The Ringmaster's Daughter

by Jostein Gaarder

where Beate's trainers really came into their own. An hour

  later we'd arrived at a viewpoint called Lucibello. From here

  we looked down on Amalfi and far across the Sorrento

  Peninsula. Beate stooped and picked a large bunch of

  birdsfoot-trefoil, which she offered to me. 'There you are,'

  she said, 'some Easter flowers.' I told her that another name

  for these yellow pea flowers was babies' slippers, and I

  showed her why.

  We began to descend towards Pogerola. I had the babies'

  slippers in one hand and Beate in the other. At one point

  Beate said that we could get married and have children. She

  didn't mean it, but it was sweet of her to say it all the same.

  She intended it no more literally than when she'd spoken

  about bathing together in the waterfall the previous day. I

  replied by telling her that I'd been thinking about inviting

  her to go to the Pacific with me. Beate just looked at me and

  laughed. But now I'd broached the subject.

  At Pogerola we went to a bar and ordered a sandwich and

  a bottle of white wine. We sat outside enjoying the view,

  we had coffee, limoncello and brandy. I got a glass of water

  for the babies' slippers.

  As we began to walk down the broad stone steps towards

  Amalfi, she said: 'You write novels, but didn't you also say

  you work for a publishing company? Isn't that a difficult

  combination?'

  She wasn't chatting now. She wanted to know who I was.

  I decided to tell her just enough for her to be able to

  recognise me as The Spider if she'd ever heard of the

  phenomenon. I said I helped other authors to write. I

  mentioned that I sometimes gave them ideas for things to

  write about, I might even supply them with notes that they

  could build on. 'I've always had more imagination than I

  could use myself,' I said, 'it's a cheap commodity.' I said

  that. I said imagination was a cheap commodity.

  Beate's reaction was obvious � she responded with silence

  and introspection. There could have been several reasons for

  this. She could finally have identified me as The Spider, or

  she might indeed be part of the conspiracy. At least it could

  be assumed she'd read the little article in the Corriere della

  Sera - she'd said herself it was important to read this

  particular newspaper to keep reasonably abreast of things -

  and she'd made special reference to its cultural section. But

  her reaction wasn't necessarily linked to anything she'd

  heard about a 'spider'. She'd had enough to react to anyway

  - I'd described a pretty bizarre occupation.

  I talked a bit more about fantasy and helping authors.

  Occasionally she'd shake her head, as if she were becoming

  more and more pensive. I made a radical decision. I said I

  wanted her to read something I'd spent the past few days

  writing at the hotel. I said I could translate it into German

  for her. I didn't want to keep any secrets from Beate, there

  had to be an end to all this pretence. I thought again about

  the two of us travelling and settling down on a different

  continent. Perhaps we were both running away from

  something - she'd already moved to southern Italy for the

  summer. I'd decided to try to live the rest of my life as a

  decent human being. I'd only got one life, and now I

  wanted to live out the remainder of that existence.

  It was six o'clock. My legs were a bit weary after all the

  wine and walking, and we decided to sit out on a bluff and

  watch the sunset. Beate said little, but soon I launched out

  into a lengthy fairy tale. I didn't often look at her during the

  course of the story and maybe this was because it took shape

  as I spoke. I can't remember all the details, but these were

  the outlines of the story:

  Once long ago, in the town of Ulm on the River Donau, there was

  a large circus. The ringmaster was a handsome man who soon

  became inordinately fond of the beautiful trapeze artiste, Terry. He

  proposed to her, and a year later she bore him a daughter, who was

  christened Panina Manina. The little family lived happily together

  in a pink caravan, but the idyll was to be short lived, for just a year

  after her daughter was born, Terry fell from the trapeze and was

  killed instantly. The ringmaster mourned his wife ever afterwards,

  but at the same time became more attached to his daughter as she

  grew up. He was glad, naturally, that Terry had managed to bear

  him a child before she was suddenly snatched away. He had been

  bequeathed a living image of his wife for, as the days and the weeks

  passed, his daughter gradually grew more and more like her mother.

