The Devil's Playground (41 page)

her name, I suspected it had something to do with all this.

Christ, Jon, that’s why I didn’t want you to know — it was

too close to me. I’m so fucking scared. What if I’m next?’

He hadn’t thought of that but now that he had, he realized

she was right. Two members of their stupid group had

already been killed. ‘Beatrice,’ he repeated. The golden girl

herself. ‘Dominic is involved somehow, more than just introducing

them, I’m sure of it.’

‘Leave him alone.’

‘Why are you protecting him?’

‘I’m not,’ she said though she realized that she was, but

it wasn’t something she could explain to herself, let alone

Jon.

‘I want you to contact him, Suze. To set up a meeting.’

‘No.’ She had no inclination to see Dominic again, not

after what had happened. If she called him now he’d see it

as a sign of her surrender, an apology for not sleeping with

him last night. She was beginning to see another side of him.

One that scared her. Of course he would apologize but it

would still be there between them and maybe next time he

wouldn’t stop. ‘I can’t do it.’

He stared at her and there it was again. The gap that had

opened up between them.

‘You don’t understand.’

“I think I do,’ he replied. Why was she protecting Dominic?

She moved towards him and he backed away. Dominic,

Dominic, Dominic — he was sure the answer lay there.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ she said.

‘And tie you up again?’ He got up from the sofa, moved

towards her.

‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’

‘Yes there is, Suze! Yes there is!’ he shouted. Before he

knew it, his hand was raised, crumpled into a fist. Heading for her face. Her perfect smile.

He took a deep breath. Relaxed his hand. Just.

‘Go on, hit me. I deserve it,’ she screamed at him.

He moved back, away from her, holding his fist as if it

was an unreliable gun.

‘You like it, don’t you?’ She moved towards him, he kept his back to her. She pulled him around. ‘It’s not that you don’t like it — that’s what scares you so much, isn’t it? That you just might like it too much.’

‘No!’

‘Liar.’

They stood there, a few inches apart, breathing hard, the

air dense with their words.

Jon looked at her. It had been clouding his mind for the

last few minutes. ‘If that’s what you think then there’s no

point in us carrying on.’

The words hung in the air like cigarette smoke, heavy and

cancerous. She stared at him, taking in what he’d said, the

stiff angle of his jaw, the tightening of his body.

‘But, Jon, there’s no point hiding from things. You need

to accept whatever it is you feel.’

‘So do you, Suze, so do you.’ He looked at her and, for a

moment, almost gave in. He remembered how much hope

he’d seen in her eyes when they’d first met and it was all but

drained now. Maybe it was a lie, he thought, maybe all we

saw in each other was a lie, created by our need and nurtured

by our refusal to see anything but that.

‘I’m sorry. It’s better that it happens now than a few

months down the line, a few years. Years that we’d know

we’d wasted. I can’t do this any more. Can’t keep pretending

it’s all okay, nothing wrong, just another quirk. Can’t fucking

do it. I’ve wasted enough of my life up to now. Jake woke

me up. I’m not going to make the same mistakes again. I’m

not going to waste my life.’

He turned before she could answer, out of the door, down

the stairs, his lungs burning, his mouth tasting dry and bitter.

Outside, the sky exploded, the open spaces of Nieuwmarkt

suddenly drowning him in unwelcome light. He turned left,

not knowing where he was going, not caring, wanting more

than anything else to get lost, to stumble and hide in the

streets, covered up and anonymous, to be where the world

couldn’t touch him, where it was far enough away and so

unreachable as to become a dream.

++++++++++++++++++ WINTER 1941-2. ST JEAN CAP FERRAT

I can’t get this damn song out of my head.

This stupid melody that has been following me like an

underfed cat through this small room.

I am now a habituee of small rooms. My space is defined

by their leaning and cowering walls. By the light they allow

in, by the measure of the world that leaks in through their

curtains, the world which I so longed to touch and that now

lies like an unwanted dishrag, filthy and stinking, hidden in

the darkness below the sink.

There it is again. That song.

I miss my records. They are in Berlin. I could not take

them with me. But yet, they are with me, here in my head,

my constant companions when everything else has fallen

away. But I do miss their covers, the feel of the cardboard

and smell of vinyl. I miss these simple things most of all.

More than I miss Father. Am I wrong to be like this? Is

something up with me? Am I just like the rest of them in my

family? What is wrong with me that I go from utter despair

to ridiculous happiness? I do not have answers to these

questions. This is not the time to think about such things.

This is the time to be sitting in small rooms.

I tore up the things I made today. I hate them. Hate the

way I can see myself in the folds of the paper. No one will

ever see them. What is the point? Who am I painting for? I

spent all morning and made three pieces but no one will ever

see them. Perhaps I should burn them. Perhaps Duchamp

was right and the art is only in the making, everything after,

commerce. But still, I wish someone would see them. Hung

up in a small gallery somewhere, nothing special but they

need to breathe, need to get away from me. I hate it. Hate

it all.

Today I painted seven pieces. I woke and the sun was streaming

through the window. I felt its heat like a hand on my

bare thigh. I made myself coffee and hummed a tune. The

one I couldn’t get out of my head. The tune suggested an

idea, the idea an image, the image a set of words.

They can all go to hell.

There is such freedom now that there are no rules.

No one will see these paintings. I have no one to paint for

but myself. There are no rules any more. I can do what I

want. And what I want to do is something wildly unusual.

