Half-Blood Blues (19 page)

But then a elderly dame come into view, wearing a elegant cream dress. She was pushing a girl in a wheelchair. Hell. I wiped a hot hand on my thighs. That girl was so damn pretty, all dark eyes and auburn hair, her slender hands folded in her lap. She look strange in that contraption, delicate-featured, and when she smiled it was like a ripple passing over a calm lake.

‘
Ernie!
’ she exclaimed. ‘I
knew
it. I
knew
it.’

‘Hi, Buggy,’ he smiled. He stood very still, waiting for them to approach. Chip give me a surprised look.

The older dame put her toe on the brake of the chair, punched it to a standstill. Then she straightened, smoothed her hands along her sleeves, give Ernst a careful look. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Look at you. You look awful.’

Ernst chuckled.

‘Liesl
thought
she heard a motor in the drive.’

The girl smiled up. ‘I
told
you, Mother.’

Frau von Haselberg clasped her hands, turned to look at us. She was pale as spring cabbage, her face full of tiny wrinkles like the veins in a leaf. Her brown eyes the only spots of darkness on her. She looked a little sickly, strange, white as something churned up from the earth’s depths. ‘You must be Ernst’s Americans,’ she said. ‘We’ve heard so much about you. It’s a shame Ernst hasn’t brought you for a visit sooner. We of course have all of your recordings.’

‘Of course,’ Ernst said dryly. ‘But have you ever listened to them?’

‘
Ernst
,’ said his mother, like she shocked. But she was smiling.

Chip took off his hat as Ernst introduced us. I stared at his gouged knuckles, the scabs from that fight a lifetime ago. His oyster lips was still badly mashed up, split and scabbed over, and his one eye wasn’t focused quite right, narrow and squinting.
Hell
, I thought,
he damn ugly. Like a Frankenstein
.

Ernst gestured at the two dames with a smooth grace. ‘This is my mother, Mrs von Haselberg. And this is my sister Liesl. We call her Buggy. She’s a frivolous troublemaker.’

Liesl give us a startling smile. ‘It’s true. You’ll see.’

‘Are you here for a long visit?’ said Frau von Haselberg.

‘No.’

His mother seemed a little disappointed. ‘You drove all the way from Berlin? Today? You must all be rather exhausted. You’ll stay for tonight, of course. I’ll have Frieda make up some rooms.’

‘Exhausted, Mother? Strong men like them?’ said Liesl, her smile full of mischief. ‘I should hope not.’

‘I ain’t so tired,’ said Chip, grinning.

Liesl focused her gaze on him, her smile widening.

I looked warily at both of them.

‘Rummel said Father is away?’ Ernst said after a moment.

His mother sighed. ‘Near Saarbrücken. Working. He should be back soon, we hope. You’ve come to see him? Nothing is wrong, I hope?’

Ernst give her a quick look. ‘He didn’t say anything?’

‘About what?’

‘You know how he is, Ernie,’ said Liesl. ‘
Rummel
knows more than we do.’

‘Ah, yes. The frail von Haselberg women. We mustn’t tax you, must we.’

‘Under no circumstances,’ said Liesl.

Frau von Haselberg just shook her head.

I was looking out the window at the sun, low over the wide green lawns. It was so damn peaceful here.

‘Let me get them settled,’ Ernst said to his mother. ‘We’ll find you in a bit. We’ll be hungry, if Anke could find a little something extra.’

Frau von Haselberg nodded. ‘Anke isn’t with us anymore. But the new girl will be able to find something, I’m sure.’

Ernst nodded. ‘Yes, yes. Fine.’

He led us deeper into the house, up a low flight of stairs, along a open passage with closed doors on one side, a view of a long sitting room below us on the other. Chip leaned over the railing, rolled his eyes at me, kept going.

‘What happen to you sister?’ the kid said quietly, as we went.

‘Polio. Four years old.’ Ernst cleared his throat. ‘She’s paralyzed from the waist down.’

‘Hell,’ said Chip. ‘Well. She seem alright.’

‘She’s not,’ Ernst said curtly. ‘Neither of them are. They’re bigoted two-faced snobs and they’d toss you into the street as soon as look at you. So would Rummel.’

‘Rummel? You butler?’

Ernst frowned. ‘Rummel’s not a butler. Rummel is –
efficient
.’ He slowed, give us a considered look, like he deciding something within hisself. ‘When something needs doing, Rummel does it. Without fail.’

‘I reckon you ain’t talkin bout the laundry,’ Chip muttered.

