The Ringmaster's Daughter

by Jostein Gaarder

  Then I said something about feeling a little sullied by our

  financial arrangement, but reminded him that we were still

  living in a capitalist society and that a piece of intellectual

  property was indeed regarded as a commodity. 'This is not

  very different from an artist taking payment for his paint-

  ings,' I said. 'They change ownership too, and the artist

  can't have any claim to the paintings he's already sold.' I

  believe Johannes was glad to be reminded of the normality

  of our arrangements.

  He said: 'I can't preclude the possibility that I'll use some

  of these in a novel I'm writing at the moment ...'

  'Perfectly all right,' I replied. 'You'll make money out of

  them, a lot maybe, and good luck to you. It's not unusual to

  sell a painting for much more than one originally paid for it.

  It's what's known as a good investment.'

  Fortunately he was the one who brought up the most

  sensitive matter. He pointed at the sheaf of papers in front of

  him and said: 'But how can I be sure you won't let the cat

  out of the bag by saying that these aphorisms are really your

  work?'

  I said I was only too pleased that the aphorisms would get

  published and reminded him that I wanted to stay out of the

  limelight. I also mentioned that I had several other things at

  home, jottings of various kinds, and that it wasn't incon-

  ceivable that we'd return to these on a subsequent occasion.

  If I didn't keep quiet about the aphorisms he took with him

  today, I'd ruin the opportunity to sell him something in the

  future.

  This last point was an important one. I had to emphasise

  that I had no intention of selling anything I'd written to

  anyone other than Johannes. This was vital for building up a

  sales network of many clients. Each one had to feel that he

  or she was unique, my sole and only favourite.

  I had reason to believe that this strategy would work for

  many years to come. Authors don't go round announcing

  that they employ a ghost-writer. They want to seem like

  original and thoroughly authentic individuals.

  Correctly handled, there was no reason to fear that my

  customers would begin to shoot their mouths off to one

  another. I needn't be afraid of the web unravelling, the

  threads would only be spun between me and each of my

  clients. There would be none to connect my customers with

  one another.

  Johannes looked about furtively, then he leant across the

  table and whispered: 'Two hundred cash, and I'll give you a

  cheque for six hundred. OK?'

  I nodded. I was particularly grateful for some cash and

  not solely because of the beer I had to pay for. Though the

  evening was still young, I recalled that the bank was closed.

  With discreet movements, almost as if he was performing a

  ballet, he took out the two hundred kroner in notes and

  his cheque book. He wrote out the cheque as slowly and

  thoughtfully as if he was signing a tax return, then pushed

  the cheque and notes across the table towards me, and

  I folded the sheets and pushed them over the table to

  Johannes. Again he squinted round the room, but he didn't

  see the little man with the bamboo cane who was about to

  run under a waiter's feet.

  Johannes quickly stowed the folded pages in the inner

  pocket of his jacket. 'Shall we go?' he asked. But I said I was

  going to have another beer. 'Thank you very much, Petter,'

  were his parting words. With that he got up and began

  walking towards the exit. As he turned the corner towards

  the cloakroom I saw him pat his breast, presumably to make

  sure he really did have the gilt-edged sheaf of papers in his

  pocket. I thought I might photocopy his cheque before I

  cashed it. I didn't quite know why, but I had the feeling it

  might be useful to keep some souvenirs.

  It was a good piece of business for Johannes. His return on

  those aphorisms was many many times his outlay. But that's

  the way it is with any sort of paper investment, you never

  know what it may be worth in the future. But I needed the

  money right there and then. Maria was on the train to

  Stockholm.

  Johannes died a short time ago. He will be remembered for

  his precise, almost lapidary axioms.

  I had already decided not to feed any single author with

  more than one genre. It would have seemed highly

  implausible if the city had suddenly turned into a literary

  cornucopia. There was only one stud, but his rut was

  enough to inseminate an entire flock of writers.

  And so, with one exception, I fed Johannes solely with a

  variety of adages, thoughts and aphorisms, or with 'spice' as

  he once called it. Since he was one of the moving spirits

  behind the Marxist-Leninists' May Day procession, I also

  gave him several clever slogan and catchword ideas over the

  years, though I never took any payment for them.

  The exception was a plot for a story set in Vietnam. The

  sheet of notes he got for a hundred kroner ran something

  like this:

  Two identical twins are born a few minutes apart in a small village

  in the Mekong Delta at the beginning of the 1950s. After their

  mother's rape and murder at the hands of a French soldier before the

  boys are six months old, they are adopted by separate families and

  grow up without seeing each other. One twin joins the FNL, and

  the other the American-backed government force. After the Tet

  offensive the twins come face to face in the jungle. Both are on

  reconnaissance prior to a major action but as yet it's only the two

  brothers who've clashed. They are identical in appearance, and each

  recognises his twin brother. Now, one of them has to die. But the

  two soldiers are equally good with their knives, they have precisely

  the same genetic characteristics, and manage to wound each other

  fatally.

