Really the Blues

by Joseph Koenig

  “Of course not. Just the same. . . .”

  There were tears in the paper over the windows. Eddie saw the street for the first time in days, people trying for a peek inside the remodeled Caverne as they passed by. The cake was in the kitchen on a table out of reach of the mice, a double-tiered confection slathered in yellow frosting, and across the top German words scripted in red glaze.

  “Herzlichen Glückwunsch und Viel Glück,” Eddie read out loud. “Does anybody know what it means?”

  “Happy birthday and much happiness,” Anne said.

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “What is this sudden obsession with birthday cake?” Roquentin said. “You still haven’t explained.”

  “We want to ensure that Colonel Maier’s party is memorable for everyone.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it,” Roquentin said.

  Eddie hadn’t stopped examining the cake. “Something’s missing.”

  “A dancer from the Folies to jump out.”

  Anne frowned. Eddie didn’t smile long.

  “The number of birthdays is usually written on top,” Roquentin said. “Maier is turning forty. It may not be something he wishes to be reminded of.”

  “Something else.”

  “Candles. We don’t need them either. Can you see a colonel in the SS blowing out forty candles on a cake like a little boy?”

  “Plus one for good luck,” Eddie said. “What’s a proper birthday celebration without them? Get some, will you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re up to,” Roquentin said, “but aren’t you carrying it too far?”

  “Not at all. I want to be certain everything goes off in a big way.”

  Someone had borrowed a couple of Wehrmacht 150cm anti-aircraft beacons and trained them over Place Pigalle. Watching the beams play among the clouds, Eddie wondered how many Parisians believed an air raid was imminent and were battening down against a flight of bombers. The light spilled over limousines parked on the cobbled square, and on couples overdressed for an evening of jazz pressing together on a red carpet outside the club. A man decked out for a round of golf drove by in a Mercedes-Benz 500K roadster in an insolent shade of red. Eddie took an immediate liking to him till he noticed German plates below the bumpers. Then an SS staff car pulled up, and he ducked away from the window without seeing who it brought.

  The first show was scheduled for 9:30. That was half an hour ago, but Speer had yet to arrive. The long wait caused a case of nerves which Eddie suspected wouldn’t improve his playing, although the tremolo it put in his singing voice occasionally won favorable reviews.

  The other Angels were wrapped up in gin rummy in their small dressing area. He listened to them argue over each hand, Weskers the loudest, and always with the last word. Their nerves weren’t on edge, their concerns no greater than hitting the right notes.

  A hand slapped his shoulder and parked there. “Weiler must have invited every high Nazi in France,” Roquentin said. “If any more show up, someone has to tell them all the seats are taken. Who do you think that someone will be?”

  “You have nothing to be afraid of. All your troubles soon will be over.”

  “Think it’s funny? You tell them.”

  “I want them inside,” Eddie said. “Nothing I like better than playing before big crowds of SS. Tell them there’s plenty of standing room.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  It was a possibility, but from what Eddie knew of crazy people they never considered that they might be crazy, or had second thoughts. He, on the other hand, was filled with self-doubt and regret, some for events still in the future, feelings that were heightened when he spotted Carla’s father. De Villiers looked like he’d been paid to model his evening clothes, the mourner’s button on the lapel a reminder that his daughter had died of complications resulting from an overdose of Eddie Piron.

  There were three empty chairs at the ringside table where Major Weiler and Colonel Maier rose to shake de Villiers’s hand. Behind de Villiers, a woman squeezed through the crowded aisles, pausing to look into the faces at every table. Weiler snapped his fingers to get her attention, but she was staring at the bandstand then and couldn’t be disturbed.

  In darkness behind the bandstand, Eddie watched Weiler make introductions as Mavis arrived at his table. What new trouble did she bring? Had she crashed the gala in order to denounce him in front of all of Paris? Colonel Maier couldn’t scrape up a smile, but de Villiers did, and kissed her hand. Mavis held on to a giggle as she was seated next to him and he whispered in her ear, which seemed to please de Villiers and Major Weiler equally, though Eddie couldn’t say why.

