The Ludwig Conspiracy(140)

Steven feels bored; he is only just six, and there are no playmates here. Just a lot of uninteresting grownups and a girl who is about ten years old and bigger than he is. She has long blond braids and is wearing a white dress. She gives him a bad-tempered look and hides behind her father . . . Steven has forgotten her name. Daddy says she’s his cousin and they should play together. The girl’s eyes flash like burning coals, and she frightens him. He runs out into the corridor, away from the girl, down the broad spiral staircase . . .

The music of piano and strings can be heard on the second floor. Steven hears the laughter of the guests, sometimes shrill, sometimes menacing, the clatter of cutlery, the clink of glasses, but it gets quieter and more muted the closer he comes to the library at the end of the corridor, which is the room where he plays, his dusty citadel. Many of the books here are more expensive than a car, his father once told him. “One of them is even irreplaceable. You will inherit it one day, but don’t ask questions now. Let Daddy read in peace . . .”

Steven pushes the heavy double doors, and they open with a squeal; everything is dark in here, the switch for the light is much too high up for him . . . but Steven has brought one of the brightly colored Chinese lanterns from the garden with a candle inside it to light the way.

The bookshelves tower up in front of him; he can smell the dust between the pages of the books; he wants to go on reading those animal stories by the man with the funny name. Or the story of the wolf and the seven little goats . . .

“You’ll know him by his rough voice and his black paws, the mother goat tells her kids . . .”

Suddenly Steven catches sight of a picture above his father’s armchair. It shows an old man with stern, piercing eyes and a huge mustache. He has often seen it up there, but this time it is standing out from the wall a little way, like a small door standing ajar.

Steven cautiously moves the picture aside, and behind it he sees a second door, made of iron. That door is open as well, and there’s a pretty little treasure chest inside it, containing an old book, with a white swan on the cover. It looks like a book of magic spells. Steven decides that he really must ask his parents if they will give him the little treasure chest so that he can keep his plastic knights in it.

He opens the book, and something about it is strange. There are letters in it that he has never seen before. They look like magical signs—maybe it really is a book of magic spells. Steven holds the shining lantern closer to the curly letters; he wants to know what they say; he guesses that it must be something very, very important. This is the book that his father was always talking about . . .

All of a sudden Steven feels a draft of air behind him. He turns around and sees that girl from downstairs standing there in her white dress, with her long blond braids. She points her fingers at the little treasure chest on the floor, and the book with the white swan on the cover in his hands. “Give that here!” she shouts. “It belongs to Grandfather! Give it to me, you bastard, you beast, you thief!”

She falls on Steven and tries to grab the book, but he takes it away from her. They fall to the floor, and she scratches his face. Steven shrieks; her fingernails are boring into his eyelids; she is thrusting them into his eyes like needles; green and yellow flashes go through his head . . . “You bastard, you dirty thief! Give it here! Give it here!”

All at once she cries out in pain and rolls to one side. Steven sees little flames licking at the hem of her dress. The Chinese lantern with the candle flickering inside it lies crushed on the floor beside her. The girl screams and rolls back and forth; the books around her catch fire. The girl sets more and more of the books in the shelves and on the desk alight. Now she looks like an angel falling from heaven, like an angel in a purgatorial fire made of books . . .

Gray smoke rises, enveloping the bookshelves. Steven reaches for the book of magic, puts it in the little wooden chest, and runs out into the corridor, toward a window. With the little chest in his hand, he slides down along the ivy and into the garden. He must get away from there, away from the crackling, smoking books, away from the girl with her burning dress.

At last, on the outskirts of the garden, the dilapidated teahouse emerges in front of him. Steven pushes the crooked door open, crawls in on all fours like a baby, and gets under the table. Mom and Dad will be very cross with him for playing with fire. The library is their greatest treasure, they always say; they will scold him. Steven crawls farther in, behind the dusty, folded garden chairs, and the moldy-smelling tablecloths stacked up in piles in the teahouse, but he holds the little treasure chest tight. He is a stone, a silent stone in the earth, and no one can see him.