Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

Someone broke a bottle in the roar. Then another. Folks was pressing up against our table, jostling us.

Chip smiled tiredly, raised his glass of gin. ‘To the end of the world, brother.’

We drank.

It was the beginning of the western offensive. The Krauts hurtled through Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg. Every hour the lines of the map was changing. Day after the Coup, Lilah reported to us the British ain’t got a government, that some damn joker named Churchill taken over. Then the Frogs sent their armies north, and the Limeys opened a front against the Krauts. Then it was the Krauts landing parachutists in behind our lines. Hell. Every night the air-raid sirens rung out, searchlights scarring the darkness. We’d bustle on down into the cellar to lean cold and weary against the walls.

A few days later we got news of the Krauts bombing Rotterdam, burning twenty-five thousand civilians in the streets. All of Paris gone mad hearing that, everyone’s faces pale like they already dead. It was happening quick and startling as lightning. One day Holland fell. We could hear bombs thumping in the background, listening to the RAF correspondent broadcasting from Flanders. Next day word come that the Limeys run a bombing raid in the Ruhr.

Day after that we heard the French armies was in retreat, fleeing Belgium, and the Krauts marched into Brussels. Next night British bombers struck Hamburg. The Reeperbahn was chewed to mulch. I thought of Ernst. Then I tried not to. The entire damn French 9th Army was captured in Le Cateau, and Antwerp fell. And just like that the Krauts was swimming along the Channel coast, washing off their boots in the cold salt, and in a panic the Limeys start sailing away from Dunkirk by the thousands.

And then our own war begun.

It was a Tuesday morning when Delilah come bursting into the flat, dragging Hiero by the wrist. She rushed to the big windows, wrenched back the curtains, and turned to stare round the flat like she looking for something particular.

‘What you doin now, girl?’ said Chip, all irritable. He lift up his head from the sofa where he been sleeping.

I rolled over, crushed the pillow over my damn face. That sun was bright .

‘They’ve been rounding up the Germans in the city,’ she said. The curtains fell back; a cool darkness descended. ‘Who knows Hiero’s living here?’

‘Ask Sid,’ said Chip, yawning.

I give a sullen shrug from where I lay on the floor. ‘No one. Just us gates.’

‘The Bug knows it,’ said Chip, rubbing his jaw. ‘But she ain’t goin tell.’

Delilah set to brooding over that. The kid ain’t said nothing.

‘What bout the rest of the building?’ I said. ‘Ain’t they like to remember him? He been goin to the cellar every damn night there a siren.’

She frowned. ‘They’ll think he’s Senegalese,’ she said, after a moment. ‘I’ll tell them he’s Senegalese.’

I felt a soft tremor run under my skin, just real soft, like I taken a hit of the rot straight. Cause it was the first time Delilah spoken to me directly in weeks. Hell. When it bite you, them teeth go deep.

‘What they doin with them?’ said Chip.

‘Who?’

‘The Krauts. They arrestin them? Deportin them? What?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But they’re being asked to report to the stadium at Montrouge.’

Hiero splayed his gangly legs out before him, his arms crossed glumly against his chest. Lilah turned at the window, staring toward where he sat, brooding.

‘Well, ain’t that the party,’ said Chip, with that tiredness in his voice. Something done happen to him these last months. All that fire and brutality, the sharp words and surgical instinct — it had all dimmed in him. He sat up in his blankets, shirtless, his hairy back looking rolled and muscular.

Delilah turned to him, her green eyes dark. ‘Did you see this?’ She lifted a corner of the curtains, the dust drifting off them like pollen. She gestured out the window. We could see a vein of black smoke rising from the Quai d’Orsay. The sky above it grey as lead, plume after plume of tar-dark wisps feeding the shadow. It was like I could smell them, their awful char.

‘They’re burning documents,’ she said. ‘Germans have crossed the Meuse. They’re on their way here.’

After some seconds, Chip said, ‘ Now? ’

‘Now, in three weeks, in three months.’ She shrugged. ‘Half the city’s in a panic. I suppose the other half just hasn’t heard yet. Paris is going to be a war zone. They say the fighting will go street to street.’

‘It goin be a massacre.’

She said nothing.

‘Krauts are comin,’ I said to Hiero.

He just nodded darkly, started picking at his long fingers.

‘Lucky old Louis,’ Chip said in a bitter voice. ‘Wish to hell I was tourin down south right now.’ He grabbed a tangle of his sheets, held it tight at his waist. Standing, he crossed to the window.

Frowning, Delilah took a seat beside the kid. ‘We’ve got to get visas, get out of France,’ she said.

‘What bout old Louis?’ Chip turned from the window. ‘You goin leave him down south?’

‘It’s not Louis I’m worried about.’

I shook my head. ‘Ain’t no way, girl. Everybody tryin. And the kid is a damn Kraut .’ I looked at Hiero. ‘Lilah sayin she goin get us visas. To get out.’

He glanced at her, then back at me. ‘It ain’t goin happen,’ he mumbled. ‘Ain’t no way I goin get out. I be the enemy , Sid. Ain’t she realized it?’

I shrugged. ‘She ain’t listenin to me.’

‘They comin for real then? The Boots?’ he said.

I nodded.

‘And Louis still down in Bordeaux?’

I nodded again. ‘I guess so. I guess he ain’t comin back.’

Hiero give a angry shrug, and all a sudden his face closed right over. ‘So the record dead then,’ he said flatly. Just like that. It dead.

I felt a surge of vicious pleasure at his disappointment. I forced it back down.

Delilah was rubbing a nervous hand at the nape of her neck. ‘We’ll need to get to Lisbon. We can sail from there.’

‘You ain’t getting the damn kid into New York,’ I said. ‘Lilah? Look at me, girl. Not a chance .’

‘Not without papers, no. He’ll need something to get him through.’

Chip snorted. ‘Where you goin find these magic papers?’

She frowned. A thin crease appeared between her eyes. ‘I know some people. They know some people.’

‘It soundin like a lot of damn people all a sudden,’ said Chip. ‘Why don’t we just take out a ad in the damn paper?’

‘It goin cost us,’ I said.

‘What, the ad?’

I looked at him as if to say, There is just too many kinds of stupid. He just shook his damn head. Delilah, she was looking real tired, like she ain’t known rest in a lifetime. Just seeing it made me sad.

And so begun her plan.

She figured the kid be safest with us, back in the States. I ain’t like to disagree. All of Europe was on fire. But the first step was to get the kid a acceptable passport. Then we all be needing visas, to get the lot of us through France, into Spain, into Portugal. There was vessels setting out from Lisbon for New York every day, she said. We got to be on one of them.

She set up a rendezvous with a shadow some days later. We made our way through the city’s summer streets, past folk sitting on the terraces, sipping their mineral waters, chatting like there wasn’t nothing damn happening, like the war was some far-off mirage. I stared at Lilah. She had this sunken look about the eyes, dark sockets. Her thin arms swaying hard to her quick strides. Hell, I felt for her.

Feeling my gaze, she turned dark eyes on me. I glanced away, took to studying the patient, ornate buildings. ‘Be a lot of places to hide guns round here,’ I said. ‘If it come to that.’