The Ringmaster's Daughter

by Jostein Gaarder

  I bent down to look at an old escritoire. Henrik Ibsen

  had once sat writing at this very desk. I knew that Ibsen

  had taken room 15 at the old inn, originally a fourteenth-

  century Franciscan monastery. It was here he'd completed A

  Doll's House, and now a portrait of him hung on the wall.

  It struck me that I had grown up in a kind of doll's house

  myself. Once again I fell to thinking that there was some-

  thing I was forever trying to forget, and it wasn't the fairy

  tale I'd scribbled on my mother's wall, but a nightmare that

  sat even deeper. I felt a horror of the cold, dark depths

  beneath the thin ice I'd been skating on.

  I conjectured that it was in this room that Ibsen had

  taught Nora to do her wild Tarantella, which in reality had

  been her dance of death. Anyone bitten by a tarantula could

  dance themselves to death. I'd never thought of it before,

  but now it struck me that the spider had of course been

  Krogstad, the lawyer. I had to smile. I'd come to Naples

  quite by chance. If there was such a thing as destiny, it was

  certainly ironic.

  I glanced down at the sea and again looked around the

  room. Metre Man had begun to wander restlessly to and fro

  across the floor's ceramic tiles. At one point he halted and

  inspected me with an authoritative air, thrusting his bamboo

  cane in my direction. 'Well, then! What now? Shall we confess

  our sins?'

  I unpacked my laptop, sat down at the desk and began to

  write the story of my life.

  Beate

  There are two empty whisky bottles in the corner by the

  fireplace. I don't know why room service hasn't taken them

  away, but I'll put them in the wastepaper basket before I go

  down to breakfast early tomorrow morning.

  I've been here for ten days, and for the past three I've

  written nothing. There was nothing else to write. Now

  there is something more.

  For the first time since Maria left I've met a woman who is

  on the same wavelength as me. I've found a girlfriend here

  and we go on long walks together in the hills above the

  Amalfi coast. She dresses girlishly in white sandals and a

  yellow summer frock, and she'll even venture into the hills

  dressed like this. She's full of humour and not the sort to run

  away from a cold shower. Today we were overtaken by a

  terrific thunderstorm.

  I've thought a lot about Luigi's warning, but I can't

  believe Beate is a decoy of any description. We're already

  strongly attached to one another. If she was sent to the

  Amalfi coast as a decoy, she must have changed her mind

  since. I still haven't noticed any men with earphones and

  we've been up to the Valle dei Mulini twice already. There

  wasn't a soul to be seen.

  I feel certain Beate is harbouring a secret too. Her

  reaction was so extraordinary when we came down from

  the little village of Pogerola this evening. She had a really

  serious anxiety attack, burst into floods of tears and said we

  oughtn't to see each other any more.

  But tomorrow we're to walk across the hills to Ravello.

  Beate is unattached, perhaps I'll ask her if she wants to come

  to the Pacific with me. I shall inform her about Writers' Aid,

  I've already told her some stories. I don't need to restrain

  myself any more, I've de-classified all my synopses, I've

  taken back what is mine.

  Soon Beate will be able to read everything I've written

  at the hotel over these past few days. I don't think my

  adventures with girls will shock her, maybe they'll give her a

  good laugh. After all the tears she's shed this evening, I

  wouldn't begrudge her that. I'm sure she's lived life to the

  full too; I haven't enquired about her past, but it's irrelevant,

  irrelevant to us. She still doesn't know that I'm extremely

  rich, but I'll ask her if she wants to come to the Pacific with

  me before I tell her I'm a man of independent means. I've

  already begun to investigate air routes. There's a flight from

  Munich to Singapore on Wednesday, and I've booked two

  seats just in case. I've booked 1D and 1G in first class.

  After that, we'll see.

  We could do a bit of island-hopping until we find a place

  to settle down. For that matter, we could buy a house.

  Perhaps we'll find a bungalow with a view of the sea. I'm

  not too young to live as a pensioner, and Beate paints

  watercolours.

