The Ringmaster's Daughter

Home > Literature > The Ringmaster's Daughter > Page 7
The Ringmaster's Daughter Page 7

by Jostein Gaarder

on a large, deep-pile rug while a girl of two or three sat

  watching from the sofa. I thought it unnatural. Another

  time I watched a man who was lying on a big double bed

  romping with two women at once. It didn't arouse my

  moral indignation, but there were many other observations

  that could leave me shaken. On one occasion, and unable to

  intervene, I witnessed a vicious fight over money. I wasn't

  quite sure, but it looked rather like one man was left for

  dead inside the flat after the other had made off.

  These are obviously remembered fantasy, but I learnt

  from such fantasies. They were often full of insight. Much of

  the material for the many detective novels I later inspired

  was gathered from these mental journeys. Usually, a

  detective novel has a plot that can be condensed into a

  single page. The author's skill is simply to keep this kernel of

  factual information back. The detective must spend time -

  and use cunning - to arrive at the solution. That's what the

  readers like. Piece by piece, the investigator gets a better

  idea of what has actually happened. He must also be

  decoyed up blind alleys, but as the picture gradually

  becomes clearer and more complete, the readers feel clever,

  they believe that they have helped to solve the case them-

  selves.

  I learnt from dreams as well. A dream could be like an

  open book. At the time I had two or three recurrent dream

  landscapes, as well as a few dream characters who manifested

  themselves at regular intervals. I was convinced they weren't

  just a reflex to stimuli from the external world; far from it,

  they represented something new, they were genuine new

  experiences from which I learnt and which have moulded

  me into the man I am today. But where did the dreams

  come from? I couldn't work out if all my dreams and mental

  journeys were the fruits of specially sensitive antennae

  attuned to things that came from outside, or if I had some

  sonar of the soul that was able to detect layer upon layer of

  secrets from a bottomless well within me.

  I no longer dreamt of the little man with the cane, though

  I wouldn't have minded meeting him in a sleeping dream. It

  would have been far preferable to dream about him than

  have him roaming around the flat the whole time.

  I made even more spectacular mental journeys, too. I went

  to the moon, for example, long before Armstrong and

  Aldrin. I remember once standing on the surface of the

  moon and looking up at the earth. High up there were all

  the people. It has since become a cliche, but years before

  Armstrong made that giant leap for mankind, I found myself

  on the moon discovering for the first time how tragi-comic

  all wars and national boundaries were. I was possibly twelve

  when I made that journey of the mind. Ever since then, I've

  had a heightened sense of all the trivialities with which

  people pack their lives. Praise and punishment, fame and

  honour seemed even more farcical.

  Some of my mental travels took me even further into

  space. I once went on a time-machine trip and arrived back

  on earth before there was any life here. I moved over the

  face of the waters, and the earth lay like a bud that's ready to

  burst, because I knew that life on earth would begin soon.

  That was about five billion years before Gerhardsen's first

  government.

  Or I could rove about on mental wings to various places

  in the city, like the fly-loft in a theatre where I could sit high

  up, just beneath the roof, and gaze down at all the actors. On

  one occasion the little man was seated on a lighting batten

  only five feet away from me. He glanced furtively at me

  with a world-weary face and said in a thick voice: So you're

  here as well, are you? Can't I ever do anything on my own? That

  was a bit rich coming from him.

  I kept on getting new ideas. Sometimes they breathed down

  my neck, fluttered like butterflies in my stomach, or ached

  like open wounds. I bled stories and narratives, my brain

  effervesced with novel concepts. It was as if this fever-red

  lava welled up from the hot crater within me.

  Relieving the pressure of my thoughts was a constant

  necessity, almost ceaselessly having to go somewhere where

  I could sit discreetly with a pencil and paper and let them

  all out. My excretions might consist of long conversations

  between two or more voices in my head, and frequently on

  specific ontological, epistemological or aesthetic subjects.

