Half-Blood Blues: A Novel

Half-Blood Blues
I Paris 1940 Chip told us not to go out. Said, don't you boys tempt the devil. But it been one brawl of a night, I tell you, all of us still reeling from the rot--rot was cheap, see, the drink of French peasants, but it stayed like nails in you gut. Didn't even look right, all mossy and black in the bottle. Like drinking swamp water. See, we lay exhausted in the flat, sheets nailed over the windows. The sunrise so fierce it seeped through the gaps, dropped like cloth on our skin. Couple hours before, we was playing in some back-alley studio, trying to cut a record. A grim little room, more like a closet of ghosts than any joint for music, the cracked heaters lisping steam, empty bottles rolling all over the warped floor. Our cigarettes glowed like small holes in the dark, and that's how I known we wasn't buzzing, Hiero's smoke not moving or nothing. The cig just sitting there in his mouth like he couldn't hear his way clear. Everyone pacing about, listening between takes to the scrabble of rats in the wall. Restless as hell. Could be we wasn't so rotten, but I at least felt off. Too nervous, too crazed, too busy watching the door. Forget the rot. Forget the studio's seclusion. Nothingtore me out of myself. Take after take, I'd play sweating to the end of it only to have Hiero scratch the damn disc, tossing it in the trash. "Just a damn braid of mistakes," Hiero kept muttering. "A damn braid of mistakes." "We sound like royalty-- after the mob got done with em," said Chip. Coleman and I ain't said nothing, our heads hanging tiredly. But Hiero, wiping his horn with a blacked-up handkerchief, he turn and give Chip a look of pure spite. "Yeah, but, hell. Even at our worst we genius." Did that ever stun me, him saying this. For weeks the kid been going on and on about how dreadful we sound. He kept snatching up the discs, scratching the lacquer with a pocket knife, wrecking them. Yelling how there wasn't nothing there. But there was something. Some seed of twisted beauty. I didn't mean to. But somehow when the kid turned his back I was sliding off my vest, taking the last disc--still delicate, the grooves still new--and folding the fabric round it. I glanced around, nervous, then tucked it into my bass case. The others was packing up their axes. "Where's that last record at?" said Hiero, frowning. He peered at the trash bin, at the damaged discs all in there. "It's in there, buck," I said. "You didn't want it, did you?" He give me a sour look. "Ain't no damn point. We ain't never goin get this right." "What you sayin, kid?" said Chip, slurring his words. "You sayin we should give it up?" The kid just shrugged. We lined up the empty bottles along the wall, locked up real quiet, gone our separate routes back to Delilah's flat. Curfew was on and Paris was grim, all clotted shadows and stale air. I made my quiet way along the alleys, dreading the sound of footsteps, till we met up again at the flat. Everyone butColeman, of course, Coleman who was staying with his lady. We collapsed onto dirty couches under blackout curtains. I'd set my axe against the wall and it was like I could feel the damn disc just sitting in there, still warm. I felt its presence so intensely it seemed strange the others ain't sensed it too. Its wax holding all that heat like a altar candle.  
 
It was the four of us living here. Delilah, Hieronymus, Chip and me. Couple months before we'd spent the day nailing black sheets across the flat's windows, but damn if that grim sun didn't flood through anyway. The rooms felt too stale to sober up in. We needed to sweat it out in the fresh air, get our heads about us. Ain't been no breeze in weeks. Hiero was draped in his chair, his scrawny legs dangling, when all a sudden he turn to me. His face dark and smooth as an eggplant. "Christ I feel green. My guts are pure gravy, man." "Amen," I said. "Man, I got to get me some milk." "Amen," I said again. We talked like mongrels, see--half German, half Baltimore bar slang. Just a few scraps of French between us. Only real language I spoke aside from English was Hochdeutsch. But once I started messing up the words I couldn't straighten nothing out again. Besides, I known Hiero preferred it this way. Kid hailed from the Rhineland, sure, but he got old Baltimore in the blood. Or talked like he did. He was still young that way. Mimicking. Something had changed in him lately, though. He ain't hardly et nothing since the Boots descended on the city, been laid up feverish and slack for days on end. And when he come to, there was this new darkness in him I ain't never seen before. I gave my old axe a quick glance, thinking of the record tucked away in there. It wasn't guilt I felt. Not that exactly. Hiero sort of half rolled onto the patchy rug. "Aw, Sid," he groaned. "I need milk." "In the cupboard, I reckon. We got milk? Chip?" But Chip, he just open one brown eye like a man half-drowned. His face dark as cinder in this light. Hiero coughed. "I'm tryin to clean my stomach, not rough it up." His left eye