Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

Chip and me, we didn’t give that sort the time of day. We was snobs, purists. And so we swung with Franz Grothe and Georg Haentzschel, Walter Dobschinski and Ernst Hoellerhagen and Stefan Weintraub. We swung with Eric Borchard, till that night when, high on horse, he strangled his girlfriend. Then we swung with someone else. It been a ride.

It was a cool night, the coppery reek of raw exhaust on the breeze. I looked across the grass of Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, studying the glowing ochre Babylon theatre. From a distance it put me in mind of a slab of cheddar, that lustrous colour and all them angles. How strange to be standing here again, in this very square I used to tread when I was young. The building caught the last of the sunlight, bright against the grey square.

Chip stood between me and our eerily silent minder, what’s-his-name. Chip was fixing his hair, spitting on his fingers then dabbing at the pale part in his Afro. Already sick with nerves, I looked past him, at the Babylon, the crowd of folks spilling out onto the plaza. Seeing just how many there was, I begun swallowing hard. My damn throat felt like it stuffed with cotton.

‘Sid? You got the nerves, brother?’ said Chip.

I waved him off. ‘I’m alright.’

The square was filled with a carpet of folk rolling all the way to the theatre across, the Volksbühne, with its fearsome grey pillars. The Babylon looked packed so tight a gent couldn’t sneeze without greasing his neighbour. As if every Tom, Fritz and Eva in the city had turned out. Hell. I’d banked on this being a smaller affair.

‘How we even going to get in?’ I said. ‘There ain’t even room to get in the damn door.’

‘Aw, we’ll get in. You’ll see.’ Chip was looking at me with his thin oyster lips pressed tight. ‘You sure you alright? You looking a little green, Sid.’

‘I ain’t green.’

Chip grunted, patted my shoulder. Felt good having his hand there, reassuring. I was damned uncomfortable. Chip’s suit hung too short on my arms, hiked high up off my wrists like I about to wash my damn face. And his shirt sagged real loose on the collar, tailored for his fat bull’s neck I guess.

I thought of telling him so. Instead, I said, ‘I should’ve punched you in the goddamned mouth second you asked me to come back here.’

That seemed more fitting.

But Chip, he was laughing, already leading me and our minder toward the front door. ‘Hitting me wouldn’t of made no difference. Ain’t one single tooth nor shred of sense left in this old head.’

‘I expect that’s the truth.’

He turned back to me then with a funny smile on his face. ‘You ready to get back into the world, Sid?’

And before I could answer, he thrown open the damn door and shoved me on in.

Just like that, everything erupted. Hordes of folks was all up in our faces, their cries clattering about the theatre like trapped birds. Chip Jones! Mr Jones! Sidney Griffiths! Charles! Sid! Cameras flashed like pinpricks of light on the surface of water. Our minder, the sorry runt, he just too damn scared and too damn small to make anything of his job. As he squeaked for folks to step on back, I got jostled right and left, nearly falling down the carpeted steps, the silk of my suit roughing against Chip’s. A sudden urge to grip Chip’s coat come over me, but knowing I’d look a fool I just held my breath. The air felt heavy and sultry as a July night in Baltimore. And everything around us glowed red and yellow: the walls, the glare of sun dying in the windows, the gleam of blouses and handbags, of shoes. I felt suffocated by the marigold brightness of it all. And some damn fool named Sidney Griffiths had his name shouted over and over, like he was lost.

‘Just a little nervous, eh?’ said a milky voice suddenly at my ear. Caspars’ arm come up under mine.

The crowd began unbraiding around us, and I turned to look Kurt Caspars in the face. His plump cheeks all stubbly, his Scandinavian paleness a shock against his dyed black hair. He was smiling that half-mast smile of his, that awful ironic smile makes you feel something bad just happened somewhere else and what kind of damn creep you must be not to know about it yet. Nodding, he left us.

Our minder led me and Chip through the nightmare of a foyer into the theatre. I ain’t said nothing to him. Cause damn if that theatre wasn’t packed . Stuffed row on row with every damned brand of folk. All that noise in the foyer — they was the overflow . God in holy heaven, I thought, sinking into my seat. Why did I come.

The minder sat Chip in the front row, among the VIPs. Set him down like an old sack of potatoes between two gents we ain’t known from Adam. Then he led me to the other end of the same row, taking the seat beside mine. That surprised me. Guess I reckoned he’d file old Jones and me side by side, seeing as how we was a package deal.

I sat feeling out of sorts, a weird sulphur smell coming off the upholstery, like it was newly shampooed. Seats creaking around me like Virginia crickets. The other VIPs was all older than me, wax-faced and stern. I didn’t know none of them. No Marsalis, no Grappelli. I wondered where everyone was.

Kurt Caspars took the stage, smiling his cold weasel smile. ‘Thank you all for coming tonight,’ he said. His weird, angular accent somehow put me in mind of Big Fritz. Hell. Fritz. That poor bastard. There was a time I couldn’t think of him without getting angry. Coming back here was a damn fool idea.

It pleased me some to see Caspars’ hands trembling. ‘What we’ve managed to create here tonight,’ he said, ‘it’s been the work of so many voices, of so many years. A festival for Hieronymus Falk here, in what used to be Horst-Wessel Square? It’s a testament to the power of the new Germany, of a people filled with the future.’

The crowd, man, they ate this cheddar up . Cheering, clapping, banging the damn armrests on their creaking blue seats. Me, I sat frowning to myself. The thing about Caspars, see, he’s a master of talking big and saying nothing. But conviction in a voice ain’t like meat in a stew. It ain’t got no sustenance. I knew that even back as a kid. I glanced down the row to see what old Jones was making of this. His face look empty, sharp, staring straight at the stage. I tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t look at me.

All of a sudden Caspars quit the stage and a tremendous hush descended. The lights dropped, and the whole theatre sat in silence, waiting. I must’ve been fidgeting, cause our minder leaned over and whispered, ‘They’re going to show the documentary first, then afterwards your row will go onstage to answer questions.’

‘So they’re delaying the guillotine,’ I said.

The chap paused, silence opening between us. Then he leaned over once more and said, ‘They’re going to show the documentary first, then afterwards your row will go onstage to answer questions.’

A chill run through me. I got that odd feeling again, like something bad was going to happen. My stomach was burning.

But then the screen began to glow, the soundtrack crackled in, the audience began applauding. I drawn in a slow breath. Two hours, I told myself. Two hours. Ain’t hardly long at all.

Caspars’ documentary wasn’t told in no straight line. Seemed like one person was still talking when another one shown up onscreen, and then they was both talking over some photograph of someone else. I don’t know. But every time the kid flash up onscreen, his face eight feet tall, that chill cut through me. It got so I felt like I was watching myself watching the picture, my eyes pried wide, my hands damp on my trouser legs. Christ, here it all was, every last piece of our Berlin life: the women we’d messed with, the clubs we’d gigged at. And ain’t none of it seemed right .