Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

‘Did I stutter, buck?’

‘Did he say cat?’ Paul said to me. ‘Cat?’

‘Cat,’ I nodded.

Chip stared from one to the other like we was all off our nuts. ‘Cat. C-A-T, Cat. That damn squawlin in the damn walls from that damn feline bastard all the damn night. It ain’t kept you up?’

I started to laugh. ‘How hard you get hit in the head?’

‘Jesus, brother. It ain’t shut its damn yap all night. Felt like I was sleepin in a music hall, all that wailin.’

‘Keep drinkin that czech, brother.’

‘I heard it,’ Hiero said quietly.

Paul raised an eyebrow over the top edge of his newspaper.

‘Every damn jack in a six-block radius like to have heard it,’ said Chip.

Paul smiled. ‘I guess Armstrong’s girl’s not the only singer around here.’

‘Come to think of it,’ Chip said with a grin, ‘it sound a bit like her. She say where she slept last night?’

‘Dame Delilah the Second,’ Hiero murmured. ‘She just keepin us company.’

‘Dame Delilah the Second, is right,’ laughed Chip. ‘Ain’t no one like to get no sleep at all round here now.’

Delilah cleared her throat, turning at each mention of her name. ‘I’m standing right here,’ she said, frowning. She folded one braceleted wrist at her hip.

‘Aw, we ain’t makin fun,’ I said in English.

‘It complimentary,’ Chip grinned.

‘Mm. I’m sure it is. Ernst is in his office?’ But she was watching the kid as he picked up his horn, fiddled nervously with the plugs. I could see he was trying to look anywhere but at her. Hell.

‘Ten-pfennig socks at KaDeWe,’ muttered Paul. ‘I guess we’re going to miss out on those.’ He turned the crinkled page.

‘You find anythin bout last night?’ said the kid in his soft way. His eyes flicked over to Delilah, back to Paul.

‘I’m looking, I’m looking,’ said Paul distractedly.

‘You reckon that be good news?’ said Chip.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t reckon it means nothin. What it say bout Poland?’

Paul shook his head. ‘This is just the neighborhood rag, buck. It won’t give you any news you haven’t already heard elsewhere. You know that.’ He kept turning the pages. ‘Fritz would be delighted. The heart of commerce just keeps on beating.’

‘Go on, Socrates. What else you got?’

Hiero lift up his head, staring with sudden intensity at the paper. He blinked twice, rapidly. Then he reached across, tore a strip off the back page. Paul pull back fast, annoyed, but the kid ain’t said nothing.

‘What you got there?’ said Chip. ‘Hey, answer me, buck. Don’t make me come over there and take it off you.’

Hiero looked around, nervous. In that thin reedy voice of his, he said, ‘Albert Basel reviews the Golden Seven in here. Listen. Never have I heard a more loathsome example of noble men trying to embody something base. The Golden Seven is a parody of negroid drum rhythms that ends in being more despicable than Chicago jazz itself .’

Chip whooped. ‘Old Goebbels startin to knock down his own damn walls. What he doin, gettin Albie review the Seven? He off his nut?’

‘You got to ask that?’ I said. ‘For real?’

‘Goddamn Albie,’ he muttered.

Albert Basel, see, he was this critic down from Leipzig, a born-again Boot whose pen was, as Chip put it, a inch and a half bigger than his sword. It so happened that in ’29, he wasn’t able to get enough of us. Savoured us like a fine Merlot. Wrote article after article bout ‘German jazz’s ingeniously complex rhythms’. That was me and Chip he talking bout, we his particular favourites. Then come ’33. Seeing his teaching days at the Leipzig Conservatory done for, he suddenly change his suit. I remember the first day I seen him in the street and he just cross to the other side, like he ain’t heard me hollering at him. We was ‘aural vermin’ after that, ‘Jewish-Hottentot frivolity’.

Chip ain’t never forgive the son of a bitch.

But it ain’t made no sense, his reviewing the Golden Seven. Cause the Seven be old Goebbels’ answer to folks’ hunger for jazz. See, the music refused to die. Never mind the Swing Boys up Hamburg way. There was still jacks who known their Whiteman from their Ellington. And they still hankered to swing. The wireless done totally ban jazz, sure, but Joey Goebbels was shrewd enough to offer a alternative. And the Seven was that damn alternative. Like replacing sugar with salt. Staffed with half-rates like Franz Thon, Kurt Hohenberger, and Erhard Krause, they played from — holy hell, wait for it — sheet music .

‘What else he say, kid?’ I asked.

The kid turned, staring at the doorway.

I looked up. Ernst was glaring at us, his pale face blurred in the half-light. He worn a plain black suit, and with his black hair and coal-dark eyes he look fearsome. ‘Who isn’t here?’ he said sharply.

Paul lowered the paper, glanced up over it.

‘Say what?’ said Chip.

‘Who isn’t here? Who? ’

I blinked. ‘Fritz ain’t here. You meanin Fritz?’

Ernst frowned. ‘Fritz uses the stage door,’ he said under his breath. He turned to Delilah. ‘Are you expecting anyone? Did you tell anyone to come by?’

‘No.’

‘What goin on?’ I said. ‘Ernst?’

But he ain’t answered, just turned on his heel, walking fast. We was up quick, following him out onto the stage. Ernst got halfway across the boards when he froze, held up one waxen hand. No one moved. And then we heard it too.

Four steady sharp knocks on the front door. The glass rattling. A muffled voice calling out in German.

‘That ain’t Fritz,’ I whispered.

Hiero was standing with one long hand clutching his horn, his eyes flicking bout the club for some damn way out.

‘Holy hell,’ Chip hissed through his broken face. ‘It the Boots .’

‘I expect so,’ Ernst nodded, coming calmly back toward us. All at once it was like whatever been seething in him just smooth right out, harden right up into a sheet of steel. He cupped his hands, lit a cigarette. His pale hands steady. ‘Go through the water closet. You can get to the cellar through there, behind the old props. Get in there and go right to the back of it. And keep quiet. All of you.’

The kid, he was trembling.

‘What bout the alley out back?’ I could hear the fear in my voice. ‘We get out there, we out for sure .’

Ernst shook his head. ‘They’ll be watching it,’ he said almost casually. He gestured with his cigarette. ‘Go.’

So we gone.

Running across the stage, down the steps, through the sound doors and along the narrow brick corridor to the water closet. Kid was still gripping his horn and I near tore it from him. Then I thought, hell, maybe it’s better out of sight. I don’t know.

The damn blood thundered in my head. A low panel of plaster been cut out from round the pipes in that water closet, just under the faucet, and the kid crouched down, pried it free. He bent his shoulders low, slipped through into darkness. The closet was a cramped space and there wasn’t room for all of us at once. I waited in the hall, glancing back in dread at the low door up the stage.

‘Hurry it up,’ I hissed. ‘Paul? Hell. Go.’

I listened hard but ain’t heard nothing.

‘What, you worried bout you handsome suit?’ Chip said to Paul. ‘ Go , buck.’

Paul finally slipped through, and then at last Chip was wriggling low. I stepped in, shut the door real soft behind us, leaving it unlocked.

‘Thank hell old Fritz ain’t here,’ Chip whispered back at me, half in the hole, one elbow extended awkward out. His white bandage glowed like milk in a dusky room. He give me a frightened smile.