My thoughts cannot be contained in the old forms. They are

too rigid, too reductive. They are not the world as I see it.

They are poor and empty. They are no longer relevant. We

desperately need new forms. The world is not the world.

I had to move away from Grandpapa. I couldn’t stand to be

in the same town as him any more. He drowns me with his

hatred. Makes me feel physically sick. Being near him, I am

overwhelmed by a paralysing stupor. I can’t think when he

is around, can’t paint. It is no wonder Grandmama killed

herself. I believe I would have done it much sooner had I to

live with the old goat.

Here I cannot hear his shouting. I have my own room.

The hotel is small and no one bothers me. There are more

Italian soldiers and they do not look at me in the same way

as the German soldiers. Yesterday, I was walking in town

when a young Italian whom I had seen a few times before

(and was sure had seen me) came up to me. I began to move

away, scared, I had heard the stories — but he smiled and I

knew that a smile like that could not contain anything bad.

He handed me a package. Winked and was gone. When I got

home, I opened it to find a salami, two tomatoes and a small

bar of chocolate. I began crying. I couldn’t help myself. I

held on to the chocolate like it was a lover and cried my

heart out.

The paintings are going well. I have lost count of them. One

day, I will sit down and go through them, put them into

some kind of order. I think I got the numbering mixed up,

or I changed my mind. But first I need to finish. To see the

whole thing before I know the shape it will have. I have less

materials now. I only have three colours I can use. I do not

know how much time I have left.

I can hear that awful man ranting on the radio every week.

That awful man I once was so enamoured with. I remembered

Alfred showing me the Draft of XXX Cantos that had

recently come out and his face as he read to me from those

startling stanzas, the fire and beauty and generosity of the

man that wrote them, the blinding, brilliant supernatural

rhythm of his sentences. And now he is on the radio, ranting

from Rome, screaming about credit and usury and about

how a certain people should go to hell. And yet, I still

remember the beautiful lines he wrote and I pretend that

this is a different man, not the poet but a lesser man and I

close my eyes and think of other times.

Yesterday German soldiers were in town. The hotel landlady

said it would be better if I stayed in my room. She promised

nothing would happen. I crawled under the bed. I lay there,

curled up until night. I waited for the knock on the door

though I knew that was only for theatre. That in real life

there was no knock. That these people didn’t need to knock.

I was too scared to get up and go to the bathroom. I was

afraid my shadow would give me away. I tried to remember

songs and hummed them, careful not to let any sound slip. I

do not know how much longer I can stand this.

I am desperately unhappy. I spent all day hiding under the

covers again. My old despair got the better of me and threw

me back into a slow death-like lethargy. If I can’t find any

joy in my life and my work I will kill myself. I feel so hopeless.

I have time enough to work and yet I can’t. My happiness is

at an end. I have no one to talk to. The sun has been stolen

from me. From deepest sunny brightness to greyish darkness.

I am sinking in despair. I am scared to get out of bed. It is a

winter such as few people could have experienced. Extreme

torpor, unable to move one finger … I am ill, my face always

red with dull rage and grief.

He couldn’t get the song out of his head.

It had joined him on the walk back from Suze’s. No

particular reason, not even a song he’d listened to for quite

a while. And yet there it was, constantly humming just under

everything else.

He’d fallen asleep to it, trying to remember the words, the

order of the verses - anything to forget about what had

happened earlier between him and Suze.

The morning brought with it sunshine, and the song, like

an elusive lover’s name, came back and filled his head during

breakfast.

“The silver one, please,‘Jon said and watched as the shop

assistant tallied up his purchases, twenty or so CDs and a

portable on which to play them.

He’d been too long without music. Too long with other

people’s choices, never what he would have liked. He spent

all morning browsing the aisles of a record shop on Kalverstraat.

He thought it would be the same. Some refuge in the

familiar. But there was difference here too, and he spent

hours going through the racks, picking up old favourites Springsteen, Dylan, the Dead, Miles - checking for European

bonus tracks, boodegs, things he couldn’t find back home.

And of course, that song. The tide track from Tom Waits’s Blue Valentines, the one that had been going round his head.

He sat in a cafe enjoying the wide luxury of the square, so

unlike the Amsterdam he was used to, with its clustered

streets and cloistered bars. Walk ten minutes and it’s a whole

different city. Turn a corner and you’re in another world. It

was only now that he began to realize how much a prisoner

of the District he’d become, how it had shaped and warped

his vision of the city.

He drank his coffee and looked at his CDs. He refused to

think about Suze. Every time she came up (and she came up

quite a bit) he tried to remember the track listing of a

particular album. Diversionary measures.

He popped Viva hast Blues into the personal. Plugged the

earphones right in. Took a long toke on a joint as Will

Oldham’s ravaged voice started singing. Within minutes, he

realized that a massive smile had taken residence on his face,

making his jaw hurt, his lips ache. But he did nothing to

remove it. The sun would be out only for so long. This was

the time to enjoy it. The time for other things would come

later.

He spent the next couple of days locked in the private

world that a Walkman provides. Where everything becomes

detached; the world silent and impenetrable. Something

viewed from the outside, Uke a television with a broken

speaker or an old silent movie.

He began to walk, in whichever direction he desired. Every

morning from the hotel, making sure he was out of the

District before its weight could surrender him. Make him

prisoner. On the first day he walked west, into the Jordaan, stared at the seventeenth-century workers’ houses and small shops, the unmistakable stench of the poor areas, the constant