The Devil's Playground (16 page)

summer vacation from college, first day back, filled with

words and wonder and wanting to talk so much. A haemorrhage

had taken her in her sleep. And a week later, her father,

dead in a car accident, skewed and burned with his latest

lover on some god-forsaken highway in Idaho. A fearful

symmetry she was just beginning to grasp. As if that shot,

heard and seen twelve years before, had only now reached

its target, a long, slow and deliberate trajectory that had taken

all this time to come to its conclusion. And so: counsellors

and more counsellors. Lawyers and heavy doubt and sudden

wealth and through it all she couldn’t wait to get back to

college. To sink herself into paintings, into the dark canvases

and obdurate theories that promised to swallow the past. It

was the only thing that made her feel better, the swell and

sway of other people’s lives.

And was it really only the sun that made her think about

these things? Or something about yesterday, Wouter’s stumbling

phone call? Or was it the face of the dead girl that

stared out from her TV set that morning?

She saw the dog first. Then Dominic following behind, gently loping along as if he wasn’t already fifty minutes late, smiling when he saw her, though she’d seen that he’d

noticed her earlier, when she was looking at the dog. She

smiled back.

‘Sorry I’m late. I had something to finish. Lost track of

time.’ He stood beside her, blocking out the sun. His thick

Yorkshire accent dry. and sleepy. ‘Drink?’

She only then realized that she was sitting at an empty

table. ‘They do those super sickly sweet guava juices here?’

‘They do. I’ll get you one,’ he said, watching the curve of

her ankles as she crossed her legs. Sighing.

He started walking towards the door, then turned, as if

suddenly remembering something.

‘Oh, wow!’ she said taking the magazine from him. The

dark maroon gloss of the cover soft and sexy under her

fingers, the embossed letters (AnjAesthetics — a Periodical, slightly raised, reflecting back the overhead sun.

Dominic smiled, all was going well, he could feel it. ‘It

arrived from the printer’s this morning. And another

thing…’ He reached into his pocket. ‘I saw it secondhand,

cheap. Thought you’d like it.’ He handed the book

to her.

‘Oh my God, how did you know I wanted this!’

‘I saw you admiring it in the university bookshop.’

She felt herself go red. ‘But it’s just come out. It’s so

expensive.’

Dominic smiled. ‘I found it secondhand. It was dead

cheap.’

‘Thank you. That was so kind of you.’ She suddenly felt a

rush of affection, a deep fist in her chest. She grabbed his

hand, squeezed — it felt as though there were no bones under

the layers of flesh — said thank you again, kissed his cheek,

genuinely touched that he’d thought of her, though feeling

guilty too for never having done anything so kind for him.

As she waited for him to come back with the drinks, she

carefully opened the magazine. She loved its smell. The smell

of new things, of recent printing, paper and ink and oiled

machines. She saw her name on the masthead, ‘associate

editor’, she liked that, previously she’d only been a contributor

but Dominic had recently given her more of the editorial

work as he’d been so busy. It was their third issue. In small,

almost invisible lettering at the bottom of the cover were the

words ‘produced by the Revised Council of Blood’.

It was Dominic who had formed the group. She’d met

him during her second week in the city. He’d sat across from

her during seminars and, even that first time, she could not

ignore the way his eyes would settle on her as they scanned

the room, always looking away when she caught his stare.

And yet she liked him, despite his obvious and painfully

occluded attraction to her, or maybe because of it, she wasn’t

sure. When he told her about the Council she’d been thrilled,

there was something about its mystery, the way they met

weekly in a rented basement in the red-light district, the air

of being part of something secret. She knew it was silly, this

attraction, but she couldn’t help it. And the Council was

useful for her work. Dominic had formed it as a debating

group, to hammer out a theory of representation. A moral theory of representation. Of course they never agreed and she sensed that it seemed silently to frustrate Dominic that

they couldn’t come to a consensus. She knew it was the nature

of these things — language and theory showed everything to

be so slippery that even their own foundations were always

being put into question. She liked the fact they disagreed. It

was more exciting.

They looked at the impact of photo-journalism, the saturation

of atrocity photos, newspapers once full of breasts

and beaches were now routinely filled with mutilated corpses,

the inner workings of rape camps and dream-like cities made

of skulls. They wanted to know what this meant. How the

aesthetisization of images made them anaesthetic, drained

them of their power to shock and outrage.

Dominic firmly believed in the power of these images to

politicize. Suze, having seen people discussing wallpaper

shades over coffee-table books of the Holocaust, wasn’t so

sure. Charlotte had chosen to show something else. This was

what held her and the Council was a place where she could

discuss her ideas. The journal, subtitled Periodical, was an

organ through which they could publish essays or critiques

relating to their concerns. They printed 500 copies and

usually sold them all within the quarterly run at bookstores

and coffee shops throughout the city.

She saw that this issue was mainly devoted to a forty-five

page piece by Dominic entitled ‘The Seduction of the Banal:

The Utilization of (Imagery) in Life (is) Beautiful as Process

in Revisionist History’. He always used (seemingly random)

parentheses, except the word (is) which was routinely

enclosed and therefore put into question. She flicked through

the introduction, more parentheses, a sentence that she knew

she’d have to read three times to get the sense of, something

about the Italian film, a withering remark … she scanned

the rest, feeling the onrush of a mega-migraine. Forty-five

pages! She couldn’t believe it. There was something horribly

pretentious about it all. She hoped Dominic wouldn’t ask

her opinion.

