Read Online The Devil's Playground by Stav Sherez - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stav Sherez
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twitch, his body humming and snapping
with crackle. The drawer rolled open. He took out the joint,
lit it, cursing his weakness, exhaling into the waiting grille of
the air-conditioner.
Sucking on the warm smoke he remembered the night of
his graduation, twenty years earlier, him only twenty-seven
then, drunk with the recognition, the backslaps and the sheer
wonder of a whole life still ahead. He’d spent the night with
his lover, Elizabeth, telling her of his plans, how he could
fast track through this and that division, the whole intricate
career path that he’d devised for himself so rigorously and
seriously.
He almost coughed on the smoke when he thought about
Elizabeth. She’d been his girlfriend since the first week of
the academy and he’d loved her with a more insane rush and
intensity of feeling than anyone before or since, the kind of
whirlwind that swallows you only once in your life and which
you spend the rest of your time trying to recapture. They’d
married a week after their graduation and had decided to
take their honeymoon in California, a place neither of them
had ever been to, but whose allure, through movies and
media, had gripped both of them since childhood.
They never went.
Jan van Hijn, Ronald’s father, had been dead twenty-two
years; a hero of the war, a fearless anti-Nazi and freedom
fighter in city legend. Van Hijn had walked through the
police academy forever in the old man’s shadow. People
looked at him and noted the facial resemblance to his father,
strangers in bars would tell him stories about his dad and
everyone treated him with a certain respect which he had
grown comfortably accustomed to.
And then the article had come out. Published in Der Stern three weeks after his graduation. The article that brought to light newly discovered documents relating to dark deeds that
took place in occupied Holland. Correcting the false Anne
Frank-fostered belief that the city was good to its Jews,
detailing how it had the lowest rate of survival in Europe,
only one in sixteen ever made it back from the East or stayed
undiscovered in rotten basements. The article that named
his father, Jan van Hijn, as the Gestapo’s most acclaimed
collaborator in the Low Countries.
The facts were irrefutable, backed up by facsimiles that
held his father’s signature, a shaky, familiar hand that also
inscribed his son’s books with little quotations, and Van
Hijn, feeling sicker and sicker, had read the piece listing the
people his father had betrayed, the Jews wrenched out of
hiding places and shot or burned alive in their synagogues,
the resistance leaders given up.
He tried to remember his father and he couldn’t reconcile
what he read with the man he knew and yet there was no
way to deny that everything they said was true. That he had
been both the man that Ronald thought he was and the man that they accused him of being.
That was the hardest thing to grasp, not that he did what
he did during the war, any man is capable of that, not even
that his legend was what it was, these things happen, Van
Hijn thought. No, the single greatest problem that he faced
was that his father had been both these men; a loving and
generous parent and, at the same time, a seller of men’s lives.
People had started gathering outside his house after the
article came out. A swastika had been crudely spray-painted
on his car. Gangs of neo-Nazis sent him letters and offers of
money trying to recruit him to their cause. ‘Blood Will Out’
they often wrote, he was his father’s son and they too saw
great things in store for him.
Elizabeth couldn’t take it. Her mother had been a Dutch
Jew who had somehow survived Auschwitz. The fear of
what was inside her husband was too much for Elizabeth
and she left. He felt betrayed by her, by his father and by the
friends who had stopped calling and who now exchanged
only perfunctory greetings with him each morning at
with crackle. The drawer rolled open. He took out the joint,
lit it, cursing his weakness, exhaling into the waiting grille of
the air-conditioner.
Sucking on the warm smoke he remembered the night of
his graduation, twenty years earlier, him only twenty-seven
then, drunk with the recognition, the backslaps and the sheer
wonder of a whole life still ahead. He’d spent the night with
his lover, Elizabeth, telling her of his plans, how he could
fast track through this and that division, the whole intricate
career path that he’d devised for himself so rigorously and
seriously.
He almost coughed on the smoke when he thought about
Elizabeth. She’d been his girlfriend since the first week of
the academy and he’d loved her with a more insane rush and
intensity of feeling than anyone before or since, the kind of
whirlwind that swallows you only once in your life and which
you spend the rest of your time trying to recapture. They’d
married a week after their graduation and had decided to
take their honeymoon in California, a place neither of them
had ever been to, but whose allure, through movies and
media, had gripped both of them since childhood.
They never went.
Jan van Hijn, Ronald’s father, had been dead twenty-two
years; a hero of the war, a fearless anti-Nazi and freedom
fighter in city legend. Van Hijn had walked through the
police academy forever in the old man’s shadow. People
looked at him and noted the facial resemblance to his father,
strangers in bars would tell him stories about his dad and
everyone treated him with a certain respect which he had
grown comfortably accustomed to.
And then the article had come out. Published in Der Stern three weeks after his graduation. The article that brought to light newly discovered documents relating to dark deeds that
took place in occupied Holland. Correcting the false Anne
Frank-fostered belief that the city was good to its Jews,
detailing how it had the lowest rate of survival in Europe,
only one in sixteen ever made it back from the East or stayed
undiscovered in rotten basements. The article that named
his father, Jan van Hijn, as the Gestapo’s most acclaimed
collaborator in the Low Countries.
The facts were irrefutable, backed up by facsimiles that
held his father’s signature, a shaky, familiar hand that also
inscribed his son’s books with little quotations, and Van
Hijn, feeling sicker and sicker, had read the piece listing the
people his father had betrayed, the Jews wrenched out of
hiding places and shot or burned alive in their synagogues,
the resistance leaders given up.
He tried to remember his father and he couldn’t reconcile
what he read with the man he knew and yet there was no
way to deny that everything they said was true. That he had
been both the man that Ronald thought he was and the man that they accused him of being.
That was the hardest thing to grasp, not that he did what
he did during the war, any man is capable of that, not even
that his legend was what it was, these things happen, Van
Hijn thought. No, the single greatest problem that he faced
was that his father had been both these men; a loving and
generous parent and, at the same time, a seller of men’s lives.
People had started gathering outside his house after the
article came out. A swastika had been crudely spray-painted
on his car. Gangs of neo-Nazis sent him letters and offers of
money trying to recruit him to their cause. ‘Blood Will Out’
they often wrote, he was his father’s son and they too saw
great things in store for him.
Elizabeth couldn’t take it. Her mother had been a Dutch
Jew who had somehow survived Auschwitz. The fear of
what was inside her husband was too much for Elizabeth
and she left. He felt betrayed by her, by his father and by the
friends who had stopped calling and who now exchanged
only perfunctory greetings with him each morning at
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