The Devil's Playground (6 page)

a fullness and depth that you were previously unaware of.

He looked at the TV but the football was over, he’d missed

the final score. There was a straggly, skinny, tired-eyed labrador on the screen, head hanging down, droopy jowls, something

terribly wrong with its legs and, even with the sound

off, Jon knew this was an animal charity ad.

And then he began to cry. Looking at the dog, feeling as

if the whole building was caving in on him, it was something

so unexpected, something that he couldn’t stop. He felt

palpitations rumble and rage through his chest like a rattling

train, he tried to catch his breath, his eyes stinging with tears.

The next time he looked up the news was on. Fires raged,

people screamed and fell to the ground, pride and dignity a

luxury they could no longer afford. He turned it off, stubbed

his cigarette, burning himself in the process and grabbed his

car keys.

He was drunk. He knew this because his ankle didn’t hurt

that much. Over the limit. He got into the car and tested his

foot against the pedal. It seemed okay. So what if they

stopped him? So fucking what?

Jake was dead.

He’d thought he could help him. Thought that taking him

in might mean something. Jake’s death felt like a negation of

all that he’d tried to achieve, a lightning bolt from above if

you were a religious man.

He missed Jake, more than he ever thought he would a

stranger, someone off the streets. He missed him like one

misses a dream lover whose perfection is only an index of

the dream and whose disappearance when waking leaves you

emptier and sadder than any flesh and blood woman ever

could. That strange, quiet man had upset every story Jon had

made up to explain him and he now understood how it is

we look back on things we miss, things that are never

apparent in their moment but exist only in reflection, a messy

stirring of memory and desire.

He drove up on to the Westway, the great concrete snake

that straddled the west of the city, vaulting across housing

estates and parks, heading into the black occlusion of

night, Townes Van Zandt on the stereo and London passing

invisibly by.

In the dark cramp of the car he blamed himself for not

having given Jake more money, though he’d tried once and

the old man had just refused in that polite yet inarguable way

of his. But he should have been more insistent or perhaps

just sneakier, slipping it into Jake’s clothes when he wasn’t

there. But what would that have achieved? Was money really

the problem? He didn’t think so. Jake had never asked for

any, even when he was out on the street. At first Jon had

thought the old man was still holding on to whatever dignity

was left but now he realized that Jake had made it back to

Amsterdam and that he’d had money all along.

He clung to the idea that the detective had made a mistake.

That it was some other man lying extinguished on a slab

somewhere. He wondered if he would have to go to Amsterdam

just to ascertain for himself whether Jake was actually

dead. Did he really want to know? Maybe it was better to

leave the possibility open.

But he knew how remote that was, knew that there was

no doubt about it and perhaps the only real surprise had

been the Dutch detective.

That and the location of death.

Amsterdam.

But even that wasn’t really a surprise.

No, not at all.

At the time, he’d thought it was just a story, a way the old

man used to get a point across.

Amsterdam. The place where Jake was born.

It had a seductive symmetry to it, Jon admitted, but was

that all?

He hadn’t thought about it again, not in the intervening

period, and so the question of whether Jake had told him

the truth was one that he’d never asked, but which the Dutch

detective had nevertheless answered.

Jake had been in the flat a week. He spoke little and always

kept his room tidy and clean. He spent most of his time in

there, reading, writing, Jon never knew. After the awkwardness

of the first night Jon thought it would get better, but

the old man stayed the same, accepting food and drink with

a nod or a shrug but rarely saying anything apart from the

most basic syllabic units, no and yes. The space between

them seemed further than the few metres of carpet broken

by black coffee table.

Jon had tried to engage him, pull him into dialogue, but

Jake had said nothing. The silence made Jon uneasy. He put

on music to fill it. He played the old man CDs, asked him

what he thought, did he like this one or that one, but Jake

didn’t answer and Jon fumbled with another CD so as not

to drop into awful silence again.

He spent more time outdoors, avoiding the silent accusation

that hummed through the flat. He started to wonder if

he was losing his mind; perhaps asking Jake to stay had been

the breaking point, the first unreasoned act that would bring

down the deluge. He forced himself to go back to the flat,

entered its unwelcome space, Jake lodged in his room like

some autistic monk. He checked to see if anything was

missing then made the old man coffee and tea, not sure

which he’d prefer. He hid things from Jake, then, in spasms

of guilt, put them back in their places. He’d told a few friends

and they’d laughed at him and somehow that had reaffirmed

his initial act, for it was in their disapproval that he saw the

glint of the good he was doing, or at least thought he was.

Those first few days the only thing Jake ever said apart

from yes or no was, ‘It’s a botch. It’s all been a botch.’ He

said it several times, perhaps thinking Jon out of earshot, a

steady rhythmic canto repeated to himself, the window, the

stale and empty air, and Jon never knew whether Jake was

talking of his life or of something else.

‘It’s my birthday today.’

Jon stared at him, stunned. It was more than he’d said all

week.

Jake stood in his bathrobe wrapped tight, always wrapped

so tight, Jon noticed, and smiled.

‘I thought it would be a good day to go for a walk.’

Jon tried to say something but the words stopped in his

throat. He nodded, unwilling and unable to utter anything

lest it destroy the moment.

