Authors: Esi Edugyan
That night we made love in her room. It was only the second time. Afterward, I slept uneasily in her narrow bed, her hot back pressed up against me. In the morning, when the cold light poured in through the dirty glass, I couldn’t remember my dreams.
2
The day finally arrived.
I come in late, banging my old axe through the door like I already into the rot.
‘Hell, brother, you ain’t too tired for us?’ Chip called from the stage. He turn to Armstrong. ‘Poor boy ain’t been sleepin well.’
Hiero was smiling at me slyly. The son of a bitch.
‘It must be catchin,’ Armstrong laughed in that low rumble. ‘All I hearin bout be this awful damn insomnia Delilah been sufferin. You know anything bout that?’
I flushed. ‘Where all the other gates? It ain’t just us?’
Chip give a little soft shoe shuffle. ‘It just us. Just the stripped down set.’
‘I thought we’d just start out clean,’ Armstrong rasped. ‘Thought we’d just get to know each other in a intimate way.’
‘Sid likes intimate,’ Chip smiled. ‘Sid likes stripped down.’
‘I’m sure he don’t know what you talkin bout,’ Armstrong grinned back at him. ‘I’m sure he just don’t have a clue.’
I come on up that stage filled with dread, my old shoes dragging. Louis Armstrong, brother. That gate cast a shadow even lying down. And here he was jawing with Chip like their mamas used to knit together. Hell.
It was a small basement lounge, with the houselights up in the back and the floor unlit and the tables shoved aside, the chairs balanced upside down on the white cloths. The floor done been swept, and small piles of rubbish and dirt stood along one side of the room.
Chip drawn out a few quick taps, testing the snare. I give Hiero a savage look. He was holding old Armstrong’s second horn loose at his thighs, his long thin pinky sharp out at an angle from the pistons.
Armstrong give us a look. ‘Old Town Wrangler? B-flat?’
Hiero shrugged.
‘You ready, Sid?’ said Armstrong.
All a sudden my throat went real dry.
‘Aw, he ready,’ Chip smiled. ‘Count us in, brother.’
And with just a casual nod of the head, without even saying a word, Armstrong bring us slowly in. And then we was off. Chip’s kit was crisp, clean, and I could feel the lazy old tug of the bass line walk down into its basement and hang up its hat, and I begun to smile. Then the kid come in. He was brash, sharp, bright.
And then, real late, Armstrong come in.
I was shocked. Ain’t no bold brass at all. He just trilled in a breezy, casual way, like he giving some dame a second glance in the street without breaking stride. It was just so calm, so effortlessly itself. Give me a damn chill.
Cause he done completely shift his gears. No longer the high-C hitter, that crazy showman fluttering so tight on the high register he sound like a flute. He’d calmed down, grown up, bleeding a lyricism so pure it like the voice of a old, old gate – burned of excess, holding nothing but just what he needed for each single note.
I ain’t hardly believed it. Hiero, Chip and me was so harmonious, so close in tone colour, it sounded like the same gate squawling on three different instruments. Man, it was smooth.
But then it started.
I wasn’t sure what it was, at first. A late buzz on the bass, maybe, a sluggish tap of my old toe. But there just wasn’t no crackle in the gut, the bass just walking real flat-footed along them lines. I start messing it up, trying to find some blood in it.
Chip give me a sharp look from behind his kit, like to say, brother, you playing like you got twelve thumbs. And I was. I could
hear
it. Then I was back in time and holding the colour just right, and all of it gelled again. Armstrong lift up his horn, look at the kid, trill lazily away. Hiero punch out a brassy reply. Chip, he was brushing them skins so sweet it like he talking to a jane.
And then, just like that, my damn fingers stumble again.
‘What you
doin
?’ Chip hissed at me over his kit. ‘Get youself together now. Hell.’
I could feel the sweat dripping into my eyes. I give my head a slow shake. Armstrong give us a look, then just keep on going.
When we broke, Armstrong walk over to us wiping his forehead with a white kerchief. Turning to us, he grunted, giving us a sharp look over.
The blood rush to my face.
‘Now that was OK,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘That was good. I reckon we got to reshape it a little though.’ He turn to Hiero. ‘You, though – man oh man. Little
Maestro
?