She saw him navigating the door with the drinks, smiling.

She knew what he wanted from her and she knew, just as

surely, that it was something she could never give. He was

so different from Wouter and yet both were men with whom

she enjoyed moments but couldn’t envisage sharing a continual

stream of time with. She thought about what Moshe had

said. Even if he was right, and she was willing to concede

that maybe he was, even then, there was something about men who desired possession so much, with the attendant labelling and identification, surname and marriage certificate,

that made her skin crawl, not in any metaphorical sense, no,

like ants slowly inspecting your skin, that kind of crawl.

She could never be with Dominic and yet she couldn’t

help liking him, the way he always edged around his infatuation,

never coming out and saying it as American boys did,

keeping it, like a special locket, just to himself. It made their

relationship easier, for her at least. It kept the unspoken

hanging. And that was good. She knew he didn’t have many

friends in the city and she felt it necessary to make known

to him that he wasn’t alone. And she enjoyed his company,

his passion, especially when, momentarily, he would forget

that she was the girl he was in love with, and relax, be himself.

But lately she’d felt a new tension between them, as if the air

was suddenly charged. There was something in Dominic’s

face she hadn’t seen before, a tightening, a resoluteness that

worried her. He’d begun to miss meetings.

‘How’s the work going?’ He placed the drink beside her,

sat down.

She jumped, smiled, annoyed that he’d caught her

unaware. ‘My work?’ She put the glass to her lips. She’d been

so lost in thought she wasn’t sure what he was referring to.

‘It crawls along. Like most things.’

Dominic nodded. But they both knew they weren’t here

to talk about that.

They sat and sipped their drinks, each unwilling to break

the silence, to utter her name, the dead girl.

Suze had seen it on the morning news. She didn’t fully

understand the fast-talking presenter but her face and name

needed no translation. She felt her stomach drop through

the floor, the room spin around her. She’d immediately called

Dominic. She’d needed to talk but now, as they sat staring

at the unburdened tourists that strolled past, she didn’t know

what to say. That yes, death had finally affected her so? That

yes, it had taken the murder of someone she knew? That all

they talked about in the Council was a lie?

‘I’m so sick of it all.’ It came out of her, a surprise, and

she looked to see if Dominic had heard but, oh god, he had

and was now looking worried and anxious.

He put his hand on her leg. She tried not to jerk back

though her body’s natural reaction was exactly that. She

couldn’t say why his touch should have that effect on her,

that it was only an innocent gesture, a measure of reassurance

gladly given. She froze as his hand rested upon her knee,

trembling slightly, trying not to show what she felt.

We have to carry on.’ He smiled but she could see that

he was just as nervous about the position of his hand as she

was. ‘It doesn’t change anything.’

She swung her legs away. ‘It changes everything, Dominic.

She was just a dead girl until today. Today she’s someone we

knew.’ She felt herself shaking but understood she would

have to control it in front of him.

‘It’s just a coincidence,’ he said, trying to sound calm,

inching his hand towards her again.

‘Nothing is a coincidence,’ she replied.

Beatrice had been a member of the Council. No one had

seen her for a few weeks. Everybody thought holiday, no

one believed murder. Not until this morning when the police

had finally revealed her name, splashed across countless

newspapers and TV sets in the faint hope that it would yield

some further clues and in the safe knowledge that it was

what the public wanted.

Suze moved back. ‘You can’t think that.’ She edged her

chair further back. ‘You know what happened — how can

you say it was a coincidence?’

*You think it was because of the Council? The work she

did?’ He leaned forward, bridging the space between them.

*You think it wasn’t?’

Dominic shook his head. A headache was crawling its way

up his neck. ‘Stupid, dumb luck, or bad luck. People aren’t

killed for writing articles, discussing theories.’ He tried to sound reassuring.

She looked at him. His eyes steadfastly refused to focus

on hers as always, bounced up and down until they found a

neutral point to rest upon. She didn’t believe a word he said.

‘The TV talked about how she was killed.’

‘She’s not the first,’ Dominic replied, thinking back to the

preceding victims, their faces paraded. Their faces always

with us.

‘She was someone we knew.’ She thought this plain fact

was enough to explain itself.

‘And that makes it different?’

She looked at him; as usual she couldn’t read the signs.

Was he teasing her? Or being comforting? ‘Yes, that makes

it different. It’s no longer a set of words and I know that’s

the point, Dominic, but…’

‘You don’t sound like you believe that any more.’

She noticed that he was grinding his foot into the floor,

small violent circular motions.

‘I’m not so sure what I believe any more. I know that I

can’t talk about all this horror, look at these kind of images,

discuss and debate them. Not in the same way. I can’t look

at them. The idea of it makes me sick. We were just playing

around. I feel it’s my fault she’s dead.’

‘Your fault? Don’t be stupid, Suze.’

‘I’m not being stupid.’

Poor boy, she thought again, the more comforting he tried

to sound the more patronizing he ended up being. She

quickly scolded herself for always thinking the worst. His

intentions were good and that was the main thing, had to be.

When they reported the second victim I wanted more,’

she said. ‘I told myself this is it. A serial killer. Right here in Amsterdam. That particular method of killing. I thought this

is what we need. Horror. A wake-up call. Something more

than cartoon violence, something more than images on the

screen. I read the papers every day, wanting more, another

victim, a death more horrible. You understand? I couldn’t

believe how it tied in with everything the Council was talking

about. I thought this would make people realize the horror

of what they routinely take as entertainment.