Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

I like to have spat out my damned dentures at him. ‘Doing fine, my ass. Jesus. You know what you look like from here? Hell, brother, can you see anything ?’

‘Go on,’ he scowled. ‘Get lost.’

I shook my old head. ‘You like a damned fool out here.’

His arms all folded up over the steering wheel, his face staring up over the dash. ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered. ‘Hell. I just got to get on the road and I be fine.’

‘Sure you will. You be fine like Tante Cecile was fine.’

He looked at me then with something like hope. I felt suddenly angry again.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I said. ‘I ain’t going to help you.’

‘I ain’t asked for you to.’

‘No you ain’t.’

I stood there leaning in at his window, watching him watching me there. I could feel an old knife twisting in my guts. ‘If you asked for it,’ I said. ‘If you asked for it maybe you’d get it.’

‘I ain’t asking for you to help me.’

‘Can you even see over that dash? You need some phonebooks to sit on?’

He said nothing. I watched him struggle to put the stick in reverse.

‘You driving a standard? You even crazier than I thought.’

‘I ain’t crazy, Sid,’ he shouted suddenly. He look he going to start crying on me again.

I stood back then and crossed my arms. ‘Go on. Let’s see you get out of this then.’

He said nothing, just sat blinking ahead of him. An ancient old raisin of a man.

I could see the hotel staff watching through the glass. ‘Son of a bitch,’ I said at last. I came around to the driver’s side. ‘Get out of the damned seat. I mean it. I ain’t helping you but I be damned if you going to ruin a perfectly good automobile.’

I opened the door, the bell chiming from the dash, a fragrance of clean leather like a new saddle wafting out at me. Hell. The porter was still standing at the sidewalk, my suitcase in his red fists. I lowered my window, gestured for him to bring it on over.

Chip was careful not to look at me. I glanced across at the road. Everything seemed to slow right down. The day, bright and cold in that now unknown country. I don’t know. We don’t none of us change, I guess.

What is luck but something made to run out.

We jogged through the street, Paul and me. Slowly, we swung up into the trolley as it clattered down the boulevard, its brittle bells chiming. Leaning down, Paul hauled me aboard after him. The late evening sun sat like phosphorus on him, lighting up his blue eyes, his pale knuckles where he held me. It was the last week of August, and the light cutting through the trolley windows fell lush and soft as water.

‘You need to do more sport, buck,’ Paul laughed.

I nodded, gasping.

We tottered down the aisle to our seats. The trolley floor rattled and shuddered under us as it gained speed. The mahogany benches was warm from the long sun, and I shielded my eyes, looking past the tied-off curtains, the glass lamps clinking quietly. The city poured past us like something final, something coming to a end.

I sat there catching my breath, feeling a strange, vague sadness hammering at me.

Paul’s mood was entirely different. With a gentle smile, he winked at a jane across the aisle. Blushing, she looked down at her feet. Hell. He was a real cake-eater, our Paul, a great ladies’ man. With his wavy blond hair and his natty moustache, Paul look more like a motion picture star than the out-of-work pianist he was. Watching him brush the street dust off his dapper blue suit, I caught a sudden glimpse of how every damn jane on the trolley seen him: handsome, athletic, with that strong jawline, those eyes bluer than Greek silk. The perfect Aryan man. And he was Jewish.

‘Listen, Sid,’ he said. ‘Were you serious about helping me out tomorrow?’

‘What, with Marta? Or with Inge?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Marta, I guess.’

‘You got my number if it’s Inge.’

‘Inge then. It doesn’t matter so much.’

The boulevards was all shady, the green lindens dark against the bald sky. The trolley pulled up alongside a stop, emptied, filled up, then rolled back out again. We was on our way to the Hound to practise some numbers with the kid, though I wasn’t sure what the point was. We been banned from playing live. Which meant we was banned from playing, period. In fact, if Ernst ain’t owned the Hound — a sweet little sanctuary of a club bought with his papa’s money — we might’ve give up playing at all. Well, not really, but you get the idea. The club been closed up for months, become more a place to just mess around.

My eyes drifted to the window, watching folks out in the slow summer light, the jacks in their shirtsleeves, the girls on their bicycles. We was passing a crowded square filled with tables, folks drinking coffee, eating pastry, when I caught sight of a face I known.

‘Ain’t that Ernst?’ I said, sitting up in my seat.

Certainly looked like him — his jet-black hair, his skin so pale it near translucent, the veins standing out like etchings under the flesh. He was gesturing to a woman, a cigarette burning down in his fingers. I ain’t recognized the woman.

‘What, there?’ said Paul. ‘No, that’s not him.’

‘The hell it ain’t. Look again, brother.’ We was coming abreast of them now, their small table set out on the pavement in the sunshine. The woman he was sitting with wore a huge grey headwrap, fastened with some sort of ugly brass brooch. She was thin as a garden rake, and when she smiled I seen real clear a row of very small, very crooked teeth. We clattered past on the tracks.

‘Where?’ Paul said, frowning.

‘Over there. With that jane with the cloaked birdcage on her head. You ain’t seen him?’

Paul twisted round on the mahogany bench, squinting out the window till we was long past. ‘It wasn’t him,’ he said firmly. ‘What would he be doing with a jane like that?’

‘A jane like what?’

Paul jutted out his lower teeth, gestured with one hand like he wrapping a turban round his skull.

I smiled. ‘You get what you pay for, brother.’

‘Ernst must be on damned poor footing with his pa, if he’s paying for that .’

The trolley stopped, its bell chiming before starting back up. A older jack got on, short, narrow-shouldered, and wearing a party badge. We fell silent. Seeing me, his face gone grim, but then his eyes settled on Paul, and he started smiling. Good old Aryan Paul. The jack glanced at his pocket watch as he neared us.

He sat down across from us, his mottled hands resting on his knees. The sun slanted in through the windows behind him so I couldn’t no longer see his face.

‘If this weather persists, we’ll have summer right into November,’ he said pleasantly.

I ain’t said nothing.

After a moment, Paul smiled. ‘We can only hope so.’ I could feel him gearing up, gathering his charm. He flashed one of his startling smiles.

‘You’re not in uniform, son,’ the jack said.

‘Not yet.’ He give the jack a knowing look.

The man seemed to think about this for a moment. Then he lowered his voice. ‘What do you know?’

‘What have you heard?’ Paul asked back.

‘It’s coming, isn’t it?’ The man leaned forward, across the aisle. ‘The horses are gone from the markets. My wife thinks it’s nothing. But it’s really starting, isn’t it?’

‘It’s always starting,’ said Paul. ‘We always have to be prepared.’

‘The British won’t stop it.’

‘The British are impotent,’ said Paul.

‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘Yes.’