The Ringmaster's Daughter

by Jostein Gaarder

prevent the murders from taking place.

  The victims were nearly always done to death outdoors in forest

  or farmland, and always with a sharp butcher's knife. Soon, almost

  half the guests from Hamilton's fancy dress ball had been killed, and

  the serial killer began to get closer to the laird and the duke, not to

  mention the chief constable. He knew very well that he'd been the

  sixteenth piece to be taken on the board.

  Naturally enough, one of the first suspects was Iain MacKenzie

  who'd been so irrevocably humiliated by his wife that fateful night,

  and had now lost her for good. Apart from the laird and the duke,

  MacKenzie was the last piece left standing on the chessboard and, in

  theory at least, he might have been able to remember every move in

  the game. But when the thirteenth and fourteenth murders took

  place while MacKenzie was in police custody, he was set free with a

  pat on the shoulder.

  The laird himself was questioned by the police. It was he who

  had lost the game, not without a little disgruntlement, and he was

  also one of the few who knew the game move by move. The police

  also wanted to ask the laird why he had organised such a bizarre

  masquerade in the first place.

  When the butler was brought in for questioning at the police

  station, they raked over certain inconsistencies between his own

  statements and the laird's, but he was never on the list of suspects.

  He was, however, able to tell the police that, both before and after

  that calamitous Midsummer's Eve, he'd been concerned about

  Hamilton's mental health.

  The farmer and his wife who'd cried off only a few days before the

  party were also brought in and eliminated from the enquiry.

  She was finally caught red-handed after gaining entry to MacIver's

  barn and stabbing the farmer in the chest with a butcher's knife.

  It had been easy enough for Mary Ann to gain entry to the local

  farms, lawyers' offices and large estates. Nor had she found any

  difficulty in enticing the women and men of the place out into forests

  and moors.

  Chief Constable MacLachlan was an experienced police officer,

  but even he had to ask Mary Ann what her motive for the most

  brutal series of killings in Scotland's history could have been.

  The bewitchingly beautiful Mary Ann told him it was shame.

  It had been an enchanted evening, and she clearly recalled all

  the lips she'd kissed and all the passionate embraces she, with

  tenderness and desire, had allowed herself to be swept up in, but

  subsequently she had felt ashamed of her immorality. She could

  have elected to take her own life, but that wouldn't have made

  things any better. Mary Ann couldn't bear the thought that any of

  the laird's guests should go on living with the recollection of her

  chasing about the hedges ofHamilton's garden giving herself to half

  of Scotland.

  Many attended and wept bitterly when Mary Ann was hanged

  at Glasgow a few months later.

  That September I began to study history. Sometimes I

  invited a girl student home for cheese and wine or omelettes

  and lager. I could grill steaks as well, and I could make stew,

  fish soup and pickled herring.

  I was just waiting for Maria to come and tell me that she'd

  got the job she'd applied for in Stockholm. Then she rang

  one evening and asked if she could come round. When she

  turned up, she was carrying a large bunch of yellow roses.

  They were for me. It seemed strange. I didn't know what

  she wanted, but I knew that something was up.

  We sat leaning across the kitchen table holding hands. I'd

  switched off all the lights. Only a single lighted candle stood

  on the table between us. We'd drunk a bottle of cheap red

  wine.

  I was glad to have Maria back, but I wanted her to get to

  the point. First, she told me she'd got the job in Stockholm

  and that she'd be moving in December. I thought that I

  could learn to live in Sweden too, but before I was able to

  speak Maria said something that shut the idea of Stockholm

  out for ever.

  She looked into my eyes and said that she had a favour to

  ask of me. It was something that would last our entire life-

  time, she said.

  I felt a tremor pass through my body. For the first time I'd

  been able to embrace the notion of something that might

  last my whole life. I liked the sound of the word 'last', it was

  a beautiful word.

  'I want to take a child to Stockholm with me,' she said.