twitched all high up in the lid, the way you sometimes see the heart of a thin woman beating through her blouse. "It's milk I need, brother. Cream. That powdered stuff'll rip right through you. Like you shittin sand. Like you a damn hourglass." "Aw, it ain't that bad," I said. "Ain't nothin open at this hour anyway, kid. You know that. Except maybe the Coup. But that's too damn far." We lay on in silence a minute. I tossed my arm up over my mouth and man if my skin didn't stink of rancid vinegar--that was the rot, it did that to you. In the bad light I could just make out the room's last few chairs huddled by the fireplace. They looked absurd, like a flock of geese hiding from the hatchet. Cause they was the last of it, see. This been a grand old flat once, to go by Lilah's stories. All Louis XIV chairs, Murano chandeliers, Aubusson tapestries, ceilings high as a damn train station. But the count who lent Delilah the place, he done urge her sell what she could before the Krauts come in. Seemed less bleak to him. And now, the flat being so empty, you felt only its depths, like you stranded at sea. Whole place nothing but darkness. Across the room, Chip started snoring, faint like. I glanced over at Hiero, now all knotted up in his chair. "Kid," I said thickly. "Hey, kid." I put a hand to my head. "You ain't serious bout givin up on the record. We close, buck. You know that." Hiero opened his mouth, belched. "Good mornin right back at you," I said. He didn't seem to have heard me. I watched him heave hisself up on his feet, the chair moaning like a old mule. Then he sort of staggered on over to the door. Least I reckon that was his idea. Looked more like he heading for the fireplace, stumbling all about. His shoulder smacked a wall. Then he was on the floor, on all fours. "What you doin?" I said. "Hiero, what you doin, kid?" "What you mean, what my doin? You ain't never seen a man put on his shoes before? Well, stick around, cause it's bout to get excitin. I'm gonna put my damn coat on next." Hiero was wrestling his old houndstooth coat. It'd gone all twisted in the sleeves. He still ain't stood up. "I need me some daylight right bout now." I pulled on my fob, stared at my watch till it made damn sense. "This ain't no kind of hour, kid. You ain't youself." He ain't said nothing. "Least just wait till Lilah wake up. She take you." "I ain't waitin till my foot wake up, never mind Lilah." "You got to at least tell her what you doin." "I ain't got to do nought." A soft moan drifted over from the window, and then Chip lifted up onto one dark elbow, like he posing for a sculpture. His eyes looking all glassy, the lids flickering like moths. Then his head sunk right back on his shoulders so that, throat exposed, it like he talking to the ceiling. "Don't you damn well go out," he told that ceiling. "Lie youself down, get some sleep. I mean it." "You tell it, buck," said Hiero, grinning. "You stick it to that ceilin." "Put that old cracked plaster in its place," I said. But Chip, he fallen back and was snoring along already. "Go on into Lilah's room and wake her," I said to Hiero. Hiero's thin, leonine face stared me down from the doorway. "What kind of life you livin you can't even go into the street for a cup of milk, you got to have a nanny?" He stood under the hat rack, leaning like a brisk wind done come up. "Hell, Sid, just what you expect Lilah to do, you get in real trouble? She got a special lipstick I don't know bout, it shoot bullets?" "You bein a damn fool, buck." Pausing, I glanced away. "You know you don't got any damn papers. What you goin do you get stopped?" He shrugged. "I just goin down the Bug's. It ain't far." He yanked open the door and slid out onto the landing, swaying in the half-dark. Staring into the shadows there, I felt sort of uneasy. Don't know why. Well. The Bug was our name for the tobacconist a few blocks away. It wasn't far. "Alright, alright," I muttered. "Hold up, I'm comin." He slapped one slender hand on the doorknob like it alone would hold him up. I thought, This kid goin be the death of you, Sid. The kid grimaced. "You waitin for a mailed invitation? Let's ankle." I stumbled up, fumbling for my other shoe. "There won't be no trouble anyhow," he added. "It be fine. Ain't no one go down the Bug's at this hour." "He so sure," I said. "Listen to how sure he is." Hiero smiled. "Aw, I'm livin a charmed life, Sid. You just stick close." But by then we was slipping down those wide marble stairs in the dark and pushing out into the grey street. See, thing about the kid--he so majestically bony and so damn grave that with his look of a starving child, it felt well nigh impossible to deny him anything. Take Chip. Used to be the kid annoyed him something awful. Now he so protective of him he become like a second mother. So watching the kid slip into his raggedy old tramp's hat and step out, I thought, What I done got myselfinto. I supposed to be the older responsible one. But here I was trotting after the kid like a little purse dog. Hell. Delilah was going to cut my head off.  