Ernst give a bitter smile. ‘No. There are others who do that.’

That night I slept a long time in the soft bed. When I finally woke in the late morning I found a clean suit set out for me, near my size. I wondered where Delilah and Paul slept. What they was waking to.

I found Chip and the kid out in a side courtyard, where the Horch been parked for the night. Both got on clean suits too. Someone done washed the road dust off the auto, and it gleamed like a bone in the sun.

I stood just inside the French doors, looking out at them. Hiero was sitting on the stone steps, his back to me, watching Chip run a hand along the shining Horch. It seem so ordinary, this scene. Then Hiero turn round, staring directly at me though I was standing in the shadows. ‘Sid?’

After Berlin, something happened between me and the kid. I ain’t understood it. But it was like he started looking out for me, watching over me, keeping a closer eye. Hell. He like a brother, baring his teeth at Ernst or Chip or anyone who bite too hard at me. Like we ain’t had a rivalry over Delilah just days ago. But something in me just wasn’t working right, cause even as it was happening, I ain’t felt nothing.

As I come down the steps into the white sunlight, I seen a movement from under the alcove. Ernst’s sister was wheeling herself slowly over to Chip.

‘It’s a beautiful automobile,’ she called to him.

He shrugged, said something I ain’t caught.

‘A Horch 853 Sport-Cabriolet,’ she laughed. ‘The 1938 models were nice, yes.’

Chip give her a quizzical look.

‘I’m good with wheels, Mr Jones,’ she said.

He stared at her like he ain’t never seen such a creature. Then he laughed. ‘Aw, you just call me Chip.’

‘Chip, then. You must call me Buggy. Liesl is far too… comatose.’

The kid give me a brooding look as I sat down.

Liesl was still laughing. She obviously one of those janes who can’t stand pauses in conversation, will do anything to fill them. She seem so frail, so delicate. Beautiful like a turning season, like something you known just ain’t going to last. ‘Yes, it’s because of this,’ she was saying, slapping the arm of her wheelchair with a flat report. ‘If you can’t laugh at it, Chip, then it’s a sad fate indeed.’

‘Sad fate,’ the kid muttered, scowling. ‘That chair cost more than folk make in a year.’

‘On the other hand,’ I said in soft rebuke, ‘her legs don’t work.’

Hiero scowled again. ‘Ernst ain’t foolin. She seem alright, don’t she. But he know his family, Sid. That girl be dangerous.’

I glanced over at him, taken aback by the anger in his voice. He watched Liesl in her chair, watched her run her fingers through Chip’s scruffy afro. ‘I never liked Hamburg,’ he said with a soft fury. ‘My mama come through here sometimes. I reckon it reminded her of my daddy. I always hated it. My mama, she from Köln.’

I lift my face, hearing that. ‘
From
Köln? You mean she born there?’

‘What else do she from Köln mean?’

‘So you a
Mischling
then?’

‘What. It ain’t obvious?’

‘You looked in a mirror? Ever?’

He studied the smooth back of his hands. ‘Black as a starless night.’

‘Ain’t nothin wrong with black, buck.’

‘My daddy from Cameroon.’

‘Cameroon? Hell.’

The kid smiled shyly. ‘He been royalty there. Kaiser Wilhelm II hisself invite him to this country to be schooled here, to study medicine. He sailed into Hamburg on the Wöhrmann Line in 1899. Met my mama on a school break. That was in April. She was studying to be a nurse. Then he graduate, move on down Köln, marry her.’

‘Sound like you got all the facts real accurate,’ I said. Thinking,
Shit, you tell a tale like you don’t
want
to be believed
. ‘Royalty. Shit.’

He grinned at me. ‘For real. Hard to believe, ain’t it.’

‘It hard to believe alright.’

Chip went over to the Horch, pulled old Ernst’s licorice stick out of the backseat, and brought it back to where Liesl was parked in the sunlight. He start showing her how to finger that clarinet. Then he took it from her, smile, lift it to his lips, and blown a sharp needling high C. He wiped off the reed, passed it back to her.

Hiero looked at me, lifting his eyebrows sourly. ‘You know what I think when I look at her?’

‘What.’

He studied her with his small dark eyes. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘We got to drive to it though.’

I run a hand over my eyes, like to shield some of that bright sunlight. I felt real tired. That heaviness in me again. ‘It ain’t safe, kid.’

‘It safe enough.’ He studied me, set a hand on my arm. His grip was strong. ‘I won’t let nothin happen. I swear.’

I looked at him in surprise.

