The Devil's Playground (40 page)

doorbell.

He’d booked himself back into the same hotel, reassured

by die presence of his familiar room, its paint-peeled walls,

grudging view and memories of previous residents. He’d wanted a few days to sit and think. To try and trace the connections, work through his feelings towards Suze. But he found himself here, on her landing, barely two hours after arriving back in Amsterdam, breathless and filled with anger, longing, hope, dread and affection, not knowing what to make of any of it, only knowing he had to see her.

‘Jon, you’re back!’ she said, opening die door wide.

*Why didn’t you tell me, Suze? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’ He hadn’t meant to be so aggressive, to confront her so early, but it spilled out regardless.

She looked at him and she saw that he knew. That it was too late. All her good intentions meant nothing now. She went towards him. He moved out of her reach. She could feel the tears trying to push through but she managed to hold them back.

‘I’m so sorry, Jon, I should have told you; believe me, I was going to,’ she said, afraid that this was the end, knowing how phony she sounded, how weak.

He just looked at her, his face empty. His jaw was clenched

tight and his eyes were cold and hard.

‘Why, Suze? Why did you lie to me?’ He moved past her

into the room. He didn’t want to have this conversation out

in the hall. ‘You knew about Jake’s death all along and you

never said a thing. You never even fucking told me you knew

him.’ He sat down on her sofa, lit a cigarette.

‘I swear to you, Jon, I know nothing about his death. The

first I heard was when you mentioned it.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me you knew him, why keep it

a secret?’

‘I was trying to protect you.’

‘Protect me?’

‘Myself too.’ Her hands covered her face. ‘Oh God. I

know I should have just told you, let you follow your own

instincts.’ She moved towards him. ‘I didn’t want anything

to break us up, to come between us. I could see what you

felt for Jake, don’t doubt that. I don’t know what happened

to him. I really don’t. I know he was mixed up with Kaplan.

I know the Doctor came and sat in our group and infected

us all with his disease. Things have been fucked ever since.

I didn’t want you to step into that circle, Jon, you must

believe me. I didn’t want you to be infected.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t try to protect me.’ He stared at her,

trying not to let his other feelings show, the ones that told

him to take her in his arms, hug her, kiss her.

‘I can’t help it, Jon. I saw what it did to my parents. The

way they drew away from me after that, the way they slipped

off the face of the earth. I was almost happy when they died,

relieved. At least now they wouldn’t have to pretend to be

dead any more. There’s things we shouldn’t know. Things

we can’t deal with. I just wanted us to have a chance.

Something outside of all this terror.’

He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t like her parents, that

he hated others making decisions for him, but he kept his

mouth shut and slowly edged along the sofa until their bodies

were touching, folding over each other. He took her hand

and held it and they didn’t say anything else for the next

few hours.

She was the first to wake. She stumbled over to the sofa and

covered him in a blanket. She went outside and bought milk

and eggs, her mind reeling, her heart lurching. She cooked

him breakfast, watched him shuffle the food around on his

plate.

‘Tell me what you know about the Doctor.’ Jon sat on

the sofa, looking at her. Outside the rain swelled and crashed

on the pavements. The sun had given up hours ago.

‘I don’t know much. Only that Dominic found him. Told

him how the group had admired his book. Asked him to

attend a meeting or two. I never spoke to the old man. I

didn’t like what he did to us, the way he split us apart. You

have to understand that when we all first read the book it

was amazing. It gave us focus and inspiration as a group.

When we met the man himself it was a whole different

matter.’

‘I know, I’ve seen the video Jake made of him,’ Jon said,

stubbing out his cigarette, flicking his tongue across the dry,

bitter expanse of his mouth, watching her surprise.

‘How well did you know Jake?’ he asked, bitterly aware of

the irony, the memory of the detective asking him the same

question, his reply.

‘I met him at the museum. We talked a bit some days. I

told him about the group and he expressed an interest. He

came a few times and that was it. I never really knew him

beyond that. I always found him very unapproachable, as if

the man you saw was only a cover for someone hiding

underneath. When you told me what happened, I felt so

guilty. I felt as if I was the one to blame. I’d introduced him

to the group.’

He took her hand, slipped his fingers through hers. ‘Blame

doesn’t come into it, Suze. I don’t know why Jake was killed

but I don’t think it has anything to do with you.’ And he told

her about the 49 reels that Van Hijn had mentioned.

“You think that’s why?’

Jon nodded. The films had gone up for auction just

over a week after Jake’s death. There was no doubt in his

mind.

‘I think if we got to see them, we’d understand why,’ he

said. ‘What was he doing at the JHM? You must have seen

him enough to know.’

She thought back to those days, the way she’d avoided

Jake. ‘He was always in the basement going through all the

footage. It’s a mess down there. There’s hundreds, perhaps

thousands of reels of film and video that have been sent in

to the museum. They’re kept in crates. No one ever has the

time to go through them.’

‘The detective thinks that Jake was looking for something.

The existence of these 49 reels seems to suggest that he

found it, but I’m not sure — maybe Jake was just going

through all this footage educating himself.’

She shook her head. ‘No. You’re right. He was definitely

looking for something.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Just the way he went through them now that I think about

it. There was nothing random about it. I think he was looking

for someone in those films. He used to stop them and get

right next to the screen, scrutinize the faces there.’

‘You think he was looking for his father, perhaps?’

‘Maybe. Or maybe he was looking for someone else.’

‘What’s wrong?’ She’d woken to find him sitting on the edge

of the bed, smoking a cigarette.

