Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

Chip chuckled. ‘Those be her sons. They both dead now. She won’t share her candy otherwise. I figured I go in with you, she give out twice as much.’

I stood there staring at him in the dark hallway. Here he was, cheating his own blood and grinning about it.

He give me a look. ‘You goin to eat that?’

I stuffed the candy into my mouth. It tasted like chalk.

I don’t known how long I walked. My damn hands wouldn’t stop shaking with the fury of it. Goddamn Chip. Chip son of a bitch Jones. I left that awful theatre and just turned up the nearest street, passed the hundreds of parked cars, followed the new lamps away.

I come to a rest in a small treeless park. Trudging over the trim grass, I sat down on a cold bench. Lord my knees ached. A cold wind was cutting through the park. All these changes. Construction cranes hung like broken bridges, silhouetted in the distance against the glow of the Berlin skyline. I reached down, rubbed my smarting legs. I could feel that old damn pressure on my bladder. I needed a toilet. I got back to my feet.

Ain’t no good getting old. And this night, of all nights, brother, I got old.

Chip Jones was a bastard. Sure he was. But he ain’t never been malicious like that before. Petty, mean, a bit on the wrong side of crazy — but they ain’t the same thing. This, this was like a scald that don’t give you no peace. It burned and burned and burned. Something my mother used to say come to mind, something I ain’t thought of in a dog’s age. Ma used to say to me, she said, ‘Sid, that Jones boy ain’t got no light to his eyes.’ He ain’t got no light to his eyes. That used to tear me up, cause I always reckoned Ma was calling him stupid. Now, shuffling through a dark Berlin park seventy years later, I finally come to understand what she’d meant.

The café I found smelled of dishwater and cabbages, the varnished wood cheap and the seats sticky with fake leather. I didn’t care none. I come in through its brass doors grimacing. There wasn’t but two diners inside, a fellow and a lady, sitting together at a shaded table by the wall. I nodded at the barmaid, a thin woman with hair like dead grass, and took a seat at the bar. I opened the menu. I wasn’t hungry.

The barmaid come up, and I ordered some wurst, sauerkraut and boiled potatoes.

‘Where’s your bathroom?’ I said.

She tapped her ballpoint pen against her teeth, as if thinking. She tilted it lazily toward the far end of the bar.

Ain’t no sooner had I got back than the café chain rattled, and the seat beside mine was being pulled out by big, grey hands.

‘You goddamned bastard,’ I said, not even looking up.

‘Hell, Sid,’ said Chip, holding his chest from the long walk over. ‘That ain’t right, what he did.’

‘You sitting down? Here? Get the hell away from me.’

He opened his hands, closed them. ‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t say all that. I swear.’

I glanced up at his face, at its perplexed look. Like he known he should be sorry but wasn’t sure just what for. ‘Chip, I mean it. You get the hell away from here. We done, brother. You hear me? We done.’

‘Sid, I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know that all was in there.’

‘You murdered me. You flew me out here and you murdered me.’

The barmaid was looking at us uneasily.

‘Aw, Sid.’ Chip’s eyes was all glassy as he blinked at me.

And then he started to cry. The skin of his neck welled up under his chin like he’d tied a black kerchief there, his shoulders shaking with it all.

I swore, looked away.

‘Aw, Sid,’ he mumbled, ‘aw, hell, Sid.’

I sat in silence. I ain’t going to say nothing more to him, I thought. But then I could hear my old damned creaky voice starting up. ‘I thought, ain’t no way he could do something like this,’ it was saying. ‘I thought, he brought me ties from his tours. He’s a friend. He ain’t that kind of mean.’

‘Sid.’ He was wiping his eyes with his big thumbs. He looked so old, so old. ‘Sid, you know how they edit these things. Hell, I ain’t said half of that. You know how these things get cut.’

‘Get cut is right.’

‘Sid. Come on.’

‘What you think? You just come in here and it all go away? I should tear your goddamned head off. Jesus.’

But something was already going out in me. Hell. Chip just look so damned small sitting there, his little shoulders rolled forward in that suit, his big veined knuckles raw on the counter.

‘I know I did,’ he said quietly. ‘I know I got carried away. But I ain’t meant it like he put it together. I swear. Caspars, he just kept asking and asking. Just kept on me. I said a lot more, all sorts of things that was real nice about you. They just wasn’t in it. He known what he wanted, Sid. And that’s what he took.’

We was silent for a time. The barmaid come over and Chip shrugged at her and she just stood there looking at us. After a minute I blown out my cheeks, told her to get him the same as me. Chip’s German wasn’t half so good as mine.

‘You’re a bastard,’ I said, but without force.

He nodded miserably. ‘I am. I am. I feel damned awful.’

‘You going to feel worse, too. I’m flying back first flight I can get.’

He looked at me.

‘Aw, don’t give me that look,’ I scowled. ‘You surprised ? You honestly surprised ?’

‘I guess I ain’t. I guess it makes sense. I mean, I understand.’

‘Do I look like a man gives a damn?’

‘You’ll miss Poland, I guess.’

I hissed bitter air through my teeth, not saying nothing.

‘I ain’t sore about it,’ he said, lifting up his eyes and looking at me hopefully. ‘If you change you mind, well. I already rented the car.’

‘You ain’t serious.’

He looked confused, unsure how to respond. I got down from my chair, slapped some money on the counter. ‘Eat,’ I said. ‘Eat my damned plate too. Finish it. Ain’t no good leaving a thing unfinished.’ And I pushed on out of his life for good.

Or what I figured was for good.

I blown off the rest of the festival. Yes sir. And since I figured Caspars owed me something, I spent Saturday getting massages and eating rich, indigestible meals on his dime. On Sunday I bought ties in the Westin Grand shops, chocolates, wine I didn’t even like, charging everything to, you bet, The Kurt. My only regret was not being there to see his damned face when he got that bill. Chip come to my door twice that first day but I ain’t answered it. Then he stopped coming by.

I saw the old Judas at last on the Monday morning. I woke up to find my battered suitcase set just outside the door. Ain’t even needed to unpack it. I was following my porter through the lobby to the taxi stand for the airport when the young fellow turned his head, stopped short. To the right a small crowd had gathered on Behrenstrasse. A fish-grey Mercedes was shuddering and inching forward, shuddering and inching back, trying to pull out from the curb. As it rolled back, it damn near hit a taxi pulling out behind it. As it rolled forward, it near hit a parking sign.

And, hell, crouched over the wheel, looking crazily back and forth, face all squinched up, was Charles C. Jones. Damn jack look frightened as a child.

‘Hold up, jack,’ I said to the porter, who gave me a confused look. I switched to proper Hochdeutsch . ‘Could you wait one second, please?’

I left him curbside as I strode up to Chip’s car, rapping with my knuckles on the window. Chip whipped his head around, real nervous, his face hardening when he seen it was me. He rolled down the window.

‘Leave me alone, Sid. I doing fine.’