The Ringmaster's Daughter

who got up and went over to you and asked if you'd got a

  match. You understood my Italian, but you marked me

  down as a foreigner because of my accent. You said you

  didn't smoke, but in a couple of moments you'd picked up a

  lighter from the neighbouring table and lit my cigarette.

  You weren't the type just to refer me to the next table, you

  took responsibility yourself, or rather, you had nothing

  against lighting my cigarette, you were pleased I'd turned

  to you. You showed by the way you did it, that it most

  certainly wasn't the first time you'd lit a woman's cigarette.

  'When I thanked you, a shadow fell across your face

  telling me you were in difficulties of some sort, that you

  were close to seeking someone to confide in and that that

  other person might as well be me. I turned and went back to

  my table, it only took a moment, but I felt your eyes on my

  back, although that might have been purely my imagination.

  When you'd paid your bill and got up to go, you gave me an

  almost sorrowful look and waved, and the way you waved

  told me that you thought we'd almost certainly never see

  each other again. I'd been sketching you on my pad because

  I really liked your face, but you weren't observant enough

  to notice you were my model. But still I smiled at you with

  an exaggerated openness. I wanted my look to tell you that

  our lives are strange; and so you left, but it was as if you took

  away with you something that you'd glimpsed in my eyes.

  The way you walked out of the pizzeria told me you were

  going to the Valle dei Mulini, and of course I could have

  been wrong, but as it turned out I wasn't. I thought that if I

  got another chance, you were someone I'd like to get to

  know better.'

  I halted on the narrow footpath and clapped my hands

  a couple of times. 'Bravo!' I exclaimed. I felt naked and

  exposed and it felt good, it felt good to be seen and known,

  it was like coming home. It had been a very long time

  indeed since I'd had anyone to come home to.

  'First you told me you asked me for a match by chance,' I

  said, 'but now you say you realised I had none.'

  She laughed at this small contribution. It was a token that

  I'd weighed every word she'd uttered. 'Well, it was pure

  chance that my lighter was empty, but you were no chance

  person, you were like an open book, a book I'd already

  begun to read.'

  Or she'd been well briefed beforehand, I thought. But I

  quickly dismissed the idea.

  It was for other reasons I said: 'Have you got other

  lighters?'

  She didn't know what I meant. 'Do you always go round

  with one lighter that works and another that's empty?'

  She looked up at me and gave me a little slap. I probably

  deserved it.

  We walked slowly on. The more two people have to say

  to one another, the more slowly they walk. She went on

  talking about her watercolours and the exhibition. She told

  me now that she'd illustrated a couple of children's books

  plus a de luxe edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Over the past

  few years she'd also begun to write.

  I was taken aback. I was startled that it was only now she

  owned up to being a writer, but as she had spoken the last

  few words with a certain reticence, I decided to refrain from

  comment just then. Many people feel a bit shy about ad-

  mitting they're trying to write. Perhaps it was bashfulness

  that had prevented her from mentioning it the day before.

  I told her I'd come to Amalfi from the Bologna Book

  Fair. I studied her carefully, but she gave no special reaction

  to my information. I'd have to stop thinking about Luigi.

  'So you publish children's books as well?' she asked. I

  merely nodded. I placed a hand on her head and stroked

  her hair. She made no comment.

  By the time we'd got up to the Via Paradiso half an hour

  later, we could see that some large, black clouds had begun

  rolling in across the valley from the encircling mountains. It

  was sultry. We heard the church bells begin to ring down in

  Amalfi. A second later the bells of Pontone began to sound

  as well, and from the ridge on the other side of the valley,

  those of Pogerola. It was noon on Easter Sunday.

  We heard the first growl of thunder, and Beate took

  my hand. I asked if she wanted to turn back, but she was

  absolutely set on continuing. She has an appointment with

  people further up the valley, I thought, and knew that I was

  imagining things. From the time I'd left Bologna I'd already

  stage-managed my own death in twenty or thirty different

  ways. But Beate wasn't part of any conspiracy. I'd high

  hopes she might be the one to save me from all inventive-

  ness. I'd begun to anticipate that she might even be able to

  teach me to live like a human being.