Can
that. You Little
Louis
, pure and simple. Little Louis, boy. And don’t you change a thing. You the
stuff
. You perfect.’
‘Kid was swingin alright,’ Chip smiled.
‘You was swingin youself, Pops,’ the old titan said. ‘Like you rubbin you own belly over there.’
‘Aw, when we good, we good,’ I chuckled.
But Armstrong just grunted to hisself and stepped off the stage, over to the bar.
Hell. I was smiling this sick smile and just wasn’t able to stop. I leaned over my old axe. But my hands was trembling.
‘Now tell me, boys,’ called Armstrong from down at the bar. He was holding a cold glass to his forehead. ‘Tell me bout this caveman with the clam moustache been barkin speeches all over Germany.’
Chip was wiping down the skins. ‘He askin bout Hitler,’ he said to Hiero, without looking up.
‘Hitler,’ Hiero nodded, with a dark expression.
‘What you want to know?’ said Chip. ‘It real bad over there, real bad. Folk too frightened to open their mouths.’
‘What you know of it, Griffiths?’ said Armstrong.
I come down off the stage, feeling grateful he even ask. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Dentists be pullin teeth out through
noses
, the mouths is shut so tight. Ain’t no law over there.’
‘They still got a ministry for it though,’ Chip called.
Hiero was looking at me, but I ain’t bothered to translate. I was feeling stung, bitter, and seeing his damn face staring in that half-darkness ain’t helped me none.
‘You boys got through it alright, though.’
‘We didn’t,’ I said. ‘We lost a gate.’
Armstrong nodded. ‘Mm. I heard bout that. Your pianist. What was his name?’
‘Butterstein. Paul Butterstein.’
‘I’m real sorry for you,’ he murmured.
We all sort of shrugged. It was still raw.
‘Ain’t it been strained here, though?’ Chip asked after a minute. ‘Lilah was tellin us bout the ten-percenter.’
Armstrong nodded. ‘The Frenchies got their share of nightmares. We only just one of them. I ain’t worry bout it too much now. Was a time though we had to count our black gates before we climb a stage. Still, it a sight more decent than where we from.’
‘What, Chicago?’ I said. ‘Try Baltimore.’
‘Try Orleans,’ Armstrong said.
Chip pour hisself a finger of gin. He turn around, lean back with his two elbows perched high on the bar like a damn bird. ‘It’s a odd thing though. Till recent, Krauts got some kind of ladder when it come to blacks. Not like what been goin on with the Jews. If you a black American, well, you treated alright. If you a foreign student or singer or somethin, sure. They ain’t want you goin back home talkin bad bout their little utopia. But if you a black Kraut, a
Mischling
, like our boy here—’ He glanced at Hiero. ‘Well. It get real ugly.’
‘The music’s just dyin,’ I said. ‘Ain’t nothin left but Wagner.’
‘Wagner and the Horst Wessel,’ said Chip, scowling.
‘Horst Wessel,’ Hiero said, frowning. He waved his horn dismissively.
‘The Horst Wessel?’ said Armstrong. ‘That a song?’
‘It a damn
anthem
.’
‘He was a Boot,’ Chip said. ‘A Nazi thug. He run into some trouble with his landlady – she want more rent, or he won’t keep holin her, somethin. Wessel’s girl was a street hustler too, I think. I forgot the details. Anyway. This landlady be the widow of a Kozi—’
‘A Communist,’ I said.
Chip nodded. ‘So some old comrades of her husband’s go up to Wessel’s flat, shoot him dead. And that’s how it starts. Kozis, they try to make Wessel look like a pimp and a criminal. They just cleanin the streets, see. But the Nazis, hell, they turn the old thug into a martyr. A idealist who sacrifice his life for the Fatherland. They give him one hell of a funeral.’
As Chip spoke, the kid was opening the valves on his horn, blowing it clear. He give me a dark look. I looked away.
‘The anthem, it about this jack?’ said Armstrong.
‘Not
about
him,’ said Chip, ‘
by
him. It a poem he wrote, set to music. How do it go?’
I shook my head. ‘Flag’s held high.’
Chip cleared his throat. Tapping the bar to keep the beat, he start to sing in German:
The flag’s held high! The ranks are tightly closed!
SA men march with firm courageous tread.