  From the age of eighteen months she would occupy one of the best

  seats at the circus and watch the performance intently. During the

  intervals she would sometimes get a lick of candy-floss from one of

  the clowns, and before she was three she could find her way to and

  from her seat without help or assistance. Soon both audiences and

  artistes began to regard her as the circus mascot, and it wasn't

  unknown for people who'd already been to the circus to come back

  again just to see Panina Manina, because she was a completely new

  experience every night � you could never predict what she'd get up

  to. And so the audience always got two performances for the price of

  one: they watched the evening's show, but they also sat watching

  Panina Manina.

  It wasn't unusual for the little girl to clamber over the wall of the

  ring and take part in the performance itself. She was allowed to do

  this because the ringmaster felt so sorry for his poor little daughter,

  who'd lost her mummy, that he wished her all the happiness she

  could find. These special contributions were always totally spontan-

  eous. Suddenly the roly-poly little child would get caught up in one

  of the clowns' routines, or she might run into the ring between acts

  and do her own little piece, perhaps with a ball she'd borrowed from

  the sea-lion, a couple of bowling pins she'd wheedled from the

  jugglers, a hula-hoop, a small trampoline or a spoof water-pistol

  she'd found in the props store. Panina Manina always got a great

  round of applause for these ad lib performances and, as time passed,

  the feeling of excitement before a show had more to do with what the

  ringmaster's daughter might get up to, than with the long list of acts

  in the circus programme.

  Only the Russian clown, Piotr Ilyich, was unhappy with the

  state of things. He disliked Panina Manina breaking into his

  routines, and it annoyed him that she almost always got the loudest

  applause. He made up his mind to put an end to this nonsense, and

  one day in the interval he had her abducted. As usual Panina

  Manina had approached the clown as he stood selling candy-floss

  outside the big top, but this time he had an accomplice in the shape

  of a Russian woman who was visiting the town. Her name was

  Marjuska, and she'd been paid by Piotr Ilyich to take Panina

  Manina back to Russia with her. And so it came about that the
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  unfortunate girl grew up on a poor farm near a small village deep

  in the Russian tundra. The woman was never nasty to Panina

  Manina because she'd always yearned for a daughter, but the girl

  missed both her daddy and the circus so much that she cried herself to

  sleep every night for a year. Until one night she forgot why she was

  crying. But still she went on crying, for Panina Manina was still

  just as sad, the only difference now was that she didn't know why.

  She no longer had the faintest memory of the circus she'd come from,

  forgotten was the smell of sawdust, and forgotten, too, the notion

  that she had a father in afar distant country.

  Panina Manina grew up to be more and more beautiful until at

  last she was the loveliest woman east of the Urals. This was at the

  time Stalin ruled Russia, but her foster-mother was a trusted

  member of the Communist Party and one day Panina Manina

  moved to Moscow where for a couple of years she earned her living as

  a model for some of the Soviet state's greatest artists. Coincidence �

  and life's coincidences is what this story's all about � coincidence

  dictated that one summer's day she arrived in Munich, not far from

  Ulm. Now, her father's circus had come to Munich, and as Panina

  Manina went about taking in the Bavarian capital, it happened that

  she caught sight of the big top. She walked towards it, indeed it was

  almost as if something drew her towards it, but still she couldn't

  remember that she'd once been a true circus girl herself, for the tent

  was now in a different town. But deep down inside her there must

  have been something that recalled the ring with all its clowns and

  processions, the wild rides and the trained sea-lions. A large crowd

  had gathered outside the tent as it wasn't long to the start of the

  evening performance. Panina Manina went to the ticket window

  and bought the best seat she could get, for she'd travelled far, and in

  those days it was a great treat for a Russian girl to watch a modern

  circus in Munich. In the covered way leading to the big top she

  bought a stick of candy-floss, and though it was a bit odd for an

  elegant woman to be seen sitting in the front row licking a stick of

  pink candy-floss, Panina Manina had been determined to try the

  sweet confection � it wasn't exactly everyday fare where she came

  from. The performance began: first the great procession with all the

  animals in the ring, followed by the most daring of trapeze acts, then

  clowns and jugglers, bareback riders and trained elephants.

