Authors: Esi Edugyan
The kid stood in the corner, staring out at us through the darkness. He looked right creepy. I couldn’t see his eyes.
I shrugged my axe down against the wall. ‘Come on then.’
I was feeling the nerves, see. I ain’t picked up a axe since that damn morning with Armstrong, in that other life. I run my fingers down the sleek strings in that flickering light, feeling sort of sad, like I been lying to myself bout something a long damn time. I thought,
It don’t matter now, do it? It don’t matter if you stumble. Ain’t nothin to be proved no more.
There was a kit in the corner. Coleman started blowing out his valves. I looked at the kid, he looked at me, and then Chip was counting us in. It was that sudden, brother. Ain’t no talking at all. Just all of us clambering aboard that music like we all got the same ticket for the same damn train.
And it felt
right
. I just fold right back into Chip, climbing up and down the ladders of sound he lay out for me. Coleman follow us in with a bold, lurching cry on his brass. It felt full, rich, pained in some leggy way. Both bright and grave.
All a sudden Chip give me a look of surprise from his dark corner.
Kid wasn’t even hardly listening, it seemed. Handling his horn with a unexpected looseness, with a almost slack hand, he coaxed a strange little groan from his brass. Like there was this trapped panic, this barely held-in chaos, and Hiero hisself was the lid.
I pulled back some as he come in, fearing we was going to overpower him in that narrow closet. But he just soften it down with me, blur it up. Then he blast out one pure, brilliant note, and I thought, my god.
I might’ve been crying. It was the sound of something growing a crust, some watery thing finally gelling. The very sound of age, of growing older, of adolescent rage being tempered by a man’s heart. Yeah, that was it. It was the sound of the kid’s coming of age. As if he taken on some of old Armstrong’s colossal sadness.
It made even me sound solar. Hot in a simmering, otherworldly way. And all at once I understood what the kid was to me. That only playing with him was I pulled out of my own sound. Alone, I wasn’t nothing. Just a stiff line, just a regular keeper of the beat. But the kid, hell, his horn somehow push all that forward too, he shove me on up into the front sound with him. Like
he
was holding
me
in time.
Maybe I was just finally forgiving myself for it. For failing. Maybe that was the sound of forgiveness I heard in my old axe. Cause that night, swinging by candlelight in that cramped room, everything warring in me settled down.
I known without a doubt I ain’t never be involved in no greater thing in my life. This was it, this was everything.
We was all of us free, brother. For that night at least, we was free.
Next morning, we woke to a low thrum coming up through the floor, the windows rattling. I thought at first it was just the dream of all that jazz we done play. But then I woke for real, my blood thundering. I got up quick, pulled back the blackout curtains, stuck my drowsy face out into the sunlight. Streets was empty, the cobblestones dull in the light. But echoing off the buildings, through the squares, that steady rumble come clear. Boots. Thousands of boots marching on pavement.
‘Hell,’ said Chip, yawning. ‘Tell me that ain’t my head.’
‘It ain’t you head.’ I cleared my throat, spat down at the gutter. Then I leaned back into the flat. ‘Krauts.’
It was the fourteenth of June.
The kid was shivering hard in his blankets.
‘How he doin?’
Chip pulled the sheets higher on him. Kid ain’t even crack a eyelid. ‘All that damn playin last night run him down. It ain’t good, buck. What you think?’
I didn’t know. I could feel my old fingers still throbbing with the night past. I felt jumpy, a strange, thrilled feeling cutting through me. Hell. I gone over to the light switch, flicked it on. The electricity was back up.
‘Ain’t all bad then,’ Chip grunted. ‘Lights workin now that it
daytime
.’
‘Trust the Krauts,’ I said, extending a salute. ‘
Heil!
’
But he ain’t smiled. Not like he used to.
‘We got to get out of here, Sid,’ he said, his voice low. ‘We can’t stay. You know it.’
But I was still hopping from our session the night before. ‘We
Yankees
, brother. We can damn well stay. It ain’t our war.’
‘You ain’t never heard of no one gettin shot, just cause they a ass?’
‘Chip,’ I said. ‘Come on, brother. They ain’t goin hunt you down. They ain’t even known who you was back in Berlin.’
