The Song of Seven Read online

  No one reacted. The balls calmly click-clacked again. The guests went on playing, drinking, smoking and talking and paid no attention to Frans.

  “There you go, sir,” said the landlord, pulling up a chair for him. “I’ll just bring your beer over.” Then he hurried off, as if to avoid more questions.

  Frans sat down, still not entirely recovered from his surprise. Gradus Grisenstein’s coachman. Gradus Grisenstein…

  Gr… Gr…! He took out the letter, opened it up and looked at the signature.

  Yes, now that he knew the name, he could clearly make it out. It definitely said Gradus Grisenstein!

  Suddenly he felt someone’s eyes peering over his shoulder. He glanced back to find someone standing there, brazenly trying to read the letter.

  As Frans glared in speechless fury, the young man, not at all flustered, gave him a friendly smile and said, “Good afternoon!” He had a pleasant face, although his straight brown hair was far too long for Frans’s liking. His large, dark eyes studied Frans with obvious interest. “Cigarette?” he said, holding out a packet.

  Frans was so surprised that he accepted. The young man didn’t take one himself. He pulled his chair over, threw the packet on Frans’s table and looked for some matches.

  “Here, I’ve a light for you,” said a polite voice. The man with the grey beard had appeared beside them. In one hand he held a pack of playing cards and in the other was a lighter with a huge blue flame.

  “Thank you,” said Frans. Silently, he took a few drags. The young man sat there as if expecting Frans to do something. Who was he? He seemed so familiar…

  Suddenly he realized. It was the Biker Boy. He looked very different, without his crash helmet and leather jacket, but it was definitely him.

  “I know you,” said Frans.

  The boy raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry. You’re mistaken,” was his reply. “I’m sure I don’t know you.”

  “Yes, you do!” said Frans. “We met yesterday evening.”

  And he gave the Biker Boy a stern look, as if he were one of his naughtiest students.

  “Yesterday?” said the boy, with a puzzled expression. “Where?”

  “At Sevenways,” replied Frans.

  “I was here last night, at the Thirsty Deer,” the boy said, so firmly that Frans started to doubt himself. “Everyone here can be my witness.”

  But the word “witness” just reminded Frans of the Biker Boy and his bet. “That’s not true!” he said sharply.

  The boy, however, was just as calm as before. “You might think you’ve met me,” he said, “but I’ve never seen you before. Honestly. I’ll swear it by all six paths of the Seven Ways.”

  Now the man with the beard joined their conversation. “Then we can only conclude, Roberto,” he said, “that you have a double.” He sat down at Frans’s table, gave them both a friendly nod and shuffled the dog-eared cards with clean, white fingers.

  “Roberto!” called one of the men at the billiards table. “Are you coming? It’s your turn!”

  Roberto smiled at Frans, jumped to his feet and went over to join the players. Frans watched him until the landlord arrived with his beer. Putting the letter back into his pocket, he asked, “So who is this Count Grisenstein and where does he live?”

  “Ah, I’m needed elsewhere, sir,” said the landlord. “Be with you in a moment.” And he scuttled off.

  A conspiracy, thought Frans. The longer this goes on, the more it seems like a conspiracy… Whatever next?

  “Take a card,” said the man with the grey beard. He fanned out the pack and held them out to Frans. “Choose one,” he ordered, “and look to see what it is.”

  Frans did as he was told. It was the seven of hearts.

  “Don’t show it to me,” said the man, “and put it back in the pack. That’s right.” Again he shuffled the cards, put them on the table and gave them a tap. “Now reach into your right trouser pocket,” he said.

  Frans did so and pulled out a playing card. “Seven of hearts!” he exclaimed.

  “Let’s do it again,” the man said cheerfully. “And pay closer attention this time. No, don’t think too long about it.”

  The same ritual was repeated. This time Frans took the jack of spades from his left inside pocket.

