Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

Ernst come back late the next night. Our anxiety was chewing its way through our guts, we was so nervous. Ernst come in real slow, and I known it at once. Never mind his slick hair looking impeccable, his silver cufflinks shining. He run a pale hand down his tie, tucking it cleanly into his suit. Then he just shake his head.

‘You’re sitting in the dark,’ he said. ‘Somebody turn on a goddamn light.’

I felt my heart sink.

‘Nothin?’ said Chip. ‘For real?’

‘Maybe that’s good news,’ said Hiero. ‘Maybe that means they’re not in trouble.’

‘No, kid,’ said Ernst. ‘It’s not good news.’ Then he stopped, give the kid a hard look, his dark eyes looking liquid. ‘What do you mean, “they”?’

‘Delilah been gone all day too,’ said Chip. He give a quick glance over at me.

I could feel my old head spinning. ‘You go to the police?’ I said nervously.

‘Yes.’

‘They ain’t got them?’

‘They said they hadn’t heard anything about anyone fitting Paul’s description.’ He swallowed. ‘I didn’t ask about Delilah. But she’s a Canadian citizen. She should be fine.’

‘And American. She both.’

Ernst nodded. ‘Then she’s even safer.’ But there was something soft, something pliable in his voice, made me think he ain’t believed it.

‘Aw, look who just in time,’ hissed Chip.

I looked up.

Big Fritz was slipping silent through the soot-darkened curtains upstage. He was carrying his sax, his coat folded over the other arm. For a instant I ain’t believed he real. I sat still in my chair, my eyes fixed on him. He stop to study the cat lying like a pile of rags between the footlights. Then he come forward and down to us.

He look awful . His brown suit damp and sallow, his ruddy jowls shadowed with stubble, his small flinty eyes studying us each in turn. His mouth sagged in his soft cheeks like moist dough. He look like he bout to speak, but then he ain’t said nothing.

‘Hell, Fritz,’ said the kid. ‘You okay?’

‘Fritz,’ Ernst said with a quiet nod. But he ain’t moved.

We was all watching him.

He opened his massive hands, gestured weakly. ‘I came as soon as I heard.’ He sound sad. ‘Poor Paul. Jesus. What was he doing out there?’

I stared at Fritz’s raw-looking nose, peppered with fat black pores. Thinking, hell, he look damn gruesome.

‘Not just Paul,’ said Ernst.

‘Delilah’s missing too,’ I said quiet-like.

Fritz give me a long look. ‘Armstrong’s girl?’

Chip scraped back his chair, stood abruptly. ‘Sid’s girl,’ he said in disgust. ‘You been gone a long time, buck.’

Fritz frowned at Chip. His tight lips gone white at the corners.

All a sudden I just wanted to screw from that place, to slit my own throat, hell, just go . I ain’t wanted a single damn word more of this. I sat real still.

‘Delilah Brown,’ said Ernst. ‘Armstrong’s singer up from Paris. She was with Paul when he disappeared. It doesn’t make sense.’

Fritz leaned back against the edge of the bar. ‘I didn’t hear anything about a jane. She’s American?’

‘Canadian. Both.’

‘You’re sure she was with him?’

But Ernst was studying him with his very dark eyes, like he brooding on something. At last he said, ‘What did you hear, Fritz? How did you know to come back here?’

Fritz shook his head. ‘Only that Paul was arrested.’

‘Jesus,’ Chip muttered.

Fritz glanced at our faces. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘No.’ Ernst sat back, crossed his legs. But there was a hardness in his gestures, like he trying real hard not to feel what he was feeling.

‘What you mean, arrested?’ the kid said nervously.

‘He was deported to Sachsenhausen. This morning. I don’t know what the charges were. I expect the usual.’

‘The usual,’ said the kid, and there was a bitterness there I ain’t heard before.

‘Holy hell,’ Chip whispered. He begun running his hand down his face, staring at the scuffed floor.

The cat stood in the footlights, stretched, lay back down. Started licking the tops of its paws.

I felt something just give out in my chest, like my lungs was collapsing. I was breathing real fast, real shallow. Sachsenhausen . Hell. Not one of us had to ask where that was. A jack could live in a windowless pit and still know the word Sachsenhausen.

A tap was dripping somewhere back in the green room. The floor shuddered slightly, like a big truck passing in the street outside. I could hear the kid breathing.

‘What bout his papers?’ said Hiero. ‘He got his papers with him, right?’

Fritz shook his head. ‘I didn’t ask about his papers .’

‘ Who didn’t you ask?’ said Ernst. ‘Where did you hear all this, Fritz?’

Sachsenhausen, I thought. Hell.

Fritz ain’t said nothing for a long moment. His huge red face looked flushed, but it always look like that. He fold back the doors of his suit, put his huge hands in his trouser pockets. At last he sort of sighed. ‘Albert Basel. I’ve been hiding in an old flat he owns. Hoping this would blow over.’

‘Albie Basel!’ Chip shouted. ‘ Albie Basel? ’

‘What you doin over there?’ I snapped. ‘He killed us last year.’

‘It made more sense than staying here with you,’ he said grimly. ‘Than all of us being in one place. I should have said something. I’m sorry.’

‘Aw, he sorry ,’ hissed Chip.

Fritz stood real damn still, like he made of wax. ‘Shut up, Chip. I mean it now.’

‘Sure you do. If you ain’t gone out in the damn daylight maybe the Boots be less suspicious. They come here huntin for us the morning you left. You known that?’

‘If you hadn’t killed that poor boy, we wouldn’t be in any trouble at all.’

‘Poor boy?’ I said. ‘The one with the bottle to the kid’s neck?’

Fritz scowled. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Enough,’ said Ernst.

The club’s coarse light sat on our faces in a way made them look like masks, shone this soft transparency over the flesh. Ain’t none of us look like ourselves.

Delilah’s gone , I kept thinking. And then: Sachsenhausen . And then: Delilah .

Ernst stood decisively. He run a hand over his sleeves, like out of habit. ‘I’ll get the Horch out of the garage. I’ll bring it around out back. We need to go. Now. We don’t even know what Paul or Delilah will have told them. But I’m sure it’ll be enough. Take what you need from here.’

Sachsenhausen.

‘Where we goin?’ Hiero asked slowly, like from underwater.

Delilah was gone.

‘Hamburg. And then, hopefully, Paris.’ Ernst look like he going to say something more but then he broke off, as if there too much to say.

Sachsenhausen.

‘I won’t be going,’ said Fritz. There was a strain in his voice. All a sudden I was seeing again just how huge he was, how much his own man. He crossed to the stage, gathered up his coat and his alto sax.

‘You can’t stay here, Fritz. It’s madness.’

Fritz let a long silence trail Ernst’s words. He frowned. ‘Franz Thon has invited me to join the Golden Seven,’ he said calmly. ‘I wanted to tell you before I heard about Paul. And then, well.’ He sort of shrugged.

I got a strange taste in my mouth, a texture like cobwebs. Fritz in the Golden Seven ? Hell. Imagine it. I ain’t never heard nothing so unreal in my damn life. And all a sudden it all seemed so dreamlike, so ridiculous.

Ernst was staring at the filthy floor. ‘And you’ve accepted Thon’s invitation.’

We sat there in silence, all of us staring at Fritz.