Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

I glanced sharply at him. He was smiling though, just making an innocent joke.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘It like to put you both to sleep fast enough.’

Hiero got up from his chair, rapped the table with his knuckles. ‘Pour me another, Chip. I won’t be a minute.’

He led me down a dark hall smelling of sweet breads, into a narrow, simple bedroom. I could see the dark sky of the fields through the window, the billion stabs of the stars.

‘Bed has fresh sheets,’ said Hiero, his hand on the brass doorknob. He shrugged, as if to say, What more could you ask of life.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Thomas.’

He was still looking where I was standing just a minute ago. ‘I’m glad you came, Sid. I thought… well. I’m glad.’

This awful weight come into my throat then, I almost couldn’t breathe. I swallowed it down. ‘What a thing, finding you like this.’

‘Like what?’

I shrugged, then seen he couldn’t see it. ‘Alive.’

He gave a sad smile, nodding. ‘Well. You get some rest. Any luck, we’ll both still be that way in the morning.’

He shut the door behind him. And then I known, sitting on the edge of the bed in that dark room, sure as anything in my life, that I had to tell him about the visas. That that was why I come. Not to find a friend, but to finally, and forever, lose one.

I slept. But it wasn’t a dream, what I seen. There was this gap in time, an absence, and then I was thick into it again. I could see Hiero being forced to line up in a row of rusted iron statues. I seen him called out of that lineup, the SS men so astonished by his colour they rubbed his skin, like to see if the black come off. They pegged him for an athlete, like Jesse Owens, like Joe Louis, threatened to keep an even sharper eye on him, in case he used that fitness to run away. I seen an SS man follow him to the effects room, tell him to strip down — everything: coat, hat, pants. Stuffed all of it in a sack with his new number on it.

It wasn’t a dream. I seen them feed him saltpetre until his limbs begun to swell. To keep that raging African libido in check. Day after day until his face between his hands felt like a slab of water-logged bread.

And I seen the kid shaved, every last part of him, him standing in a cold room, raw as caught game, his thin legs shaking. Except it wasn’t the kid he been, but the old man he’d become, so that it was his shining white beard on that dirt floor, his milky eyes troubled as he got handed a striped uniform, a tramp’s cap. And I heard him say to them, ‘It’s an old life. It’s an old life.’

I seen him unable to sleep. Hell. I seen him staring at his bunkmates, their limbs like twisted forks, their eyes like everything been burned right out of them. Even empty like this, they give him surprised looks, amazed at his black skin. And I seen Hiero hardly notice. These men are like smoke, you could move right through them. He even feared them a little, as if just being near might leech the muscle from his bones, carve the light from his eyes.

And I seen his days creeping by. I seen him forced into an orchestra. There’s no shortage of instruments folks have brought with them, maybe reckoning they’d play when they got to where they was going. I heard Hiero playing Wagner’s Lohengrin as new trains pulled up. I heard him playing The Threepenny Opera ’s Cannon Song as bodies was rolled by on lorries and folks was marched off to be hanged. I seen him playing in a brothel of female prisoners, their screams tearing the air as he stood there, lips working, his notes brassy and bright.

It wasn’t a dream. And then I slept.

The sun rose, and that overwhelming light returned. I got up in the same rumpled clothes I gone to bed in, went outside, sat on the lip of Hiero’s porch with my legs dangling over the edge.

I’d poured myself a mug of coffee but was drinking it black — wasn’t no milk in the fridge. Thinking of that startled me. Three of us together again in a house with no damn milk? All a sudden I known there wasn’t no way I could tell the kid the truth. None.

About an hour earlier Chip had stepped out, yawning, asking me to go for a walk. But my old legs wasn’t feeling quite right. I watched him trudge off alone, heavy with his eighty-three years. Seemed sad, seeing the age on him.

I was just thinking of going inside when I suddenly felt a presence behind me. Glancing back, I gave a start. Hiero stood there, silent, turning his face into the sunshine.

‘Good morning,’ I said, studying him. It still ain’t seemed real, his being alive.

‘Morning, Sid.’ He was dressed in an ill-fitting T-shirt, raggedy jeans, tennis shoes so old looked like he run ten marathons in them. Trampish and shabby. Yet somehow, despite all of it, dignified.

I made to stand up, to help him.

‘Lord, Sid, sit down, sit down.’ He gave me a gentle smile. ‘I been in this old house so long I could run through it backward and not hit a thing.’

He felt for the lip of the porch with both hands, sat carefully.

‘How’d you sleep?’ he asked, a little winded.

‘Aw, you know. Strange bed.’ I looked at him, then added, ‘But I thank you for everything. You a mighty fine host.’

‘Got some mighty fine scotch, at least.’

I chuckled. ‘I made up a pot of coffee if you interested. Ain’t no milk that I could find.’

Hiero smiled.

‘All these years,’ I said. ‘All these years, you been living here. And I ain’t had no idea of it.’

He ain’t said nothing to that, and we sat in silence. I stared at his profile, his skin so rich-looking against the white sky. His eyes like opals, staring into an unseen country.

And then, I ain’t known why, all a sudden I started to say it.

‘Hiero, I got to tell you something. I don’t want to tell you but I got to.’

‘It’s Thomas,’ he said.

I blushed, cleared my throat. ‘What I got to tell you, it’s bad.’

He frowned. ‘What is it?’

I flung out my coffee into the weeds, shook out the mug and looked away. ‘Hell. All those years ago in Paris. It was my fault you didn’t get your visas.’

He paused, like he still waiting to hear me out. Looked like a rusted statue. Ain’t no reaction at all.

My throat was dry. ‘My whole life,’ I said. ‘My whole life I wanted to tell you about it. I been so damn sorry, Thomas.’

When he turned to me, he had a puzzled smile on his face. ‘That’s just it. That’s just what I invited Chip up here for. I ain’t wanted him thinking I blamed him for what happened. I don’t blame anyone, Sid. I don’t.’

‘You’re not listening. It was my fault. I hid your visas.’

‘But, Sid, I didn’t even get my visas.’

‘That’s what I’m telling you. You did get them. Day or two before you was picked up. They got delivered to our flat by hand, one of those days you was lying in sick and I was watching over you. They was left at our door, and I hid them.’

He was shaking his head. ‘It don’t make no sense,’ he said, ‘it don’t. Why would you do that?’

I sat there trembling, not wanting to say it.

And then he said, as if to himself: ‘The recording.’

‘Thomas,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so damn sorry. I’m sorry.’

But he made a cutting gesture with one hand, like I shouldn’t touch him. He sat there in that sunlight for a minute, his face turned away. Then he got real slow to his feet, shuffled to the second door, stepped inside. He closed the door behind him.

The porch felt so damn quiet. My skin, my chest, every part of me went heavy with the light. Almost blind in it, my eyes blinking, a pressure whiting out the yard. I was clutching that mug like it was my life. It wasn’t about doing the right thing, I understood then. It wasn’t about compassion, it wasn’t about giving comfort. Hell.