Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

‘A human zoo,’ I mumbled. ‘Shit.’

I was just too damn astonished to say anything else. A old woman come out from one of the huts, carrying a baby in her arms, her shrunken gams gleaming in the sunlight. She crossed that sun-beaten patch of mud, singing something real soft to the baby. The baby started squalling.

‘My daddy ain’t never forgive hisself for comin here,’ said the kid.

I ain’t said nothing.

‘He a chief in Douala. Here he just a savage in civilized clothes. But hell, Sid,’ — Hiero give me a quick angry glance — ‘I ain’t never heard him say a damn word against Germany. Not once. Herodotus tell this story bout King Darius of Persia. The king called the Greeks to him and asked, How much scratch I got to pay you to eat the bodies of you fathers when they die? Greeks told him ain’t no sum on earth get them do that. Then Darius called some Indians to him, jacks who eat their fathers, and asked them in front of the Greeks, How much scratch I got to pay you to burn the bodies of you fathers when they die? Indians said no way in hell they burn their fathers. See, a jack always reckon his own customs is the best in the world. Ain’t no way you change his mind. But my daddy, he wasn’t like that. He come to Germany, that be it. He make hisself into a German.’

I ain’t said nothing to that.

We stood a long time at that enclosure. The sun slid lower. When I glanced over, I seen the kid lock eyes with one of the men, a jack with greying hair, the whites of his eyes gone yellow. They stared a long while at each other. I could hear the birds crying overhead. Some folk come down the path, chatting, drifted on past.

Hiero ain’t even blinked. There wasn’t no shared curiosity in that gaze, no sense of shock. Just calm resignation, like when a man gazes at a portrait of hisself from another time.

When we left Hagenbecks, it was like something gone out of the kid then, some kind of fury. He was just wearied. We ain’t drove back to Ernst’s estate at once. Kid directed me down toward the piers, and we pulled in slow, got out, walked to the far end to sit in the cool sunlight. Our legs dangled out over the black water. A swell of gulls rose over our heads, screaming. Air stank of the salt and the heavy docks across the way.

A big grey ship pushed slowly through the locks.

Hiero banged the dried mud from his shoes, stared out over the long shawl of water. ‘Hell. Hard to believe there be Algerians at the end of this water.’

I nodded, feeling depressed. ‘And Icelanders.’

He smiled. ‘Canadians?’

‘Indians.’

‘Some poor old jack in Baltimore lookin right back at us,’ said the kid, swinging his big feet.

I frowned. ‘I might even know him. Might be my Uncle Henry.’

‘America,’ said Hiero, and there was something in his voice.

‘You talk bout this sea and that sea,’ I said. ‘Atlantic. Pacific. But it all one water, ain’t it? Why divide it up?’

Hiero squinted up at the gulls. ‘You a real poet, Sid. A goddamn Herodotus.’

But my thoughts done already wander, to the day the kid first walked into our lives. How Paul brought him down to the Hound one night, the kid’s face half hidden by a old tramp’s cap slouched low over his eyes. I remember how I grinned at Chip, thinking he look like a damn child. No more than twelve years old. Hell, Paul couldn’t be serious. Was we really supposed to believe this Joe Diaper be a horn blower for real?

The kid come up, his jacket swaying every which way. He look awkward, all knees and elbows. He dressed like some tramp, huge khaki trousers held up with blue suspenders. Ratty houndstooth coat. And that dirty cap on his head, looking less like protection from the weather than something to hide under. Shade the world from his eyes when he ain’t feel like seeing it. He might’ve been any nasty little street brat to look at his clothes. What got you was how he moved in them. Didn’t strut exactly — he was too shy for that — but he moved with a rhythm got you thinking. Like he had a damn limp.

Paul kept going on bout what a dazzling genius he was, what a rare talent. A damn virtuoso . Me, I couldn’t stop looking at his skinny wrists.

But when he lifted his horn, we give him a respectful silence. His trumpet was a cheap-looking thing, dented, like a foil-wrapped chocolate been in a pocket too long. He put his rabbity fingers on the pistons, cocked his head, his left eye shutting to a squint. ‘Buttermouth Blues,’ Ernst called back to him.

The kid nodded. He begun to tease air through the brass. At first we all just stood there with our axes at the ready, staring at him. Nothing happened. I glanced at Chip, shook my head. But then I begun to hear, like a pinprick on the air — it was that subtle — the voice of a hummingbird singing at a pitch and speed almost beyond hearing. Wasn’t like nothing I ever heard before. The kid come in at a strange angle, made the notes glitter like crystal. Pausing, he took a huge breath, started playing a ear-splitting scale that drawn out the invisible phrase he’d just played.

The rest of us come in behind him. And I tell you, it ain’t took but a minute more for me to understand just what kind of player this kid was. He sounded broody, slow, holding the notes way longer than seemed sane. The music should’ve sounded something like a ship’s horn carrying across water — hard, bright, clear. The kid, hell, he made it muddy, passing his notes not only over seas but through soil too. Sounded rich, which might’ve been fine for a older gate, but felt fake from him. The slow dialogue between him and us had a sort of preacher — choir feel to it. But there wasn’t no grace. His was the voice of a country preacher too green to convince the flock. He talked against us like he begging us to listen. He wailed. He moaned. He pleaded and seethed. He dragged every damn feeling out that trumpet but hate. A sort of naked, pathetic way of playing. Like he done flipped the whole thing inside out, its nerves flailing in the air. He bent the notes, slurred them in a way made us play harder against him. And the more we disagreed, the stronger he pleaded. But his pleading ain’t never ask for nothing, just seemed to be there for its own damn sake. In a weird way, he sounded both old and like he touching the trumpet for the very first time.

I hated it. It felt so damn false, so showy. I kept my face lowered, out of the footlights, as we come to a slow stop, the music breaking apart.

When I looked back, old Ernst, he got water on the eyes. He cryin .

Paul just leaned forward, give the kid a loose hug round the shoulders. ‘What’d I tell you, boys? The voice of God .’

I thought of it now, sitting on the pier with the kid. But all of a sudden it ain’t mattered no more that the kid wasn’t, in my opinion, as good as everyone claimed. Sitting here at the pier, staring out at the flat, grey waters, he looked so damn small, so vulnerable. Like he something blown in on the wind. And I known then that this was what Delilah seen when she looked at him.

I put a hand on his shoulder, felt his sharp bones moving through his shirt.

He look at me shyly, smiled. ‘We goin be alright, Sid,’ he said. Then he ducked his head, embarrassed, looking away.

Couple days later I was coming up out of the gardens, crunching over the pink gravel, when I turned round to see Ernst striding toward me.

‘Sid.’ His linen suit was wrinkled at the elbows. He smoothed his hair, glanced back at the vast house behind him. ‘My father’s returned.’

‘He get them? He get our papers?’

‘I hope so.’ Ernst put a hand on my shoulder, started walking. ‘Come with me. I want him to meet you. I want him to see these are real people he’s dealing with.’