Half-Blood Blues (5 page)

Of course, the recording’s cult status had to do with the illusion of it all. I mean, not just of the kid but of all of us,
all
the Hot-Time Swingers. Think about it. A bunch of German and American kids meeting up in Berlin and Paris between the wars to make all this wild joyful music before the Nazis kick it to pieces? And the legend survives when a lone tin box is dug out of a damn wall in a flat once belonged to a Nazi? Man. If that ain’t a ghost story, I never heard one.

One question kept flaring up, though: who was this Hieronymus Falk? Some of the wildest stories you ever heard come out, a couple of them even true. Folks reckoned he could play any song after hearing it just once (true); they believed he was Sidney Bechet’s long-lost brother (ain’t we all?); they murmured that like the bluesman Robert Johnson, Falk would only play facing a corner, his back to everyone (handsome devil like Falk? think again) – and speaking of the devil (and Johnson), they reckoned he’d made a pact with hell itself, traded his soul for those damned clever lips.

I don’t know, maybe that last one is even true.

Then in the fall of ’81 a few more details come out. In an interview Hammond gave, he claimed the kid died in ’48, after leaving Mauthausen. Died of some chest ailment that August, of a pulmonary embolism. Pulmonary embolism? Somehow that ain’t struck folks as right. ‘What
really
happened to Hieronymus Falk’ become something of a journalist sport. All sorts of nonsense started up. One article said Falk got pleurisy. Another said pleurisy of the suicide variety, implying he brought it on himself, one too many rainy walks in that frail body. Still another said forget the lungs – it been his heart that give out, cardiac arrest due to starvation. More romantic that way, I guess. No one seemed to get it right. All of this was like an old knife turning in me and Chip’s guts. Leave the poor kid dead, we felt. Let him lie.

Through all of it, Hammond stuck to his guns.

‘It’s like I said, Sid, pulmonary embolism,’ he told me later. ‘I’ve never been more astonished than when everyone refused to believe it. A man like Falk, though, I guess he’s got to have a glamorous death. With the right kind of death, a man can live forever.’

Hell
, I thought when I heard that.
A man like Falk
? Hiero was just a
kid
. Ain’t nobody should have to grow up like that.

..........

I stood a long time behind my door, listening for Chip’s shuffled footfalls on the stairs. Then I locked the two deadbolts, rattled the chain into place.

Chip Jones
, I thought grimly, as I went back down the hall.
Chip goddamn Jones. The man don’t understand limits
.

Not that I believed him. Even for a second. I returned to my quiet living room, turned off the lights, stood at the window with one slat of the blinds held down, staring out into the street. After a minute Chip appeared, a small silhouette in the gathering darkness. He crossed the street, walking slowly, then turned and glanced up at my apartment. I released the blinds with a crackle and stepped back into the shadows.

After a time I sat, looked at my hands. The room darkish now, the late afternoon haze laying shadows against all the furniture. Everything looked heavier. I could smell Chip’s cigarillo like the devil’s presence.

Then I said to myself, be fair, just picture it for a minute. What if this wasn’t some prank of Chip’s, what if these letters did exist, what if somehow, like the proverbial voice from beyond the grave, the kid was reaching out to us? What would you do, Sid, if all that was possible? After what you done, wouldn’t you owe it to him to go? I sat there until the room went full dark, staring through my warped living room blinds into the street.

It was no use. I did not believe it.

I knew I should get up, get back to packing, but I didn’t move. An odd feeling come over me then. I could feel my hands and feet tingling like they wasn’t my own no more, and then it seemed like some shadow passed over my heart. I shivered.

I must have slept. I woke with my head twisted hard to one side, a long line of drool dampening the front of my shirt. It was still dark. I got up, checked the clock, grimaced. Still a few hours yet.

Then I was packed and wrestling the battered suitcase down the stairwell and out to the waiting taxi. It idled there in the cold early light, the clouds of exhaust hauntingly white in the street. Gave me a chill, seeing it.

I got into the cab with a groan. The peeling seats smelled bad, like garlic or onions. ‘BWI,’ I mumbled. ‘Don’t go taking no scenic routes either. I got a plane to catch.’

The cabbie wore an Orioles cap turned backwards. I ain’t understood how men got to keeping their hats on indoors in this day and age. He shrugged. ‘Sure thing, boss, BWI.’ He punched the meter and pulled away.

