The Ringmaster's Daughter

begin digging into hers.

  Beate had mentioned that she'd lost her mother quite

  recently, and that they had always been very close. She'd

  died quite unexpectedly. It had actually happened on her

  birthday, while she was at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel cele-

  brating the occasion with some friends. Her mother had

  been in sparkling form, but then, just as she'd been about

  to go to the table with a glass of champagne in her hand,

  she'd suddenly collapsed. A doctor was present amongst the

  guests, but it proved impossible to save her life. She hadn't

  died of heart failure, or any other demonstrable condition,

  she'd simply vacated this world. 'And your father?' I asked.

  'I'd rather not talk about him,' she replied rather brusquely.

  Then she repented and said in a milder tone: 'It can wait

  until tomorrow.' She looked up at me and laughed. Perhaps

  she was thinking about the waterfall.

  Occasionally her sandals forced her to take my arm

  where the path was rough or steep, but as we went

  through the town gates of Pontone, she linked her arm

  through mine and like this, as if we were man and wife,

  we walked into the Piazzetta di Pontone. It was so easy, it

  was like an amusing game, it was as if we were playing a

  trick on the entire world. Some people take years to get

  to know one another, but we were in a totally different

  league. We had already discovered many subtle short-cuts

  to each other. But we respected each other's little secrets,

  too.

  After we'd taken a look at the view, we went to a bar and

  stood drinking a cup of coffee. Beate ordered a limoncello as

  well, and so I had a brandy. We hardly spoke now. Beate

  smoked a cigarette - I had snatched the matches out of her

  hand and lit it for her. We leant on the counter looking

  provocatively into one another's eyes. She was smiling, it

  was as if she was smiling about several different things at

  once. I said she was nuts. 'I know that,' she said. I said I was

  much older than her. 'A bit older,' she said. Neither of us

  had revealed our age.

  The way down from Pontone to Amalfi was a steep, narrow

  path with more than a thousand steps. At one point we

  passed a man leading a mule. We had to squeeze up against

  the rock face, and this also forced us close together. She

  smelt of plums and cherries. And earth.

  We sat down on a bench to rest our legs. A few moments

  later Metre Man came along and climbed up on to an

  adjacent kerbstone. But first he glanced up at me and with

  his bamboo cane asked if it was all right to sit down. I

  couldn't be bothered to argue as I knew he'd do exactly

  what he wanted anyway. 'Metre Man is Master' was a catch-

  phrase he'd used constantly when I was little. I could hardly

  speak sternly to him while I was in Beate's company. If I'd

  admonished him verbally or just waved him away, she might

  have been scared, she would certainly have begun to doubt

  my sanity. I decided instead to tell Beate a fairy tale,

  indirectly addressing it to the little man as well. The bones

  of it went as follows:

  Long, long ago in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, there lived

  a small boy called Jiri Kubelik. He lived in a poky little flat with his

  mother. He didn't have a father, but when he was about three years

  old, he began to have frequent vivid dreams about a little man with

  a green felt hat and a reedy bamboo walking-stick. In his dreams,

  the little man was exactly the same height as Jiri, but otherwise he

  looked the same as any other man. He was just much shorter and far

  more glib-tongued than most.

  In these dreams the little man tried to convince Jiri that it was

  he who dictated everything the little boy did and said, and not

  only at night when he slept, but during the day as well. When

  Jiri sometimes did things that his mother had forbidden him, he

  imagined that it must be the little man who'd made him do it. It

  happened more and more often that Jiri used adult words and

  expressions and his mother couldn't work out where he'd picked

  them up. He could also rattle off the strangest stories to her, small

  fragments or long narratives which the little man had told Jiri as he

  slept.

  His dreams about the little man were always lively and amusing.