‘Nothing.’

‘C’mon, tell me.’

‘I don’t know, I just feel terrible. Like a whole house of

dread is sitting on my chest. I woke and couldn’t breathe. I

thought I was fucking dying.’

‘Jon.’ She moved towards him, sat down, began to roll a

joint. ‘You can’t let it take control of you like this. You can’t

let it affect you. It’s history.’

‘This is what you were so afraid of?’ He looked at her but

she turned away, concentrated on the joint she was rolling.

He understood why she’d done it but he also knew that not

to know would have been worse.

He tried to light a cigarette but the lighter was damp.

He threw it across the room, watching it shatter into its

component bits.

‘Jon!’ It was all coming true. Everything she’d feared had

transpired and she was so unsure as to what she could do to

stop it. She wanted to run away, forget it all, but she knew

that she’d spent her life doing that.

‘That fucking tape that Jake made. The Doctor’s story.

All that stuff — I still can’t believe it. The way they gave

those madmen complete freedom and they just ran amok

with it.’

‘I know, Jon.’ She moved closer towards him. ‘I was like

that for a long time after I read about what had happened to

Charlotte. It filled me with so much anger.’

‘How did you deal with it?’ he asked. He liked it when she

was riled up like this. Liked the fire and passion that he saw

in her. The way it deferred his own thoughts.

‘It wasn’t all that bad at first. I felt more awake, more

in control … there’s something about anger that’s very

liberating. I went with it. Indulged it. Read as much as I

could, tried to drown myself in the horror, as if that was the

only way out. It took me some time to see what it was

doing to me, how it was eroding my capabilities to love and

distorting my view of Charlotte’s work. I looked to her then.

I thought if she could live through those times and manage

to contain her anger then I should damn well be able to. And

that was when I really began to understand her work. When

I let go of the rage and the need in me for her to comment

on her times, I realized that she was doing so in the only way

she knew how, by telling her autobiography, her whole family

history between the pages of Life? Or Theatre?”

‘But isn’t the anger necessary? Isn’t that what makes us

human?’ He was shaking. Trying to hide it.

‘Maybe it is necessary and it’s surely unavoidable but that

doesn’t mean it’s useful or healthy in any way. Where do you

go from there? Revenge?’

‘Sometimes that feels like the only goal worth anything

any more.’

‘Revenge isn’t worth a thing. Alois Brunner, the SS head

who personally sent Charlotte on her way to Auschwitz.

Well, he wound up in Syria after the war, teaching them how

to torture prisoners, how to kill Jews. In the eighties a

letter-bomb amputated both his hands. You think that’s

compensation for anything? Those hands that did nothing

but point people towards their doom against Charlotte’s?

The hands that painted those pictures?’

‘How else do you react? At least anger is a positive reaction,

a conscious revulsion. Otherwise what happens, do you

become like the Doctor? Accept it all?’

‘No, you don’t have to. You can’t let it eat you up. You

can react in other ways. Charlotte did.’

‘By painting her life story?’ It was easier when they were

talking about lives other than their own. He could forget

about all the things she hadn’t told him. ‘Why?’

‘Because it was the only way she could react as a Jew

to what was going on around her. Anger might have just

succeeded in getting her killed. The whole period leading up

to the war entailed a series of actions against Jews that slowly

stripped them of their identity and heritage. The Nuremberg

Laws put them outside of society, of the German society

that they’d always felt a deeply enmeshed part of. They had

their jobs taken, they were forced into ghettos. They became

aliens to themselves. I think that’s why so many trusted the

Nazis until the very end, they could not accept that people

from their culture, their own country, could ever commit

such atrocities. It would be an acceptance of their own

capability to do such things. The Nazis weren’t monsters on

the whole, but educated, cultured Germans, the very same

people the Jews thought themselves to be. Charlotte’s work

is full of quotes from Goethe, Schubert and Schiller. It’s a

deeply German work, steeped in tradition and allusions to

the past. It was the only way that Charlotte could reassert

her identity. The only way she could take back control of her

life. I saw that there were more important things than anger

and protest — when you lose yourself, when you’ve been

stripped of all your identity, the only thing you can do is

build it back up again, page by page, painting by painting.

With the world in fragments around her she had to sustain

her own narrative, where there was no meaning or continuity,

she had to create it.’

‘But maybe if more people had got angry about the

Nuremberg laws, Germans and Jews — I wonder if things

would have taken the same course.’

‘Who knows? Who knows what really happened when it

comes down to it, what a single one of these people felt?’

He moved closer to her. Felt the heat of her hand in his.

The ugly shadow of the Doctor darkening both their lives.

He held her as tight as he could.

‘I think this Dominic you mentioned was there, when Jake

filmed the Doctor,’ he said, letting it out finally, the last

secret.

‘Dominic?’ She thought back to the previous night, the

ugly scene that had left her wandering the empty streets for

hours.

‘You said he got the Doctor and Jake together. I think he

filmed the testimonies. There was someone else moving the

camera, someone other than Jake.’

‘It wasn’t Dominic,’ she replied, aware finally that there

was nothing left to hide. ‘It was Beatrice.’

He mouthed the words but nothing came out. Took a

deep breath. ‘Beatrice?’ He hadn’t contemplated that. It came

as a shock but, as he thought it through, it began to make

sense. The films that her mother had told him about. The

projector.

‘She was working on some project with Jake. I didn’t know

what. They’d become quite close. She was so headstrong,

she really wanted to take on the world. When they announced