  One voice might say: It is perfectly clear to me that the human

  being has an eternal soul, which only inhabits a body of flesh and

  blood for a short while. The other voice might answer: No,

  no. Man is an animal just like any other. What you term the soul

  is inextricably linked to a brain, and the brain is ephemeral. Or,

  as the Buddha said on his deathbed: All that is composite is

  transitory.

  Such dialogues could soon run to dozens of sheets of A4

  paper, but it always felt good to get them out of my head.

  And yet, no sooner had I transferred them to paper, than I

  was full of voices again and had to relieve myself once more.

  The dialogues I spewed out might just as easily be of a

  thoroughly mundane nature. One voice might say: So there

  you are. Couldn't you at least have phoned to say you'd be late?

  And the other voice would answer: I told you the meeting

  might last a long time. Then the first voice again: You don't

  mean to say you've been sitting in a meeting all this time? It's

  almost midday! And so the row would begin.

  I never worked out in advance what such introductory

  exchanges presaged. Indeed, it was to avoid thinking about

  it that I willingly sat down and wrote the entire altercation

  out, so as to get it out of my system. The only way to get

  relief from an over-active mind was to fix its impulses in

  writing.

  Occasionally I would bathe my brain in alcohol and,

  when I did, the spirit would flow back out again as stories; it

  was as if the liquid evaporated and got distilled as pure

  intellect. Though alcohol had a very stimulating effect on

  my imagination, it also dampened my angst about it too. It

  both primed the engine within me and gave me strength to

  endure its workings. I might have a shoal of thoughts in my

  head, but after a few drinks I was man enough to corner

  them all.

  When I woke up in the morning I couldn't always

  remember what I'd been writing or making notes about

  the evening before, or at least, the very last thing I'd

  scribbled on the writing pad after a couple of bottles of

  wine. Then, it could be exciting to sling on a dressing gown

  and saunter into my work-room just to cast a glance over

  my desk. It wasn't inconceivable that something interesting

  might be lying there and, if I found a sheaf of notes I had no

  recollection of writing, it was almost like receiving a

  mysterious document that had come to m
e via automatic

  writing.

  Perhaps one driving force behind my imagination and my

  periodic drinking was that thing I was always trying to

  forget, but which I couldn't really remember either. Why

  did I expend so much energy forgetting something that I

  couldn't even recollect?

  Only the countryside and visits from girls could provide me

  with brief interludes of a kind of intellectual peace.

  I was a natural mystic even before I began Sixth Form

  college. I saw the world as a thing dreamlike and bewitched.

  I wrote in my diary: I've seen through almost everything. The

  only thing I am unable to fathom is the world itself. It is too vast. It

  is too impenetrable. I've long since given up as far as that's con-

  cerned. It's the only thing that stands in the way of a feeling of total

  insight.

  I was also a romantic. I could never have contemplated

  telling a girl I loved her if it wasn't true. Perhaps that was

  why I kept inviting all those girls. I realised that one day I

  might become a faithful lover. As far as I was concerned, I'd

  have been able to spend the rest of my life in a little cabin in

  the woods together with the girl I really loved. I just had to

  find her first. While I was out walking I was convinced she

  could turn up at any moment. Perhaps she'd be there on the

  path round the next bend, I really thought it was possible.

  It's no exaggeration. I hadn't the slightest doubt she existed.

  *

  That June day I'd walked to Ullev�lseter from another skiing

  hut. There was virtually no one hiking in the forests

  surrounding Oslo on a hot summer afternoon; perhaps that

  was why it held such a special air of anticipation. For a large

  portion of the journey I hadn't met a soul, and that increased

  the chance that she might suddenly come walking towards

  me. If the forest had been packed with people it would have

  been harder for us to notice each other, and we certainly

  wouldn't have stopped to chat.