 
We usually went all of nowhere in the daytime. Never without Delilah, never the same route twice, and not ever into Rue des Saussaies or Avenue Foch. But Hiero, he grown reckless as the occupation deepened. He was a Mischling, a half-breed, but so dark no soul ever like to guess his mama a white Rhinelander. Hell, his skin glistened like pure oil. But he German-born, sure. And if his face wasn't of the Fatherland, just bout everything else bout him rooted him there right good. And add to this the fact that he didn't have no identity papers right now--well, let's just say wasn't no cakewalk for him. Me? I was American, and so light-skinned folks often took me for white. Son of two Baltimore quadroons, I come out straight-haired, green-eyed, a right little Spaniard. In Baltimore this given me a softer ride than some. I be lying if I said it ain't back in Berlin, too. When we gone out together in that city, any Kraut approaching us always come straight to me. When Hiero'd cut in with his native German, well, the gent would damn near die of surprise. Most ain't liked it, though. A savage talking like he civilized. You'd see that old glint in their eye, like a knife turning. We fled to Paris to outrun all that. But we known Lilah's gutted flat wouldn't fend off the chaos forever. Ain't no man can outrun his fate. Sometimes when I looked out through the curtains, staring onto the emptiness of Rue de Veron, I'd see our old Berlin, I'd see that night when all the glass on our street shattered. We'd been in Ernst's flat on Fasanenstrasse, messing it up, and when we drifted over to the curtains it was like looking down on a carnival. Crowds in the firelight, broken bottles. We gone down after a minute, and it was like walking agravel path, all them shards crunching at each step. The synagogue up the block was on fire. We watched firemen standing with their backs to the flames, spraying water on all the other buildings. To keep the fire from spreading, see. I remember the crowd been real quiet. Firelight was shining on the wet streets, the hose water running into the drains. Here and there, I seen teeth glowing like opals on the black cobblestones.  
 
Hiero and me threaded through Montmartre's grey streets not talking. Once the home of jazz so fresh it wouldn't take no for a answer, the clubs had all gone Boot now. Nearly overnight the cafés filled with well-fed broads in torn stockings crooning awful songs to Gestapo. We took the side roads to avoid these joints, noise bleeding from them even at this hour. The air was cool, and Hiero, he shove his hands up so deep in his pits it like he got wings. Dawn was breaking strangely, the sky leathery and brown. Everything stunk of mud. I trailed a few steps behind, checking my watch as we walked cause it seemed, I don't know, slow. "Listen. This sound slow to you?" I yanked the fob up and held the watch to the kid's ear. He just leaned back and looked at me like I was off my nut. As we walked, tall apartments loomed dark on either side of the street. Shadows was long in the gutters. I was feeling more and more uneasy. "Nothin's open this hour, man. What we doin, Hiero? What we doin?" "Bug's open," said the kid. "Bug's always open." I wasn't listening. I stared all round me, wondering what we'd do if a Boot turned the corner. "Hey--remember that gorgeous jane in Club Noiseuse that night? That dame in a man's suit?" "You bringin that leslie up again?" Hiero was walking all brisk withthem skinny legs of his. "You know, every time you drink the rot you go on bout that jack." "She wasn't no leslie, brother--she was a woman. Bona fide." "You talkin bout the one in the green suit? Nearest the stage?" "She was a Venus, man, real prime rib." Hiero chortled. "I done told you already, that been a leslie, brother. A man. It was writ plain as day all over his hairy ass." "I guess you'd know. You the man to see bout hairy asses." "Keep confusin the two, Sid, and see what happens. You end up in bed with a Boot." We come round the corner, onto the wide square, when all a sudden my stomach lurched. I been expecting it--you need guts of iron to ride out what all we drunk last night. Iron guts I ain't got, but don't let that fool you bout other parts of my anatomy. My strength, I tell you, is of another stripe. I shuffled on over to a linden tree and leaned up under it, retching. "You get to know this here corner a bit better," said Hiero, smirking. "I be right back." He stumbled off the sidewalk, hopped the far curb to the Bug's. "Don't you be takin no fake change!" I hollered after him. "With you eyesight, the Bug like to cheat you out of you own skin." A white sun, tender as early fruit, stirred in the windows of the dark buildings. But ...