  Once more I felt that Maria was the only woman I'd ever

  met whom I didn't always understand. It was what I liked so

  much about her. It's impossible to love anyone you always

  understand completely.

  'I want you to give me a child, Petter,' she said.

  I didn't grasp the significance of what she was saying. I

  was still thinking about what it would be like to move to

  Stockholm. Should I sell the Oslo flat? Or simply let it out?

  But then Maria said that she didn't want to spend her

  entire life with one man. She was just like me, she said.

  Maria knew me intimately, I'd told her about all my female

  visitors. I felt I was seeing myself in a mirror.

  Maria wanted to have a child by me. She said I was the

  only man she could contemplate as a father to her child,

  she'd known that since we first met at Ullev�lseter, but she

  couldn't tie herself to me. She asked me to make her

  pregnant. She asked me to inseminate her.

  I laughed. I thought it was a rather neat idea, and one so

  absolutely in my spirit. Procreation without commitment

  was right up my street.

  We sat there a long time talking the matter over, but not

  at all in an earnest way. We were laughing and joking. Maria

  wanted us to sleep together again, and the idea was alluring.

  We could sleep together until Maria got pregnant. Then

  she'd have to leave for Stockholm.

  Despite all this, I wasn't ready to father a child. I wonder

  if I ever have been. The mere thought of looking into my

  own child's eyes struck me as awful. I hadn't liked having

  my head patted and I hadn't enjoyed having my cheek

  pinched. So how would I manage being the one doing the

  patting?

  I mulled over these aspects as well. I didn't want a child,

  but I could help Maria. The more we talked, the more

  convinced I became that her idea was a brilliant one. She

  stipulated that we had to make a pact. She said we had to

  promise not to try to find one another after she'd moved to

  Stockholm. We would never be able to meet again. I wasn't

  even to have her address. And, most importantly, we were

  to swear that even the child's paternity was to be a secret

  between the two of us. All I was to be told was whether it

  was a boy or a girl.

  I was so fascinated by this scheme that I felt the blood

  begin to pound in my veins. Maria was not just my equal, I

  felt she excelled me in talent and audacity.

  Giving a woman a child that wasn't to be mine suited me

/>   perfectly. I'd always liked spreading myself, emptying

  myself, but I'd never been much interested in what I might

  call copyright. I'd never had any need to be applauded for

  what I did or initiated, not even when I was little. I received

  no ovation for the taxis I ordered. Ordering taxis had been a

  wonderful idea, but no one had thanked me for it after-

  wards.

  Now we'd be able to meet often in the days to come.

  That alone was a great inducement. I've never found it easy

  to look more than a few days into the future. I've looked

  backwards and to the sides, but I've never taken much

  account of the days to come. I told Maria that I accepted her

  conditions. It would be an honour to make her pregnant, I

  said. It would give me such enormous pleasure. We had

  a long laugh at that. We guffawed. We got randier and

  randier.

  Several glorious weeks followed, and even now they feel

  like the only weeks of my life when I've been truly alive.

  We termed our special relationship an ad hoc romance.

  We couldn't stay in bed making children all day, but we

  spent the entire twenty-four hours together. We went for

  long walks in the city and in the forest, and I narrated some

  of my zaniest stories. Maria had a particular penchant for an

  involved tale about a jeweller who committed a posthumous

  and thoroughly premeditated triple murder. I actually told

  the story I'd sold to the author in Club 7, too. After all,

  Maria was leaving the country.

  I had to tell some of the stories twice or three times. Maria

  said she wanted to try to learn them by heart. The only

  problem was that I was never able to tell a story exactly the

  same way twice. At times like these Maria would leap in and

  prompt me. She couldn't understand how she could be

  better at remembering what I'd said and the exact way I'd

  expressed it. I explained that the only real skill I possessed

  was improvisation.

