THE RINGMASTER'S DAUGHTER.

Jostein Gaarder.

My brain is seething. I'm bubbling with hundreds of new ideas.

They just keep welling up.

Perhaps it's possible to control thoughts to a certain extent, but to stop thinking is asking too much. My head is teeming with beguiling notions, I'm not able to fix them before they're ousted by new thoughts. I can't keep them apart.

I'm rarely able to remember my thoughts. Before I manage to dwell on one of my inspirations, it generally melts into an even better idea, but this, too, is so fickle of character that I struggle to save it from the constant volcanic stream of new ideas ...

Once more my head is full of voices. I feel haunted by an excitable swarm of souls who use my brain cells to talk to one another. I haven't the equanimity to harbour them all, some must be racked off. I have a considerable intellectual surplus and I constantly need to unburden it. At regular intervals I have to sit down with pencil and paper and relieve myself of ideas ...

When I awoke a few hours ago, I was certain I'd formulated the world's most competent adage. Now I'm not so sure, but at least I've given the virginal aphorism a due place in my notebook. I am convinced it could be traded for a better dinner. If Isold it to someone who already has a name, it might make it into the next edition of Familiar Quotations.

At last I've decided what I want to be. I shall continue doing what I've always done, but from now on I'll make a living out of it. I don't feel the need to be famous, that's an important consideration, but I could still become extremely rich.

I feel sad as I leaf through this old diary. I was nineteen when the entries above, dated 10 and 12 December 1971, were written. Maria had left for Stockholm several days before, she was three or four weeks pregnant. In the years that followed we met a few times, but now it's been twenty-six years since I last saw her. I don't know where she lives, I don't even know if she's still alive.

If she could see me now. I had to jump aboard an early morning flight and get away from it all. In the end, the external pressure built up to something like the one inside me, and so an equilibrium was achieved. I can think more clearly now. If I'm careful I may be able to live here for a few weeks before the net tightens around me for good.

I'm thankful I got away from the Book Fair in one piece.

They followed me to the airport, but I doubt if they were able to discover which plane I boarded. I bought the first empty seat out of Bologna. 'Don't you know where you want to go?' I shook my head. 'I just want to go away,' I said. 'On the first plane.' Now it was her turn to shake her head, then she laughed. 'We don't get many like you,' she said, 'but there'll be a lot more in the future, believe me.'

And then, when I'd paid for my ticket: 'Have a good holiday! I'm sure you deserve it ...'

If only she'd known. If only she'd known what I deserved.

Twenty minutes after my plane had taken off, another one left for Frankfurt. I wasn't on it. I'm sure they imagined I was heading home for Oslo, with my tail between my legs.

But it isn't always wise to take the shortest route home if your tail is between your legs.

I've put up at an old inn on the coast. I sit staring out across the sea. On a promontory down by the sh.o.r.e stands an old Moorish tower. I watch the fishermen in their blue boats.

Some are still in the bay, hauling in their nets, others are moving towards the breakwater with the day's catch.

The floor is tiled. The chill strikes up through my feet.

I've put three pairs of socks on, but they're useless against these cold floor tiles. If things don't improve soon, I'll pull the counterpane off the big double bed and fold it to use as a foot-rest.

I ended up here quite by chance. The first plane out of Bologna could just as easily have been for London or Paris.

But I feel it's even more of a coincidence that, as I write, I'm leaning over an old writing table where once, long ago, another Norwegian - who was also an exile of sorts - sat and wrote. I'm staying in a town which was one of the first places in Europe to start manufacturing paper. The rums of the old paper-mills are still strung out like pearls on a string along the valley bottom. They must be inspected, of course.

But as a rule I ought to keep to the hotel. I've taken full board.

It's unlikely anyone in these parts has heard of The Spider. Here everything revolves around tourism and lemon growing, and fortunately both are out of season. I see that some visitors are paddling in the sea, but the bathing season hasn't yet begun and the lemons need a few more weeks to ripen.

There is a phone in my room, but I have no friends to confide in, there have been none since Maria left. I could hardly be labelled a friendly person, or a decent one, but I do at least have one acquaintance who doesn't wish me dead.

There was an article in the Corriere della Sera, he said, and after that everything seemed to start falling apart. I decided to get away early next morning. On the flight south I had leisure enough to think back. I am the only one who knows the full and complete extent of my activities.

I've decided to tell all. I write in order to understand myself and I shall write as honestly as I can. This doesn't mean that I'm reliable. The man who pa.s.ses himself off as reliable in anything he writes about his own life has generally capsized before he's even set out on that hazardous voyage.

As I sit thinking, a small man paces about the room. He's only a metre tall, but he's fully grown. The little man is dressed in a charcoal-grey suit and black patent leather shoes, he wears a high-crowned, green felt hat and, as he walks, he swings a small bamboo cane. Now and then he points his cane up at me, and this signifies that I must hurry up and begin my story.

It is the little man with the felt hat who has urged me to confess everything I can remember.

It will certainly be more difficult to kill me once my mem- oirs are out. The mere rumour that they are being penned would sap the courage of even the boldest. I'll ensure that such a rumour is circulated.