  We weren't far from the waterfall we'd passed the

  previous day, when the skies suddenly opened. Beate

  pointed to the ruins of an old paper mill, and we dashed in

  to try and find some shelter. We crept as far inside the ruins

  of the mill as we could. She was laughing like a small child,

  and her laughter echoed dully. There were a mere three or

  four square metres of roof above our heads, but the floor we

  sat on was dry.

  Soon we were caught up in the worst thunderstorm I'd

  ever known, or perhaps I should say the best, because we

  soon agreed that we liked thunderstorms. They were virile.

  The storm lasted more than two hours. The rain tipped

  down continuously, but we stayed dry. I said it was back in

  the Stone Age and we were cavemen. 'There's neither past

  nor future,' I said, 'everything is here and now.' My voice

  had assumed a hollow ring. She had nestled into the crook of

  my arm, and again she asked what my novel was about. I had

  time to tell her now, she insisted. I let her talk me over. I

  chose one of the synopses I'd had for sale before Writers'

  Aid had collapsed. It was a family tragedy. I had the synopsis

  in my head, and now I fleshed it out. In rough terms the

  story ran along these lines:

  Just after the war, in an old patrician villa in the small Danish

  town of Silkeborg, there lived a well-to-do family by the name

  of Kj?rgaard. They had just engaged a new servant girl in the

  house. Her name was Lotte, and that was her only name because

  she was an orphan of not more than sixteen or seventeen years of

  age. The girl was said to be extremely beautiful, so it wasn't sur-

  prising that the Kj?rgaard's only son couldn't keep his eyes off her

  while she was hard at work for his demanding family. He constantly

  followed her about the house and, even though he was quite a young

  boy, he managed to seduce her in the wash-house one day while

  she was boiling clothes. It only happened once, but Lotte became

  pregnant.

  In the years that followed, a number of different accounts of what

  had actually happened in the wash-house that fateful afternoon did

  the rounds. It
was whispered that the boy ? or Morten, to give him

  his proper name ? had raped the girl as she stood pounding the

  clothes, but the Kj?rgaard family steadfastly maintained that it was

  Lotte who'd behaved improperly, and that she was the one who'd

  seduced the boy. Enough witnesses could testify to the way she

  would giggle and simper and generally behave wantonly in the boy's

  presence.

  The family now made confidential arrangements for the maid to

  take up a new position with a family in a remote part of the country.

  But when, a few months later, Lotte gave birth to a son, they made

  sure they kept the child as he had the family's noble blood in his

  veins. Although the Kj?rgaard clan was well endowed with worldly

  wealth, it certainly had no superfluity of heirs, and not a drop of the

  eminent family's blood was to go to waste. Lotte protested as best

  she could and wept bitterly when the boy was taken away from her

  only a few weeks after his birth, but both materially and morally she

  was considered unfit to look after the child. And, after all, the boy

  had no father.

  Naturally, Morten wanted nothing to do with the baby. He was

  in any case too young to claim paternity and for their part, his

  parents were far too old to adopt the child as one of their own

  children. But Morten had an uncle, who'd long been blighted by a

  childless marriage, so he and his wife now assumed parental re-

  sponsibility for the little boy, who was christened Carsten.

  Gradually, as Carsten grew up, he would occasionally wonder at

  the age his mother and father must have been when he was born.

  His mother must have been nearing fifty, but it never occurred to

  him that Stine and Jakob, as they were called, weren't his biological

  parents. On his birthdays he always got a card from 'Cousin

  Morten', and up to the time of his confirmation, a small Christmas

  gift sent by post, but of course it never struck him that his eighteen-

  year-elder cousin was really his true father. It was a well-kept family

  secret to which he was never privy.