  Some useful ideas: dwell on the choice facing the two of them, the

  logic of war. The man who doesn't kill his brother risks getting

  killed himself. Do the brothers manage to say anything to each other

  before their last gasp? Do they gain any new insight? (A short

  dialogue here?) Don't forget the battle scene: the two dying twins

  who once were at peace with one another in their mother's womb

  and later, when they each suckled at one of her breasts, but who

  have now killed each other. The circle is complete. They were born

  in the same hour and now their blood mingles in a single pool. Who

  finds the twins? What reaction does the discovery provoke?

  Johannes used the story, but turned it into a novella. When

  I read it in a literary periodical a year later, I thought it was

  well written, and I was particularly impressed with his

  detailed knowledge of military hardware and all the telling

  background descriptions of Vietnam. But it made me rather

  depressed all the same.

  Johannes' version of the story ended, of course, with the

  twin who represented the army of liberation being unable tor />
  kill his twin brother, even though this brother had enlisted

  as a lackey of US imperialism. And so he'd been brutally

  liquidated himself.

  Throughout the novella the words 'sly' and 'heroic' were

  used repeatedly, but never of the same twin. Johannes had

  known how to deploy the fact that the twins were identical.

  He had used the story to demonstrate how little effect

  inherited characteristics have on a person's development.

  I can't say I was shocked by this turn of events, for it was

  hardly surprising. That was the way a lot of literature was

  written in the seventies. Literature's job wasn't principally to

  debate problems. It was supposed to be uplifting.

  *

  During the next few years I established myself on a national

  basis and I also made a few contacts in the other Scandi-

  navian countries as well. It took longer to go international,

  that was the next step.

  One important principle was that I couldn't sell the same

  notes more than once. That would have been spotted. What

  a spectacle it would have been if two detective novels

  by two separate authors based on exactly the same plot

  had appeared in the same year! The thought struck me

  occasionally and it was a seductive one, because it would

  indubitably have been interesting to see, just once, what two

  authors made of the same idea.

  I also had to be careful which stories I told in company. I

  couldn't run the risk of a critic pointing out that a recently

  published novel was based on a story which had been doing

  the rounds for ages and which the reviewer had most

  recently heard related across a table at the Tostrupkjelleren.

  This forced me to segregate the stories I could tell myself

  from the plots that were earmarked for sale. I had to curb

  my oral development. Living with this limitation was an

  excellent challenge. It pushed me ever harder to invent

  something new the whole time.

  Right from the start I had to live with one big exception

  to this rule. I'd told so many good stories to Maria that I

  didn't feel I could keep them all back. If Maria read

  Norwegian novels during the eighties and nineties, she'd

  have chuckled quite regularly. In more recent years she'd

  also have been able to reminisce about the days when

  she nestled in my arms, by reading various foreign novels. I

  have several film synopses on my conscience too, or on

  my list of credits, depending on how you look at it. I like

  the thought of Maria going to the cinema and watching an

  epic cinematic version of one of the many stories I made up

  for her after we'd made love. I need no other copyright

  acknowledgement.

  So from the first, Maria was the only one able to pinpoint

  me as The Spider. I never told my authors about Maria, and

  I never told Maria about them, even though my business

  was well established by the time we last met. But I felt I was

  safe with her - she had used my sendees too. Maria's darling

  child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. That was her little

  secret that she didn't want revealed. Perhaps she was as

  scared of it becoming common knowledge as Johannes was

  of the whole city finding out I'd written the twenty aphor-

  isms that had added zest to the novel that proved to be his

  literary breakthrough. In this regard but only in this, Maria

  was in exactly the same boat as Johannes.

  When a thing was sold, it was gone. This didn't pose a

  problem. The idea that I'd ever run out of ideas never

  occurred to me, it was the only thing I simply couldn't

  conceive. I'd been much alone in childhood, I'd had my

  own flat since I was eighteen, I'd been in training ever since

  I went to nursery school.

  However, I made a point of keeping a photocopy of all

  the notes I sold. They were kept in separate ring-binders

  marked 'SOLD'. On the top of each page I wrote who I'd

  sold them to and how much for. In the early days this was

  the only system of receipts I used, but that was before I

  realised that it was possible one day for a counter-force to

  build up, to equalise the pressure that arose from within

  me. It was before I began to carry a dictaphone in my

  inside pocket when I talked to authors, and before I began

  to tape telephone conversations. However, I did keep

  photocopies of every cheque I'd received right back to my

  earliest transactions. And I might as well make it clear that

  those, too, are kept in my bank box, together with the

  tapes.

  The enterprise got going just at the time when photo-

  copiers were coming on to the market. For a short while

  I was dependent on the coin-operated machines at the

  university or in the library, but it wasn't long before I had

  my own Rank Xerox. When personal computers made

  their appearance in the 1980s, the office work became much

  simpler, and when I went international in earnest, I never

  travelled anywhere without a powerful laptop.

  I had to accept being the centre of a large circle of acquaint-

  ance. This was a bit of a trial sometimes, but it wasn't

  onerous. I was a sociable person, I was well liked, and I

  rarely found I had to pay my share of restaurant bills. I

  couldn't always explain why myself but, whenever a bill was

  presented, someone had almost always settled up for me.