  And so Jiri generally awoke with a smile on his lips, and never

  protested when his mother said that it was bedtime. His problems

  began one morning when the little man failed to disappear with his

  dream, for whenjiri opened his eyes that sunny summer's morning,

  he could plainly see the man with the green felt hat in his room

  standing by the bed, and the next second the miniature man had

  slipped out of the open door into the hall and from there, into the

  living-room. Jiri hurriedly got out of bed and, very naturally, rushed

  into the living-room too. Sure enough, there was the little man,

  pacing to and fro amongst the furniture brandishing his cane. He

  was very much alive and full of vigour.

  When Jiri's mother emerged from her bedroom a bit later, her son

  was eager to point out the little man who just then was standing in a

  corner of the living-room prodding one of the books in the bookcase

  with his cane. But his mother had honestly to confess that she was

  quite unable to see him. This surprised Jiri, because for him, the

  little man with the stick was anything but a vague or shadowy

  apparition. He was as clear-cut as the big vase on the floor or the old

  piano, which his mother had recently painted green because the

  original white colour had begun to go yellow.

  However, certain aspects of the little man's behaviour were quite

  different from when he'd appeared in the dreams. Occasionally he

  still turned to say a few words to Jiri, but that was the exception

  now. This was a major shift in their relationship, for while the little

  man had been in Jiri's dreams, he'd played with words almost

  continuously. It was as if, from this time on, he had renounced

  almost all use of language and speech in favour of young Jiri. In the

  dreams he had also loved picking plums and cherries which he'd put

  straight into his mouth and eaten with great relish, or sometimes

  he'd take Jiri to a secret stockpile of fizzy drinks he kept in the

  cellar, there to open bottle after bottle of pop which he put to his

  mouth and emptied before even asking the boy if he'd like to quench

  his thirst as well. In the real world, on the other hand, he never

  picked up any objects in the room ? apart from his own hat and cane

  which, as if by way of compensation, he twirled and flourished

  almost ceaselessly. He didn't eat or drink anything, either. In the

  world of reality he remained a mere shadow of himself compared

  with the vitality and friskiness he'd demonstrated in Jiri's im-

  agination. Perhaps it was the price the little dream man had had

  to pay for advancing from dream to reality; after all, it was a

  considerable leap.

  jiri got bigger, and the little man cont
inued to scamper around

  him almost everywhere he went, but without growing by as much as

  a millimetre. By the time Jiri was seven he was already almost a

  head taller than the little man, and from that time on he began to

  call him Metre Man, as he was only a metre tall.

  As soon as Metre Man entered reality and appeared in Jiri's flat

  for the first time, Jiri never dreamt about him again. He was sure,

  therefore, that he'd either escaped from the dream world of his own

  volition, or that he'd accidentally got separated from the fairy-tale

  land he came from and could no longer find his way back. Jiri

  thought it must be his fault that the dream man had got lost, and so

  he never gave up hope that one day Metre Man would succeed in

  getting back to the world he came from. That was where he belonged

  after all, and we must all be very careful not to stray too far away

  from the reality of our roots. Gradually, as Jiri got older, having the

  little man around him all the time often made him tired and

  irritable.

  All through Jiri's life Metre Man followed him like a shadow. It

  might look as if he was Jiri's sidekick, but the little man always

  maintained that it was the other way round, that he was the one

  pushing the boy, and that it was he who made all the decisions in

  Jiri's life. There must have been something in this, becauseJiri could

  never control when or where he'd find Metre Man. It was always

  the little man who decided when he would appear. And so he could

  pop up at the most inconvenient moments in Jiri's life.

  No one apart from Jiri could ever catch so much as a glimpse of

  Metre Man, whether at home in the flat he still lived in or out on

  the streets of Prague. This never ceased to amaze Jiri.

  One day, when he'd grown to manhood, he met the great love of

  his life. Her name was Jarka and as Jiri wanted her to share his life

  and soul, he tried to point out Metre Man on a couple of occasions

  when he materialised in the room, so that his love could also catch a

  glimpse, however fleeting, of the tiny wonder. But to Jarka this

  looked as if Jiri was in the process of losing his wits, and she held

  herself aloof from him a little. Then, finally, she left him for a young

  engineer, because she felt that Jiri was living more in his own fantasy

  than in the real world with other people.

