Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

After a moment he shrugged again. Then he turned to go. He was holding his chin stiff as he made his way through the tables and up toward the front of the club. I imagined I could hear his fat thighs rubbing together in that suit. He stopped halfway up. ‘You should come too, Ernst, while they’ll still have you. They’re not bad players. But they’d be so much better with you there. Think about it. Food, good money — you’d be taken care of.’ He glanced us over, a kind of sadness in his eyes.

Ernst bent down, lit a cigarette very carefully. I seen him shake out the match but his hands, hell, they was trembling.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been more ashamed of someone in my life,’ he said. ‘Never.’ He exhaled a long slow stream of pale smoke. ‘Good luck to you, friend.’

‘You callin him friend ?’ Chip shouted. ‘ Him? That fat fuck ?’

Hiero was staring at Fritz with a unreadable expression in his eyes.

Fritz nodded, twice. He made to say something, then seemed to decide against it.

Chip stood, leaning across the table. ‘You sack of shit ,’ he shouted. ‘Get out of here before I shove that axe so far down you throat it come out the other end. Go .’

‘Damn it Chip,’ Ernst raised his voice. ‘Sit down .’

But Fritz was already out, past the coat check, into the lobby.

Chip’s panting filled the club. We heard the bolt on the front door punch back, then the glass clatter as the door opened and shut. Then nothing but silence. That dripping water from the faucet backstage, a distant rattling from outside, like the street itself was trembling, the great pavement shaking.

I was curled up against the back window of the Horch, my suit jacket folded under my head. Mile after mile rolled by, barren in the dark. I remember the sun coming up red in the east. Delilah, the smell of her skin, her cool fingers tracing a line down my ribs. And old Paul blind-drunk at the piano, his amber laugh. I felt heavy, blank, like a light gone out in me. The Horch banged and jounced over the back roads, climbed back up onto the highway. And then I ain’t felt nothing. Not a twinge of grief, disgust or anger. Nothing.

I remember the kid swearing. We was long out of Berlin when he start to cussing and banging his hand against the back of Ernst’s seat, shouting that he left his horn in the Hound. I opened my eyes. My own axe loomed between us, its head pressing hard up against the canvas roof. The kid put a hand on my shoulder, murmured a apology. I just closed my old eyes.

I remember a early sky blond as ash, a warm wind smelling of coal and birch leaves. The mute road rolling out before us. Chip cracked his window open, and smelling all that dust I thought I was going to cry. I just shut my eyes tight, buried my face in my jacket. Thinking, there got to be something we could of done. Cutting out for Hamburg ain’t no kind of loyal.

Somewhere through that fog I heard Chip and Ernst in the front seat, arguing. The miles poured past, never-ending. I remember seeing Chip unwind the stained bandage from his head, peel the gauze off his scabbed-over scalp and ball up the bandages, tossing them out the window. We was nearing Hamburg. And then we was pulling over, lurching to a stop. I lift up a feverish face and seen Ernst out on the gravel shoulder talking to two armed Boots.

‘It okay, it okay,’ Hiero whispered to me. He squeezed my arm. ‘Don’t you worry Sid, we goin be fine. Ernst got it under control.’

One of the Boots crouched down, staring in at us with a flushed face. Ernst barked at him to step away from the Horch, like he might sully it. There was more talk, and then suddenly they was pulling away in a storm of gravel. Ernst thrown hisself back into his seat, his delicate hands on the wheel. He had a quiet, angry-looking smile on his face, and saying nothing, started the auto back up.

I slept again.

I woke feeling drained. Thoughts of Delilah and Paul rose up in my mind, and I tried to force them back down. Shadows passed by in the windows.

‘Sid,’ the kid said quiet-like. ‘How you doin?’

I shifted, glanced over at him. The road’s holes rattling the wheelwells, making my feet stammer against the floor. The kid’s knees was folded up over my old axe.

‘Hiero,’ I said, then begun coughing.

‘You thirsty, buck?’ said the kid. He pulled a canteen of water from under his seat. ‘Go on.’

It was late afternoon. Outside, a soft green light lined the boulevard, filtered through the trees. We started passing tall, pillared gates, the arched and gabled roofs of vast mansions rising up over their brick walls. Ladies strolled the streets, maids in strict uniform walking hordes of dogs on leather leashes.

Ernst look uneasy, driving real slow. We ain’t none of us talked.

Except Chip, of course.

‘Shit, Haselberg,’ he grinned. ‘You grown up here? With butlers and gardeners and nannies wipin you ass?’

‘We don’t choose where we’re from,’ said Ernst.

Chip chuckled. ‘I guess you got to keep you hands clean for you clarinet.’

I could smell the sea through the open window. Ernst pulled onto a leafy road, winding between pale lindens. I seen some wide green lawn just beyond the trunks. And then it struck me: this wasn’t no road at all, but a damn driveway . Hell.

Ernst pulled to a stop on pink gravel. ‘We’re here.’ With a vaguely sour look on his mug, he climbed out of the Horch, left his door standing wide.

Well, knock me over with a feather. It was a huge white stone mansion, with pillars and twin staircases leading up to the front verandah. A stone balustrade looked out over the yard. On either side of the huge façade, long, windowed wings stretched on for what seem like forever. On the lawn beyond I seen figures working, two gents crouched in the flowerbeds, a jane carrying some sort of bucket over their way. Looked like a damn institution .

‘You grown up here, buck?’ Chip muttered. ‘Hell. You father ain’t happen to wear a little white coat most days, do he?’

Ernst put a hand on the warm hood of the Horch, studied us where we stood on the running board staring in awe at the property. ‘My family — well, they aren’t me. Please remember that.’

Hiero nodded. ‘We know you, Ernst. It alright.’

‘And no,’ he said to Chip. ‘I didn’t grow up here. Mutti bought this place two years ago.’

‘You got to have one damn big extended family,’ Chip said with a smile. ‘Hell, buck. Boots ain’t never find us here. Even if they lived in the damn place with us.’

A tall man had come out to the balustrade and stood watching us, his long shadow bent and stretching out towards us. Something in the way his grey fingers grasped the stone made me real uneasy. Ernst shaded his eyes, studied him.

‘That you father?’ said Hiero.

Ernst shook his head. ‘It’s Rummel.’

The man come down one side of the steps, moving with a stiff grace. As he approached I seen just how damn long and thin he was. He got to be six and a half feet, but thin as celery, his lean, bony face expressionless, his hooded eyes pale. He give a quick, stiff bow, the corded muscles knotting in his neck.

‘Mr Ernst,’ he said. ‘How pleasant to see you.’

‘Rummel,’ said Ernst, smiling. ‘This is Sid Griffiths. Chip Jones. That over there is Hieronymus Falk. They’ll be staying here tonight. Would you find them a room, please. In the west wing, I’d think.’

Rummel nodded. ‘Shall I inform your mother that you’re here?’

Ernst give him a look. ‘Where’s Father?’

‘Your father, sir?’

But Ernst shook his head. He was already starting toward the house. ‘Leave your instruments, gents,’ he called back to us. ‘Rummel will take care of that. Are you hungry?’