41 pages • 1 hour read
Esi EdugyanHalf-Blood Blues
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary
In 1939 Berlin, Sid and Paul Butterstein, the Jewish pianist for the Hot-Time Swingers, the jazz sextet that Chip, Sid, and Hiero also play in, take a trolley to a practice session at a local club called the Hound, which has been shut down for “degenerate sympathies” (79). As they pass a crowded square, they catch sight of Ernst von Haselberg, the group’s manager and clarinet player, as well as the owner of the Hound, with a woman they don’t recognize, who wears a headwrap. A Nazi party member gets on the train and talks to Paul, mistaking him for a fellow Nazi. Paul converses with him nonchalantly, but Sid notices his anger afterward.
Arriving at the club, Paul and Sid start a practice session with Hiero, who repeatedly requests that they rehearse one of Sid’s entrances, much to Sid’s annoyance. Ernst arrives with the woman Sid and Paul saw from the train, whom he introduces as Delilah Brown, a jazz singer associated with Louis Armstrong. She invites them to come to Paris to record with Armstrong, telling them that it is a chance to get away from Berlin’s increasingly oppressive political climate.
Paul, Sid, Ernst, and Hiero head to a public bathing facility, where they meet Chip and Fritz Bayer, the group’s German alto sax player. As they undress, they tease one another and talk about the women they have been seeing. In the pool they discuss Delilah’s offer. Hiero says he wants to accept, and most of the others agree; only Fritz expresses reservations.
They leave the bath and head home, careful not to draw attention to themselves. Suddenly, Sid and Chip hear a scream that sounds like Hiero. They run to the sound and find three Nazi soldiers holding Hiero by the hair, while a fourth holds Paul’s neck. Chip immediately attacks the nearest soldier, then Sid joins the fight as well. One of the soldiers shouts racial expletives, and Fritz appears, coming to Paul’s rescue. A soldier threatens to cut Hiero with a broken bottle; Chip attacks the soldier and overpowers him, killing him. Sid and Chip flee from the scene.
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary
Moments later, all six members of the Hot-Time Swingers regroup at the Hound. As Fritz tends Chip’s wounds, they decide to stay at the club indefinitely to avoid potential arrest.
The next morning Delilah appears, looking for Ernst. She meets Chip, who teases her. He and Hiero jokingly name a cat whose wailing kept them awake at night “Dame Delilah the Second.” Delilah reveals that she ran into Fritz as he was leaving the club.
Sudden knocking announces the arrival of Nazi soldiers, and everyone but Ernst hides in a cellar only accessible through a water closet, narrowly avoiding detection. As they emerge hours later, Ernst informs them that they were recognized in the fight and that he’s trying to get help from his influential father.
Stuck at the club, Sid flirts with Delilah, but she seems more interested in Hiero. She tells Sid her breakthrough story, when she impressed bandleader Joe “King” Oliver with cheeky comments. Together, they poke fun at Chip, trying to guess his middle name, which he never reveals.
Playing cards the next day, Chip and Paul advise Sid on how to win Delilah over, telling him that he’s “got to get her thinkin of you before she think of [Hiero]. That the trick” (129). As Delilah and Hiero emerge from backstage, Sid recognizes the golden headwrap she’s wearing as a repurposed curtain and a probable gift from Hiero. Paul tells Sid that he desperately needs something from his apartment but doesn’t say what. Meanwhile, Hiero and Delilah play and sing “Empty Bed Blues” together. Witnessing their musical synergy, Sid realizes he could never “give her that” (137).
The day after that a drunken Sid warns Delilah of what seems to be a large rat but turns out to be the cat, which Sid assumes to be another gift from Hiero. Sid awkwardly insists on giving Delilah his coat but has trouble removing it, as the others watch and laugh. Later, he apologizes but only makes her more uncomfortable.
Chip advises him to try one more time, so he apologizes to her in the privacy of Ernst’s office. As he’s about to leave, she calls him back and removes her headwrap, revealing her bald scalp, and asks whether he still wants her. Sid kisses her, then says he’s in love with her. They lay down on the sofa to have sex.
