The Devil's Playground (45 page)

told Wouter that it was time. He led them through the

restaurant, past the swinging doors and into the kitchen.

Two men were clouded in a halo of steam and smoke as they

fried something on the hob. A strange, bitter perfume filled

the air. The waiter led them down some stairs and into a

long room, dark and damp, where he left them.

Jon began to feel bad about all this. How well did Suze

know this man? It was too late to ask her and now he was

being led into the bowels of some mephitic establishment.

He touched the can of mace in his pocket, wondering if it

would be enough.

A door at the other end opened and an extremely small

man, dark and wrinkled like a prune, made his way towards

them.

‘Thanks for seeing us, Mr Nagatha,’ Wouter said, shaking

the man’s hand, encapsulating it.

ŚYou brought some friends.’ His accent was flat and without

tone. He looked at Jon and Suze, his eyes like small black

olives hidden in the folds of his face.

‘Wouter said you could show us the preview footage,‘Jon

said, stepping forward, feeling both fear and excitement.

Nagatha laughed. ‘Yes, that I can do.’

Jon’s heart was pounding hard. Now he would see them.

Now he would know if they were real. He reached into his

pocket and pulled out the photos. He took the one of Jake

and showed it to Nagatha. ‘You know this man?’

The old man shrugged. ‘No, never seen him before. Hasn’t

been here, anyway.’

Jon took the photo back, everything collapsing again.

He thought perhaps Jake had left a trail through these

establishments.

‘Wait.’ Nagatha put a hand on his. It felt cold and bony

like the claw of a small bird. ‘Let me see the other one.’

Jon handed Nagatha the photo of the Doctor.

‘This one I know,’ he said. ‘Used to come here sometimes.

Old German. Strange tastes. Had to take him off our list.

Damaging the goods. Haven’t seen him in a while.’

‘How long?’ Jon’s mouth was so dry he almost couldn’t

speak. The room began to vibrate.

‘A month or so. Lived up near Prinsengracht. One of my

men used to deliver to him.’

‘Deliver?’

‘Oh, you know, videos, girls, whatever was asked for.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘As I said, we had to take him off the list. Made the girls

do disgusting things with his dogs. Real fucked up. Treated

them like shit. No respect for the merch. You see, I couldn’t

have that.’

‘Dogs, did you say dogs?’ Jon’s head started rattling like a

multi-ball frenzy in a pinball machine.

‘Yes, why, you like that kind of thing? Perhaps I can find

you some videos.’ The human prune laughed.

‘Did any of the girls disappear?’

Nagatha burst out laughing. ‘Oh no. Anything like that

had happened, I would have gone to see the old man myself,

paid him a visit. You think I’m some kind of fucking fool?’

He carried on laughing.

‘Any chance you’d have the address somewhere?‘Jon said,

stepping forward, casting his shadow over Nagatha, who

almost seemed to disappear.

Nagatha looked at him, thought it through for a minute.

Jon saw the deep, etched lines in the man’s face, the scars

like small scarves wrapped around his neck. ‘Normally I

wouldn’t, you understand. But this case is different. I don’t

owe the old fuck anything. In fact, he owes me. How about

I tell you where he lives in exchange for a night with this

pretty girl?’ He smiled at Suze and put his hand on her breast.

She pulled herself out of his reach. Nagatha laughed. ‘Okay,

I understand. Way it is these days. Money then. A thousand

dollars.’

‘You take credit cards?’ Jon said.

‘Most certainly.’ Nagatha nodded, smiling. ‘What shall I

make it out for … services?’

Jon handed him his Visa. Nagatha took it and it disappeared neatly into his hand.

‘Wouter, show them what they came here for. It’ll take

me a few minutes to get this information. I’ll find you.’

Jon and Suze followed Wouter, who seemed to know

where he was going.

‘That was easy,’ Suze said, still feeling the heat of the old

man’s clutch.

‘And expensive,’ Wouter added.

‘Not really,‘Jon replied. ‘In fact, not at all.’

Wouter led them along a dark, narrow corridor and down

some flights of stairs. ‘In there.’ He pointed to a door at the

far end.

‘Not many people here,’ Jon said, wondering why the place was so quiet and empty.

‘This is the special entrance. Come, follow me.’

He took them into a small, thin room. They were alone

inside and Jon was beginning to wonder what was happening

when Wouter pressed a button on the wall above him and

the screen rolled back revealing the one-way mirror that

looked out into the main viewing room of Mr Nagatha’s.

It looked like a screening room. Widely spaced chairs

dotted the floor. Men sat, stiff and still as concrete, their eyes glued to the screen.

‘What’s going on here?‘Jon asked, trying to peer round to

see what flickering images held these men in such captivity.

‘Nagatha had the preview blown up, digitally enhanced

and looped fifteen times. People are paying a lot of money

to see this. This thing is all that people are talking about.’

Wouter smiled, ‘All the rage, you might say.’

Jon watched the men, upright, their hands hiding in the

darkness of their crotches. Small, furtive movements. He

wanted to leap through the glass, grab them, ask them what

the fuck they thought they were doing. But more than

that, he wanted to watch the film. To see what they were

seeing.

‘Come.’ Wouter led them through the other door and

down some more stairs. ‘We have a special room reserved

for this.’

They followed him through a labyrinth of tunnels, turning

and skewing, almost like a ghost image of the city above

being replicated below.

‘What else goes on here?‘Jon said, hearing strange sucking

sounds coming through the walls.

‘You don’t want to know,’ Wouter replied.

