Authors: Esi Edugyan
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.
‘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.
Chip fumbled for a damn switch. ‘Hell, kid. Lights is out.’
‘Not just the lights,’ said Coleman. ‘The power’s been cut.’
Chip let go with a string of foul curses. I started to smile, hearing it. Then there was a sudden bang, and Chip swore again. ‘Who put the goddamn chairs in the goddamn middle of the goddamn floor?’
I wiped the rain off my face with both hands. ‘How we goin record without no electricity?’
‘It a war, brother,’ said Coleman. ‘What you goin do?’
There come the scrape of a match, then light flared up in old Hiero’s bony hand. His eyesockets deep in shadow. ‘We goin play. Ain’t nothin else to do.’
‘But we ain’t goin
record
nothin.’
The kid turned away.
‘Aw, it goin come back on eventually,’ said Coleman. ‘We’ll lay it down then, Sid. Don’t you worry.’
Someone had found a old candle stub and set it on a upturned glass on a chair in the middle of the studio. I got a glance round. The studio was narrow, cramped, the ceiling oddly high. The soundproofed walls looked scarred, like there been a damn gunfight. The floorboards under us been painted white, and they rattled loosely as we shifted round.
‘That goin sound just beautiful on the disc,’ said Chip, frowning.