Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

‘Double it,’ she said.

‘Now I know you shittin me.’

She held my eye. One of her bulging eyes look glassy, grey. I ain’t noticed it before, but now it seemed distinctly sinister. I counted out more francs, scowled, made my way back to the table.

‘You ain’t goin believe what this just cost,’ I said.

‘Twice what it used to,’ said Chip. ‘And you paid up front.’

I stared at him.

He held out his hands. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Hell. Why you think I ain’t ordered the drinks?’ After a moment he give a angry smile. ‘Don’t matter anyhow, brother. Krauts get here, francs ain’t goin be worth nothin .’

Through the slats of wood I could see the light in the street shifting, glowing a paler grey. ‘It burnin off,’ I said. ‘Guess it wasn’t the Apocalypse after all.’

All a sudden the kid leaned in quick, almost tipping his chair. ‘Fuck this,’ he hissed. ‘Let’s do it.’

Chip smiled his bitter smile. ‘Buck, you just ain’t my type. Now, Sid, here…’

But just then the Bug come over with our cafés au lait, set them down hard, and the kid shut up again, his face closing. He ain’t even give her a look. But once she was gone he looked up at us again, his eyes still burning.

‘Let’s do it,’ he said again, softer. ‘Let’s cut that disc.’

I was reaching for my cup. ‘What disc he talkin bout?’

The kid just stared sullenly at Chip, like he waiting for a answer.

‘The Horst Wessel,’ said Chip. ‘I reckon that what the gate be on about. Am I right?’

Now Hiero turned his fierce eyes on me. There was a radiance in his face, a kind of feverish luminosity coming off his skin like heat. I swallowed nervously. It wasn’t safe, talking like this in Kraut. We huddled in close, whispering.

‘It like Armstrong said,’ said Hiero. ‘We got to do this. We all goin be dead in a couple days anyhow.’

‘Ain’t no second trumpet,’ said Chip.

‘Coleman,’ I said before I even thought it. It was so obvious, no other damn answer made sense. ‘Billy do it for sure. If he still here.’

‘We ain’t got nowhere to record,’ Chip added. He took a sip of his coffee, but I could see the old gears turning behind his eyes. ‘But Delilah might know somewhere. Hell. What you think, kid? You ain’t too sick?’

Hiero scowled at that.

And all a sudden I could feel this lightness coursing through me, this real soft excitement. Like a echo of something I felt once, in another lifetime. ‘OK, Pops, let’s do it,’ I said, imitating old Armstrong’s gravelly voice. ‘Let’s make history.’

Chip grimaced. ‘Cut that out. You sound like a damn fool.’

The sunlight splayed out across the streets. Delilah walked along the lee of the far buildings and crossing over, come up to our flat. She moved slowly, like she got bad news for us. But when the kid give her a anxious look she just pulled out a old rusted ring of keys, set it down on the sideboard.

‘The studio’s not far,’ she said. ‘It’s old though. Pretty primitive.’

Hiero was shivering in his blankets.

‘It be fine,’ I said. ‘Long as it works. You talk to Coleman?’

‘Billy’s in,’ she said.

She done already taped up a American flag in the front window of the flat, in front of the blackout curtains, to warn off the damn Krauts. The neighbourhoods all across Paris done empty out, the crowds still swelling at the stations. Though ain’t no trains coming no more. We could hear the steady punch and shudder of artillery all day now, getting closer, and well into the night. We lay awake, all of us, listening to the war and to Hiero whimpering. To our shrunken stomachs groaning under our hands. We was hungry, brother, nothing but onion broth in the bistros, nothing but wizened carrots dug up past the Bois de Boulogne in the markets. That was the day the post offices dragged down their heavy iron shutters for good. Telephones ain’t reached beyond Paris limits. We was finally cut off from the world.

‘They shoot the hell out of us, ain’t no one ever know,’ said Chip. ‘We just disappear.’

‘We start recordin tonight,’ the kid whispered through his clenched teeth.

Delilah barked out a laugh. ‘You keep telling yourself that. Go on. You’re going to rest tonight, and we’ll see how you’re feeling tomorrow.’

‘Hell I will,’ Hiero scowled weakly. ‘Ain’t no time left to wait.’

‘You think the Boots are going to care if you’re sick? They’re going to come through the city shooting anything that moves. You want to be sick out in that?’

The kid shivered.

Chip stood brooding at the window.

‘It alright, brother,’ I said softly. I’d hauled out my old axe, was double-checking the action in the strings. I looked up at the kid. ‘We goin do this. We really goin do this. Let the damn shellin start when it want. When you ready, we goin do this. But you ain’t goin lay nothin down if you can’t hardly breathe.’

We was all of us scared. But the next day, hell, we woke to the news on the wireless, to posters plastered all over the damn streets: Paris was a open city. Ain’t no one fighting for it at all.

Now if you lift you hand to the Krauts, you breaking the law .

Half Blood Blues . That what he going call it, our Horst Wessel track. It wasn’t true blues, sure, ain’t got the right chord structure, but the kid ain’t cared none. ‘Blues,’ he said, coughing roughly, ‘blues wasn’t never bout the chords.’

I figured, hell, ain’t nothing else these days what it claim to be.

So the next evening the kid banged our door shut, double-checked the lock, and then we was off. A light rain was falling as we made our way along the cobblestones, through the abandoned squares. Hiero got Armstrong’s case tucked up under one arm, his head down, shoulders shrugged up high. We could hear the steady thud of explosions to the north. That was the Kraut artillery. The street-lights ain’t come on, and we trudged through the gloom feeling heavy as wet sheets.

‘Where we goin, kid?’ I said at last.

But Hiero just half turned, blinked his eyes to get the sooty rain from them, coughed. His eyes was feverish. ‘We goin to work.’

Chip spat. ‘You mean we goin to play .’

‘Well, hurry it up, brother,’ I said. ‘Cause I ain’t walkin round all night. Unless one a you like to carry my case for a bit.’

In the gathering shadows I could see the damn posters announcing Paris a open city. They been plastered in the shuttered doorways of shops, or hung already tattered off the unlit lampposts, coming softly apart in the wet drains. Hell, I thought. What coming be coming fast.

We come round a corner, stuck to the shadows. A figure was leaning in a doorway across the alley. Chip give him a nervous look until he step forward in the drizzle. It was Bill Coleman.

‘Brother, I thought that was a gun,’ Chip breathed, nodding at the horn held loose at that gate’s thigh.

‘Aw, I known what you wanted it to be,’ said Coleman, smiling. ‘How you boys all doin?’

We give Coleman relieved nods, then all stood watching Hiero pull out that ring of ancient keys, trying them one by one in the lock of a narrow white door. I glanced across the alley at the curtained windows in the blackness. Thinking, length of time this taking, this can’t be good. But then the kid dragged the door open. With the light of the evening sky, we could just make out a narrow brick corridor, then darkness. The air stunk of rat shit, of sharp toxic soap. I give the kid a hard look. He shrugged.

‘Go on in,’ he said. ‘What you waitin for?’

He closed the door with a crunch behind us.