  Jiri lived out his life in loneliness and isolation, and it was only

  when he died that an extraordinary change occurred. From the day

  Jiri was released from time ? by that I mean our world ? rumours

  began to abound in Prague that people had seen a homunculus

  strolling alone down by the banks of the River Vltava in the

  evenings. Some claimed they'd seen the same manikin strutting

  around and excitedly swinging his little bamboo cane about him in

  the market-place of the old town as well. And last but not least, the

  little man was observed at irregular intervals sitting on a gravestone

  in the churchyard. He always sat on the same grave, and on the

  stone was carved JIRI KUBELIK.

  An old woman would sometimes sit on a white bench and give

  the little man a friendly wave on the rare occasions he took up

  position on Jiri's gravestone. It was Jarka who, all those years

  before, had turned down Jiri's hand because she thought he'd lost his

  reason.

  Gossip had it that the old lady was probably Kubelik's widow.

  Maybe that was because she was always sitting on the white bench

  in the churchyard staring atJiri'sgravestone, and then again, maybe

  not.

  I spent almost an hour over the story of Jiri and Jarka and, by

  the time I'd finished, the little man was no longer sitting on

  the kerbstone keeping an eye on us. Perhaps I'd frightened

  him off.

  Beate was looking a bit pensive. 'Was that a Czechoslo-

  vakian fairy tale?' she enquired.

  I nodded. I felt no desire to tell her I'd made it up myself.

  'A literary fairy tale?' she queried again.

  I answered yes to that too, but I wasn't sure that she

  believed me. I had no idea how conversant she was with

  Czechoslovakian literature.

  By the time we got down to the town again, it was five

  o'clock. I asked Beate if she wanted to have dinner with me

  at the hotel. I praised the food and the view and said they

  had an excellent wine from Piedmont. She thanked me but

  excused herself, saying she had something to do.

  'Tomorrow we could go to Pogerola,' she suggested.

  I nodded. 'Then we can bathe in the waterfall,' I said.

  She pinched my arm tenderly and laughed.

  We arranged to meet in front of the cathedral at ten-

  thirty. It would be Easter Sunday.

  *

  I sat up pondering my meeting with Beate until far into the

  night. It had been an extraordinary meeting, the sort that

  only happens once or twice in a lifetime.

  She might possibly be the same sort of age as Maria when

  I'd known her. Maria had been ten years older than me, and

  now I was the elder. I might be fifteen or twenty years

  Beate's senior, but I carried my years well. It was fright-

  ening. I was forty-eight, but those final eight years didn't

  show. 'A bit older,' she'd said. I'd never been embarrassed

  that Maria was ten years older than me, and she'd never been

  concerned that I was much younger.

  I couldn't believe that Beate was acting as a decoy for a

  hired assassin - or that she was an assassin herself. But if she

  had been, she might well have behaved just as she did this

  afternoon. She'd been in Amalfi exactly as long as me.

  Perhaps I was easy meat. Tomorrow we'd walk up to the

  valley and over the mountains to Pogerola. The excursion

  was her idea, she'd been through the Valley of the Mills to

  Pogerola before. She hadn't wanted to have dinner with me

  because there was something she had to do. Perhaps, I

  thought, she had to make a few phone calls, and presumably

  there would be men with earphones all over Valle dei

  Mulini next morning. I could see them in my mind's eye, I

  could imagine them taking up their positions amongst the

  ruins of the old paper mills. I could already hear Beate's

  laughter and I'd long since conjured up a picture of the wad

  of notes that would change hands. I had a hyperactive

  imagination.

  I glanced up at the portrait of Ibsen. Mightn't the truth

  just as easily be that Beate and I were two shipwrecked souls

  clinging together? I thought of Fru Linde and the lawyer

  Krogstad. They were practically part of the fabric of this

  room. I was convinced that Beate had something dark in her

  past as well. Was the idea of a future together so unthink-

  able? She was living in a bed-sit in the town and was a

  painter. She didn't know that I was very rich, that was one

  of the last things I'd tell her.