The city always struck me as dirty this early in the morning. The streets wet with the night rains, the slow scuttle of rats under parked cars, the trash and blown papers in the alleys. Wasn’t always this grim.

At my age, a man shouldn’t have to take a cab to the airport. Should be someone he can call, take him there, wish him a safe flight. I ain’t got no regrets about it though.

‘No regrets is right, boss,’ the cabbie said cheerfully. ‘Regrets don’t do you no good.’

I looked at him in surprise. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud.

‘Where you off to?’ he said.

I watched his eyes in the rearview mirror, drifting over to me, away.

‘London,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to London. I live there.’ Better not to tell folks your business, I figure. Nor to let them know you’re leaving your pad empty. A man’s got to be careful these days.

‘London?’ the cabbie said. ‘No kidding. I used to live in London. England’s alright but the food’ll kill you. Whereabouts you live over there?’

I frowned. I ain’t got no mind for this damn small talk. Best to shut him up quick. ‘Not London England,’ I said. ‘London Ontario. In Canada.’

The cabbie’s eyes sort of glazed over. Canada kills any conversation quick, I learned long ago. It’s a little trick of mine.

I was watching the streets scroll on past. Baltimore always seems like the kind of city you’re either leaving or just returning to. Ain’t no kind of place to hang your hat. Even as a kid I’d dreamed of getting out. I watched the green wall of shrubbery along the freeway pour past the cab window, feeling uneasy. I ain’t no fool, I known this was like to be my last trip away.

See, I was born here, in Baltimore, before the Great War. And when you’re born in Baltimore before the Great War you think of getting
out
. Especially if you’re poor, black and full of sky-high hopes. Sure B-more ain’t
south
south, sure my family was light-skinned, but if you think Jim Crow hurt only gumbo country, you blind. My pals and I was as much welcome in white diners as some Byron Meriwether would be breaking bread in Jojo’s Crab House. Things was
bitter
. Some of my mama’s family – two of her brothers and a schoolteacher sister – they was passing as whites down Charlottesville way. Cut us off entirely. You don’t know how I dreamed of showing up there, breaking up their parade. I ain’t so sure about it now, I suppose they was just trying to get by best they could.
We
could’ve passed too, said we was bohunks or something, but my pa ain’t never gone for that. Negro is what the lord made us, he always said. Don’t want to be nothing else.

At the airport, I checked myself in and started the slow walk to the gate. Long white tunnels, checkpoints, passports. I didn’t see any sign of Chip.

Even when they called for boarding, I ain’t seen him.

Not a bad start, I thought with satisfaction. Hallelujah. Maybe Chip going to miss this plane.

We was set to fly first-class, courtesy of old Caspars, and I’d no sooner settled into the wide seat, slipped off my old orthopedics, and leaned right back, than I saw Chip shuffling on down the aisle toward me.

‘Sid,’ he said, out of breath. ‘I didn’t think I goin to make it. They damn near lost my reservation.’ He looked crisp, sharp, perfectly attired in a black silk suit with a grey kerchief folded in the breast pocket. ‘I think you in the wrong seat,’ he said, studying his ticket.

I pulled mine out, looked at the numbers on the overhead latches.

‘Ain’t you in 2B?’ he said.

‘4D,’ I said. ‘I’m in the right seat.’

He frowned. ‘I’m in 2A. I ain’t nowhere near you. That can’t be right.’

He ducked his head, looking around. ‘On the other side of the goddamned plane,’ he muttered. ‘I put us together, brother, I swear it. Hell.’

‘It’s alright, Chip,’ I said, all of a sudden feeling friendlier. ‘Don’t you mind it. I’m like to sleep the whole way anyhow.’

Chip nodded, miserable. ‘Well. Maybe they’ll let me come over once we get under way. Maybe the seats’ll be free.’

Then he was gone, settling in on the far side, and the stewardess was stalking up the aisle stowing bags and kits and purses. And then we was lifting up off the tarmac and tilting steeply, rising up into the ether. I gripped my old armrests and stared out the cabin windows at the clouds. It was too grey to see much of the city below. Before the seatbelt light come off I’d downed two sleeping pills and drawn the blanket up to my neck.

Well, I thought drowsily. A man ain’t but one kind of crazy.

I could see Chip leaning out into the aisle, trying to catch my attention. I leaned back, closed my eyes. Berlin, I thought. Hell.