  Suddenly, during a short break between two acts something

  extraordinary happens. All at once, Panina Manina loses control of

  herself, climbs over the barrier and runs out into the circus ring with

  candy-floss in one hand and a wide-brimmed woman's hat in the

  other. She begins to dance and jump about, but she isn't dancing as

  you'd expect a grown woman to dance. Panina Manina gallops

  uncontrollably around the ring the way a small child might run

  about a large floor. At first the audience breaks out into peals of

  laughter, thinking that this is the start of another funny act, but

  when the good citizens of Munich � who are renowned for their

  prudishness � realise that the woman with the hat and candy-floss is

  just mad or drunk or perhaps even high, they begin to hiss. For a

  few seconds more Panina Manina is in ecstasy, then she catches

  sight of an imposing man standing before the large orchestra holding

  a riding whip. It's the ringmaster. Panina Manina sinks down into

  the sawdust, she begins to sob and then to weep miserably, because

  now she's beginning to understand what a fool she's made of herself.

  In that same instant the ringmaster realises that the hysterical

  woman is his daughter. He strides across the ring towards her, she

  looks up at him, and now Panina Manina also remembers that

  she's the ringmaster's daughter, for blood is thicker than water. The

  ringmaster decides to cancel the rest of the performance. He looks

  up at the conductor and tells the orchestra to play the melody

  'Smile' from the Chaplin film Modern Times. And so he sends

  the audience home. He thinks he's probably finished as a ringmaster

  because Munich's populace seldom overlooks a faux pas, but the

  ringmaster is happy all the same. He has found his own dear

  daughter once again, the greatest of all circus tricks, and now he will

  spend the rest of his life with her.

  Beate hadn't uttered a word while I'd been speaking. She

  seemed all but paralysed, and when I'd finished and looked

  in her direction, she appeared dejected. I tried to cheer her

  up by saying that the story had a happy ending, but she

  remained glum. Before I'd begun to narrate she'd been

  holding my hand, but soon after she'd dropped it. I was

  surprised that a fairy tale could have such an affect on her.

  She was taciturn and sat there almost tight-lipped.

  Eventually she asked me how old I was. I said I was forty-

  eight. 'Exactly forty-eight?' she asked, and her tone was

  frigid. I couldn't see why the extra months made much

  difference, but perhaps she was keen on astrology. I said I

  was a Leo and had turned forty-eight at the end of July.

  We began walking down towards the town. She wore a

  resigned, almost injured, look. 'Perhaps you'd hoped I was a

  little younger?' I asked. She just snorted and shook her head.

  She said she was twenty-nine, and I realised she was exactly

  the same age as Maria had been in the summer of'71. Time

  had stood still, I thought, and now Maria had returned. It

  was Easter Sunday, and Maria had risen from the dead. It

  was an alluring thought.

  Beate's mood had changed totally. She didn't need to

  be part of any conspiracy to have heard of The Spider, I

  reasoned. She had one foot in the book industry herself, and

  down in the valley she'd confided to me that she'd begun to

  write, and it might well be that what she'd heard of The

  Spider wasn't particularly flattering. For all I knew she might

  be the daughter of one of the authors I'd helped. I recol-

  lected that at least one of them lived in Munich, a man in his

  mid-fifties whose family I knew nothing about.

  It was a tense and difficult situation, but I felt sure we

  could get over whatever was troubling her if only I could

  discover what it was. I'd managed to surmount unpleasant

  situations before. Beate had told me that her mother had

  died suddenly only a few months earlier and that she'd been

  very attached to her. It was hardly surprising that she

  suffered from mood swings. I'd once lost a mother myself.