Together with us, marching in our ranks in spirit, are those
Comrades Red Front and Reaction shot dead!
And then Hiero raise up his horn, real soft, and start playing a uneasy nervous beat under the words, against the words, like he just slyly mocking them:
Clear the streets for the brown battalions,
Clear the streets for the Storm Division man!
The swastika’s already gazed on full of hope by millions.
The day for freedom and bread is at hand!
Armstrong ain’t said nothing. He just walked over while Chip and Hiero was playing, pulled down his own horn, and lifted it to his broken lips. He caught Hiero’s eye, then, soft-like, his whole face puckered up. He come in on the loose beat.
Hell. It wasn’t nothing like before.
It was the sound of the gods, all that brass. It was the old Armstrong and the new, that mature distilled essence of a master and the boy he used to be, the boy who could make his glissandi snap like marbles, the high C’s piercing. Hiero thrown out note after shimmering note, like sunshine sliding all over the surface of a lake, and Armstrong was the water, all depth and thought, not one wasted note. Hiero, he just reaching out, seeking the shore; Armstrong stood there calling across to him. Their horns sound so naked, so blunt, you felt almost guilty listening to it, like you eavesdropping. After some minutes Chip stopped singing, left just the two golden ropes of sound to intertwine.
It was then that I finally heard it. I heard how damn brilliant the kid really was.
I hated it.
‘Now
that
, friends, is
music
!’ barked Armstrong, breaking off. He whipped his white kerchief from his pocket to mop his gleaming brow.
‘Is it ever,’ I said, sounding sour.
‘I swear to you, Little Louis, that horn you usin ain’t
never
sound so good.’ Armstrong’s eyes was wrinkling up. ‘Well tell him,’ he said to me, ‘tell him what I said.’
‘Louis says you soundin good,’ I told Hiero.
The kid smiled, shrugged.
‘Tell him he just a little slow between the verses,’ said Armstrong.
Holy
hell
, brother.
Thrusting his hand down the neck of his shirt, Armstrong pulled out the chain he was wearing. ‘Come on over here,’ he said. ‘Come here, all a you.’
We drifted on over to him.
It was a Star of David on a gold chain. ‘I always worn this for luck. Always. When I’s a boy, I worked for this family, the Karnofskys. They come over from Lithuania. I was just seven years old but I wasn’t blind, I could see the shit these folk was handlin. And yet they was always, always, kind to me. I was just this kid could use a little word of kindness, just this kid needin a little niceness as he made his way in the world. And they give it.’
We ain’t none of us spoke. Hiero was looking at Armstrong like he understood.
‘We goin to
do
this,’ said Armstrong. ‘We goin to
do
this, brother. It ain’t right what’s goin on over there. We goin to burn this Horst Wessel to the record. Lay it down, a late track. What you think? Twist it up, make it pretty. Say somethin with it to the world, to the Krauts, that only us cats can say. We goin do this for your gate Paul.’
His gaze was fixed on Hiero.
Then he turned to me, his eyes bright. ‘Go
on
, Griffiths. Tell him what all I said.’
Afterwards, out on the breeze-filled street, leaning my old axe up against a bench, I seen Chip approaching like I sick with plague.
‘What happen to you in there?’ he said, long-faced and grey. He give his cufflinks a grim twist. He ain’t sat down. Like maybe it was catching.
I laughed angrily, looked up at him. ‘You think he goin give me another listen? Ever?’
Chip give me a long, sad look. ‘I don’t know, brother. I think you hurt his old ears. What happened?’
‘What, you ain’t never choked before?’
Chip shrugged, put a hand on my shoulder. All a sudden his eyes was two hard black stones. ‘You make me look like shit, buck, and I’ll gut you,’ he said softly. ‘I will.’
He turned, punched his fists into his pockets, and wandered off up the street into the cold afternoon.
I was shaking with anger and embarrassment the entire walk back through Montmartre. The flat was empty, and I come in banging my old axe. I sat down with a grimace, just sat there staring at the moulding on the walls.
There was a soft thump down the hall.
‘Lilah?’ I called out. ‘That you?’
‘I’m in here,’ she called. ‘I’m in my room.’
She was rolling on a dark stocking when I come miserably in.
‘So?’ she said when she seen me. ‘How’d it go?’