  I went into the caf� and bought a waffle and a cup of hot

  blackcurrant before going out to rest on the grass. On a

  bench a little way off sat a girl with dark curls. She was

  wearing blue jeans and a red jumper and we were the only

  two people at Ullev�lseter. She was sipping something too,

  but after a while she got up and came sauntering over

  towards me. For a moment I was afraid she was one of the

  girls who'd slept over at my place - a number had been

  brunettes, some with curly hair, and it wasn't easy to

  remember them all. But the woman who stood before me

  now must have been quite a bit older, she might have been

  eight or ten years their senior. A girl my age would never

  have taken such an unself-conscious initiative. She sat down

  on the grass and said her name was Maria. She was Swedish

  by the sound of her voice, and I'd never been with a

  Swedish girl before. I was convinced that Maria was the

  person I'd been searching for over the past few months. It

  had to be us, there was no one else here. It would have been

  too much of a coincidence to meet at Ullev�lseter on a hot

  June afternoon unless we were meant for each other.

  After only a few minutes' casual conversation we were

  speaking quite freely and easily and felt almost like old

  acquaintances. She was twenty-nine and had just finished a

  doctorate in the history of art at Oslo University. Prior to

  that she'd studied Renaissance art in Italy. She lived on the

  university campus, and this was another auspicious novelty.

  The girls I'd previously met always had to come back to my

  place because they lived with large families of parents and

  younger siblings. Maria had been born in Sweden, but her

  parents now lived in Germany.

  She was quite unique, but the better I got to know Maria,

  the more I thought that we had much in common. She was

  charming, engaging and playful all at once. But she had

  something of my own talent for making swift associations

  and imaginative leaps. She possessed a refined, cognitive

  imagination and was the same cornucopia of thoughts,

  attitudes and ideas as me. She was sensitive and easily hurt,

  but she could also be inconsiderate and uncouth. Maria was

  the first person I'd met for whom I had a genuine feeling and

  with whom I was able and willing to communicate. It was as

  if we were a split soul: I was Animus, and she was Anima.

  I fell deeply in love for the first time in my life, and I didn't

  experience the love itself as at all superficial. I'd known many

  girls, a great many in fact. It wasn't out of any lack of ex-

  perience that I fell so heavily for Maria. I felt I'd built a solid

  foundation on which to start a serious relationship.

  Even as we sat out on the grass at Ullev�lseter, I began to tell

  Maria stories. It was as if she could see from my eyes that I

  was full of stories, as if she knew she could simply tease them

  out of me. She always knew which were made up and

  which were real. Maria understood irony and meta-irony �

  so essential for true communication.

  I told a small selection of my best stories, and Maria not

  only sat and listened, but she commented, asked questions

  and made various intelligent suggestions. Nevertheless, she

  always agreed with my endings, and not out of politeness

  either, but because she realised she couldn't bring them to a

  better conclusion herself. Had I said something foolish or

  inconsistent, she would have been the first to pull me up.

  But I didn't say anything foolish or inconsistent, everything

  I told Maria that afternoon was well thought through. And

  she knew it. Maria was an adult.

  We began to walk down towards Lake Sognsvann. It felt

  superfluous to suggest that we spend the rest of the after-

  noon and evening together. We fizzed, we sparkled, it was

  as if we were bathing in champagne froth.

  However, even on that first meeting I believe I must have

  realised that Maria's affinity to me included an unwillingness

  to rush into giving any kind of guarantees for the immediate

  future. For the first time I was prepared to tell a girl that she

  might come to occupy the role of the woman in my life, but

  I couldn't tell if Maria was willing to allow me to play such

  an important role in hers.

  Just before we got down to the lake it began to rain. The

  air was sultry. We sought shelter in the bushes beneath some

  huge, overhanging boughs not far from the path. I put my

  arms about her, and she embraced me. She loosened my

  belt, and we took off each other's jeans. It was only after

  we'd begun to caress that I asked her if she was on the pill.

