The Devil's Playground (11 page)

some old-time devices, watch and imagine how it was back

then, to have power, such absolute power. This is how it

begins, you see.’

The detective stood up and abruptly walked out of the

room. Jon sat there silent for a couple of minutes, trying not

to think about what Van Hijn had said. Desperately trying

not to think about it while blood and bone and screams

rushed before his eyes.

The detective came back in, flashed a new pack of cigarettes.

‘I now need to ask you a few questions about your

relationship with Mr Colby.’

‘Go ahead.’ He caught the detective’s gaze knowing that

this was the way innocent men behaved. He was innocent,

of course, he didn’t kill Jake, maybe drove him away, but

certainly not murder and yet he wondered if his responses

were those of an innocent man, noticing how Van Hijn wrote

things down when he hadn’t said anything, the smallness of

the room that almost seemed to push them together. Medieval

torture instruments? It was like something out of a

cheap novel.

‘You want another coffee first?’

‘Okay.’

The detective lit a cigarette and offered one to Jon who reluctantly took it, feeling the insides of his mouth shrivel from the dry bitterness of the smoke. When the coffee arrived

he nearly burned himself trying to gulp down the dark liquid,

letting it wash away the taste of the smoke. The room of

1,000 cancers.

‘So, you and Jake. You were lovers, right?’ The detective

held Jon’s gaze.

What?’ Jon moved in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable.

‘No, of course not,’ he said, slightly too loudly, hearing it

echo around the room. ‘It wasn’t anything like that.’

‘No, of course not,’ Van Hijn repeated, scratching his

cheek. ‘But, I had to ask, you understand.’

Jon nodded. It hadn’t even occurred to him but he could

see that the detective hadn’t totally dismissed the idea and it

bothered him; why, he couldn’t quite say.

‘Did Jake ever say anything relating to Amsterdam or the

Netherlands?’ Van Hijn asked.

Jon smiled. ‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘It was almost all he talked

about.’

The detective looked as though he’d just been plugged in.

The weariness dropped from his face, the soft edges appeared

to tighten, to coalesce.

‘I guess I should start from the beginning,‘Jon continued,

clearly aware of the power he had over the detective while

the story was still untold, determined to enjoy it after being

on the receiving end of Van Hijn’s sermon.

‘Go ahead, please.’ The detective motioned, a cigarette

jumping between his fingers, his voice dropping an octave.

So he told him. Everything that Jake had narrated that

night. All about Raphael Kuper, the war, Amsterdam, the

Jewish History Museum and the old man’s final disinheritance.

After

he’d finished, he took a deep breath, remembering

Jake as he did so and, not for the first time, he felt more than

just shock, a deep hungry loss had manifested itself through

the telling and it filled Jon with all the thoughts of what he

could have done to save the old man. All the useless speculation

and anger began to rise inside him as he stared at the

silent detective and he wanted to reach out and grab him,

shake him, hurt him, blame him for everything.

Detective Van Hijn watched. He had learned years ago

not to disturb people when they spoke, the slightest comment

from him could derail their train of thought, leaving out

essential information, cutting off paths, never to be retraced.

He’d smoked quietly as Jon told him the old man’s story, all

the while trying to contain his excitement at this new wealth

of facts.

His excitement and terror.

He knew then that he would have to go back through the

story, through the things that he’d spent so many years

burying, the dark recesses of his past, and it felt almost right,

judicious perhaps, that this last case should end where it all

began.

Maybe it was just a coincidence, the old man in Amsterdam

because of all his history, walking along the wrong canal at

the wrong time. In his experience one could not easily

discount randomness as a factor in any investigation. Sometimes

all the other facts, the ones that seemed most pertinent,

the life stories, family feuds, bad debts, sometimes those had

nothing to do with the person’s demise, they could have had,

but something else got there first, something random and

quick, though from what he knew of the killer’s work, in this

case it was anything but quick. But coincidence didn’t answer

all the questions. Not the marks on the old man’s body nor

the book in his pocket. So enticingly easy, a name and a phone

number. No, there were too many connections already, both

forensic and liminal, he could feel it in the tightness of his

skin. He turned back to Jon who was silently smoking. He

still wasn’t sure what to make of him, his links to the case,

his involvement. ‘Are you ready to make the identification?’

‘Yes, I guess so. Let’s get it over with.’

The detective tried to smile but it froze on his face. ‘It’s

not pretty, I have to warn you,’ he said.

‘I never thought it would be.’

She stared at the small gouache for hours. Transfixed by its

content, what it didn’t show, the colours that should have

been there but weren’t. The utter, blank awfulness of the

scene.

A girl sits on a bed in a small room. In front of her lie an

open suitcase, some books and a tennis racket. We do not

know if she is in the process of packing or of unpacking. Is

she leaving this small, drab room or has she just entered it?

The colours are dull, broken down and emptied. What was

once opaque is now translucent, in fact more like a water

colour than a gouache. Solid forms break apart to reveal

what lies behind. And what is that? Nothing, no paint at all.

The texture of the paper and that is all.

The girl sits on the bed in her slippers, clutching her hands

to her mouth. She looks scared and depressed. Perhaps it is

the emptiness that surrounds her. The massive whiteness of

the wall behind her, the gaping void on which she rests her

feet. The blue wash of her clothes spreads on to the lighter

blue of the bed, as if it has leaked. She is literally formless, a ghost sitting in a room bleached of life. Behind her a small

painting breaks the desert of wall. A blue figure seems to be

bursting from the frame, mirroring the position of the girl, but

also satirizing it, so full and expansive while the girl seems

to be falling into herself, diminishing slowly. It seems that

everything is fading away: the bed, the books, her own form,

wrapped and hidden by those arms, holding her face together,

almost shaking — a scene of quiet and terrible desolation.