  Roquentin said, “I’ve got to check that everything is as it should be.”

  “You’ve done it a hundred times.”

  “Not enough.”

  “The cake, it’s ready?”

  “I’ve heard about the cake two hundred times. It’s the least of my worries.”

  The cake was Eddie’s worry, his and Anne’s. He hadn’t seen her since the club began to fill. She’d told him to stop worrying because worry was also the enemy, but didn’t have advice on how to avoid it, and so he worried about everything, worry part of the plot now.

  In an instant Roquentin was back, pulling at his sleeve. “Speer was recalled to Berlin. Get onstage. Can’t you see we’re running late?”

  Looking into the crowd, Eddie’s nerve deserted him, his lip gone soft and flabby. So this was what it was like to be in bed with a woman and find yourself capable only of excuses. He was desperate for a believable lie, as were many men in that situation. Better to learn these things confronting Nazis than an impatient lover. The idea made him laugh, and he felt his confidence coming back. As the Angels headed under the lights, he took aside Philippe, the piano player: “Forget the playlist. Open with ‘Alligator Crawl,’ your specialty number. Can you give them four minutes before I come on?”

  “Close your eyes, and you’ll hear Waller.”

  “Yes, I know. Let’s hope the stage lights fail. Everyone will think you really are him.”

  “I would rather they didn’t,” Philippe said. “He’s Negro, they’d tear me apart.” Suddenly he looked confused. “Where will you be?”

  “Leading the applause.”

  The opening bars brought foot-stamping and cheers that should have been Eddie’s. He was furious with himself for surrendering the limelight. The other Angels didn’t seem right, caught up in the nervous contagion.

  Philippe sounded like Philippe trying to sound like Fats Waller, a credible impersonation for a couple of measures before his left hand took a wrong turn in the intricacies of the walking bass. Eddie blamed it on the limelight’s glare, a place where few entertainers really were at home. A waitress came by, balancing a tray of aperitifs on her fingertips. Eddie snatched a glass and emptied it in a gulp. “Hey,” the girl said too late. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He came out in front of the band to big applause, exultant in the adulation of the crowd. He never had enough. Never would. Even coming from Nazi bastards who didn’t think he was human, it was what he lived for.

  He brought the trumpet to his lips, fit it against his embouchure. Though his mouth was dry, his sound was clean and powerful, reaching into the dark corners where applause lingered. He released the spit valve, and saliva poured out of the horn. Where it all came from he didn’t know.

  Leading off with “Apex Blues,” he blew loud as the crowd settled. After stating the melody, he didn’t have much to do besides tap his foot and look amiable while the clarinet played trills around him. Next on the playlist was “Chinatown My Chinatown.” He shook his head, and the band held back till they heard the introduction to “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You.” Philippe came in with the drums playing softly alongside Eddie, who put down his trumpet after the opening chorus and began to sing.

  The Angels were all over the tune, nerves an epidemic now. Philippe hit a clunker, throwing Ed
die off-stride. Briefly, he forgot the words.

  He stepped to the edge of the bandstand. The bigwigs were almost at arm’s length, de Villiers and Mavis too engrossed in each other to listen and look. Weiler drummed a saltshaker against the tabletop to his own music. Colonel Maier stared dead ahead, stone-faced. No fan of jazz, he didn’t miss a beat.

  Eddie mopped his face with a white handkerchief. The crowd howled as he mimicked Satchmo Armstrong’s signature mannerism, but the sweat pouring out of him was real.

  The club was filled beyond capacity, the doors sealed to keep the overflow from storming inside. Waiters and waitresses were backed up at the service bar. Roquentin hadn’t put on sufficient staff to handle the mob. Eddie noticed a waitress gesturing at a waiter, who abruptly stripped off his apron and disappeared through the kitchen. The waitress was Anne, who followed after him and came out with a tray over her shoulder. What compelled her to show her face to a room filled with Nazis looking to send her to hell? Where had she learned the obsequious smile that allowed her close to the unruly occupiers of the city like a matador testing sharp horns? A sidelong glance in his direction, and she ran back to the kitchen to take on the work of the waitresses she shooed from the club.