  My imagination is running away with me again. It's too

  fleet of foot.

  When I'd finished writing out a kind of synopsis of my life -

  up to and including my hasty departure from Bologna � I sat

  for hours by my window just staring down at the breakers

  that swept into the Torre Saracena. It was Good Friday, the

  day before I met Beate. I didn't even go into town to look at

  the great procession that celebrates Christ's Passion.

  I'd decided to enlist the help of the hotel staff in e-mailing

  what I'd written to Luigi. It might be useful to have a back-

  up copy somewhere remote from my own person. Luigi

  could, if he wished, give my entire story to his journalist

  friend on the Corriere della Sera and let him use the material

  in any way he chose. It was in my interests that the story was

  made public, or at least referred to, as soon as possible. After

  that I could see about getting out of the country. An outlaw

  shouldn't remain too long in one place.

  However, when I awoke the next morning, I decided to

  spend a day in Amalfi before I took off. It was Easter

  Saturday, the weather was beautiful and I still hadn't been to

  the Paper Museum. After breakfast I went into the town and

  bought the Corriere della Sera as I'd done every day. A couple

  of mornings previously, in a brief article about the Bologna

  Book Fair, there had been a few lines to the effect that this

  year's fair hadn't produced any blockbusting title that every

  publisher was fighting to get an option on, there was no new

  Harry Potter on the horizon. The rumours this year, it said,

  were quite different: they all centred on 'The Spider'. This

  mysterious nickname was a front for a modern fantasy

  factory (sic!) that sold literary and half-finished novels to

  writers all over the world. The article's author, a Stefano

  Fortechiari, pointed out that in antiquity an influential

  author might be accredited with a plethora of different

  books which, in reality, were the works of various other

  writers. The fantasy factory was supposed to be the complete

  reverse. Several dozen novels, perhaps several hundred,

  were in fact based on drafts and ideas that originated from

  one single person. I had to smile as I read these lines. I had

  made my mark.

  The article's author had an interesting point, but the

  phenomenon he was describing wasn't as unique as might

  be supposed. From time immemorial, churchmen had

  claimed something similar for the books of the Bible. The

  Bible originated from many different hands,
of course, but

  theologians believed there was one all-encompassing meta-

  author behind the whole collection. They didn't necessarily

  think that God had verbally inspired every sentence in the

  Bible, God didn't work like that. But he'd given each of the

  authors a clue. He'd given each something to think about.

  I had considerable collegial sympathy for the way God

  worked with people. He, too, laid claim to a certain recom-

  pense, he demanded everything from praise to penance. But

  he went further than me: he threatened to destroy all those

  who didn't believe in him, and modern man refuses to live

  under such conditions. Now God was dead and it was the

  frustrated and their conspiracy that had murdered him.

  So, this Stefano was some corroboration that Luigi hadn't

  been bluffing, but it was little more than an indication.

  There was nothing in the current article to show that this

  journalist had written anything about the 'fantasy factory'

  before. Quite the opposite � it was almost as if the article was

  based on the long chat I'd had with Luigi in Bologna. Nor

  was there a single word in the article about either the

  Norwegian or Italian versions of Triple Murder Post-mortem.

  I couldn't quite be sure if there really were any plans to

  kill me, but I wouldn't allow any suspects the benefit of the

  doubt.

  I crossed the busy coast road and sat down in a pizzeria on

  the beach. I ordered a tomato salad, a pizza and a beer.

  I had to have my eyes about me the whole time. I no

  longer believed that anyone had followed me from Bologna,

  but it wasn't inconceivable that, for example, a British or

  Scandinavian publisher had combined a trip to the Book

  Fair with an Easter holiday in southern Italy afterwards. The

  Bologna Book Fair was always either just before, or just

  after, Easter.