Suze sat in the small reading room of the Joods Historisch

Museum in Amsterdam, hunched over one of Charlotte

Salomon’s gouaches. A self-portrait in turmoil, everything

washed away, no longer solid, no longer recognizable.

She spent most of her time in the dusty little room off the

main building, studying the 1,300 gouaches Salomon painted

in that torrid year in the South of France. An autobiography

in pictures with short texts attached to each, the whole work

entitled, Life? Or Theatre?

She had first come across Salomon in Boston in ‘96. A

boyfriend of the time took her to the Institute of Contemporary

Art and introduced her to the work of the 26-year-old

German Jew. She’d been surprised to learn that the paintings

had been done in 1941. They seemed much more modern than that. The use of textual overlays, the almost cartoon-like narrative which reminded her of Lichtenstein, the freedom

of Charlotte’s lines, the strictness of the colour scheme, all

seemed to point to something produced after the splurge

and rant of the abstract expressionists and their militarist

theories, more in line with the figurative impulses of pop art

and even beyond that.

The phone pulled her out of the tight squeeze of the

painting. She picked it up.

Wouter, hi,’ she said, still somewhere far away, slowly,

grudgingly, being pulled back to the world.

‘Hi,’ he said, sounding unusually brusque and downbeat.

‘I need to talk to you.’

She looked up at the wall, articles and notes pinned to a

small cork board. ‘Okay, talk,’ she said.

‘Not here, not over the phone.’

And she knew then what he was going to say. Almost like

all the other times, as if every man learned from the exact

same book. ‘Tell me now,’ she said, trying to keep her voice

steady, gripping the receiver to stop the shaking of her hand.

She could hear him cough, get himself ready. ‘It’s just not

working, Suze. At least on my end.’ She said nothing, forcing

him to continue. ‘I just don’t feel… you know we see each

other and everything and it’s nice but it doesn’t go any further

… I want it to go further, or at least try.’

She sighed, reached for her cigarettes then remembered

she couldn’t smoke in here. ‘I told you at the start, Wouter.

I thought we made this very clear.’ She wanted to sound

strong, confident. She felt so fucking weak. ‘I couldn’t spend

my life with you, no offence, and to pretend, to set things up

as if, it just seems an enormous waste …’

‘You’re too scared to try things,’ he countered, his voice

rising now, feeling an edge of righteousness. ‘You won’t give

it a chance. You want something perfect and nothing is, so

you flit from one thing to another. I can’t do it any more,

Suze, I can’t be just one of the many things you bounce off.

If you change your mind, call me.’

He put the phone down and she stared at the wall. She

held the receiver, the tone soothing and predictable, constant

and true. She took a deep breath, felt the hot swell in her

eyes, the blurring of vision, and the more she fought it, the

more it pushed forward until she was helpless and her

make-up had run down her face and the phone lay uncradled

on the desk, humming its one song.

She looked back down at the painting. Wanting to fall into

it, sink so deep she would never have to come back up. She

wiped her eyes and tried to carry on. There was always

Charlotte.

She loved the humour and the irony in her work, the

unexpected smiles and sudden, stark epiphanies produced in

those small gouaches. The spaces between the words people

said, between their bodies and thoughts. So different from

the world as it was. She’d studied art history for a long time

but had never found any other artist so commensurate with

her own feelings, with her own soul. She kept Charlotte to

herself, an endless repository of emotion that she could dip

into at will. She had the 1981 edition of her works that

included 769 gouaches from Life? Or Theatre? She read the

book like a bible, turning to it for comfort or hope or just to

see someone like herself. She knew that she was projecting

a great deal on to the artist and her work. She knew she

could never be objective. It was too close, too strange.

When the chance to do a doctorate had come along, she’d

grabbed it, knowing full well what the subject would be.

Knowing she would have to transfer to the University of Amsterdam and do her research there. The complete set of gouaches that made up Life? Or Theatre? was housed in

the city’s Jewish Historical Museum. Or nearly complete.

Rumours had spread of a further missing section painted

during Charlotte’s brief internment at the Gurs transit camp.

She needed to be close to them. Needed to feel that they

were real, not just some photos in a book, but real, tangible

objects which had a definite size and weight. She liked to

press her hand on to the paper, rub her fingers over the blue

thumbprints that Charlotte had left in the empty spaces, the

indentations and folds, the crooks and crannies of the work.

She knew it was the fallacy of the object she had been sucked

into. Knew that those small pieces of coloured paper had

been touched and held by Charlotte.

‘Excuse me, Ms Dean.’ The old caretaker had come in

silently, bringing a cup of peppermint tea for her. We’re

closing in half an hour. You’ve been here so long today, I

thought you might like a drink.’ She looked up from Gouache

number 430, took the cup.

‘Thank you, Moshe. I get so carried away in here, I

sometimes forget to eat.’ She looked at her watch. Could it

be possible that she’d been staring at this piece for the last

two hours, ever since Wouter’s phone call?

The old man smiled, his teeth glinting through the white

beard. ‘I have some gefilte fish my daughter cooked me at

home. You want some?’

She always walked Moshe home, even sometimes when

she wasn’t studying she would come in at closing time and

walk with him the fifteen minutes it took to his flat. Yes,

that would be nice.’ Nice to get out of that room, away from