The Ringmaster's Daughter

I lay on the bed waiting for mother. I was looking forward to her return, I was giddy with antic.i.p.ation. I"d often have a small surprise ready for her, but this was quite different, this was a big surprise.

There, as I sat on that plane to Naples, I suddenly recalled the sound of my mother letting herself into the hall that particular afternoon. "Here!" I shouted. "I"m in here!"

She was livid. She was absolutely livid. She was beside herself even before she"d read what I"d written on the wall.

She yanked me off the bed and threw me on the floor, she slapped me hard on both cheeks, then she dragged me out into the corridor and locked me in the bathroom. I didn"t cry. I didn"t say a word. I heard her ring my father, and heard how she was angry with him too. She said he had to come to the flat and hang some new wallpaper. And several days later, he did. The smell of glue hung about for weeks. It was humiliating.

It was a long time before my mother let me out of the bathroom. First she had her dinner, drank her coffee and listened to the first two acts of La Boheme. She said I"d better start getting ready for bed. I did exactly as I was told, but I didn"t utter a word. I didn"t talk to my mother for several days, but I did everything she told me. Finally, she had to coax me to start talking again. I said I"d never write on the wall again nor, I declared, on paper either, not even loo paper. I was very resolute and in a way I kept my promise. After this episode my mother was never allowed to see anything I"d written, not so much as a syllable. She couldn"t look at my homework either. This was sometimes brought up with my teachers, but they agreed with me. I was so good at doing my homework on my own, they said, that it wasn"t necessary for mother to see my books. Quite right too.

I wouldn"t go so far as to say that this event was what put me off being a writer, but it was certainly what made me stop drawing. There was little point in drawing when I had no one to show my drawings to. I think I can remember being struck once by the impossibility of checking whether mother would be able to read what I"d written if I ever published a book that had thousands of copies printed. But I was never going to expose myself like that. I"d exposed myself in my mother"s bedroom, that was the writing on the wall. Mother would never get the chance to stroll into a bookshop and buy a book with my name on it.

I turned down the air hostess"s invitation to breakfast and tried to sleep, but after a few minutes" doze, I jerked back into wakefulness again. I glanced down at the even Umbrian landscape. I was forty-eight, half my life lay behind me, seventy-five per cent of my life lay behind me, perhaps more, perhaps ninety per cent. Life was so indescribably short. Perhaps that was why I wouldn"t put my name on a book jacket. That thin veneer of culture, of human glory and affectation, drowned in insignificance by comparison with the colossal but fleeting adventure through which I was now journeying. I had learnt to ignore the insignificant. Ever since I was a child I"d known of a timescale quite different to that of weekly magazines and the autumn"s annual crop of books. When I was small, my father and I had seen a piece of amber which was millions of years old, and encased within it was a spider that was just as old. I"d been on earth before life began four billion years ago, I knew that the sun would soon be a red giant, and that long before that the earth would be a dry and lifeless planet. If you know all this you don"t enrol for an evening course in DIY. You haven"t the placidity of mind for it. Nor for a "writing course" either. You don"t mince about cafes saying that you"ve "started writing something". Perhaps you do write, there"s nothing wrong in that, but you don"t sit down to "write". You write only if there is something you want to say, because you have a few words of comfort to give other people, but you don"t sit down behind a desk in a spiral of the Milky Way and "write" something just for the sake of rtn or of >. But the poets posed on the catwalk. Climb aboard, ladies and gentlemen!

Welcome to this season"s collection from Kiepenheuer & Witsch. We have a creation here that should be of special interest to you. This is a superb Armani novel, unrivalled in its genre. And here we see Suhrkamp"s lyric fashion icon - "mit Poetenschal naturlich ... und mit Ord und Datum, bitte!"

I was tired. But now Writers" Aid was at an end and a literary epoch had pa.s.sed. I would never again return to the big book fairs. I had decided to try to salvage my life.

When we landed at Naples, I was the first pa.s.senger off the plane. I ran through the arrivals hall, jumped into a taxi and told the driver to take me to Amalfi. He couldn"t have been asked to do such long trips very often.

I"d never been to the Amalfi coast before, but over the years many people had suggested I spend a few days in that charming town on the Sorrento peninsula. Maria had spoken of Amalfi, she had once been there with some girlfriends. Robert, too, talked constantly about his trips to southern Italy, in the days before Wenche had left him.

We drove past Pompeii, and I tried to imagine the townspeople in the final few seconds before the volcanic eruption. As soon as I"d got one clear image, I"d do my best to erase it again. What I had seen could be summed up in one word: vanitas. Then the blow fell. Then the rage of Vesuvius poured down over all the pretentiousness.

When we"d left the mountain behind us and were driving through lemon groves towards the coast, I asked the driver to take me to a hotel I"d heard of. I"d no idea if the Hotel Luna Convento had any vacant rooms, but Easter was still a full week away.

There were lots of vacancies. I asked for room 15, and was told it was free. I said I wanted to stay a week, and not long afterwards I was sitting in front of a window looking out across the sea. There was a pair of large windows in the room, and Metre Man was already peering over the sill of the other one, scanning the ocean as well. The sun was still low in the sky, it was only a quarter past nine.

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-cla.s.sified 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 cla.s.s.

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 Pa.s.sion.

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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 t.i.tle 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-encompa.s.sing meta- author behind the whole collection. They didn"t necessarily think that G.o.d had verbally inspired every sentence in the Bible, G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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?"