  Soon came the day we'd both been waiting for, Maria

  with joy and I with sorrow. Her pregnancy test was positive

  and Maria opened her arms wide and rejoiced. Jokingly she

  said that I'd be a 'marvellous daddy'. We cackled loudly at

  that as well.

  Maria remained in Oslo a couple of months more before

  moving to Stockholm. We saw less of each other again. She

  sometimes phoned and asked me over to the campus to tell

  her a story, and I never made excuses, but it was odd to

  think that a part of me had already taken root in her body.

  Then Maria went. She rang before she left. I didn't go

  with her to the station.

  *

  I was the right man to give a woman a child he wasn't to

  share. Why shouldn't I let Maria have the child she wanted?

  It was easy. It was free. It cost me nothing. I reckoned it was

  I who should be grateful. But everything has two sides. I

  never imagined I'd have to pay so dearly for it. I wasn't

  allowed to see Maria again.

  However, it took several years before our solemn pact

  came into full force. She came to Oslo with her daughter

  four times in all. Maria simply called her 'Poppet', but she'd

  obviously given her another name as well. I imagined that

  Maria used a pet name just to keep her real one from me. At

  our final meeting, the child was almost three. That was

  when the pact was renewed and it had to be the very last

  time I saw her. Maria's idea was that the little girl mustn't

  form any impression of her father. And for that matter I

  wasn't to form any real image of her either, as I wasn't a

  proper father.

  She was a sweet little girl. I didn't think she took after

  Maria or me, but I could see a clear resemblance to my

  mother; she had the same high cheekbones and the same

  widely spaced eyes. I felt my mother was reborn, and that

  it was I who'd given her a new chance. I realised, of course,

  that I was fantasising.

  The last time I met Maria and the little girl was on a warm

  June evening in 1975. We only had a few hours together,

  and we spent them by Lake Sognsvann. We'd brought along

  prawns, French bread and white wine. Maria and I sat

  chatting about the old days while the little girl splashed

  about at the water's edge with an inflatable swan. When she

  ran up from the water for her juice and biscuits, both mother

  and daughter permitted me to wrap her in a bath towel and

  dry her. I helped her with her dress too, it was the least I

  could do. Maria had once said that I'd make a 'marvellous

  daddy'.

  Poppet sat down on the towel between us, and I began to

  tell her a long fairy tale, or a saga as I called it. She was

  laughing even before I really got going. I don't know if she

  understood what I said, and perhaps that was why she was

  laughing, but I tried to use some Swedish words to make

  things easier for her.

  I told of a small girl about her own age, who was called

  Panina Manina and whose father was the ringmaster of the

  finest circus in the whole, wide world. The circus came

  from a faraway land, but once upon a time, long ago, it was

  on its way to Stockholm where, by invitation of the King

  and Queen of Sweden, it was to set up its big top in a park

  right in the middle of the Swedish capital. All the circus

  trailers drove up through Sweden in one long line, and

  in the procession were elephants and sea-lions, bears and

  giraffes, horses and camels, dogs and monkeys. The trailers

  also contained clowns and jugglers, fakirs and tight-rope

  walkers, animal tamers and bare-back riders, magicians and

  musicians. The only child in this whole great caravan was

  Panina Manina. She was treated like a little princess because

  she was the ringmaster's daughter, and it was said that

  destiny had decreed that she would become a tamous circus

  artiste.

  The little girl sat bolt upright listening to my story, but

  she never said anything, so I couldn't be certain how much

  she was taking in. I assumed that at least she was getting

  something of the atmosphere of the fairy tale. I glanced at

  Maria, and she indicated that it was all right for me to

  continue. I think she was pleased that the little girl, too,

  could share at least one story. Even Metre Man had settled

  himself against a tree so that he could hear the rest of the

  tale. As he sat down, he raised his green hat and gave me a

  confidential wink. I think he was in a good mood. Perhaps it

  was the first time he'd felt like one of the family.

