Half-Blood Blues (38 page)

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.

Chip come trudging slowly up, breathless from his walk. ‘What was all that about?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t nothing.’

Chip sat with a grimace where Hiero been just a minute ago.

‘I don’t think I should stay here,’ I said. ‘Chip? I think I got to go.’

‘Aw, Sid. What you tell him? What you say?’

But I couldn’t say it again. I glanced at him feeling scoured out, emptied. And then it didn’t seem to matter if he known it too. ‘It was me hid Hiero’s visas all them years ago. In Paris. You and Lilah was out of the flat, and they got delivered to the door when the kid was sleeping.’ My chest was giving me strange, anguished pains. ‘I wanted to finish the recording.’

Chip glanced sharply at me, as if to say,
You did that?
But no sooner did he look surprised than his face quieted down. He stared out at the field, at Hiero’s massive iron sculptures.

The silence was so painful between us I finally rose to go.

Chip put a hand on my arm. ‘We all done things we ain’t proud of, Sidney. Especially back then.’ He turned to me, frowning. ‘It wasn’t your fault the Boots picked him up. You couldn’t have known what would happen.’

‘He wouldn’t even been there if it wasn’t for me. He’d of been in Switzerland.’

Chip ain’t said nothing for a minute. ‘What you done was inexcusable, Sid. Absolutely wrong. And I say this as someone who has profited off that record. But I know damn well you’d have given you whole life to spare him if you could. That kid was blood to you. Don’t tell yourself it was any different.’

I felt sick. I made to stand up but Chip put his big hand on my shoulder.

‘Where you going?’ he said.

‘I got to go tell him something. I got to say something more.’

‘Aw, just give him time. News like that, it just take time.’

Chip led me back into Hiero’s living room, its wall of light. ‘This is what you missed last night, turning in so damn early.’ He smiled gently at me. I still felt sick, said nothing. But Chip folded open a closet door and kneeled down with a grimace. He drawn out an old milk crate filled with records. He started pulling them from their sleeves.

‘What, he got your records?’ I muttered.

‘Aw, ain’t no jazz at all,’ said Chip. ‘No. I ain’t never heard of this stuff. Look at it. Adamo Didur. Miliza Korjus. Georg Malmstén. Marcella Sembrich. Kid says it’s mostly Polish, some of it Finnish, Swedish. But you ain’t going to believe what it sound like. Hell. Listen.’

He set the needle into the groove of an ancient record player. And slowly, crackling, like from some great distance, a golden thread of voice started up. She sounded very old. Her voice rose and slipped a register and then rose again, like it was filling with this easy brightness, singing in a language I ain’t known. It might have been Polish. Her voice was pale and splintered, raw, and then it was just a single, stunning wholeness, and closing my eyes I felt like so much was still possible.

Then it was over. I opened my eyes. Hiero stood in the doorway, his face strangely calm.

Chip began rising from his seat when Hiero stopped him.

‘I don’t need your help, Chip.’

‘I wasn’t offering it,’ said Chip. ‘I got an urgent call. Hope you got a full roll in there cause I’m like to be a while.’ He gave me a look, slipped past.

The record was still turning in its grooves, the static from the old speakers hissing in the sudden silence. Hiero stood there in the doorway some moments, his eyes downcast. Then he stared right at me, his gaze like a blade.

He shuffled forward, sat himself down in his heavy leather chair. I had the feeling of being forced to go back, to confess again. With a soft grunt, breathing hard, he turned toward the fields beyond the glass, the twisted sculptures there. ‘This sky, Sid. It’s the sky of the great epics. The great Polish epics. Of
Pan Tadeusz
.’ He pursed his lips a little. ‘That’s the one thing I miss, the sky.’

I nodded.

‘I
have
seen it, you know. The sky was what decided it for me, all that gorgeous light. I followed it here. It’s why I stayed.’

I known what he was saying, what he seemed to be saying. His blindness wasn’t due to the camps, and he wanted me to know it. I hadn’t cost him that. I stared at him, those eyes so pale they might’ve witnessed the ruin of a world, the ruin and rebirth of a world.

He brought his palms to rest on his knees. ‘What was that just then? Was that Marcella Sembrich? I ain’t heard that in years. Her voice, that’s what the light was like.’

I cleared my throat. ‘I guess so.’

He turned his sightless eyes directly on me. ‘I see you, Sid,’ he said from out of his darkness. ‘I see you like it was fifty years ago. Exactly like that.’

I ain’t said nothing.

The vinyl crackled as the needle hit the centre.

‘Turn it,’ Thomas said, without smiling. ‘Play it again.’

Acknowledgements

John Williams, Rebecca Gray, Pete Ayrton and everyone at Serpent’s Tail; everyone at Key Porter Books in Toronto; Jackie Baker; Anne McDermid and all her excellent associates; Hannah Westland and Margaret Halton at RCW; Marie-Lynn Hammond; Sarah Afful; Todd Craver; Michelle Wright; Jack Hodgins; the Prices; the Edugyans; Jeff Mireau; Richard Hess; Graham Newton; Art Schiffrin; Andrew Hamilton.

Jane Warren – you are amazing.

Akademie Schloss Solitude; The Canada Council for the Arts; The British Columbia Arts Council; Stiftung Kuenstlerdorf Schoeppingen; Fiskars A-I-R program; Collegium Budapest/JAK; Het Beschrijf/Passa Porta; Hawthornden Castle; Klaustrid; Fundacion Valparaiso.

Books

Hitler’s Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi Era
, Clarence Lusane, Routledge, 2003.

Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany
, Michael H. Kater, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Destined to Witness: Growing up Black in Nazi Germany
, Hans J. Massaquoi, HarperCollins, 1999.

Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story Between the Great Wars
, William A. Shack, University of California Press, 2001.

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