  “In the art of using playing cards to predict the future, the jack of spades is the villain,” said his peculiar companion. “That’s food for thought, eh?” He stood up and bowed. “It was a pleasure,” he said. And, in a low voice, he added, “You’ll find something else in your left inside pocket.”

  Then he calmly walked off, exchanged a few words with the landlord at the bar and left the pub. Frans stared after him, reaching into his pocket to find that there was indeed something else in there. It wasn’t a playing card, but a business card, a rectangular piece of white card with the following words printed on it in a nice, neat font:

  J. THOMTIDOM

  Magician

  As he looked at the card, other letters took shape beneath the name – handwritten letters. At first they were hazy and red, then they gleamed in grass-green and finally turned pitch-black before his unbelieving eyes. They formed three sentences:

  You’d better not say the name Grisenstein out loud. If you’d like to find out more about him, come and visit me tomorrow after church. My house, “Appearance and Reality”, is on the road from Sevenways to Langelaan.

  “This is all too much!” Frans said to himself, and he slipped the card back into his pocket with slightly trembling fingers. “First a doppelganger and then a magician…”

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder, making him jump. It was Roberto.

  “Don’t forget your beer,” the young man said. “See you around.”

  “Are you off?” asked Frans. “Hey, wait a moment…”

  “I have a suspicion we’ll meet again before long,” said Roberto. “For the second time.” He didn’t wait for a reply, but quickly headed for the door.

  A number of the other guests called goodbye as he left. “See you, Roberto!”

  No, that friendly young man couldn’t possibly be the Biker Boy.

  Deep in thought, Frans drank his beer. Is Gr… Gr… really such a grotesque and grisly grouch, he thought, that no one’s allowed to say his name out loud? I’ll have to visit that magician. I just hope he’s not trying to fool me somehow…

  Without thinking, he took a cigarette from the packet on the table, and then realized it didn’t belong to him. Roberto had left it there. Roberto’s packet… A skull was drawn on it in biro, with three messy signatures around it. So the story about the double wasn’t true. Roberto and the Biker Boy were indeed one and the same person!

  And now the young man had disappeared for the second time.

  Frans stood up, and then sat back down. I can spare myself the trouble of going after him, he thought gloomily. I’m sure I won’t find him. All the people I meet keep popping up and then vanishing like characters in a puppet show! And they act about as strangely as puppets too.

  He looked around the bar, suddenly feeling ill at ease, even though it seemed so cosy. He felt as if the other men were giving him sidelong glances, and secretly watching him, and he imagined they were nudging one another behind his back and whispering about him. The landlord was still behind the bar. He didn’t look cheery now, and had an impenetrable expression on his face.

  If I asked him another question, thought Frans, I’m sure he’d just give me a mysterious look and his answers would all be vague or false.

  So he downed his beer, paid, and went home.

  He visits a magician and finds out that appearances are deceptive

  THIS IS TWO

  “Rrr…! Rrr…!” trilled the alarm clock.

  “Grr…! Grr…!” went Frans’s thoughts. “Count Grisenstein… don’t say the name out loud… Grr… Rrr…!”

  He reached out to turn off the alarm.

  “Gr… Gr… Grisly greybeard… No, that’s the magician… Magici
an? Pah. He just knows a few conjuring tricks…”

  Frans stayed in bed, his eyes half closed. “Invisible ink, that’s what it is!” he said to himself. “It only becomes visible when it’s heated up… I read something about it once. So it was the warmth of my left inside pocket…”

  He threw off the covers. He’d set the alarm clock for a reason; he had to get up and dressed, as he was going to pay a visit to Mr Thomtidom, magician, conjurer or prankster.

  A quarter of an hour later, he was downstairs.

  “Good morning,” said his landlady, who was standing in front of the mirror in the hallway, trying different hats on top of her grey curls. “It’s very early for you to be up and about!”

  “I’m going out,” said Frans. He went into the kitchen and took some bread from the cupboard. On Sundays he always made his own breakfast.

