{"id":26464,"date":"1979-04-10T16:27:27","date_gmt":"1979-04-10T15:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=26464"},"modified":"2013-06-14T14:27:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T13:27:17","slug":"helen-holmes-prelude-1979","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=26464","title":{"rendered":"Helen Holmes – Prelude (1979)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[From ‘Bohemian Bagatelle<\/a>‘, published 1979 by the Bohemians]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PRELUDE<\/span><\/p>\n

He stood in the market-place of a small country town, slowly adjusting the straps of his accordion, shabbily dressed and swarthy of face, a bright handkerchief tied around his neck, and an old felt hat pushed back off his forehead, showing his untidy, curly, black hair.<\/p>\n

Then with a few opening chords, he broke into one of Brahms\u2019 Hungarian dances. Passers-by stopped and listened, and a little girl ran out of a house, and holding out her skirt began to dance with the natural grace so many children possess. Upstairs her grandfather pushed up the window and sat watching, a smile on his tired old face.<\/p>\n

By now the street was becoming crowded, visitors, school-children, mothers with prams, and shoppers, all drawn by fascinating rhythm, stood eagerly around, listening.<\/p>\n

The swarthy player, seeing them, and yet oblivious, played on, a smile of satisfaction slowly spreading over his face, as his nut-brown fingers sped expertly over the keys and buttons. It was a happy crowd, appreciating what they heard, and it was only after listening himself, for several minutes, that the police constable decided he had to move them on.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on, now, please, move on, can\u2019t block the road like this, you know!\u201d The music stopped. \u201cSi, si, I go now.\u201d Snapping the clips shut, the player swung the accordion on to his shoulder and slowly sauntered off.<\/p>\n

The little dancing-girl slyly gathered up the few coins that had been thrown to him, and ran upstairs to show them to her grandfather.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes later the player turned into a quiet lane, and took a key from his pocket, and opening the door of an expensive looking car, climbed in and placed the instrument on the seat beside him; then looking into the mirror he smiled. \u201cYou did well, Antonion, my friend, they like you very much, si, si!\u201d<\/p>\n

The taking the handkerchief from around his neck he wiped off the tan make-up from his face and hands, and carefully pulled off the thick black moustache, and throwing the old hat into the back of the car, took out a comb and tidied his hair. \u201cNow all I hope is that they will like me as well in the theatre in London tonight!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was exactly one year previously that an announcement in the paper read: \u201cThe admirers of Michael Hart; the well known accordionist, will be sorry to hear that, owing to illness, his doctors say, by overwork, he has had to cancel all his future engagements. I am sure all our readers will wish this talented artist a speedy recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Helen Holmes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  PRELUDE He stood in the market-place of a small country town, slowly adjusting the straps of his accordion, shabbily dressed and swarthy of face, a bright handkerchief tied around his neck, and an old felt hat pushed back off his… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[248,109,111],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26464"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26464"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26558,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26464\/revisions\/26558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}