Through Dead Eyes

by Chris Priestley

  ‘Great,’ said Alex.

  ‘Unpack your stuff and then we’ll head straight out.’

  Alex was already feeling better. Whatever it was that had jangled his nerves a few moments ago seemed to have utterly vanished. His father went back to his room and Alex unpacked his case.

  Alex and his father headed for the pancake house the receptionist had recommended, walking along the canal and then over a humpback bridge lined with bicycles chained to the railings. A tourist boat puttered by beneath them and Alex could hear the sonorous voice of the guide pointing out buildings they passed.

  Clouds still darkened the sky above the serrated roofline of the canal-side buildings but the drizzle that had been falling when they left the hotel was now dying away. The street had seemed almost sleepy from his hotel room, but down at street level it was anything but. The break in rain showers had brought the area back to life.

  Cars and delivery vehicles now rumbled along the canal-side road, and cyclists sped this way and that. Only tourists walked, Alex noticed, and even then some of those wobbled by on hired bikes. There were bikes everywhere.

  They were ridden by all kinds of people: stylish older women in expensive-looking clothes, young women in short skirts with long hair trailing behind them, men in suits, chatting on their mobile phones, their ties flapping over their shoulders.

  Once over the bridge Alex and his father walked up the street facing them, past a row of shops and a cluster of tourists gathered round a map. Alex’s father put down the umbrella he had borrowed from the hotel as the rain stopped entirely and grinned at his son.

  ‘Great, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I love this city.’

  Alex nodded as he stepped out of the path of a cyclist. It was great.

  ‘Look, this is it!’

  Next to a café was the pancake house they were looking for, metal chairs and tables on the pavement under a blue-and-white striped awning. A group of Americans were leaving, kissing and embracing before they went their separate ways.

  Alex and his father sat outside as the rain had stopped. The remains of the last shower dripped from the awning. It was humid and the clouds threatened thunder at any moment, but Alex was glad to be outside. It was nice to sit and watch the world go by.

  It was a narrow, busy little street and although few cars passed by there was a constant stream of motorbikes, scooters and bicycles, pinging their bells loudly as they rode past.

  ‘What do you fancy, Alex?’ asked his father.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, scanning the long list of possibilities with a look of bafflement on his face. The menu was in English, but the choice was dizzying.

  ‘Have a bacon one,’ said his father, pointing it out. ‘You’ll like that.’

  ‘OK,’ said Alex, relieved to have the decision taken from him.

  ‘I’m going to have a coffee,’ said his father. ‘How about you? Do you want a fruit juice or a fizzy water or something?’

  ‘No – I’ll have a coffee as well.’

  ‘Really?’ said his father. ‘Since when did you drink coffee?’

  ‘Since ages ago,’ said Alex. It was actually only a few months since he had discovered a taste for it.

  The waitress came over and though she greeted them in English, Alex’s father replied in Dutch. Alex smiled at his father when she had gone. It was funny hearing him speak Dutch.

  ‘It’s a weird language,’ said Alex, when the waitress had gone. ‘It sounds like you’re swearing all the time.’

  His father laughed. ‘I wonder what we sound like to them?’ he said.

  The pancakes were huge – like pizzas, overlapping the plates they were on. Strips of bacon were laid across them in rows.

  ‘They look good,’ said his father. He reached out and grabbed a small plastic bottle and began to squeeze the contents over his pancakes.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Alex, curling his lip.

  ‘Syrup,’ said his father. ‘Try some.’

  ‘Syrup?’ said Alex. ‘On bacon?’

  ‘Just try it,’ said his father. ‘They do the same in the US. When you come to New York –’

  ‘New York?’ said Alex. ‘We’re going to New York? Cool! When are we –’

  ‘Whoa there,’ said his father. ‘I didn’t say we’d be going next week.’

  ‘But sometime?’ said Alex.

  Alex’s father grinned.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Alex punching the air.

  Daniel Forbes in his English class had never shut up about his trip to New York the previous autumn – or ‘fall’ as he had insisted on calling it ever since.

  When they had finished their pancakes, his father waved at the waitress and mouthed something in Dutch. She nodded and went away to fetch the bill.

  ‘I’ll take you back to the hotel,’ said his father. ‘Saskia will be picking me up soon.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Sorry, Alex,’ said his father. ‘You know that I have to work while I’m here. They are paying for the trip after all.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Alex. ‘But it’s going to be really boring if all I do is hang out at the hotel every day.’

  ‘It won’t be every day, Alex,’ said his father.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s going to be today, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well,’ said his father, ‘we may have solved that problem. Angelien has agreed to show you round.’

  ‘What?’ said Alex. ‘Dad!’

  ‘Come on, Alex,’ said his father. ‘It’s really nice of Saskia to suggest it and good of Angelien to volunteer her time.’

  ‘I don’t even know her!’ said Alex, staring down at the table.

  ‘Well now’s your chance.’ His father stood up and handed some euro notes to the waitress.

  Alex opened his mouth to protest but his father raised his hands.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, Alex,’ he said, more firmly now. ‘I agreed with your headmaster that you could take time off school. We both know why. His only stipulation was that you produce a written piece about your visit. Angelien will be a very good guide, I’m sure.’

  Alex had wondered how long it would be before his father mentioned the business at school. He scowled but made no reply. There was no point in picking at that scab, he knew.

  Chapter 3

  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 s
ay 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.