the mandoline

Herb knew how to handle the mandoline. At the age of twelve he had made one. It hadn't been a real mandoline but it looked as if it was a mandoline and it made noise. In that early stage of his career he played the mandoline he had made quite often. It didn't exactly make the sound of a mandoline but anyone who heard him playing that mandoline nonetheless liked it. At the age of seventeen he became a genius. He maybe could have been told he wasn't, but in a poor family as ours we didn't care. I hadn't had the impression that Herb impressed me too much playing his mandoline. It was his attitude rather that made a stronge impression, if he played that mandoline or not. He behaved as someone of knowledge. It would take several reincarnations to know as much as he knew. Only much later I discovered that he had taken from my library, at that moment not really a library as I lived abroad, a volume called Kunst : Praxis Heute. I hadn't been aware of the importance of that volume. It didn't tell me anything but the crap I didn't like. Herb had phrased my name on both sides with black ink. Beneath that black stroke he had left his name, as the mandoline and the noise it made. He left the date in my handwriting. It impressed me and the mandoline made its tiny noise. Herb knew how to handle the mandoline.