‘I said ass, brother. I wasn’t talkin bout me.’ But he wasn’t reassured. He just stared miserably out the window at the blue sky. ‘The smoke cleared off in the night.’
‘Sure. It a perfect day to invade a city.’
Delilah come out then, tying off her silk dressing gown. She stood in the doorway, studying us. Her face looked ashen. ‘They’re here,’ she said simply.
We was up then, getting dressed, slipping on our old shoes and leaving the flat, Delilah, Chip and me. Leaving the kid to sleep off some of his sickness. We made sure to bring our papers with us.
‘What we goin eat?’ said Chip as we stepped out into the still street.
I glanced at the windows across the way. I didn’t reckon anyone still living over there.
Delilah said nothing.
Chip scowled. ‘Aw, what, ain’t we goin eat
nothin
? Krauts might be here but my old belly don’t know it. Come on. Least just stop in at the Bug’s.’
But we wasn’t walking that direction at all. We made our way down towards place de la Concorde. Folks dotted the street corners, a few vendors setting up their Friday stalls. We wandered past, feeling odd and lightheaded like we in a strange dream. A jane rode by on her bicycle, weeping. I heard Chip swear.
I suddenly realized I ain’t heard a single cannon firing all morning, the air still except for that thrumming under the cobblestones. We went on, past the boarded up bistros, past the shuttered pharmacies and cafés, the blue sky overhead awful in its emptiness.
We come out at place de la Concorde, onto the back of a gathering crowd. I could see a German tank, shining like it just been washed, a helmeted soldier in grey standing in the turret. Such harshness and such beauty under that June sun. There was big guns placed on the roofs of the nearer buildings. And there was thousands, brother,
thousands
of Boots filing past.
Hell.
We pushed our way through the crowd till we got a clear view of what was happening. I kept swallowing, but my damn throat was dry as toast. The Boots was clattering down through the gates and across the stones of the square, their heads snapping fiercely to the right as they passed their officers. Giving that damn angular salute. Scurrying all around, Kraut photographers knelt here and there, trying to catch every unholy angle of that parade. The Boots poured past in a steady stream of grey and green uniforms, jackboots gleaming, the sound of them making the pillared walls of the palace echo. The buildings, they looked filled with blame.
Then a old woman hissed from somewhere just behind us: ‘Senegalese, Senegalese.’
Chip lift up his face, turned suddenly in anger. ‘American,’ he shouted. He held up his passport as if to prove some point. ‘U S of goddamned A. You hear me, sister? Christ.’
‘Hell, brother, you want to make any more noise?’ I whispered.
Delilah just shook her head.
Chip looked at Delilah in disgust. ‘You reckon it time to run yet? We got our damn visas. You want us to wait round still? I ain’t exactly
invisible
here.’
Her face darkened. ‘Hiero’s visa should be here any day. It’s coming. It is.’
‘Like hell. You damn contact ain’t even stuck around I bet.’
She bit her lip, turned away.
The damn Boots kept filing by, hordes of greys, greens, greens, greys, more damn greys. Their sharp heels ringing like gunshots.
Some gent shoved on up beside us, staring out at the columns. He started hollering in relief. I ain’t understood a word. He had one trembling hand pressed to his heart.
Delilah looked at us, shook her head. ‘He thinks he’s saved. He thinks it’s the British army.’ She turned to him, said something curt in French.
‘Aw, Lilah, leave him alone,’ I whispered.
But it was too late. The old jack just opened his damn mouth, stared at her in horror. His eyes slid back to the Boots, back to Delilah. Then he stared round at the grim faces of other folks. All a sudden he gasped out a sob. He walked a few paces away, then stood just staring across at a deserted building.
There wasn’t nothing to do but watch. I could see the damn blood banner rising across the skyline: Hotel de Ville, the Palais Bourbon, all over the Place de la Concorde. Even the Eiffel Tower was draped with that dancing black spider.
‘You had bout enough yet?’ I said in disgust.
‘Hold on, buck. They like to start throwin the candy soon.’
I swallowed and turned away.
I felt a cool hand on my wrist. ‘Sid,’ Lilah said. ‘You don’t want to go now. You don’t want them to see you leaving.
Sid
.’
‘I can’t watch no more of it. I won’t.’
Chip give me a hard look. ‘You want to get shot, brother?’