  Next on the playlist was “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” which had been a huge hit for Armstrong. Even de Villiers stopped gabbing to focus on the stage. After the opening verse, Eddie skipped over the lyric. Everything he wanted to say was in the title.

  The crowd hung on each note as it used to do in the good times before the Germans came. La Caverne Negre was Eddie’s second home, or third, or fourth, and he would miss it. Miss what it had meant to him, what it had been. Tonight belonged to the new regime, and after tonight there would be nothing. His lament was for something that already had ceased to exist.

  He closed with “Stardust,” squeezing every drop of pathos from the gorgeous melody. Before the Angels could march off, Roquentin jumped under the lights waving for the crowd to stay put. “I wish to thank all of you for your loyal patronage of so many years,” he said. “As you know, this will be my last night at La Caverne Negre before I give the club over to new friends.”

  Philippe struck a few chords as Roquentin bathed in the affection of the crowd. “Rest assured that I am leaving you in the best hands.” The spotlight flashed, but he didn’t surrender the stage. “We have a surprise,” he said. “Don’t anyone leave.”

  Eddie unloaded a flood of spit as the lights dimmed.

  He popped a mute into the bowl of his horn, and “Happy Birthday To You” came out sweetly for one refrain, and again with a jazzy lilt. De Villiers and Weiler grinned at Colonel Maier, whose hard look didn’t vary. A spotlight swept the walls and ceiling, the tables, the floor, and the stage before it settled on the kitchen door as the cake came out on a cart guided by Anne. Eddie stepped to the side of the riser, aimed the stagelights at the Germans’ table, and watched them shield their eyes, squinting and blinking as the cake was delivered.

  “Today,” Roquentin said, “is the birthday of our dear friend, Colonel Maier, who has traveled all the way from Berlin to share it with us. Please, all of you are invited to celebrate with the colonel.”

  Eddie removed the mute, and the insipid jingle turned brassy. Through all of it, Maier didn’t smile. Someone would pay for this foolishness, and the someone might well be the musician blowing in his face. Eddie marveled at his stern display. How the man didn’t blush, or squirm, or acknowledge the cake arriving before him. Maier just sat, looking stiffly ahead, staring right through the cake while Roquentin signaled for quiet.

  Eddie whispered to him, “Get out, and take the Angels with you.”

  “It’s only the end of the first set. We haven’t lit the candles for Maier.”

  “You can light others,” Eddie said. “In church.”

  “It isn’t easy leaving for the last time.”

  “It’s easier to die here?”

  Roquentin looked at the table where Maier and Weiler sat before the cake as if they had never been to a birthday party as children, and didn’t know what came next. Eddie crooked a finger at the band, which followed Roquentin to the side exit along with the rest of the waiters and waitresses, Anne bringing up the rear. Weiler put a thin-bladed knife in Maier’s hand. De Villiers took it away and pointed it at the unlit candles in the frosting.

  Mavis found a matchbook in her purse, and de Villiers passed it to the colonel, who’d had his fill of childishness, and seemed ready to go home. Suddenly the house lights came on. Weiler bolted from the table and ran down Roquentin and his crew, collared the last of them like a card sharp dealing the ace from the bottom of the deck, and returned with Anne.

  De Villiers said, “What is going on? If you will explain.”

  “This woman is sought on serious charges,” Weiler said.

  “Can’t it wait?” de Villiers said. “Tonight is for pleasantness.”

  Weiler deferred to Colonel Maier, who nodded, and then turned to Anne. “Be so kind,” he said, “as to light the candles for me.”

  She retreated, bumping into Weiler, who forced her back.

  “You would deny me this honor on my birthday?”

  Nothing of her jauntiness was left. Maier pressed the matches into her hand. “Light them.”

  She tore a match from the book and ground it against the flint. It didn’t catch. Another crumpled when she struck it too hard. A third produced a flame that wandered along the edges of the cake. Maier caught her wrist and lowered it over a candle.