Sid wakes to find Delilah gone. Chip tells him that Paul also left, and that Ernst went looking for him. The next day Ernst returns with no news. Fritz also appears, saying that Paul was sent to a concentration camp. He reveals his plan to join the Golden Seven, a lackluster jazz group that is officially sanctioned by the Nazis. He invites Ernst to join him, but Ernst refuses. Fritz leaves.
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary
Fearing that a captured Paul or Delilah may have revealed their location to the Nazis, the remaining bandmates leave for Hamburg in Ernst’s Horch. They pass the armed guard into Hamburg without any trouble and arrive in a rich district where Ernst’s family lives in a large mansion. They are greeted by Rummel, an imposing man who informs them that Ernst’s father is away. They also meet Ernst’s mother and wheelchair-bound sister, Liesl, who has polio. Despite their apparent kindness, Ernst describes his family as “bigoted two-faced snobs [who would] toss you into the street as soon as look at you” (164).
They spend the night at the estate. The next day Liesl looks at their car and jokes around with Chip, but Hiero remains aloof. He tells Sid that he remembers visiting Hamburg with his mother as a child, and that his German mother first met his father, who was a royal figure in Cameroon, in Hamburg. Sid is surprised to learn of Hiero’s ancestry, having assumed that both of his parents were black. As they watch Chip and Liesl, Hiero shares that his middle name is Thomas. Sid, smiling sadly because it seems “such a small thing to offer” (167), reveals that his own middle name is Roscoe.
Hiero invites Sid to visit parts of the city with him. Following Hiero’s directions, Sid parks at a zoo. At first nonplussed, Sid is shocked to see an exhibit featuring a village of Africans living in squalid conditions. Hiero tells Sid that his father not only came to Germany, but he took on German attitudes: “he make hisself into a German” (171).
On their way back they stop at a pier. Sid thinks back to the first time he met Hiero, after Paul brought him to the Hound. Sid was not convinced by Hiero’s expressive playing, but Ernst was moved to tears, and Paul proclaimed his playing “the voice of God” (174).
A day or two later, Ernst takes Sid to meet his father. Von Haselberg is cordial but clearly has little interest in jazz music, preferring German classical composers. Eventually, von Haselberg agrees to provide identity papers for everyone in the group, on the unspoken condition that Ernst stay in Hamburg.
Sid, Chip, and Hiero leave for Paris. As they approach the French border, they endure a moment of suspense waiting for Nazi soldiers to let them pass, and then again, in France, after a soldier tells them to turn back. However, a second soldier grants them clearance, and they proceed into France.
Part 3 Analysis
Though they occupy the middle portion of the text, the events described in Part 3 are, apart from some scattered recollections elsewhere, the first to take place chronologically. They begin to address some of the questions that loom after Parts 1 and 2, including how Hiero came to be captured in France. Specifically, these chapters present the buildup of tension between Sid and Hiero as a result of Delilah’s presence. Sid’s increasing jealousy of Hiero provides a potential motivation for him to allow Hiero to be captured, just as Chip suggests in the documentary.
These chapters also offer a fleeting glimpse of the group dynamic shared by the Hot-Time Swingers before the band begins to break apart. The scene in the bath is particularly revealing, as the characters’ physical nakedness accompanies the honest sharing of opinion and emotion. Shy as he is, it is Hiero who advocates relocating to France most strongly, even before their involvement in a fight forces them into hiding. Meanwhile, Fritz makes jokes and comments that hint at his somewhat complacent view of the Nazis.
Delilah’s character also comes into sharp focus in these chapters. Though she puts on a strong face with her biting remarks, Sid realizes that she experiences inward insecurities. For instance, she seems disappointed when the Hot-Time Swingers fail to recognize her as a famous singer; meanwhile, despite initially rejecting Sid as a lover, she changes her mind once he sees her baldness and professes his love anyway.
The time the Swingers spend in Hamburg provides several stark, richly thematic contrasts: the von Haselbergs’ massive estate dwarfs the rudimentary dwellings of the people in the human zoo; the Germanic music preferred by Ernst’s father is much more stiff and dramatic than the jazz music the Swingers play; the men of the von Haselberg household busy themselves with matters of political importance as the women fritter away their time at home. Perhaps most significantly, the genteel façade adopted by the von Haselbergs hides an ugly intolerance.