Chip looked worn awful thin by the time we set down. More long grey tunnels, checkpoints, passports and the like. Then we was sitting on a tight little bench at the luggage carousel waiting for my damn suitcase to clatter down. It didn’t come. We watched two green bags turn on the slatted ramp, vanish, come back around again.

‘They lost it,’ I said. ‘I fly once in fifteen years and they lose my damn luggage.’

Chip nodded. ‘I ain’t lost a piece of luggage in near forty years. Good thing, too, cause the stuff ain’t cheap, boy.’

I looked at his matching luggage, all monogrammed, high-end leather, set out beside him in descending order of size like a damn family of suitcases. ‘Ain’t that something,’ I scowled. ‘How about that. You just one amazing traveller, ain’t you.’

He chuckled. ‘Aw, Sid, I just saying. It’s alright. I’ll lend you some clothes for the premiere tonight.’

‘I ain’t going to need your clothes. They going to get me my damn suitcase.’

‘Sure they will,’ Chip said encouragingly. And I got that funny dark feeling in my chest again, like something was real wrong. It ain’t
normal
, Chip being this friendly.

At the luggage counter a man with a natty little moustache told me my luggage ought to arrive at the hotel before me. It been rerouted by accident to Poland. But it coming right back, sure.

‘Poland!’ Chip laughed, as we stood in line at passport control. ‘It just going on ahead of us, to let Hiero know we coming.’ And later, at the taxi stand, he said again, ‘Poland, Sid. Think of it. That ain’t so far your suitcase can’t go there and get back to your hotel before you even arrive. Hell, that’s close, brother. Closer than DC to your old Fells Point pad.’

I scowled and looked away.

On the drive in I told the cabbie to swing us by the Brandenburg Gate. I’d sat up front to get some space from Chip but he just kept leaning on forward, breathing his damn cigarillo breath down my neck.

‘I don’t know, Sid,’ he said. ‘I reckon we should just check in. We got the opening in less than three hours.’

‘The Brandenburg Gate,’ I said again to the cabbie in German. And to Chip, ‘It be alright. You just relax some. Sit back and see.’

Sure, I admit, some part of me was just trying to spite him. But I was curious, too. The city’s new hugeness shook me. It’d always been big, but not like
this
– the war opened great holes all those decades ago and I could see them even now. Green parks broke up the sea of cement, and so many concrete lots sat empty, all gone to weed. The streets looked wider than I remembered, too. As we passed the Berliner Dom, I got a vague itch all high up in my throat. My god. That vast pillared Renaissance church – it’d
shrunk
. Looked timid, apologetic, like a man brought down in the world.

Chip set one big grey hand on my seat and leaned forward as the cabbie turned up the broad avenue of Unter den Linden. ‘You know where we are?’ he said quietly.

A weird feeling rose up in me. Last I seen Unter den Linden, they torn out all them linden trees that gave the boulevard its name, tossed up white columns in their place, sanded the pavement so their damn jackboots wouldn’t slip.

All that was gone like it ain’t never been. I got a shock of recognition, of half-recognition, and heaven knows why but I recalled the night I seen my ma’s body laid out in her coffin. As I leaned low over her, her features seemed the same, arranged in familiar calm, but there was a trace of something not her, a watermark left by the undertaker. A whimsy to her lips, maybe. As if in dying she’d learned a whole new kind of irony, a contempt for what she’d left behind.

‘This ain’t our Berlin, Sid,’ said Chip.

I swallowed. Seemed like my damn voice wasn’t working right.

Chip put his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s the years, brother. They wreck everything. For real.’

I nodded. ‘It’s lost something. I bet ain’t nobody even remember what it was.’

‘Except us, brother. Except you and me.’

I said nothing.

Chip leaned back. ‘That’s what this weekend
about
, Sid.’

I sort of half-turned in my seat to look at Chip where he sat, his big hands pressed between his thighs, his sweet black suit utterly unrumpled. ‘You keep on talking,’ I said. ‘You keep on trying to sell me something.’

He chuckled. ‘Aw, ain’t no convincing you. I know that. You don’t want to go to Poland, that’s okay.’

‘You damn right.’

He chuckled again.

But something was wrong in me. Even being put up at the Westin Grand on Friedrichstrasse didn’t sweeten my mood. I lay in the dark room on a bed the size of a banquet table, the velvet curtains shut, a chalky dryness to the air like centuries of dust.