  The wick took the flame, as did two more before the match burned down to her fingers, and she blew it out. She ripped another from the book, and Maier took her wrist again, and like bride and groom they lit a row of five candles. Eddie heard impatient chatter in the crowd, which was tired of ceremony, hungry for cake. The match flickered out. Anne struck another.

  One candle refused to light. Three matches were used up before the flame sputtered and caught. Sizzling, it threw off sparks, melted much of the paraffin, and burned out.

  No matches were left in the book. Anne plucked a lighted candle and brought it to the smoking wick.

  Maier swept her arm aside. He yanked out the glowing candle, squashed it under his heel, and drove his hand into the cake. Eddie observed that he was no Jack Horner as he emerged with nothing. Maier looked up at Anne, considered that she might be a prize he wouldn’t be cheated of, and shoved her away without a word before his humiliation was made complete. De Villiers, looking as though he was having second thoughts about his dealings with the Germans, moistened a napkin in a water tumbler, and Maier scrubbed his wrist and the back of his hand, examined each finger individually, and cleaned between them. Someone in the crowd laughed, and Eddie heard someone else tell him to shut up. Eddie blew a chorus of “Happy Birthday” with a bluesy inflection, the vocal provided by the crowd, which caught its collective breath after “Dear . . .” and then shouted, “. . . Colonel Maier, Happy birthday to you,” and cheered as all but four of the candles were extinguished in a single blow.

  Maier took back the knife and from the undamaged part of the cake hacked out a generous wedge and served it to Mavis. She displayed it like a trophy to the crowd, took a small bite, then put it down and sliced smaller pieces for everyone, while the colonel popped the cork on a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck and filled each glass on the table.

  Weiler was pronouncing a toast when Anne slipped away.

  Too late he made a grab for her, out of his seat when de Villiers stopped him. “I will not allow you to spoil our good time. Where can she run? You will find her to do with her what you must. But not now.”

  Weiler wouldn’t repeat his mistake with Eddie.

  “Come, have cake with us,” he said to him. “You provided good entertainment.”

  The house lights came on, the customers afraid of the dark, perhaps, or if they were realistic, thought Eddie, of each other. The story of Abraham begging God to save Sodom for the sake of fifty goo
d men was on his mind again. At La Caverne Negre, fifty was an impractical number. The bidding would begin at one. A single death that might weigh on his conscience, and he would argue with God rather than play Him.

  Nothing about the Germans scored points in their favor. The fawning cravenness of their French lackeys counted for as much. La Caverne was theirs now, as were Paris, France, Europe. Still they wanted more. Laissez les bons temps rouler was their motto, but with a meaning that would be rejected in New Orleans. The occupation was the best of times for them, the good old days here and now. It was written all over the glossy faces that Eddie recognized from other places he’d been wrong to call home.

  De Villiers couldn’t contain his disgust for Eddie. Weiler poured Champagne for Eddie and then topped off his own glass.

  “Give me a second to put my horn away,” Eddie said, “and I’ll be back for my cake.” He tapped his pockets. “Can I borrow a cigarette? I’m fresh out.”

  Mavis picked a Gitane out of a tortoiseshell case, put it between his lips, and gave him a light from hers. “Don’t go too far,” she said.

  From the bandstand he maintained his lookout for one good person. No one in uniform qualified. Neither did their friends, and anybody pretending to be one. He considered Mavis. Not the most admirable of women, she didn’t, nevertheless, deserve to die tonight. Not for trying to destroy Eddie Piron. Therefore no one would.

  He knelt over the trumpet case, popped the snaps, and raised the lid. Mavis wasn’t there when he looked again. He spotted her in the back of the club making a beeline to the ladies’ toilet. That part of La Caverne was the remnant of an ancient fieldstone inn that Roquentin had incorporated into the nightspot by knocking down a wall when he opened in the twenties. The toilets were the safest place to be in the event of an air raid or lesser calamity. A final survey of the crowd turned up no one else he would argue about with God for or against.

  He was seized with a fit of coughing. He hadn’t smoked since he became serious about the trumpet at eleven, and the cigarette scorched his lungs. He moved it to a corner of his mouth with a glance at Weiler, who was watching him over the lip of his glass.