  “That’s nice,” his landlady said. “I’m glad you’ve finally realized you can’t spend all day with your nose stuck in books.”

  “I don’t have any books now,” grumbled Frans, as he buttered the bread. “So I’ll have to stick my nose into other things.” With a thoughtful look on his face, he ate a piece of cheese. “Does this Count Grisenstein actually exist?” he wondered to himself. “I really should find out. Hang on a moment…”

  With a piece of bread in his hand, he walked to the telephone. It was in the hallway, under the stairs. As usual, he bumped his head. “Ow!” he yelled.

  “I always think it’s handy having the phone there in the hallway,” his landlady said. “But you’re so clumsy. You keep banging your head. Every single time! Which hat do you think suits me better, the black one or the purple?”

  “The black one,” said Frans, even though he thought they were both equally unattractive. “And I’m not clumsy, Mrs Bakker. I’m just too tall.” He sat down on the chair by the telephone and started flicking through the phone book.

  F… G… Ga… Go… Gr… Graf with one f and Graff with two fs… Gravenstijn… Green… Grisenberg… No Grisenstein.

  “I’ll wear the purple one,” Mrs Bakker decided. “I don’t see why I should always wear a black hat to church. Oh, and Frans, lunch today is at half past one precisely. You’ll be back by then, won’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Then make sure you’re on time,” she said. “I want to go out at two. I’m off to visit my sister and it’s quite a walk.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Frans, not really listening. No, it wasn’t in the phonebook. “So where does this Count Grisenstein live?” he wondered out loud.

  His landlady said something about a “house” and “stairs” and added, “See you later.”

  The front door closed behind her.

  Frans stayed where he was sitting. “So Count Grisenstein’s house is on the stairs, is it?” he muttered. “Where exactly? In the cupboard under the stairs or on the landing? No, Count Grisenstein doesn’t exist… not really. But, in that case, how does Mrs Bakker know about him?”

  He stood up, banged his head again, and said with a sigh, “No, I’m not going to think about it anymore. First I’ll finish my breakfast and then I’ll visit Mr Magician. And let’s hope, once I’m inside his house, I’ll learn to tell the difference between Appearance and Reality.”

  The weather was sunny and calm, and church bells were ringing in the distance. For the second time, Frans cycled to Sevenways. He was singing an old song from days gone by:

  Green, green, so green the grass

  the grass beneath my feet.

  Oh, where’s my friend, my oldest friend,

  so dear and oh so sweet?

  At the signpost he got off his bike and walked around a little. It was early and the invitation had been for “after church”.

  Six ways, he thought. Well, I know where three of them lead now, and I’ll be going along the fourth one before long. Maybe I’ll take a look at the fifth and sixth paths at some point too. But there isn’t a seventh way, and that’s decidedly strange. He started singing again:

  Green, green, so green the grass,

  What do I seek to find?

  A mysterious count and my missing books.

  You have them? Oh, so kind…

  Frans moved on to a different song:

  In The Hague there lives a count –

  and then he started again:

  In a house there lives a count

  and his…

  Then he faltered and stared at the seventh arm of the signpost. Was it just a coincidence? He could read it very clearly: the T, and the O and the S, and the T, R and S he’d seen before – and he could fill in the rest of the letters now. HOUSE. STAIRS. The House of Stairs. That was it!

  He looked at the ruin and shook his head. “Maybe the pub was called the House of Stairs,” he said to himself, “although it doesn’t seem like a very suitable name. I only found one staircase in there and it wasn’t very impressive. And I’m certain there’s no count living there!”

  He climbed back onto his bike and set off on the way to Langelaan. The road was wide and straight, with tall trees on either side, and it looked very grand and well-kept, the sort of lane where you might expect to find country mansions, though after half an hour’s cycling Frans still hadn’t seen any such houses. But then, ten minutes later, he spotted his destination.