  That was just the way it was.

  I had a reputation as a fount of ideas. If they'd only

  known! None of them could see more than the tip of the

  iceberg. How could I have kept the business going if all my

  clients had discovered that, in reality, I'd spun a finely

  meshed web which would one day be so extensive and

  fragile and have so many loose ends that it was doomed to

  unravel?

  At any caf� gathering, several of those seated round the

  table might be my clients, but each thought that he or she

  was the only one, at least in the early years. They thought I

  was monogamous, and I've always considered that a

  peculiarly amusing aspect of my unusual trade. To begin

  with none of my customers had the slightest inkling that

  I was really highly promiscuous. I sometimes felt like a

  polygamist who enjoys the favours of several wives simul-

  taneously. I knew about them and they knew about me,

  but they knew nothing of each other.

  If six or eight of us were in company, possibly three of

  those present might have bought a plot or two from me. But

  each thought he enjoyed a special relationship, and so they

  maintained their respect for each other. This was what they

  lived for. Many of them had already lost their self-respect. In

  those days, lack of self-respect was so rare that I noticed it;

  maybe today it wouldn't stand out so much. Self-respect is

  the name of a mental state that is less and less in evidence.

  And certainly as a virtue self-respect has gone completely

  out of fashion.

  Naturally no one announced that next month they were

  publi
shing a novel based on an idea they'd bought from me.

  But, on the other hand, I several times sensed a certain

  nervousness that I might suddenly forget myself and blurt

  out, for example, that Berit's critically acclaimed detective

  story was built on a six-page synopsis I'd sold her for four

  thousand kroner. I could detect such nervousness in an

  overstrained laugh or a tendency towards abrupt or over-

  frequent digressions.

  While we sat in the Theatercaf� celebrating Karin's suc-

  cess in winning a prestigious award for her latest novel,

  she spent the entire evening following me with her eyes.

  She was ill at ease. I, on the other hand, was feeling

  marvellous. In the citation they had specifically remarked

  on the elegant construction of the narrative. Quite right,

  I thought. I was satisfied with Karin. She'd taken good

  care of what I'd entrusted to her, she hadn't buried her

  talent.

  I wielded considerable power in such company, and that

  was fine by me. I could see nothing wrong in feeling

  powerful. Power doesn't have to be abused, and I was a

  good example of that. I had shared my own power with

  others. I'd always been excessively well endowed with ima-

  gination, so much so that I'd even begun to organise a major

  power distribution. Bold it may have been, brazen too, but

  principally it was generous. As far as the media were con-

  cerned it was Berit who had power and I who was weak. If

  I'd been longing for a spot in the media limelight I would

  have been a self-sacrificing person. But I've never wanted a

  place in the public eye.

  It amused me to see what my authors made of all the ideas

  I fed them, that was all. I had a function, and so I had to

  function. I had to have something to live on as well, I had

  to ensure my cut of the profits of an industry that was

  becoming ever more dependent on my efforts.

  When the results were tolerable, I had the pleasant feeling

  of being surrounded by my own pack of writers. I could feel

  like a king in an enlightened autocracy. I was a passable chess

  player, but I was even better at playing with living pieces. I

  liked pulling the strings, and I found it entertaining to watch

  how the proud authors put on airs. It was fun to watch them

  disporting themselves.

  Even though I wasn't listed in any professional register, I

  decided my business deserved a name. So one day I wrote

  'WRITERS' AID' on the large binders of notes I'd sold. It

  was a good name.

  My business was dependent on bilateral contact with

  authors both at home in my flat and in town. I had to

  cultivate the art of having several best friends at once. This

  led to many invitations to parties and weekend jaunts, far

  too many.

  Once contact had been established I never needed to push

  new products on to my clients. As soon as they required

  fresh material, they would return of their own accord, come

  back to Uncle Petter. So they would get more and more

  dependent on my wares. Some stopped thinking for them-

  selves altogether once they saw what I could supply from my

  own kaleidoscope of clever ideas, it was as if their brains had

  been sucked out. They claimed they felt quite empty.

  Making people dependent on me gave me no pleasure,

  but it was the way I made my living. I lived by hooking fish

  with my bait. I wasn't selling hash or acid, nor yet cheap

  cigarettes or smuggled booze. It was imagination, harmless

  imagination. But it was the key to urban esteem, the key to

  something as complex as a post-modern identity.

  If I came across a needy customer � at a large party, for

  instance � he would draw me into a corner, out into a lobby

  or even sometimes into the lavatory. There he would glance

  nervously this way and that before gabbling out his errand in

  a low voice: 'Have you got anything, Petter?' Or: 'Have you

  got anything today?' Or even: 'What could you give me for

  a thousand kroner?'

  Both in terms of genres and price categories I had plenty

  to offer. A simple bit of inspiration or a pep-talk was clearly

  in a totally different price class from, say, the complete

  outline of a longish novel, or a highly detailed film synopsis.