Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

‘Sure I played alongside the kid, Hieronymus I mean — see, we called him “the kid” back then,’ I said in a creaking voice. Then Caspars interrupted me, and when I glanced off-camera to meet his eye, he whispered I should look straight ahead.

The audience laughed at this, not unkindly. I hunkered down in my chair a little. Feeling the minder’s eyes on me.

‘What I recall most about him, besides his playing, was his reading.’ I looked off-camera again, then as if remembering Caspars’ last prompt, stared at the screen like a badger caught in headlights. ‘What I mean by this is, he been obsessed with Herodotus. All them old historical tales. Hieronymus reading Herodotus — that made me laugh. Yeah, he read all them old histories, Egypt stories, Greek stories. Like he didn’t get enough of such things in the crib, you know?’ I cleared my throat, frowning. Looking off-camera again.

Caspars whispered something.

‘Well,’ I said in reply, my voice soft. ‘Well.’ I sat there staring at my lap, not saying nothing for some seconds.

Watching myself freeze up onscreen, my body went real tight, the theatre seat squeaking beneath me. I could hear myself breathing through my mouth.

I gave a taut laugh on camera and said, ‘Well, it been right terrifying. I mean what else could it be? We gone out for a cup of milk, gone out to quell our bellies, and we end up in Café Coup de Foudre with the Nazis. It was right terrible.’ I licked my lips, my eyes flickering. ‘Listen — nothing I could say now would get at just how terrible it was.’ I grown emphatic, using my hands. ‘I mean nothing I could say to you now could begin to bring home how harsh, how awful it been.’ I paused like a man who’d made a great point. I remembered then that Caspars hadn’t reacted to what I’d said. ‘Only thing I can say is that being there with him during the ordeal, seeing his courage, it was an honour.’

A long silence fell over the theatre as my face faded out. My heart had inched up my throat till I could hear the blood in my ears. That odd feeling come over me so strong I near couldn’t breathe. Hell, I thought. What is it. The dark felt soft and hot, like an animal crouching on me.

Then Chip come onscreen, and that bad feeling in me just grew. He looked rough, old, holy in his ice-white suit, like a Mississippi Baptist spent his life preaching on the delta. Staring at his burnt-out face, his swollen cheeks and his eyes rusted from horse, I seen him with eyes afresh. He looked wrecked, and what’s worse, wholly blind to his frailty.

‘When Hiero got arrested in that café,’ he was saying, ‘they’d had to make up a reason for it. So they branded him a race-polluter, a stateless race-polluter and an immigrant and a Commie. All sorts of things. Hell, if anyone was a Commie it was Sid. But they held Hiero for two weeks at Saint-Denis, no trial, nothing, before putting him on a transport to Mauthausen. Mauthausen . Very name of it give you the shivers. Poor kid was hauled off there, and no amount of money, talk, or pull could get him out. Not that Delilah had any kind of influence no more — she was even on thin ice herself.

‘Sidney Griffiths,’ said Chip, shaking his head. Something in me died at that gesture. It seemed so contemptuous.

‘A shame, the trust we all put in him.’ Chip took a long, deep breath, reflecting. ‘But he’s a lesson, really. A lesson in what jealousy’ll do to a man. To betray such a genius musician, and a kid at that, over a woman. Over the kid’s talents, and over a woman. I mean, there he stood, denying his friend, pretending he didn’t even know him, while they dragged the poor boy away. I ain’t saying he pre-arranged it. I ain’t saying that. But handing Hiero over to the Boots, to the Gestapo, like that…’ He shook his head. ‘That’s mind-blowing, ain’t it? I don’t have to tell you what a great blow that was to the legacy of jazz. I mean, here we was on the verge of that groundbreaking recording… I know, I know, we still got a pretty good take, but imagine what it could’ve been. Hell. It’s a crime. It’s a crime for which Sid ain’t never been held to account.’

I ain’t saying I seen it coming.

But hearing Chip onscreen, all a sudden that crushing hot feeling in my chest just drain right away. It like I ain’t even there no more. Like something just finished. Just ended. This blood trapped in my head, the slow dim throb of it deep inside.

I closed my eyes.

And then I was waking in some other room, a room cool and alien to me, the windows letting onto an old Baltimore street I don’t barely recognize. Lying on a bed in the damp sheets of a lady who ain’t my wife. The room white as wheat with early sun, a dry smell like cinder coming off her body. I wanted to turn to her, to gather her small limbs into me way I done just hours ago, kissing the joint at her throat where her collarbones meet, her wet dirty curls. But I didn’t. Something was rising up in me like bad digestion. Dust on the bedside table, a half-empty glass of water. Gulls crying outside. I lay beside that woman, thick with unhappiness, thinking of my wife.

Then I was back. The air in that theatre gone rich and hot. It was stingingly quiet. Gripping the arms of my seat, I pushed on out of it, its joints squeaking. The film was still rolling, the theatre soot-black, but even in that dark I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, their gazes weighing me down like a sack of ashes.

Our minder whispered, ‘They’re going to show the documentary first, then afterwards your row will go onstage.’ But I wasn’t listening.

My damned old legs wasn’t moving right. I could feel my heart punching away at my arteries, my whole body shuddering. Don’t you damn well look Chip’s way, I thought. Not one glance, Sid. I stepped hard across the minder’s knees, past the legs of all these folks, past Caspars.

Caspars leaned forward in his seat. ‘Where the hell are you going?’ he hissed.

I stood there, half-dazed, shaking. Feeling suddenly old. Shaking and saying nothing.

You a damn coward, I thought. That’s what you is, Sid.

No, I ain’t said nothing. I just started up the aisle, slow. The silence sharp as needles. Folks watching me leave and not the picture, and me feeling their stares. My face weighed heavy, like some great load I got to haul without dropping.

Ain’t no one said nothing. But then from the darkness some son of a bitch hissed at me in German, ‘Shame on you.’

I tripped a little. Stared at the pale faces in their seats. Then kept on moving.

I broke through the doors, through the foyer, out into the night. The coolness of the city air rushed over me. I stood there in the empty square.

Even at ten years old, Chip was a veteran liar. A real Pinocchio. I recall the Saturday I first met him: the Baltimore weather all sultry, the air stewed and stinking of sewage. Steam belched from the hot manholes, and walking through it, it stuck in your gullet like crumbs. I was sitting in the park where us blacks went, sitting with my sister Hetty — Hetty wearing the Philadelphia hat she wouldn’t take off her head for no one cause our pa give it to her. She was teasing me something awful. Calling me cross-eyed, gimp-legged. So when a kid come up in the distance, sank his tan overalls into the sandbox, I spat on my sister’s shoes and ran off to join him.

He was a small, funny looking git, a real balloon head. Getting near, I reckoned him for a strange one. Those full round cheeks, those prize-fighter biceps that seemed borrowed from an older brother. As I come up, he never even raised his face.

‘You want to play ball or somethin?’ I said, glancing down at his crown. His Afro had odd bald patches in it, grey flakes.