intervened, ā€œThe Happy Harmonicsā€ was disbanded; I clung to my mouth organ and my new-found ability to make music. By the time I volunteered for military service I had progressed to an instrument with all its reeds, and over the next few years, initiated many a sing-song in camps in North Africa and Italy. Usually, it was a few of us in a canteen, but it grew to larger groups, the occasional concert, and, on one memorable occasion in the Western Desert, I was invited by the touring ENSA group to keep things going while they ā€” mostly professional musicians ā€” took a tea break.
I had their mike and amplifier, aids I had never enjoyed before, and started a sing-along that grew in momentum and far exceeded the ten minutes I was allotted. The English stood when I played ā€˜Thereā€™ll always be an Englandā€™; the Scotsmen bellowed in time to ā€˜Loch Lomondā€™; the Irish linked arms and swayed to ā€˜When Irish eyes are smilingā€™ and the Welsh stood to a man and thundered in chorus to ā€˜Men of Harlechā€™. Everyone clapped in time to tikkiedraai ā€” ā€˜Suikerbosā€™ and ā€˜Sarie Maraisā€™ (Afrikaans folk songs) and the requests came thick and fast. I had learned to play, by ear, most of the wartime songs, and I skipped the ones I didnā€™t know.
It was a wonderful experience for me. I donā€™t imagine for a moment that it was the skill of my performance that went down so well ā€” they would have sung as enthusiastically if I had just waved a banner with the words; it was the occasion. Far from home, sick and tired of the everlasting sand and flies, the uncertainty of tomorrow, surrounded by fellow sufferers, it was a chance of letting off steam for most of the several hundred young voices, but it thrilled me that my thin melody led this outpouring; I was making music. It made up in some measure for my lonely banishment of the past.
All mouth organs retain saliva, and after months, some of the reeds sounded odd, but it was all I had. In the closing days of the war in Europe, we drove into the Maximilianplatz in the centre of Innsbruck. The emperor, from the top his 50 foot column, gazed impassively as we drove around the circle. It was completely deserted. Not a single person about, every shop window boarded up. One faded sign above a small shop caught my eye - ā€œMusikinstrumenteā€ and beneath that, among others, the magic word ā€œHƶhnerā€. I peered through a crack in the shuttering, and there it was; the familiar tortoise-shell box, the name in plain block capitals. I pictured opening the curved lid, unwrapping the waxed paper, revealing, nestled in its shaped, yellow velvet bed, the ultimate in harmonica manufacture, ā€” the Hƶhner Super 64 Chromonica, a treasure unavailable since the outbreak of war.
I hammered on the wooden slats. Harder and harder. Eventually a dim light came on, and a wooden side door opened, a timid face peered out. Quickly I shouted in my stumbling German ā€œKann Ich Kaufe ā€” mundharmonika?ā€. (Can I buy- mouthorgan?).
She opened the door fully, a small blond woman with a toddler on her hip.
ā€œAre you English?ā€, she asked.
It turned out that she was, and had married a German engineer studying at Manchester University. He was somewhere on the Eastern Front, his father, who owned the shop, was frail and bedridden ā€” she was frightened and bewildered.
ā€œBut can I buy the mouthorgan?ā€, I repeated. She dithered - had no idea of price- finally, shyly, she said, ā€œWould a bar of soap be too much to ask?ā€
I ran to the truck and searched through my small pack. I found a cake of Lifebuoy still in its red and yellow paper. I also grabbed a half-wrapped bar of chocolate and hurried back to claim my prize. When I offered the chocolate to the boy, he shied away.
ā€œHeā€™s never had chocolate beforeā€, she said. She broke off a piece and put it in his mouth. The expressions that flitted across his little face would have been comical had the circumstances not been so sad. Initial refusal, query, surprise and a gradual beam of rapture as he stretched out both chubby arms. ā€œMore!ā€ he mumbled.
I reverently opened the box ā€” yes, exactly as I had imagined it. As I hugged this unexpected gem to my chest and turned away to the truck, I knew that for all the mouth organ had ever meant to me, its real value was a bar of soap -- and the delighted smile of a cherub who had never tasted chocolate.

(1038 words.)

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