  While I waited for my order, I read the paper, but I also

  became aware of an attractive woman in a yellow dress and

  white sandals. She might have been about thirty and sat by

  herself at one of the neighbouring tables. She tried to light

  a cigarette with a pink lighter, but without success. All at

  once she got up, crossed to my table and asked if I had any

  matches. She spoke Italian, but it was easy to hear that she

  wasn't a native. I told her I didn't smoke, but just then I

  caught sight of a lighter lying on the table next to mine. I

  simply picked it up, without asking the German tourists'

  leave, and lit her cigarette before replacing the lighter and

  nodding my thanks to the Germans. When I'd eaten and

  paid my bill, I waved to the woman with the cigarette as I

  went. She sat drawing something on a sketch pad, but she

  gave me a serenely enigmatic smile and waved back. I was

  certain I'd never met her before, for if I had I'd certainly

  have remembered such a special face.

  I walked up through the town and went into the Museo

  della Carta in an old paper mill. Amalfi was one of the first

  places in Europe to manufacture paper. An elderly man

  demonstrated how they pulped wood prior to pressing and

  drying the wet sheets. He still made paper the old way - a

  tradition, he explained, that went right back to the Arabs of

  the twelfth century. He showed me the exquisite writing

  paper he'd made and how a watermark was formed.

  It was hot, but I was determined to take one final walk in

  the Valle dei Mulini before I left Amalfi. I'd been up there

  once before, and then as now it had been hard to negotiate

  the alleys that led out of town, but soon I'd left civilisation

  behind me.

  Luxuriant lemon groves flanked the path on both sides. The

  trees were covered in black and green nylon netting to protect

  the lemons from wind and hail. I greeted a little girl who was

  playing with an old hula-hoop, but saw no trace of the black-

  clad woman who, a week before, had leant from a window

  and given me a glass of limoncello. The Easter sunshine had

  coaxed out hundreds of tiny lizards. They were extremely

  timid. Perhaps people didn't come along here very often.

  I put the last house behind me and passed an old aque-

  duct. I was walking on a gravelled hiking path called the Via

  Paradiso, and its name was apposite. Soon the Via Paradiso

  had become an idyllic, riverside cattle track in the bottom of

  the lush valley.

  The last time I'd walked here I hadn't met a living soul,

  but now all of a sudden I heard the sound of snapping twigs

  on the path behind me. Next moment she was by my side. It

  was the woman in the yellow dress.

  'Hello!' she said, still in Italian, smiling broadly, almost as

  if she expected to find me here. She had deep brown eyes

  and a profusion of wavy, dark blonde hair.

  'Hello!' I replied. I cast a wary glance down the path, but

  she was alone.

  'It's so lovely up here,' she said. 'Have you been before?'

  'Once,' I said.

  Clearly she couldn't decipher that I was a foreigner. She

  pointed to a waterfall fifty metres ahead. Then she said:

  'Shall we bathe?'

  This line alone was sufficient to convince me that I'd met

  the woman of my life. We'd never seen each other before,

  she was wearing white sandals and was dressed in nothing

  but a thin summer frock. It was sweltering hot, neither of us

  looked particularly prim, but suggesting we should bathe

  together was very uninhibited.

  Shall we bathe? The three words were pregnant with sub-

  text. She both did and did not mean that we should jump

  into the waterfall together. She was saying that the sun was

  hot. She'd pointed to the waterfall and called it refreshing

  and beautiful: it was tempting. She had posed the brief

  question to see how I'd react. She was saying that she liked

  me. Now she wanted to see how I responded. She wanted

  to watch me disport myself. She was setting the tone, the

  three words were a tuning fork. The woman in the yellow

  dress had said that she was willing to walk with me, but that

  she would rather not have any heavy conversation. She was

  saying we had nothing to be ashamed of.

  I remembered Luigi's admonition and said: 'Perhaps we

  could do that tomorrow.'

  She had inclined her head slightly. She had been testing

  me and I'd given the best answer she could hope for. It was a

  Solomonic answer. Had I immediately ripped off my shirt

  and begun loosening my belt, I'd have made a fool of myself.

  The invitation wasn't that literal. It was a rebus. If I'd said

  that I never bathed in waterfalls with women I didn't know,

  I would again have failed the tests she'd set me. Hiding

  behind such general norms would have been over-starchy, it

  would have been a rebuff.

