Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

‘Yeah, you heard me,’ said Chip, turning to him. ‘Now come on. Let’s get some of that famous French cuisine.’

‘ Dejeuner ,’ I said distractedly. ‘Breakfast is dejeuner .’

‘You goin be a gentlemen yet, brother. Damn. Since when you croak Frog?’

I shrugged. I was thinking of Delilah, some of what she’d taught me, but thinking of her suddenly stripped away any good feeling I’d had. I shook my head, wrestled open the door, got out. I felt dark, depressed. I kept seeing old Ernst in his brown suit, his pale brow furrowed as he turned from me to look uselessly out at the garden. I kept seeing the quiet pain in his face, like he known for weeks the end was near, but was paralyzed now that it had finally arrived.

We found a small outdoor café that was serving at this hour and settled under a green awning. It was empty but for a old gent reading the paper, dressed all in grey with a grey fedora set stiff on his grey head. Like a damn wax statue. The hard metal chair felt cold through my trousers, and though the chill was burning off some, I ain’t seemed able to get warm. As a car passed in the street, I lifted up my eyes, seen pigeons scattering like blown paper in the abandoned square.

‘Where everybody got to?’ I said. ‘Ain’t it a weekday?’

‘Brother, ain’t nobody work in Paris,’ said Chip. ‘Paris the city of love .’

Then a waitress come on up. Clearing his throat, Chip gestured for three coffees. He watched her hips as she walked back to the bar.

‘I always liked France,’ he said with a smile.

‘Get you mind off it,’ I said. ‘Hell, brother. After what all we just been through?’

The kid was leaning forward, setting his wrinkled coat sleeves on the table. ‘You think Ernst goin get out?’ he said soft-like.

‘You don’t got to whisper, Hiero,’ I whispered.

‘He ain’t comin kid,’ said Chip. ‘No chance. His car is parked .’

‘He said he goin try.’

‘Don’t matter.’

‘He said when his pa gone back to the Saar, maybe then. Maybe he goin use his own contacts.’

Chip just give him this withering look.

‘Hell,’ I said, all a sudden tired of it. ‘Leave it alone.’

Then the waitress come back, set down three cafés au lait. Chip turned this dazzling eighteen-carat smile on her. ‘Bon jour ,’ he said. ‘Al lô .’

She laughed.

I closed my eyes. It sounded damn mournful, that laugh of hers echoing off the square.

‘Now that , brother,’ Chip murmured as she sashayed away, ‘ that is the real French cuisine, right there.’

‘She got to be old as you mama, Chip.’

He give me a long thoughtful look, as if absorbing this. ‘Aw, that be the grateful type. Makes the sweetness all the sweeter.’

Hiero cleared his throat. ‘So what we doin?’

Chip was still staring after the waitress. ‘Somebody got to call Louis. Who it goin be? Sid?’

My damn foot gone to sleep and I stood up, started to shake it out. That old jack reading his paper glance over in alarm. He turn in his seat, fold one leg over the other, rustle his pages. I been dreading this hour. Louis Armstrong? Hell, I known this was it, this was our moment, our lifetime. Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain’t. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.

Hiero was eyeing me. I known we both thinking the same thing. Louis was like to ask about Lilah.

‘Aw, I’ll do it,’ said Chip. ‘Where’s the number?’

‘I reckon Sid ought to,’ said Hiero. ‘Ain’t that why Ernst left him in charge?’

‘Hell, brother,’ said Chip, scowling. ‘Sid ain’t even in charge of his own bowels .’

I fumbled in my pocket, pulled out a mess of francs, crumpled notes, soft paper wrappers. I smoothed one out, slid it over the table to Chip. Like that, he was up and asking for the phone.

I looked at the kid. Seemed like something was seared inside him. Like all certainty been peeled back, torn off, leaving just teeth and sinew. He had his face down, studying his hands, and he ain’t said nothing to me as we waited.

After a time Chip come back out, lean over the old counter to smile at the waitress. Hell, that boy got the gumption of a tomcat. At last he saunter over our way, sit down with a satisfied flourish. His metal chair scraped on the bricks as he pulled it close. The shadows seemed to deepen in the square.

Hiero looked at him. ‘So? What he say?’

‘Who?’

I laughed angrily. ‘What you mean who. What he say?’

Chip smiled then, like he just swallowed the damn canary. ‘Boys, you just stick with me. That old gate like to sit on his hat when he get a earful of us.’

‘So he ask to see us? For real?’

But Chip only turn to the kid, give him this long, slow smile. He stirred his cold café au lait, set the spoon carefully down on the saucer, took a sip. His eyes met mine over the rim of the cup. ‘I reckon I might get a chance with that waitress. What you think? Worth the effort?’

Hell. Kid like to have chewed his own arm off from the nerves.

‘It ain’t funny, Chip,’ he burst out. ‘Come on, what he say?’

‘About what, now?’

‘ Chip ,’ I said.

He look at me, give a reluctant sigh. ‘Fine, fine. Louis say Montmartre.’

‘Mont martre ? We in Montmartre. What about it?’

‘Keep you shirt on, kid. We got to stay in Montmartre. Just a few hours.’ He lifted his eyebrows at me. ‘You goin find this one hell of a day, brother.’

I felt a lurch in my chest.

‘What you sayin, Chip?’ said Hiero. ‘Louis say somethin bout Sid?’

But Chip, he just give this low cackle, like when we was kids.

We climbed the broken-stoned slopes of Montmartre, the morning already brightening. I felt frail with nerves. Got so my damn hands was shaking in my coat pockets. Louis goddamned Armstrong . We sort of fell into exhausted silence, and I glanced over at the kid. Hope eats at you like a cancer, I guess. If we just left Berlin sooner, I was thinking, if we just tried harder for old Ernst, for Paul. If we just been better men.

The steep streets was quiet and I wasn’t able to shake my feeling of being in the wrong city. There was crowds gathering in the cafés now, haunting the doorways of shops. All of them reading newspapers, muttering among themselves.

‘What’s goin on?’ said Hiero, nervous.

Hearing him speak, a man look up, watch him with cold eyes. We gone on past, drifting toward the buildings, away from the open streets.

‘Almost like bein back in Berlin,’ said Chip.

I frowned. ‘Not quite.’

He led us up toward a tall church outlined against the overcast sky. Its spire sharp and fierce, like a thing out of nightmare. We cut through a dark, treed park, up a narrow set of steps, Hiero gripping the railing and grunting behind us. Chip looked back at him, grinned.

‘I thought you horn players got the good lungs,’ he laughed.

The kid just lean right over when he reached us, gasping and coughing.

I wasn’t fooled. I known it wasn’t the hike making him dally. Watching him, I thought, Sure you all that back in Berlin. But you about to meet genius, buck. You about to learn what you ain’t. Scary, ain’t it .

Kid hacked like crazy, spitting the mess onto the cobblestones.

‘Hell, kid, ain’t that a bit of you appendix in there?’ said Chip. ‘Look, Sid. You ain’t never seen nothin like it. I think it’s got its own teeth.’

But I ain’t felt much like clowning. I drifted over to the rail, set both hands on the cold steel, looked down at the steps below us.