Through Dead Eyes (3 page)

Alex stared sullenly out of the lobby window. The recent showers had splashed the glass with a million droplets of water and the view through them was blurred and confused, like seeing through a fly’s eyes.

‘Is everything OK?’ said Saskia, casting a quick glance towards Alex.

‘Everything is perfect,’ said his father.

Saskia raised her eyebrows.

His father sighed. ‘He’s not a happy bunny,’ he said. ‘He’s cross with me because I can’t spend the afternoon with him.’

Saskia nodded and looked sympathetic.

‘We have to borrow your father for a while, I’m afraid. But Angelien will look after you,’ said Saskia, ‘won’t you, my darling?’

‘Of course,’ said Angelien.

Alex frowned doubtfully and Angelien laughed.

‘OK then,’ said Alex’s father. ‘I’ll see you later. Bye, Alex.’

Alex grunted a reply that could have been almost anything. His father knew better than to wait for more and simply turned and left with Saskia at his side.

Alex watched them walk away, arm in arm, along the canal. He heard Saskia’s laughter twitter in the clear morning air like birdsong.

Their happiness bothered him and he felt bad that it did. His mother had gone off with someone else after all. Why shouldn’t his father be happy?

‘Well,’ said Angelien, with a crooked grin. ‘My mother has given me a wallet full of euros so why don’t we go and spend it? What would you like to do?’

Alex shrugged. He stared off towards the diminishing figures of his father and Saskia.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you say we just walk around for a while?’ said Angelien. ‘It seems a shame to spend the afternoon in museums as it’s not raining. When I’m somewhere new, I like to walk around and get a feeling for a place.’

‘OK,’ said Alex.

‘What do you know about Amsterdam?’

Alex shrugged again and looked sheepish. His father had given him a guidebook to read but he had only flicked through it, looking at the photographs.

‘Not a lot,’ he said.

Angelien laughed. ‘OK. I will tell you a few things. Where to start? Well, Amsterdam was founded in the thirteenth century. It was just a little village at first, but grew and grew. It has always been a trading place, sending ships all over the world . . .’

Alex wasn’t really listening to what Angelien was saying but was concentrating instead on her lips. They had a strange way of pouting intermittently as she spoke, and he watched, fascinated. She wasn’t just pretty like a couple of the girls were at his school. She was better than pretty.

‘. . . is called the Golden Age. That was the greatest time for Amsterdam. The houses like the one you are staying in are from that time.

‘You see the tops of the houses?’ she said, pointing to the buildings along the canal. Alex looked, the spell of Angelien’s lips broken for the moment. ‘Do you see that door with the pole sticking out above it?’

‘I thought it was a window,’ said Alex.

‘No,’ said Angelien. ‘It’s a door into an attic warehouse. Many of them still have the winching gear on them for hauling the stuff up to the top of the house.’

‘So they were warehouses?’

‘They were homes as well as warehouses,’ said Angelien.

Looking down the length of the canal, Alex saw for the first time how many of these houses there were. Angelien seemed to read his mind.

‘Amsterdam was built for business. It was one big shop. It has always been about making money. Spending it too, of course . . .’ she said.

‘They must have been stinking rich,’ said Alex.

Angelien laughed.

‘Stinking rich?’ she said. ‘I like that: stinking rich! Ha! They were indeed, Alex.’

A small white boat passed under the bridge and someone called Angelien’s name. There were two well-dressed men and two women aboard. She waved back.

‘Friends of my mother,’ said Angelien. ‘They are “stinking rich”.’

Alex laughed.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk. Before it starts raining again.’

Angelien set off with Alex at her side, turning left and right down narrow alleyways and wide, busy streets. She pointed out buildings and tiny details that Alex would never have noticed without her.

‘Amsterdam’s really pretty,’ said Alex as they walked down a picturesque canal, lined with small trees and shops. ‘My dad just goes on about the war, so I suppose I never really thought much about how it looked now.’

Angelien nodded.

‘This is a tough place,’ she said. ‘We’ve been through a lot.’

Angelien looked away and her smile disappeared.

‘There were eighty thousand Jews living here before the Nazis came and only five thousand when the war ended.’

‘We did about Anne Frank at school,’ said Alex. ‘And Dad has told me loads of stuff about World War Two. I don’t remember all of it. It must have been horrible though. To be occupied I mean.’

Angelien nodded and her lips quivered a little before she spoke.

‘My grandmother told me such terrible things about that time . . . About the war and the time after.’

Alex saw the sadness on Angelien’s face but could think of nothing to say. After a moment, she smiled and clapped her hands together, snapping out of the grip of those memories.

‘Enough of sadness,’ she said. ‘There’s more to Amsterdam than sad memories, huh?’

They walked on. Alex was surprised at how relaxed he was already feeling in Angelien’s company.

‘This is the Looier,’ said Angelien as they rounded a corner near a wide canal. ‘It’s an antiques market – but indoors. Lots of it is very expensive but it is interesting. Do you want to go in?’

Alex shrugged and nodded at the same time. There was a man nearby who was sitting outside his workshop polishing a table leg that lay across his lap. Angelien walked inside and Alex smiled at him, but he just looked away, and carried on with his work.

Inside there were rows of glass cabinets with glass shelves, on which were collections of objects. The cabinets were themed: one had metal toys, another dour Victorian photographs in dusty old frames. There was a cabinet full of military medals and badges and then another nearby filled with old wooden and metal crucifixes. Alex guessed this must be where the hotel manager’s wife had come to buy things for the hotel.

Every now and then a dealer had a larger area to themselves, almost like a small shop within the market. There was a man selling old books. He was sitting in a leather armchair reading, and only looked up briefly to establish that neither Angelien nor Alex seemed likely customers.