They sat in a small room and stared at the blank screen in

front of them. Half the size of an average multiplex movie

screen. Suze sat next to Jon and her hand slipped down to

his, covering it. He didn’t move it away. Wouter shifted in

his seat, making sure he was comfortable, then pressed a

small button on the side of the chair and waited for the film

to load.

A man is strapped to a hospital bed, his limbs so emaciated that he seems to disappear as the camera swings around to reveal a short, bald-headed young doctor in glasses and a tall, stem-looking officer, impeccably suited and rigid, both watching the man on the bed. The young doctor takes off his glasses and cuts away the prisoner’s trousers, revealing the shrivelled genitals. There is no sound, only the smooth movements of the doctor as he expertly removes the man’s testicles and then sews up the incision. The stern-looking officer unzips his own trousers. Another inmate is brought in.

A crack to the back of the head brings him down to his knees and in line.

A third officer walks quickly through the back of the frame. The prisoner on the table is writhing, screaming but there is no sound. Just a curious suspension of time. He is removed and a new inmate is placed upon the bed. The doctor smiles. Bends down. Wipes his implements on his smock.

An SS man stands to the back of the frame, his face invisible now, cut off by the camera’s limitations, only his hands visible, holding a stopwatch of some kind. As the doctor performs his task in the foreground the camera suddenly pans back to reveal the now not-so-stern-looking officer, smiling in the kind of way that a father would smile at his daughter’s performance in a school play. When the doctor is finished, the officer walks up to him, shakes his hand, smiles once and then is gone.

They sat in silence and watched the operation as it looped

and played again. The face of the Nazi doctor. The smiling

officer. The jittery black-and-white pulse of the video, the

slight break-up and buffering that meant thousands were

watching the same footage when it was downloaded. It was

only sixty seconds long but it seemed to last for ever. Each

frame hanging in the space between moments like an unsure

acrobat.

‘Let’s go, I’ve seen enough,’ Suze whispered to Wouter,

springing up from her seat.

‘Yes. Fuck this, let’s go now!’ Jon added, not wanting to

watch the film for the third time.

Wouter took them back into the viewing chamber where

they saw a new set of men who were smiling and waiting

in baited expectation and then back up through layers of

staircases and hidden mezzanines until finally they walked

through the restaurant where a waiter slipped a small piece

of paper and the credit card into Jon’s hand, past tables full

of prosperous, good-looking men, drunk on the anticipation

and excitement of pleasures to come.

That night they couldn’t get close to each other. They sat on

either end of her sofa and watched a late-night black-and

white film, not talking much, unable to say anything that

wasn’t shadowed by what they’d seen, disappearing into the

folds of the film. Finally he fell into a restless sleep and she

turned off the TV and moved herself closer to him, holding

him tight so that he wouldn’t go away.

It was still dark when he awoke and slipped quietly out of

bed, trying not to disturb Suze’s sweetly sleeping form. That restless beating of the blood pounded through his head and he knew he’d have to go out. That if his head was going to

burst, it would be better that it burst in open space.

Outside the night had a strange luminescence, a feeling of

immanence that Jon couldn’t shake. He walked along the

deserted streets and across the canals and thought about all

the ugly things he’d seen that evening. Tried not to think

about them but there they were, following him around as

surely as the man had been following him earlier that night.

Now the streets were empty, the first time he’d seen them

so devoid of the flash and friction of life, and he liked the

way he could hear the slow ripples of canal water, the sound

of rubbish twisting in the wind.

He passed by an all-night fried chicken restaurant and he

stopped and looked through the window at the few people,

sitting, staring dead-eyed into their food, hunched over with

the kind of loneliness that drives you out in the middle of

the night to such a place.

The night was filled with the emptiness of sleeping cities.

For two or three hours, everything shuts down and collapses,

even in Amsterdam. Jon walked through streets unrecognizable

in their bareness, their lack of people, and it was as if he

could feel the presence of that other Amsterdam, its dark,

cluttered machinery pulling and cracking beneath his feet,

humming behind the closed shop-fronts and cafes, alive in

the swerve of canals and alleyways. It was as if for everything

that occurred above there existed a shadowy twin living a

life of its own, every now and then taking over the city and

then retreating back to its domain, the mind, the underground,

the dark recesses of a dream.

Tonight everything felt suffused with sadness, from an old

man in the chicken joint to the policeman he saw walking

alone across Dam Square.

He saw small groups of boys flicker across his vision,

running silently from street to street, their purpose unknowable.

A couple fighting on the steps of the town hall, screaming

and hitting each other with a terrible fury. Stray dogs

stumbling about, maimed and hobbling through the deserted

streets looking for the remains of fast food. In a small alley

off a square he came upon the broken wheels and seats of

prams, many colours, all smashed and twisted by some

unknown force. Ghostly garbage trucks slowly rolled across

Damrak, fully mechanized, not a human being in sight.

Down by the first canal line he saw a small girl being

punished by her father. The man ordered the little girl into

apissoir and made her stand there for five minutes while Jon

watched, smoking a cigarette, cursing his cowardice. He

followed the canals, finally sensing the order to them, the

way the city rotates out from a circular centre and for the

first time he could picture where he was in relation to his

hotel, to Suze’s place.

The streets slowly began to fill up with early-shift workers,

women rushing to cleaning jobs, the whole menial underclass

flushed out of sleep at half past five, like ghostly versions of

what was to follow. He couldn’t bear to see them. Couldn’t

bear to see the agony and disappointment in their eyes, the

enormous tragedy of the dream in their immigrant shoulders.

The years of anger and resentment that had carved them out

into their present forms. The insurmountable obstacles of

race and education, the great leveller — money — being all but

unobtainable, except in the smallest increments. A dribble

here and there, enough to make them come back to work