Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

Chip and me, we stumbled into that storm. We ain’t brought nothing, no water, no food, and I already seen the foolishness of it. My skull throbbed. Chip squinched up his eyes, grimacing. I felt this grand helplessness go through me. A old jane passed by us, her back crooked as a hat hook, wheeling her crippled old husband in a cart. I just looked away.

Chip seized my sleeve, gestured across the boulevard. A old man ran his damn wheelbarrow hard up against my thigh, shoved on past.

‘That the kid?’ shouted Chip.

‘Where?’

‘There. Under that damn tree. On the grass. There.’

I looked and looked. ‘No,’ I shouted, ‘that ain’t him. Now come on.’

But Chip started pushing through that mass of folk.

‘Chip,’ I called. ‘Hell. Chip!’

He ain’t stopped.

Cussing, I waded on after him.

But, hell, it was the kid. He was sitting with his head slouched down between his knees, his hands clasped loose before him. Delilah was crouched in front of him, her back to the crowd. His clothes hung slack, like he just stolen them from some damn laundry line, and sitting there in that pool of fabric he looked totally shrunken. There was other folk, families, destitute men, sitting up under that tree. The yellow light shone on Delilah’s cheekbones. Her face look sharp, angular, grim.

‘Hi, girl,’ said Chip. ‘How the view from here?’

‘You got my note,’ she said tiredly.

Chip scrunched up his small eyes. ‘Yeah. And Sid here was especially damn glad to get one this time.’ His oyster lips widened.

I just looked away. It was too damn hot, just awful. ‘You give up on the station too I guess.’ It wasn’t a question.

Delilah run a hand along Hiero’s smooth neck.

‘Kid’s sick?’ said Chip. He crouched on his haunches.

But when Hiero lifted his head we seen the blood. Someone had smashed his damn nose in, split his lip.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Chip muttered. ‘Let me see that.’

‘He’s fine,’ Delilah said sharply. ‘I cleaned it already. As best I could.’

I just stared at him, at his head lolling on his shoulders there, like he been into the damn rot all day.

Chip got a strange look on his face. ‘What happen? Someone take him for a African?’

Delilah nodded. ‘A Senegalese soldier. Thought he was abandoning the city.’

I kept staring out at that mass of fear, at all them damn folk shuffling on with their crazy belongings. Thinking, A Stuka come, you ain’t got a chance. You all just be mowed down like grass. Like a comb pickin out lice.

Chip give me a thoughtful look. ‘How damn hopeless you reckon it be?’

The crowds surged, swelled up round a foundering cart, poured steadily past. All that shouting, the screaming of children, folk wheeling the damnedest things. And that nasty yellow light glinting off it all.

‘We ain’t gettin nowhere in that,’ I said.

Chip nodded. ‘We goin get just far enough ain’t no one like to bury us after the Stukas chew us up.’

‘That what you worried bout? Bein buried?’

He smiled a dark smile. ‘I ain’t worried bout nothin , buck.’

‘We’re going back,’ said Delilah quietly. ‘Hiero and me. We’re going back.’

We both of us turned, stared at her where she sat with one arm round the kid’s frail shoulders. He started coughing.

‘Krauts goin be killin every damn jack they find.’ Chip’s voice was cold. ‘You goin back to that? For real?’

She was staring sadly at the kid. ‘This was foolish. You can’t panic. You lose your head, you’re in real trouble. I don’t know what we’ll do, but this isn’t any good at all. The Germans will come through here with their planes and clear this road in a matter of minutes.’

I looked at her. Was like she was reading my own damn thoughts. Chip shook his head, but I known he thought it was useless too. A jack don’t run away from a war. It move too damn fast for that.

And so we started back for Paris. Trudging along the sides of the road, wading against the press of refugees. The crowds ain’t even hardly seem to notice. None of us spoke. The yellow light felt thick, oppressive. We gone back in, through the city gates, walking along abandoned, boarded-up streets till at last we was shuffling back up to Montmartre, the buildings dark and deserted.

Passing the Bug’s shopfront, I caught a glimpse of our reflections. We seem to drift instead of walk, our faces blurred in the glass, ghosts.

The next day the sun ain’t risen.

All was darkness over that empty city, the dawn sky black as char. A pelt of ash dusted the cobblestones, lampposts and boarded windows. Streets felt battered, desolate. We walked through that unnatural darkness, listening to the steady thud of heavy guns in the distance. Every once in a while a window would rattle from the recoil.

Our shoes rung hollow in the empty squares. Storefronts was all boarded up. Apartment windows was dark. Wasn’t even no pigeons to be seen.

‘Hell,’ muttered Chip. He run his hand along his face. It come away black.

‘What is it?’ said Delilah. ‘Coal? Are they burning the coal deposits?’

‘They givin up on us, girl,’ I said. ‘They ain’t plannin on defendin nothin. They gettin out while they can.’

Chip grunted.

The kid, he ain’t said a word. Trudged along behind us with his head low, his face steeped in darkness. Every block or so he’d lean up, shudder, hack some molten black sludge up from his lungs. Like the darkness had gone through to his core.

We walked in the middle of the Champs-Élysées, among the stained steel girders, the tangles of barbed wire. We stared out through the gloom. Ain’t no other soul stirred, no electric lights visible.

Delilah slowed after a time, give us a sombre nod.

‘What is it, girl?’ said Chip.

‘I need to go meet with some people. I’ll see you back at the flat.’ She give the kid a long look. ‘Be watchful.’

He ain’t said nothin. Just stared at her with his hollow eyes.

‘You want someone with you?’ I said. ‘It ain’t safe out here.’

‘She a tough old bird,’ said Chip. ‘She goin manage. Right, girl?’

‘I’ll manage.’ She begun slipping away into the dark.

Ain’t one of us asked where she was going.

We ain’t had no place in mind. But we circled down over the Seine and made our way back east. Then we was standing again at the edge of boulevard Saint-Michel, watching the refugees moving south. Ain’t no one spoke. The quiet creak of axles, the rattle of carts over the pavement. A horse, its ribs jutting like forks, snorted, stamping nervously. The steady, soft shirr of footsteps shuffled by, like water, like wind rippling through grass.

These folk wasn’t from Paris, we known. They was from farther north, from the fighting. I ain’t made out their faces, just the pale blur of the sullen, the wretched, in their defeat. Hell. I hitched up one shoulder, stuffed my hands deep in my pockets.

After a time we trudged back, drifting toward the Bug’s. Her windows was boarded up now, and there wasn’t nothing but candles burning on the tables, but she was still open.

I folded my elbows on the counter. ‘Three cafés au lait.’

She give me a weird, fierce glance, nodding hard. Her hair was loose, standing in frayed grey strands at her temples. She scratched a infected-looking rash on the back of her hand, studied me like she was weighing something.

‘What?’ I said.

She frowned, cleared her throat. ‘You pay first.’

‘You kiddin me? Hell, lady, it us . You know us.’

She shrugged. ‘Different times.’

I swore. Digging into my pocket, I felt around for a while. Ernst’s money, which we’d divided evenly between us, wasn’t so even now. Chip seem flush while the rest of us was counting every last damn centime . After a minute I drawn out some crumpled francs, slapped them down on the counter.