  We walked past a farm where a couple of dogs snarled,

  and some fussing geese waddled about a dirty coop. Just

  before we took the last steps down to the main road, Beate

  stopped and looked up at me. 'You shouldn't have told me

  that story!' she exclaimed. Then she burst into tears. I tried

  to comfort her but she just pushed me away.

  'Was it really that sad?' I asked.

  'You shouldn't have told me
that story,' she repeated. 'It

  was stupid, terribly stupid!'

  She looked at me, lowered her gaze, then peered up at me

  once more. It was as if I was a ghost. She was frightened and

  I was the one who'd unsettled her.

  I was completely at a loss. I enjoyed being with women

  I couldn't fathom, but this was no fun at all. I must

  have touched a raw nerve. Perhaps she'd identified with

  the ringmaster's daughter - after all, I knew nothing about

  Beate's past. It wasn't often a story had such a powerful

  effect, but it had been a long day, a day of many strong

  impressions.

  Suddenly she looked up at me again and there was fire in

  her eyes as she said: 'We must forget we ever met. We can't

  tell anyone about this, ever!'

  I didn't understand this violent attack. I'd had previous

  experience of sexual escapades being superseded by a kind

  of contrition � it was something I'd discovered to be a

  peculiarly feminine characteristic � but this was quite

  different. Beate wasn't the sort to take being lulled by

  a thunderstorm to heart. And if she had felt remorse,

  she'd surely have kept it to herself, or at least not pushed

  the blame on to me. It wasn't Mary Ann MacKenzie I'd met

  in Amalfi.

  'We must forget everything, don't you see?' she repeated

  tearfully, then continued: 'We must promise never to meet

  again!'

  When I didn't respond, she said: 'Don't you understand

  anything? Don't you see that you're a monster?'

  Her anxiety was infectious. Perhaps I was an ogre - the

  thought had struck me. There had been the vague notion

  that all my synopses and family narratives were perhaps

  nothing more than my own macabre tango with a terrified

  soul.

  There was something I couldn't recall, something big and

  painful that I'd forgotten ...

  She'd stopped crying. Beate was brave, she wasn't a

  person who wept for show. Now only hardness and

  coldness remained. I didn't recognise her, I had no idea

  what sort of cross she had to bear, and now her armour was

  impenetrable.

  'I'm scared, I'm scared for us both,' she said.

  Perhaps it was a clue. Perhaps she knew about the plans to

  kill me, she just hadn't realised that I was The Spider, not

  until now, not until I'd revealed how I helped authors. It

  hadn't sunk in properly until I'd told the long tale of the

  ringmaster's daughter, and still she hadn't been quite certain

  until I'd divulged my age. She had looked into The Spider's

  eyes and they weren't just one pair of eyes, but many.

  They'd frightened her. She'd known The Spider was a

  monster, but she had allowed the monster to seduce her

  before she'd managed to identify him. She knew about the

  plans to kill me, and now she was scared for us both.

  We passed the police station and walked in silence

  through the town. From windows and cornices and small

  balconies fronting the street Amalfi's washing hung out to

  dry, T-shirts and bras fluttered in the gentle breeze like the

  semaphore signals from a simple existence. This humdrum

  life felt like the promised land to me now, but Beate's steps

  got faster and faster, it was almost impossible to keep up with

  her, and she didn't stop before we were down on the

  seafront. I didn't know where she lived, but our ways parted

  here.

  I touched one of her shoulders, and she seemed to freeze.

  'I don't understand,' I said.

  'No, you don't understand,' she said. 'And I can't speak it

  either.'

  She shook off the hand I'd laid on her.

  'Are we never to meet again?' I asked.

  'Never,' she replied. Then she added: 'Perhaps one of us

  must die. Don't you even understand that?'

  I shook my head. She was out of kilter. Again I thought of

  Mary Ann MacKenzie. I didn't know what I'd set in train.

  'Never again, then,' I said.

  But she'd reconsidered. 'Perhaps we must see each other

  again,' she said now. 'In which case it should be tomorrow,

  but that will be the very last time.'