  She proffered her hand. 'Well, tomorrow then,' she said.

  She laughed. 'Come on!' she said. And we began walking.

  She walked a pace ahead of me on the path.

  Her name was Beate and she came from Munich. She'd

  been
a week in Amalfi too, but she mentioned she was

  staying all summer. She painted watercolours, had rented a

  bed-sit from an affable widow, and was due to hold a big

  exhibition in Munich at the end of September. I'd have to

  come to Munich then, she told me. I promised - I couldn't

  really do otherwise. The previous year she'd had a small

  exhibition of scenes from Prague after spending a couple of

  months in the Czechoslovakian capital.

  We had switched to German. It was easier for me to speak

  German than for Beate to struggle on in Italian. I could hear

  that she hadn't been born in Bavaria and thought there had

  to be a reason why she didn't say where she came from. I

  don't know where I got the notion that her parents might be

  Sudeten-Germans, but it was probably due to her mention

  of Prague.

  I didn't tell her exactly what I was called, but I used a

  suitable pseudonym. I looked her right in the eyes as I said it.

  I needed to test her out. She gave not the least reaction to

  the pseudonym.

  I wasn't a fool. Perhaps even now I was in love, but I

  wasn't irresponsible. I couldn't shut out Luigi's warning.

  She didn't ask my surname, but I told her I was Danish and

  lived in Copenhagen. She didn't react to that either. I told

  her I was the editor-in-chief of a Danish publishing com-

  pany, which was quite plausible. I'd brought a laptop and

  some work to Amalfi, I explained. I needed to get away for a

  while. I thought it sounded reasonable. But I'd under-

  estimated her.

  'Work?' she queried.

  'Some editorial work,' I said.

  'I don't believe a word of it,' she said. 'No one travels

  from Denmark to southern Italy just to concentrate on

  "editorial work". I think you're writing a novel.'

  I couldn't lie to her, she was much too clever.

  'All right,' I said. 'I'm writing a novel.' Then I added: 'I

  like it when you see through me.'

  She shrugged her shoulders. 'What is your novel about?'

  I shook my head and said I'd promised myself not to talk

  about what I was writing until it was finished.

  She accepted my answer, but I still wasn't sure she believed

  me. Was it possible that she knew who I was? If Luigi's hint at

  an intrigue had been a joke, I'd never forgive him.

  We passed the moss-covered ruins of several paper mills.

  Beate pointed out flowers and trees and said what they were

  called. We spoke about the Jena Romantics' fascination

  with ruins and the traditional countryside. We talked about

  Goethe and Novalis, Nietzsche and Rilke. We talked about

  everything. Beate was a fairy tale, she was a whole anthology

  of fairy tales. She was no straightforward type, she had a

  multiple personality. I felt she was like me.

  It's not often I'm captivated by a woman, but on the rare

  occasions when I do meet a woman I fall for, it doesn't take

  me long to get to know her. It is those you don't like that

  take the longest time to know.

  After we'd passed the ruins of an ancient mill called

  Cartiera Milano, a path turned off to the right. Beate asked

  me if I'd been to Pontone. I knew it was the name of a small

  town that lay on the saddle of hills above Amalfi, but I

  hadn't been up there. 'Come on!' she said and beckoned me

  to follow. She had a map and told me that the path was

  called Via Pestrofa. My inability to work out any etymology

  behind the name irritated me.

  We put the valley behind us and joined a stone-paved cart

  track with high kerbstones on either side of it. We halted

  several times and looked down into the valley. We could

  still hear the deep roar of the waterfall we were going to

  bathe in next day, but soon its sound subsided and merged

  into the gentle chatter of the river that still reached us from

  the depths of the Valle dei Mulini.

  We were short of breath by the time we got up to Pontone

  an hour later. We had talked continuously and we were

  already well enough acquainted for each to know that the

  other had a secret in life. I was afraid to let her know my

  intimacies, and she seemed just as anxious that I shouldn't