  She smiled roguishly, but shook her head. 'Why not?' I

  asked. She laughed. 'You're looking at it all back to front,'

  she replied. I was confused. It was the first time I'd been

  with a girl I didn't understand. She said: 'I'm not on the pill

  because I'm quite happy to have a baby.' I said she was mad.

&n
bsp; When she'd had her pleasure, I ejaculated into the

  bilberry bushes. Maria laughed again. She was ten years

  older than the other girls I'd been with. She didn't make a

  big thing of the fact that I'd come in the bushes because she

  wasn't on the pill. And I'm sure Metre Man didn't either.

  He just stood out in the rain under his damp felt hat,

  thrashing at the bushes with his spindly cane.

  We were together every day in the weeks that followed. For

  the first time I knew someone who I felt was my equal. I'd

  had a good time with girls before, but I was never sorry to

  see them go the next morning. I'd learnt to abhor breakfast

  soppiness. Many of my girlfriends viewed breakfast as a sort

  of prelude, I saw it as a finale. But I would have missed

  Maria if she'd suddenly decided to leave after breakfast. But

  because we were so alike, I thought she might vanish from

  me at any moment. I also realised that Maria had a low

  threshold for the kind of company she could tolerate in

  preference to her own. I still satisfied that threshold.

  I was always drunk with new ideas after we'd been

  together. Maria knew it. She would ask me to tell her what I

  was thinking, and I would narrate a story, usually a

  completely new story I'd invented off the top of my head.

  Sometimes I had the impression that she just went to bed

  with me because she knew it was the surest way to hear yet

  another enthralling tale. I wouldn't have minded that

  arrangement provided it had been an explicit one. I hadn't

  done anything blameworthy to the girls I'd been with, and

  Maria couldn't be accused of doing anything unjust to me.

  We were the same. We shared the same shameless erotic

  devotion, the same cynical tenderness. We feasted upon one

  another, the question was merely which one of us would

  leave the table first.

  One evening we went to the opera and saw Madame

  Butterfly. The fact that Maria liked Puccini too gave me great

  pleasure. Years had passed, but it was as if things had come

  full circle and we were again at the opera watching Madam

  Butterfly, the only difference was that now no one tried to

  refuse us a glass of Cinzano between the first and second

  acts. Pinkerton's betrayal was just as callous as before, he

  broke the heart of the delicate girl from Nagasaki, but

  neither Puccini nor his librettists could have guessed that

  only a few years later the Americans would be back to crush

  the whole of Nagasaki. We saw it at the height of the

  Vietnam war, and after the performance we went to a bar

  in Stortorget and talked about the many thousands of

  Pinkertons in Saigon - and the even greater number of

  butterflies.

  *

  I wasn't surprised when Maria appeared one day at the end

  of August and said that our relationship had to end. It merely

  saddened me. I felt stupid. I felt just as awkward as the girls

  who'd believed that four or six nights together could form

  the basis of a lasting relationship.

  The reason I wasn't taken aback by Maria's sudden

  announcement was that several times recently she'd spoken

  about being frightened of me. She'd begun to be frightened

  of looking into my eyes, she told me on one occasion.

  When I asked why, she turned away and said that all the

  stories I recounted made her apprehensive, she was scared of

  what she called my overweening imagination. I was amazed

  by her jitteriness. Later she explained that she still loved

  hearing me narrate, and that it wasn't the stories themselves

  that worried her, but that, in the long run, she didn't know

  if she could sustain an intimate relationship with someone

  who inhabited his own world more than the real one. I'd

  been rash enough to tell her about the little man with the

  bamboo cane as well, and a couple of times I'd pointed him

  out in the room. Honesty isn't always the best policy.

  Now she told me that she'd applied for a job in Stock-

  holm. It was a curator's post at one of the big museums.

  We continued seeing each other after this, but only once or

  twice a week. We remained good friends, there was never

  any ill-feeling between us. I remembered how I'd continued

 

‹ Prev