  On his left, some way back from the road, stood a large house. A plaque on the wall announced that its name was “Appearance and Reality”. A gravel path, lined with pots of geraniums, led to the front door.

  Frans leant his bike against a tree and looked at his watch. It was exactly quarter past eleven. The magician’s house looked different than he’d expected; he’d been imagining something old and mysterious. This house, though, was new – brand new, in fact. All he could see was the brick front of the house, with its neat, straight lines. The windows were all closed with yellow shutters, which gleamed as if the paint were still wet.

  He walked up to the front door, read the nameplate – J. THOMTIDOM, Magician – and pressed the bell.

  A few seconds later, he heard a click and a metallic voice said, “Push the door and come in.”

  Frans did as he was told, and the door opened inwards. He took two steps before stopping to stare, open-mouthed. He could never have imagined the sight that greeted his eyes! Not a corridor, not a hallway or lobby… the door opened onto a stretch of grass in the open air, with trees on both sides. And at the other end of the field, at the foot of a hill, was an old army tent.

  Frans glanced back; the door was still there. The wall was just a façade. “Which just goes to prove,” he said out loud, “that appearances are indeed deceptive.”

  “A very astute observation!” a voice called. And Mr Thomtidom appeared from the tent.

  Both men walked across the field and stopped, facing each other. The man who called himself a magician gave Frans a look of approval.

  “Welcome,” he said. “We’ve already met, so there’s no need for formalities.”

  “I know your name,” Frans began, “but you don’t…”

  “I know you’re called Frans van der Steg,” Mr Thomtidom said, interrupting him. “You’re a teacher, you’re twenty-four years old, you’re just over six foot one inch tall, and you have red hair.”

  “The part about the hair isn’t so hard to guess,” Frans said drily. He decided that he was not going to let anything else surprise him.

  “To a colour-blind person, your hair might just as easily be green,” said Mr Thomtidom. “But I think it’s a very fine red. A proper dark red… not that carroty colour. Come along, the coffee’s ready.”

  “So this is actually your home? In, um, reality?” asked Frans, when they reached the tent.

  “Well, it’s true that the ugly wall at the front is just for appearances,” replied Mr Thomtidom, “and that this accommodation is a better match for my reality. But to be honest I’m not yet entirely acquainted with my own true reality, even though I’ve studied both philosophy and
psychology.”

  “That all sounds very academic,” said Frans. “I thought you were a magician.”

  “Yes, that is my real profession,” said Mr Thomtidom. “White magic mainly – although I’m sometimes forced to delve into the Dark Arts.” He looked up at Frans with a smile. His eyes were a very pale blue and it was impossible to tell if their gaze was hazy or, in fact, extremely sharp.

  “Don’t let that frighten you, though, Mr Van der Steg,” he added. “Go on in. You’ll have to duck your head. There we go! I’ll open up the front of the tent, so we’ll have more light.”

  Frans looked around. He saw an airbed with a couple of blankets, a camping stove, a frying pan and a folding table, with two cups on, next to a coffee pot and a bowl of sugar. That was all.

  “Please take a seat,” said the magician.

  Frans sat down on the airbed, thinking to himself, The man lives like a hermit! But Mr Thomtidom’s appearance completely contradicted that impression. He seemed far too well-groomed. All his impeccable black suit was missing was a top hat.

  “What are you thinking about?” the magician asked unexpectedly.

  “I’m still trying to tell the difference between appearance and reality,” replied Frans.

  “Aha,” said Mr Thomtidom, “I imagine that’s the influence of the Seven Ways.”

  “Yes. And that’s another example of appearance and reality,” said Frans. “Why is the place called Sevenways? There aren’t seven ways. There are only six!”

  “That is a most profound question,” said the magician, sitting down beside him. “Do you take sugar? You haven’t lived in the area for long, so of course you’re not familiar with our local history. Centuries ago, on the spot where the signpost now stands, there was once a hermit’s cell…”