But we sat awhile longer in the sunlight, neither of us moving. The kid watched Chip wheeling Liesl over the flagstones.

‘My middle name be Thomas,’ he said. ‘I want you to know that. I ain’t keepin it a secret.’

I sort of smiled at him, sad like. It seemed such a small thing to offer. ‘Roscoe,’ I said. ‘Sidney Roscoe Griffiths.’

Hamburg. It wasn’t nothing to me, another grim north German city. I remembered it being rainy, its skies a murky grey like a constant reflection of water. We come through here once or twice working the clubs to the damn Swing Boys. Them rich sweet-faced kids who come out to defy the Housepainter. Every last one of them got up in glen-checked suits and crepe-soled shoes, short skirts and silk stockings, their long hair so thick with grease you could roast a pig in it. Like it what you
wear
that matter. I known they meant well, known they was our audience, but man, most ain’t known two strokes bout jazz, come out only cause of the ban. Kids who thought Whiteman, Gluskin, Bela was the equals of a Armstrong or a Basie. Ain’t even able to cut the rug, their arms all swinging together like some hundred-legged beast. Shaking their hair or their homburgs or their closed umbrellas. I known they loved us, got beat up in the streets cause of us. And hell, I
wanted
to love them back. But I ain’t never did.

I thought about it as we drove on through the town. All that Swing culture was already dying.

Kid and me ain’t hardly talked on the drive. Maybe he was thinking some of the same thoughts I was. At last he tapped the dashboard with his long soft fingers, gestured for me to pull into a lot. I come to a stop, the Horch purring quietly, then stared up through the window at the big sign on the fence.

‘Hell. You takin me to the
zoo
?’

‘Hagenbecks ain’t a zoo,’ said the kid. ‘It a animal park. It supposed to be better than zoos. They don’t use barred cages, just moats to keep the damn animals in. So they free to roam wild in their own spaces.’

‘Kid, I ain’t in the mood. For real.’ I folded my arms over the steering wheel, blown out my cheeks.

He give me a curt look. ‘You got to see somethin.
This
the Hamburg I known.’

He climbed out, shut the door with a bang. I watched him through the clean windscreen for a minute. Sighing, I clambered out after him.

The gates at the entrance stood tall and imposing in the sunlight. We crossed the concrete square, stood at the ticket booth. The jack standing in there give Hiero a polite look. The kid stared him down boldly.

Going in, we passed a woman and her very young son. The boy pulled back on her hand, stared at us with frightened eyes.

Hiero ain’t said nothing. A dark, satisfied smile passed over his lips.

Hagenbecks was a green, shady park. The air carried traces of shit and piss and mud, like we was moving into farmland. I seen pale birds overhead, crying like widows, and then the path wound down by a pond. I seen the backs of grazing hippos, their skin glowing like polished rocks. The kid looked uneasy, scanning the path ahead.

‘It alright,’ I said. ‘We ain’t got to be so nervous here.’

He looked at me. ‘It ain’t that.’

Then I caught sight of a row of thatch-roofed clay huts. The kid start striding hard toward them, and I sort of trailed after. We ain’t seen more than a few other folk in the park that afternoon. I paused on the path. Then I gone closer.

Wasn’t no moat at this exhibit. Instead, a breast-high wooden fence stood spiked between us.

‘These the dangerous animals,’ Hiero said bitterly.

I just stared in amazement. I wasn’t even clear on what all I was seeing at first. Then I swore softly.

Cause it was
people
. Black folk. Barefoot, dressed in rags and bones. A group of jacks squatted on flat rocks in the mud, smoking crude pipes, disks hanging from their huge earlobes. Women sat in a circle farther back, leopard- print cloths tied firmly round their privates. With mortar and pestle they was pounding cornmeal, the powder of it dusting their feet. And despite all the mud, despite the filth and the flies, their skin looked weirdly shiny. All silvery black, like the zookeepers kept them buffed up like onyx.

A ache come into my chest. ‘They keep
people
here?’

‘This just the African exhibit,’ Hiero muttered. ‘They got one for Samoans, for Esquimaux.’ He was trying to smile, like it ain’t so horrifying. Or like it so horrifying, it funny. But the smile ain’t reached his eyes.

‘A human zoo,’ I mumbled. ‘Shit.’

I was just too damn astonished to say anything else. A old woman come out from one of the huts, carrying a baby in her arms, her shrunken gams gleaming in the sunlight. She crossed that sun-beaten patch of mud, singing something real soft to the baby. The baby started squalling.