Nearby a woman was selling old ceramic tiles. Angelien stopped and pointed them out to Alex. Each one had a drawing on it, usually in blue line. Alex picked one up that had a drawing of a man aiming a shotgun at a bird flying overhead. When Alex saw the price sticker, he turned to Angelien in amazement.

‘That much for an old tile?’ he gasped.

‘These are very old, Alex,’ she said. ‘There are lots of fakes around but these are the real thing.’

The owner nodded at Angelien’s remark and then gave Alex a rather less friendly glare over her half-moon glasses. Alex put the tile back, embarrassed, and pretended to be interested in another, this time with a young girl on it. The tile was cracked across from one corner to the other and a chip had fallen out just where the girl’s face ought to be. There was something troubling about the faceless image.

Alex turned to follow Angelien, who was already heading for a doorway through to a room which looked more like a school jumble sale.

‘This is a room where people can just book a table and set themselves up to sell whatever they have. A lot of it is junk, of course.’ She grinned. ‘But still I can’t resist hunting about. Shall we have a look and see if we can’t find treasure?’

Angelien had started rooting around in a box filled with doorknobs, when a raucous dance track started up that Alex did not initially realise was Angelien’s ringtone. It was very loud by the time she had dug her phone out and answered the call. An old man nearby scowled at her.

‘
Hallo? Dirk!
’

Angelien turned her back on Alex and walked away a few steps as she talked, walking to an open doorway and out into the street. She turned and looked at him through the window before going back to her conversation.

Alex walked on to another stall and looked at some battered old metal toy cars. He picked up a chipped and worn old truck, remembering the fun he used to have with a similar toy when he was a small boy. But that memory only led to thoughts of his mother.

He put the truck down and moved on again. It was then that he saw it, lying in an old tea crate on top of a pile of odds and ends, partially obscured by an old scarf.

It was a mask.

Not the kind worn by superheroes and highwaymen that covers just your eyes; this mask was a full face and quite an old one, judging by the cracked and worn white surface. Its empty eyes seemed to stare up at him and he leaned over to pick it up.

It was lighter than he had expected and, turning it over to look at the inside, he found that it was made of wood. It was also surprisingly cold to the touch. He turned it back over to look at the oval face.

It seemed to be a mask of an old woman. A small nose rose up from the curved oval and a mouth opened beneath that, small and smiling, a thin black crescent lying on its back, the upturned points ending in three carved creases.

The eyes were almost the same shape as the mouth, though the other way round so that they pointed downwards, and with softer ends closest to the nose. Above the eyes there were no eyebrows, just a succession of shallow wrinkles. There were more wrinkles below the eyes. The stallholder – a young woman in a heavy sweater and a woollen hat, long red hair parted on either side of her round face – started talking to him in Dutch and then, realising he didn’t understand, switched to English.

‘It’s interesting, no?’ she said. ‘Maybe Japanese. You like it?’

Alex shook his head and put the mask down. But he had only walked on a few paces when something made him stop and turn round. The mask looked back at him from the stall where he had set it down.

Alex was held by the mask’s inscrutable gaze. The vacant eyes seemed to have him in a hypnotic grip and he reached out to pick it up again.

‘How much is it?’

Alex actually disliked the mask quite strongly. But he also knew that for some reason he wanted it.

‘For you – twenty euros,’ she said, pushing her hair away from her face, leaving a long strand stuck to her lipstick. It slashed across her face like a long red scar.

Alex’s father had only given him twenty euros to spend for the whole of that day. It was a lot of money, but even so, he knew he had to have it.

‘OK,’ said Alex.

Alex handed the mask to the stallholder. He reached inside his jacket and took out his wallet, then counted out the notes and handed them over. The woman counted the money and lifted her sweater to put it in a zip-up purse on her belt.

‘I’ll put some paper around it,’ she said. ‘Would you like a bag?’

‘Yes please,’ said Alex, now wondering whether he should have haggled about the price. Angelien walked over just as Alex was taking the bag from the stallholder.

‘Hey, I wondered where you were for a minute,’ said Angelien. ‘What have you bought?’

‘A mask,’ said Alex. ‘Do you want to see?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But how about getting something to eat?’

Alex nodded.

‘Who was that on the phone?’ he asked. ‘Your boyfriend?’

Angelien smiled and pursed her lips.

‘None of your business,’ she said.

Angelien led the way and after a few minutes they arrived at another pancake house. It was much bigger than the one he had been to with his father at lunchtime. This one was like a fast food place, with rows of plastic-covered tables and vases of plastic tulips.

The waiters all said hello when she came in and a woman came round from behind the counter and kissed her on both cheeks.

‘I used to work here,’ said Angelien, when they had sat down at a table by the window. ‘I was a waitress for months when I was starting college. It’s hard work though – my feet were so sore at the end of the evening . . . What is that phrase you English say when your feet hurt?’

Alex shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Sure you do,’ Angelien said, frowning as she tried to remember. ‘I hate it when I can’t remember.’

A waiter came over and Angelien ordered a bacon pancake. Alex did the same.

Alex smiled. He still didn’t really know what to say to Angelien and was happier looking out of the window than into her face. He knew a few girls at school but he had never had a real girlfriend or been on a date. He had never even been alone with a girl like this in a café. Since the trouble with Molly, none of the girls at school would speak to him. They just ignored him completely or giggled and walked away.

Alex looked out of the window, watching cyclists sail through the junction, seemingly fearless of cars and motorbikes. A garbage truck beeped as it reversed over the wheel of a bicycle chained to a tree. The driver craned round to look at what he’d hit and then drove off, leaving the bicycle wheel bent and useless.