Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

He ain’t said nothing.

‘Least just wait till Lilah wake up. She take you.’

‘I ain’t waitin till my foot wake up, never mind Lilah.’

‘You got to at least tell her what you doin.’

‘I ain’t got to do nought .’

A soft moan drifted over from the window, and then Chip lifted up onto one dark elbow, like he posing for a sculpture. His eyes looking all glassy, the lids flickering like moths. Then his head sunk right back on his shoulders so that, throat exposed, it like he talking to the ceiling. ‘Don’t you damn well go out,’ he told that ceiling. ‘Lie youself down, get some sleep. I mean it.’

‘You tell it, buck,’ said Hiero, grinning. ‘You stick it to that ceilin.’

‘Put that old cracked plaster in its place,’ I said.

But Chip, he fallen back and was snoring along already.

‘Go on into Lilah’s room and wake her,’ I said to Hiero.

Hiero’s thin, leonine face stared me down from the doorway. ‘What kind of life you livin you can’t even go into the street for a cup of milk, you got to have a nanny?’ He stood under the hat rack, leaning like a brisk wind done come up. ‘Hell, Sid, just what you expect Lilah to do, you get in real trouble? She got a special lipstick I don’t know bout, it shoot bullets?’

‘You bein a damn fool, buck.’ Pausing, I glanced away. ‘You know you don’t got any damn papers. What you goin do you get stopped?’

He shrugged. ‘I just goin down the Bug’s. It ain’t far.’ He yanked open the door and slid out onto the landing, swaying in the half-dark.

Staring into the shadows there, I felt sort of uneasy. Don’t know why. Well. The Bug was our name for the tobacconist a few blocks away. It wasn’t far.

‘Alright, alright,’ I muttered. ‘Hold up, I’m comin.’

He slapped one slender hand on the doorknob like it alone would hold him up. I thought, This kid goin be the death of you, Sid .

The kid grimaced. ‘You waitin for a mailed invitation? Let’s ankle.’

I stumbled up, fumbling for my other shoe.

‘There won’t be no trouble anyhow,’ he added. ‘It be fine. Ain’t no one go down the Bug’s at this hour.’

‘He so sure,’ I said. ‘Listen to how sure he is.’

Hiero smiled. ‘Aw, I’m livin a charmed life, Sid. You just stick close.’

But by then we was slipping down those wide marble stairs in the dark and pushing out into the grey street. See, thing about the kid — he so majestically bony and so damn grave that with his look of a starving child, it felt well nigh impossible to deny him anything. Take Chip. Used to be the kid annoyed him something awful. Now he so protective of him he become like a second mother. So watching the kid slip into his raggedy old tramp’s hat and step out, I thought, What I done got myself into . I supposed to be the older responsible one. But here I was trotting after the kid like a little purse dog. Hell. Delilah was going to cut my head off.

We usually went all of nowhere in the daytime. Never without Delilah, never the same route twice, and not ever into Rue des Saussaies or Avenue Foch. But Hiero, he grown reckless as the occupation deepened. He was a Mischling , a half-breed, but so dark no soul ever like to guess his mama a white Rhinelander. Hell, his skin glistened like pure oil. But he German-born, sure. And if his face wasn’t of the Fatherland, just bout everything else bout him rooted him there right good. And add to this the fact that he didn’t have no identity papers right now — well, let’s just say wasn’t no cakewalk for him.

Me? I was American, and so light-skinned folks often took me for white. Son of two Baltimore quadroons, I come out straight-haired, green-eyed, a right little Spaniard. In Baltimore this given me a softer ride than some. I be lying if I said it ain’t back in Berlin, too. When we gone out together in that city, any Kraut approaching us always come straight to me. When Hiero’d cut in with his native German, well, the gent would damn near die of surprise. Most ain’t liked it, though. A savage talking like he civilized. You’d see that old glint in their eye, like a knife turning.

We fled to Paris to outrun all that. But we known Lilah’s gutted flat wouldn’t fend off the chaos forever. Ain’t no man can outrun his fate. Sometimes when I looked out through the curtains, staring onto the emptiness of Rue de Veron, I’d see our old Berlin, I’d see that night when all the glass on our street shattered. We’d been in Ernst’s flat on Fasanenstrasse, messing it up, and when we drifted over to the curtains it was like looking down on a carnival. Crowds in the firelight, broken bottles. We gone down after a minute, and it was like walking a gravel path, all them shards crunching at each step. The synagogue up the block was on fire. We watched firemen standing with their backs to the flames, spraying water on all the other buildings. To keep the fire from spreading , see.

I remember the crowd been real quiet. Firelight was shining on the wet streets, the hose water running into the drains. Here and there, I seen teeth glowing like opals on the black cobblestones.

Hiero and me threaded through Montmartre’s grey streets not talking. Once the home of jazz so fresh it wouldn’t take no for a answer, the clubs had all gone Boot now. Nearly overnight the cafés filled with well-fed broads in torn stockings crooning awful songs to Gestapo. We took the side roads to avoid these joints, noise bleeding from them even at this hour. The air was cool, and Hiero, he shove his hands up so deep in his pits it like he got wings. Dawn was breaking strangely, the sky leathery and brown. Everything stunk of mud. I trailed a few steps behind, checking my watch as we walked cause it seemed, I don’t know, slow.

‘Listen. This sound slow to you?’ I yanked the fob up and held the watch to the kid’s ear.

He just leaned back and looked at me like I was off my nut.

As we walked, tall apartments loomed dark on either side of the street. Shadows was long in the gutters. I was feeling more and more uneasy. ‘Nothin’s open this hour, man. What we doin, Hiero? What we doin?’

‘Bug’s open,’ said the kid. ‘Bug’s always open.’

I wasn’t listening. I stared all round me, wondering what we’d do if a Boot turned the corner. ‘Hey — remember that gorgeous jane in Club Noiseuse that night? That dame in a man’s suit?’

‘You bringin that leslie up again?’ Hiero was walking all brisk with them skinny legs of his. ‘You know, every time you drink the rot you go on bout that jack.’

‘She wasn’t no leslie, brother — she was a woman . Bona fide .’

‘You talkin bout the one in the green suit? Nearest the stage?’

‘She was a Venus , man, real prime rib.’

Hiero chortled. ‘I done told you already, that been a leslie, brother. A man . It was writ plain as day all over his hairy ass.’

‘I guess you’d know. You the man to see bout hairy asses.’

‘Keep confusin the two, Sid, and see what happens. You end up in bed with a Boot.’

We come round the corner, onto the wide square, when all a sudden my stomach lurched. I been expecting it — you need guts of iron to ride out what all we drunk last night. Iron guts I ain’t got, but don’t let that fool you bout other parts of my anatomy. My strength, I tell you, is of another stripe. I shuffled on over to a linden tree and leaned up under it, retching.

‘You get to know this here corner a bit better,’ said Hiero, smirking. ‘I be right back.’ He stumbled off the sidewalk, hopped the far curb to the Bug’s.

‘Don’t you be takin no fake change!’ I hollered after him. ‘With you eyesight, the Bug like to cheat you out of you own skin.’ A white sun, tender as early fruit, stirred in the windows of the dark buildings. But the air, it still felt stale, filled with a grime that burned hot in you nostrils. I stamped my feet, then doubled over again, heaving. The goddamn rot.