  I told how all the big circus lorries and trailers halted for

  dinner by a large lake deep in the Swedish forests and, while

  they were there, the ringmaster's daughter wanted to paddle

  in the water. The ringmaster thought that one of the clowns

  was keeping a watchful eye on her, but the clown had

  misunderstood and thought the animal tamer was supposed

  to be looking after Panina Manina while the adults roasted

  wild boar steaks on a huge cam
p fire. At all events, when the

  great convoy was due to continue its journey to Stockholm

  a few hours later, nobody could find her. They searched for

  her all evening and night, and many of the animals were let

  loose to see if they could pick up her scent, but all to no

  avail. After searching high and low for Panina Manina most

  of the next day, everyone came to the conclusion she must

  have drowned in the lake. For hours, two camels stood at

  the water's edge drinking, they drank and drank, and there

  was a general belief that this was because they recognised

  the smell of Panina Manina in the water, and they were

  probably trying to drink the lake dry. But at last the camels'

  thirst was slaked and the ringmaster's daughter was still

  missing, and remained so. It was said that the ringmaster

  cried himself to sleep for many a sad year afterwards, because

  Panina Manina had been the apple of his eye, he had been

  fonder of her than all the rest of the circus put together.

  I pretended to wipe away a tear, and I think the little girl

  gazed up at me. It seemed she had at least understood the last

  thing I'd said; after all, she'd been paddling down there at

  the water's edge herself quite recently, so I hurriedly went

  on:

  But Panina Manina hadn't drowned. She'd simply gone

  off to do a little exploring while the grown-ups sat in front

  of the fire drinking wine and eating wild boar meat. She

  followed a nice little path into the forest, and soon her legs

  were so tired that she sat down in the ling between the tall

  trees. As she sat there listening to the doves cooing and the

  owls hooting, she fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke,

  she imagined she'd only dropped off for a few minutes, but

  in reality she'd slept all through the night and more besides,

  for the sun was now high in the sky. Panina Manina took

  the path again to find her way back to the camp fire, but she

  wasn't able to find a single circus trailer, and soon she was

  lost in the forest. Late that evening she arrived at a small

  homestead with a little red house and a flagpole flying the

  Swedish flag. A pink caravan stood parked in front of the red

  wooden building, and perhaps it was this that attracted

  Panina Manina's attention, for to her it looked rather like a

  circus trailer. Although she was only three, she went up

  to the caravan and knocked at the door. When no one

  answered, she crawled up a small flight of stone steps leading

  up to the red house and knocked on the door there. It

  opened and out came an old woman. Panina Manina wasn't

  frightened; maybe this was because she was a real circus girl.

  She looked up at the strange lady and said that she'd got

  separated from her daddy � but she spoke in a language the

  woman couldn't understand, because Panina Manina came

  from a faraway land that the old lady had never visited.

  Panina Manina hadn't eaten for almost two days, and now

  she put her little hands to her mouth to show that she was

  hungry. At that the woman realised that she was lost in the

  forest and let the little girl in. She gave her herring and

  meatballs, bread and blackberry juice. Panina Manina was so

  hungry and thirsty that she ate and drank like a grown-up.

  When night came, the woman made up a bed for her and,

  because they couldn't talk to each other properly, she sat

  down by the bed and sang her a lullaby until she fell into a

  deep sleep. As she had no idea what the girl's name was she

  simply called her 'Poppy'.

  Poppet glanced up at me again. Perhaps it was because I

  was miming the way Panina Manina ate herring and meat-

  balls, but it might also have been because she had noticed

  that the girl in the story had been called 'Poppy'. I wasn't

  certain she'd understood much of the story itself, but I went

  on:

  Panina Manina lived in the little house for many years. No

  one in the whole of Sweden managed to find out who her

  mother and father were and, as the years passed, Panina

  Manina's memory of the ringmaster grew dimmer and

  dimmer. Soon she was talking fluent Swedish and had

  forgotten her own language because she hadn't got anyone