  She was sitting on the cathedral steps at half past ten the

  next morning. She was wearing her yellow dress again, and I

  thought that perhaps we even resembled one another in

  something as
mundane as our attitude to clothes. While I

  was on my travels, I always wore my clothes for as long as

  possible before putting them out for washing. But maybe

  the explanation was simply that she particularly liked her

  yellow dress. I did too. And it was Easter, and for all I knew

  she might have washed it since yesterday afternoon, it might

  have been one of the things she'd had to attend to. How-

  ever, her white sandals had been replaced by a pair of stout

  trainers. We were going walking.

  She rose from the steps and came to meet me. First, we

  climbed back up all the steps again and stood outside the

  door listening to the singing from the Easter mass. Beate was

  solemn and impish at the same time.

  We found the alleys that led out of town and, as we

  ascended the steep hillsides between the lemon groves, she

  told me she'd never met a man she'd felt so in tune with as

  me. I returned her almost startling admission and added that,

  apart from a few short-lived relationships, I hadn't been

  really fond of anyone since I'd been quite young. I said with

  a glint in my eye that I'd been waiting for her. Again our

  conversation was punctuated with irony and hyperbole, but

  today there was an underlying earnestness to it. I felt sure

  that Beate really did care for me, and I'd told her I was

  leaving Amalfi on Wednesday.

  I enquired whether it was quite by chance that she'd

  turned to me for a light the day before. She gave a mis-

  chievous smile, but nodded innocently. And had she

  followed me up to the Valle dei Mulini? She shook her

  head but said that she'd guessed I was going for a walk and

  that it wasn't very difficult to work out which direction I'd

  take as there was only one valley to walk in. So, I said, it was

  fortuitous that she'd asked if I had a match, but not that

  she'd walked the same way as me afterwards?

  'I suppose not,' she replied enigmatically.

  I wanted to get to the bottom of it, and now not simply

  because I was thinking of Luigi. 'We hadn't even talked to

  each other,' I pointed out, 'we'd barely exchanged a glance.'

  At first she laughed, and then she gave me a completely

  different version. 'You may be an observant man, but you

  don't seem to know much about yourself,' she said. 'Well,

  for a start, you came into the pizzeria with the Corriere della

  Sera under your arm, so you were presumably an Italian,

  and perhaps even something as rare in these parts as an

  intellectual. Then you sat down and glanced at me. Your

  look didn't say much, but it did at least tell me you weren't

  gay. You ordered pizza and beer, so perhaps you were a

  tourist after all, but you obviously spoke Italian. You

  squinted in my direction again, but I think this time you

  only looked at my feet and took in my white sandals. I

  attached importance to this detail because not all men look

  at a woman's feet, but you did. You let your gaze dwell on

  my feet, you examined my sandals, so you had to be a

  sensuous person. Then you opened your newspaper at the

  culture section, and so, perhaps, you were a man interested

  in culture.

  'Once again you looked at me, it was just for an instant,

  but it was a fixed and level glance. Perhaps you don't

  remember, but I returned your gaze on that occasion.

  However briefly, it was the first time you and I looked into

  each other's eyes, it was our first intimacy, because looking

  into a person's eyes without averting your own - as one

  usually does when eyes accidentally meet ? can be very

  intimate. It was a reciprocated look. This time I suspected

  you of trying to guess my age, but I may be wrong there.

  'I'd finished my lasagne and was trying to light my

  cigarette with a lighter that had run out of gas. You noticed

  that, but not, I think, that I'd registered your interest. It all

  took just long enough, perhaps five seconds, so that if you'd

  had a lighter on you, you'd almost certainly have come

  across to my table and given me a light, at least if you were

  the kind of person I took you for. Instead, I was the one