  Jakob was captain of a large merchant ship, and when Carsten

  was small he was sometimes allowed to accompany his father out

  into the wide world. He became deeply attached to both his parents

  and, being an only child, they worshipped him above everything

  else, but when he was in his last year at school, both Stine and

  Jakob died in a matter of a few months. Suddenly Carsten was

  alone in the world ? and without family, for all four of his grand-

  parents were now dead. By this I mean that as Jakob lay dying, he

  told his son the old story of the maidservant in the wash-house and

  cousin Morten, who in reality was his true father.

  By this time Carsten had little contact with his cousin. They

  hadn't set eyes on each other for many years, but when Carsten

  began to study for his M.A. at the University of Arhus there came

  a time when he was completely stuck for money. In his desperation

  he approached Morten who obviously knew that Carsten was his

  real son, but who also took it for granted that he was the only person

  in the world who did, as Stine and Jakob were now dead.

  Morten had become a highly respected medical consultant at

  Arhus's hospital. He'd married the lovely Malene, the daughter of

  a Supreme Court judge in Copenhagen, and they had two nice

  daughters who both sang in the church choir, and Morten had no

  intention of initiating his cousin into his spotless bourgeois existence

  ? he knew too much about the boy's chequered family background.

  Without letting on what he knew, Carsten asked his cousin

  for a loan, or preferably an allowance of five or ten thousand

  kroner, because he knew that his cousin was a wealthy man. But

  Morten flatly refused Carsten's request; he brushed aside the young

  student's humble entreaty for a little help in a tight spot. He poured

  him a glass of malt whisky, made some witticisms about the old days

  and put five hundred kroner into his hand before packing him off

  with a few general platitudes about advancement being the reward of

  study. What proved so fateful was that Carsten ? who already had

  feelings of near hatred for his real father because of his years of

  dissimulation ? now rounded on his cousin, looked him straight in

  the eye and said: 'Don't you think it's disgraceful to refuse your

  own son a loan of a few thousand kroner? Perhaps next time I ought

  to speak to Malene ...' Morten started, but Carsten had already

  turned his back, merely remarking as he left: 'We'll say no more

  about it now!'

  After several disrupted years of study, Carsten met Kristine who,

  from then on, became practically the sole object of his attention. He

  only rang Morten and Malene a couple of times in the following

  years, and on both occasions it was Morten who answered the

  phone. One thing was certain: Carsten would never again ask his

  cousin for money. Nevertheless, he received cheques from him once

  or twice, and when he and Kristine were married they got a cheque

  for five thousand kroner from cousin Morten and Malene, Maren

  and Mathilde. This was not enough to mollify Carsten's bitterness

  towards his biological father, and by the time they got married he

  had decided to adopt Kristine's surname. Her family had accepted

  him with open arms.

  Carsten loved Kristine, and from the moment he met her he

  never wanted anyone else. But where destiny blunders, no human

  prudence will avail: Carsten had always had a nasty birthmark on

  his neck, and when this suddenly began to bleed, Kristine insisted

  he went to a doctor and got it seen to. The local doctor removed the

  birthmark and sent it for routine analysis to the hospital at Arhus,

  but unfortunately the result of the tissue biopsy was never sent back

  to Carsten's doctor. When weeks and months passed without any

  word from the doctor or the hospital, neither Carsten nor Kristine

  gave the birthmark another thought. The next spring, however,

  Carsten fell ill; he was diagnosed with a cancer that was spreading,

  and this was immediately linked to a tissue biopsy that had been

  sent to the hospital several months earlier.

  Much later, the hospital admitted that the sample from Carsten

  had been received and analysed and also positively diagnosed as a

  malignant melanoma, but the mystery about why Carsten's doctor

  hadn't been informed still remained. The official responsibility lay

  with the consultant, Morten Kj?rgaard, but apparently he hadn't

  had anything to do with the analysis itself, so it seemed likely that

  one of the pathology lab technicians had been careless. The local

  newspaper carried a short piece about 'the consultant who hadn't

  been told' and who therefore 'was robbed of the chance to save his

  own cousin'. But it was soon forgotten.