I shook Delilah free. ‘Hell. They goin shoot everyone got to go to the damn toilet? I ain’t stickin round here. See you back at the flat.’
It was over. It was all of it over. I turned and pushed my way back through the gathered crowd. It felt like pushing through soft wax, those folk ain’t hardly moved at all.
..........
When I come in, Hiero was still sleeping. He lay on the antique sofa in the living room’s half-light, his skin glistening with a cold sweat. Frowning in his sleep, he drawn his legs up into a fetal curl. Sofa creaking under him. I kneeled beside him, took up a old jar of balm, begun rubbing it onto his hairless chest.
‘Easy there, buck,’ I said. ‘You just go easy there. You alright?’
He just coughed a sharp, bloody cough, ain’t even opened his damn eyes.
I set a second pillow under his head, got his breathing clearer. I felt damn hopeless.
And then I heard it. Three sharp raps at the door.
I sat very still, listening.
It come again, unmistakable.
Holy
hell
. My heart started pounding. I glanced real careful over the windowsill at the street outside, but I ain’t seen no Boots, no tanks, nothing. I put a finger on the kid’s cracked lips.
‘Be real damn quiet, brother,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t you make a sound.’
And I got up from the floor, walked real careful down the hall. Each floorboard creaking under me like fireworks.
The knock come a third time, impatient, sharp.
I stood at the heavy oak door, listening. Nothing. The only damn peephole we got was a heavy iron latch in the middle of the door – nothing subtle, nothing safe. My hands was trembling. But then I thought:
Brother, if that the Boots they like to call out at you. Or break down the door. They ain’t goin just to knock like they got all day.
Still I ain’t moved. I ain’t moved for what seemed a lifetime.
At last, I called out in English, ‘Hello? Who there?’
Nothing. No answer.
I took a breath, drawn back the bolts, opened the door.
The landing was empty.
I give a quick glance down the hall, stepped out and looked over the rail at the courtyard below. There wasn’t no one. But I ain’t heard no one leave, and something in it all made me real nervous. There was a smell on the landing of dust, wet rubber, and under that a sharp reek of boiled onions.
It was then that I seen it. Tucked under the doormat, a single brown corner poking out. I pulled it clear, give a quick, uneasy look round before slipping back inside.
Papers. Even then, even before I torn it open, I known what it was, what it got to be. And sure enough, there in red ink:
Hieronymus Thomas Falk
. The name crisply printed on a French exit visa, transit visas, a entrance docket into Switzerland.
A high feeling come over me, everything suddenly bright, like we got some sort of golden pass out of hell. I leaned against the sideboard, trembling. A damn lump in my throat like I going to start weeping. I blinked hard.
Then it hit me. I thumbed through the papers again, held open the envelope, felt around inside. There wasn’t no American passport. There wasn’t no visas through to Lisbon. Hell. Whatever else he was doing, the kid wasn’t coming with us back home. This was the end of our life together. This was the end of waking up to the kid’s half-scared, half-sarcastic face. Shit.
It was the end of our recording.
I glanced back down the hall, into the living room. The kid was whimpering softly in his asleep. I wasn’t even thinking. I slid his visas back into the envelope, walked to the kitchen, staring all around. I pulled the icebox away from the wall, tucked the envelope behind it. Shoved everything back into place. And the whole time I was telling myself,
Don’t worry, Sid, you goin figure this out. Just got to get the kid back on his feet. We just need a few hours, just one good goddamn take.
When I come into the living room, Hiero was awake. He turned his thin face up at me. ‘What was all that racket?’ he said, drowsy. ‘Is the Boots here?’
‘Aw, ain’t nothin. Knife fallin off the counter. You thirsty?’
‘I thought the Boots done got in. For sure.’ And then he closed his eyes.
A few minutes later the front door banged open like a rifleshot, and Delilah come tearing through. Ain’t even closed the damn door behind her. ‘Where are they?’ she said, her heels cracking on the boards. ‘Sid? Where are they?’
‘Hell, girl. You near killed me. Where’s Chip, he alright?’
She stopped, breathing hard. ‘What? No. Yes. He’s fine. I was just coming to see you were okay. Where’re the visas?’
My mouth gone real damn dry. ‘Visas?’
‘The visas,’ she said, nodding. She glanced round the room.
I give her a blank look. ‘You mean our visas?’