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
The Ringmaster's Daughter Page 19