They walked through Hyde Park, watching the skaters and

ducks gliding by, the cold precision of September that made

everything look as if it were in hyper-focus, carved discrete

and sharp by the icy, brittle air. They didn’t say anything,

nothing much, Jon tried to mention the good weather but

the old man just smiled that smile of his, impenetrable as

a slab of granite. They walked back to the flat as the rain

began to cloak the sky. Listened to a Grateful Dead concert

from November 1973. It was the one thing they had in

common and though Jake changed the subject every time

Jon mentioned a certain show, there was something there,

some memory of a different time. Jake nodded along to

the November 7th ‘Dark Star’ and commented on the

recording.

‘I always had a bad one,’ he said. Jon looked at him, unsure

what to say. ‘Lots of hiss and tape generations. This sounds

clean.’

‘You should hear the remastered Cow Palace show from

‘76.’ Jon moved forward, encouraged.

Jake nodded. ‘Yes, that’s a great one. Haven’t listened to

any Dead for a long time. I feel like a different person now.

Different from the one who used to listen to all this. It’s

strange.’

Jon had caught Jake checking out his CDs one evening.

His first thought was that the old man was going to take

them and sell them. He was appalled by how quickly the

thought had appeared. He made a vow to be kinder to Jake,

to not lock his bedroom door as he had been doing the past

few nights, stealthily, carefully turning the key so that it

wouldn’t echo down the empty hall. To stop watching Jake

as if he was a thief. He tried not to think about these things. But they came. Especially late at night, lying in bed, in the dark, when he heard the floorboards creak and the careful creeping of tired feet.

When the music was over they sat in silence, staring at the

floor. Sometimes Jake seemed in another world; though his

eyes were open they were scanning some wider horizon than

the room afforded. It made Jon feel uneasy in his own flat

and he picked up a book, something to distract him from

the silence.

‘When was the last time you were in a synagogue?’

Jake asked, making Jon flinch, the book dropping from his

hand to the floor. It was the first unsolicited comment

from the old man since that morning. He couldn’t remember

when he’d last been. How did Jake even know he

was Jewish?

‘I don’t know,’ he replied shifting in his seat. ‘My father

was never a religious man.’ He glanced down. Jake’s eyes

bored into him. It was as if he were a machine that had been

running on standby only now switching to normal power,

unleashing its potential.

Jake frowned. *We are all religious, one way or another.’

He took a sip of scotch. ‘You liked your father?’

‘No,‘Jon replied, surprised by Jake’s aggressive tone and

by this intensely personal probing. He looked so serene from

the outside and yet his voice trembled with a dark and

ruinous sonority, a bitter, heavy sound that seemed to fill

every space in the flat.

The neither. Mine was a bastard.’

He stayed on the Western Avenue watching the dull suburban

houses roll by like flimsy backgrounds in a B-movie.

He remembered the sculpted tone of Jake’s voice, the sound

of country boarding schools and old universities, so incompatible

with the man’s beard and borrowed clothes. The way

he’d opened up that evening. And he thought about the way

their fathers’ deaths had changed their lives irrevocably.

Jon stared at him. He’d never talked about it to anyone.

He was scared of people’s prejudices. The things they

wouldn’t say. ‘Yes,’ he eventually answered, somehow feeling

that it was easier for such intimacies to creep out between

total strangers. ‘Removed the ethnic stain of Rieglbaum and

replaced it with the terse gentility of Reed. He said it was

something that I shouldn’t talk about. He always made me

ashamed of the fact.’

‘And you still are, I see.’ Jake shook his head, gently.

Jon didn’t answer. He lit a cigarette. Hid behind the smoke.

*You have much yet to discover.’ Jake looked at him,

smiled and Jon thought there was a lot of pain in that smile

— pain, but also a measure of kindness that he was not used

to seeing. His mother had smiled like that.

‘I don’t think these things matter so much any more.’ He

wanted to say something, to show Jake that he had his own

beliefs, his own opinions.

Jake laughed, a forced, strangled sound. Jon looked away.

“You don’t think they matter? You’ve lived in a room all

your life, what would you know? They don’t matter until

they do and when they do they’re all that matters.’ He lit a

cigarette, letting the words hang in the air. He didn’t expect

Jon to reply. He continued, his voice hoarse with smoke, but

calmer now. ‘Those were very different times to be Jewish

in, before the war … before they knew what happened.

Very different. You cannot imagine.’ Jake marked every

punctuation stop with a firm drag on his cigarette, exhaling

the smoke with the next sentence. Jon wondered exactly

what the old man meant, but he didn’t ask him to elucidate,

fearing that Jake would think him slow or stupid, an unworthy

conversation partner, and fold back into the box of silence

from which he’d so recently sprung.

‘I suppose so,’ he replied, though he wondered how

different they really were. His friends were all Christians but

here, in the presence of a Jew, he was most uncomfortable

and he felt ashamed that it should be so.

‘So, what about your mother?’ Jake asked.

‘She’s dead.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault.’

‘Still.’

Jon’s cigarette felt dry and tasteless as the memories rolled

inside his head like an endless ocean of sorrow and anger.

He hated himself for wishing it was his father who had died

on that grey, faceless street. That useless, prosaic death. And

yet he knew that, given the chance, he could have made that

choice without blinking. He blamed him for sending her out,

for her death. It disturbed him how Jake brought all that up.

It made him angry that he still cared.

Yes, he’d inherited that at least. His father’s anger which

had shaken his world with all the power of any monster or

demon that he could have imagined. And now it was inside

him, this anger, breathing through him, as if in some tangible

way his father’s soul had migrated into his, corrupting it with

its bile and hatred. He would flare up like a struck match