  Carsten only lived a few weeks after he became ill. He spent most

  of the time at home, and Kristine and her parents nursed him as best

  they could, both physically and spiritually. In addition, a nurse ?

  who was soon visiti
ng daily ? provided as much help and support as

  they needed. Her name was Lotte. When Lotte learnt just where

  the unsightly birthmark had been, she looked at Carsten's date of

  birth again. This was just a few days before he died, but from that

  moment on she sat continuously by his bedside tenderly holding his

  hand until it was all over. Carsten's last words when he opened his

  eyes and saw Lotte and Kristinefor the very last time, was: 'We'll

  say no more about it now!'

  I sat cradling Beate in my arms and spent more than an hour

  over the story of Carsten. She didn't say a word, I could

  hardly hear her breathing. It was only when I'd finished that

  she looked up at me and said that the story was wonderful,

  but also terrible as well. She said it was both wonderful and

  terrible at the same time. She was a grateful listener. As I'd

  got a fully fledged synopsis to work from, it wasn't too

  difficult to fill in the story, especially when I was with Beate

  amongst the ruins of an old paper mill, constantly being

  charged by the power and drama of a huge thunderstorm.

  Again she said that it was sure to be a brilliant book and that

  she was certain it would come out in Germany too. She said

  she was looking forward to reading it.

  The thunder and lightning continued, and the rain fell

  just as heavily as before, but the story I'd told gave so much

  food for thought that I could hardly begin a new one.

  Besides, it would have been stretching credulity a bit to be

  working on two novels at once.

  We sat talking over certain details and aspects of the

  plot. I gave Beate the impression that she was offering

  me valuable advice and, had I really wanted to write that

  novel, I'd certainly have found the points she raised useful.

  She nestled closer to me, put one of her hands in mine and

  kissed my throat a couple of times. It might have been me

  who began kissing more passionately, but she reciprocated.

  'Are we being naughty, now?' she whispered, and then she

  undressed. In the blue, stormy light she reminded me of a

  nude by Magritte. We laid down gently on the stone floor.

  We had no choice. We were defenceless against the

  elements. It would have been an expression of moral

  degeneracy not to have made love in that thunder, in that

  storm. It would have been like not hearing nature's voice,

  not bowing to nature's will.

  We lay in a close embrace until the thunder died down.

  The scent of plums and cherries was about her, and no

  words were needed. Only when it had stopped raining did

  she half sit up and say: 'Let's take a shower!' It was a rather

  paradoxical thing to say just as the shower had stopped and

  all the water had been used up. But she rose and pulled me

  after her. We ran naked to the path, it wasn't cold. Beate led

  me in the direction of the waterfall and reminded me of my

  promise. A few moments later we were standing under the

  waterfall singing. Beate had begun it. She sang 'Tosca's

  Prayer', which I thought was a strange choice, so I answered

  with the much more apposite 'Tower aria'. But she went on

  with 'Tosca's Prayer': Perche, perche, Signore? I appreciated

  her familiarity with operatic literature. It didn't surprise me,

  but I appreciated it. I don't know why I suddenly began

  singing an old nursery rhyme, perhaps it was because I felt so

  happy. It hadn't entered my mind since I was a boy, but the

  words went: Little Petter Spider, he climbed on to my hat. Then

  down came the rain and Petter fell off splat. Then out came the sun

  and shone upon my hat. And woke up Petter Spider who climbed

  on to my hat.

  We ran back to the ruins and got dressed. And by the time

  we were back on the path, the sun was shining. We felt no

  shame. The only thing that was a bit embarrassing was that

  I'd sung the old rhyme about Little Petter Spider. Luckily,

  she didn't enquire about what I'd been singing, and perhaps

  she hadn't been listening properly, but I rued my thought-

  lessness. Once again I was back on the Piazza Maggiore in

  Bologna.

  We crossed the river and began to climb a steep hillside