Several dozen dictaphone ca.s.settes have been securely deposited in a bank box - there, now that's out - I won't say where, but my affairs are in order. I've collected almost one hundred voices on these tiny ca.s.settes, so these already have an acknowledged motive for murdering me. Some have made open threats, it's all on the ca.s.settes, which are numbered consecutively from I to x.x.xVIII. I have also devised an ingenious index that makes it easy to locate any one of the voices. I have been prudent, some might even call it cunning. I'm certain that hearsay about the ca.s.settes has saved my skin for a couple of years now. Supplemented by these jottings, the little miracles will have even greater value.

I don't mean to imply that my confessions, or the cas- settes, will be any guarantee of safe conduct. I imagine I'll travel on to South America, or somewhere in the East. Just now I find thoughts of a Pacific island alluring. I'm insular anyway, I've always been insular. To me there's something more pathetic about being isolated in a big city than on a small island in the Pacific.

I became wealthy. It was no surprise to me. I may well be the very first person in history to have plied my particular trade, at least in such a big way. The market has been limit- less, and I've always had merchandise to sell. My business wasn't illegal, I even paid a certain amount of tax. I lived modestly, too, and can now afford to pay substantial tax arrears should the matter ever arise. It wasn't an unlawful trade from my customers' point of view either, just dishonourable.

I realise that from this day forth I'll be poorer than most because I'll be on the run. But I wouldn't have swapped my life for that of a teacher. I wouldn't have swapped it for an author's life, either. I'd have found it hard to live with a definite career.

The little man is making me nervous. The only way to forget him is to get on with my writing. I'll begin as far back as I can remember.

Little Petter Spider

I believe I had a happy childhood. My mother didn't think so. She was informed of Petter's unsociable behaviour even before he started school.

The first serious chat my mother was summoned to, was at the day nursery. I'd sat there all morning just watching the other children play. But I hadn't felt bad. It had amused me to see how intensely they lived. Many children find it fun to watch lively kittens, canaries or hamsters; I did too, but it was even more fun to watch lively children. And then, I was the one controlling them, I was the one deciding everything they did or said. They didn't realise it themselves, neither did the nursery a.s.sistant. Sometimes I'd have a temperature and have to stay at home and listen to the Stock Exchange prices. At times like these nothing at all would happen at the day nursery. The children would just keep getting in and out of their jump suits, in and out. I didn't envy them. I don't think they even had any elevenses.

I only saw my father on Sundays. We went to the circus.

The circus wasn't bad, but when I got home I'd begin to plan a circus of my own. That was far better. It was before I'd learnt to write, but I a.s.sembled my own favourite circus in my head. No problem there. I drew the circus as well, not just the big top and the seats, but all the animals and circus performers too. That was hard. I wasn't good at drawing. I gave up drawing long before I began school.

I sat on the big rug barely moving a muscle, and my mother asked me several times what I was thinking about. I said I was playing circuses, which was the truth. She asked if we oughtn't to play something else.

'The girl on the trapeze is called Panina Manina,' I said.

'She's the ringmaster's daughter. But no one at the circus knows it, not even her, or the ringmaster.'

My mother listened intently, she turned the radio down, and I went on: 'One day she falls off the trapeze and breaks her neck. It's the final performance, when there aren't any more people in town who want to buy tickets for the circus.

The ringmaster stoops over the poor girl, and just then he sees she has a slender chain around her neck. On the chain is an amber trinket, and inside the trinket is a spider that's millions of years old. When he sees this, the ringmaster realises that Panina Manina is his own daughter, because he bought her that rare trinket on the day she was born.'

'So at least he knew he had a daughter,' my mother interjected.

'But he thought she'd drowned,' I explained. 'You see, the ringmaster's daughter fell into the River Aker when she was eighteen months old. At the time she was just plain Anne-Lise. After that the ringmaster had no idea she was still alive.'

My mother's eyes widened. It was as if she didn't believe my story, so I said: 'But luckily she was saved from the freezing cold water by a fortune-teller who lived all alone in a pink caravan by the river, and from that day on the ringmaster's daughter lived in the caravan together with the fortune-teller.'

My mother had lit a cigarette. She stood there disporting herself in a tight-fitting costume. 'Did they really live in a caravan?'

I nodded. 'The ringmaster's daughter had lived in a circus trailer ever since she'd been born. So she'd have found it far stranger to move into a modern block of flats on an estate.

The fortune-teller had no idea what the little girl's name was, so she christened her Panina Manina, the name she's kept to this day.'

'But how did she get back to the circus?' my mother asked.

'She grew up,' I said. 'That's easy enough to understand.

Then she went to the circus on her own two feet. That wasn't the least bit difficult, either. This all happened before she became paralysed!'

'But she could hardly remember that her father was a ringmaster,' my mother protested.

I felt a pang of despair. It wasn't the first time my mother had disappointed me; she really could be quite dense.

'We've been over this already,' I said. 'I told you that she didn't know she was the ringmaster's daughter, and the ringmaster didn't know either. Of course he couldn't recognise his daughter when he hadn't seen her since she was one and a half.'