I bent down to look at an old escritoire. Henrik Ibsen
had once sat writing at this very desk. I knew that Ibsen
had taken room 15 at the old inn, originally a fourteenth-
century Franciscan monastery. It was here he'd completed A
Doll's House, and now a portrait of him hung on the wall.
It struck me that I had grown up in a kind of doll's house
myself. Once again I fell to thinking that there was some-
thing I was forever trying to forget, and it wasn't the fairy
tale I'd scribbled on my mother's wall, but a nightmare that
sat even deeper. I felt a horror of the cold, dark depths
beneath the thin ice I'd been skating on.
I conjectured that it was in this room that Ibsen had
taught Nora to do her wild Tarantella, which in reality had
been her dance of death. Anyone bitten by a tarantula could
dance themselves to death. I'd never thought of it before,
but now it struck me that the spider had of course been
Krogstad, the lawyer. I had to smile. I'd come to Naples
quite by chance. If there was such a thing as destiny, it was
certainly ironic.
I glanced down at the sea and again looked around the
room. Metre Man had begun to wander restlessly to and fro
across the floor's ceramic tiles. At one point he halted and
inspected me with an authoritative air, thrusting his bamboo
cane in my direction. 'Well, then! What now? Shall we confess
our sins?'
I unpacked my laptop, sat down at the desk and began to
write the story of my life.
Beate
There are two empty whisky bottles in the corner by the
fireplace. I don't know why room service hasn't taken them
away, but I'll put them in the wastepaper basket before I go
down to breakfast early tomorrow morning.
I've been here for ten days, and for the past three I've
written nothing. There was nothing else to write. Now
there is something more.
For the first time since Maria left I've met a woman who is
on the same wavelength as me. I've found a girlfriend here
and we go on long walks together in the hills above the
Amalfi coast. She dresses girlishly in white sandals and a
yellow summer frock, and she'll even venture into the hills
dressed like this. She's full of humour and not the sort to run
away from a cold shower. Today we were overtaken by a
terrific thunderstorm.
I've thought a lot about Luigi's warning, but I can't
believe Beate is a decoy of any description. We're already
strongly attached to one another. If she was sent to the
Amalfi coast as a decoy, she must have changed her mind
since. I still haven't noticed any men with earphones and
we've been up to the Valle dei Mulini twice already. There
wasn't a soul to be seen.
I feel certain Beate is harbouring a secret too. Her
reaction was so extraordinary when we came down from
the little village of Pogerola this evening. She had a really
serious anxiety attack, burst into floods of tears and said we
oughtn't to see each other any more.
But tomorrow we're to walk across the hills to Ravello.
Beate is unattached, perhaps I'll ask her if she wants to come
to the Pacific with me. I shall inform her about Writers' Aid,
I've already told her some stories. I don't need to restrain
myself any more, I've de-classified all my synopses, I've
taken back what is mine.
Soon Beate will be able to read everything I've written
at the hotel over these past few days. I don't think my
adventures with girls will shock her, maybe they'll give her a
good laugh. After all the tears she's shed this evening, I
wouldn't begrudge her that. I'm sure she's lived life to the
full too; I haven't enquired about her past, but it's irrelevant,
irrelevant to us. She still doesn't know that I'm extremely
rich, but I'll ask her if she wants to come to the Pacific with
me before I tell her I'm a man of independent means. I've
already begun to investigate air routes. There's a flight from
Munich to Singapore on Wednesday, and I've booked two
seats just in case. I've booked 1D and 1G in first class.
After that, we'll see.
We could do a bit of island-hopping until we find a place
to settle down. For that matter, we could buy a house.
Perhaps we'll find a bungalow with a view of the sea. I'm
not too young to live as a pensioner, and Beate paints
watercolours.
My imagination is running away with me again. It's too
fleet of foot.
When I'd finished writing out a kind of synopsis of my life -
up to and including my hasty departure from Bologna � I sat
for hours by my window just staring down at the breakers
that swept into the Torre Saracena. It was Good Friday, the
day before I met Beate. I didn't even go into town to look at
the great procession that celebrates Christ's Passion.
I'd decided to enlist the help of the hotel staff in e-mailing
what I'd written to Luigi. It might be useful to have a back-
up copy somewhere remote from my own person. Luigi
could, if he wished, give my entire story to his journalist
friend on the Corriere della Sera and let him use the material
in any way he chose. It was in my interests that the story was
made public, or at least referred to, as soon as possible. After
that I could see about getting out of the country. An outlaw
shouldn't remain too long in one place.
However, when I awoke the next morning, I decided to
spend a day in Amalfi before I took off. It was Easter
Saturday, the weather was beautiful and I still hadn't been to
the Paper Museum. After breakfast I went into the town and
bought the Corriere della Sera as I'd done every day. A couple
of mornings previously, in a brief article about the Bologna
Book Fair, there had been a few lines to the effect that this
year's fair hadn't produced any blockbusting title that every
publisher was fighting to get an option on, there was no new
Harry Potter on the horizon. The rumours this year, it said,
were quite different: they all centred on 'The Spider'. This
mysterious nickname was a front for a modern fantasy
factory (sic!) that sold literary and half-finished novels to
writers all over the world. The article's author, a Stefano
Fortechiari, pointed out that in antiquity an influential
author might be accredited with a plethora of different
books which, in reality, were the works of various other
writers. The fantasy factory was supposed to be the complete
reverse. Several dozen novels, perhaps several hundred,
were in fact based on drafts and ideas that originated from
one single person. I had to smile as I read these lines. I had
made my mark.
The article's author had an interesting point, but the
phenomenon he was describing wasn't as unique as might
be supposed. From time immemorial, churchmen had
claimed something similar for the books of the Bible. The
Bible originated from many different hands,
of course, but
theologians believed there was one all-encompassing meta-
author behind the whole collection. They didn't necessarily
think that God had verbally inspired every sentence in the
Bible, God didn't work like that. But he'd given each of the
authors a clue. He'd given each something to think about.
I had considerable collegial sympathy for the way God
worked with people. He, too, laid claim to a certain recom-
pense, he demanded everything from praise to penance. But
he went further than me: he threatened to destroy all those
who didn't believe in him, and modern man refuses to live
under such conditions. Now God was dead and it was the
frustrated and their conspiracy that had murdered him.
So, this Stefano was some corroboration that Luigi hadn't
been bluffing, but it was little more than an indication.
There was nothing in the current article to show that this
journalist had written anything about the 'fantasy factory'
before. Quite the opposite � it was almost as if the article was
based on the long chat I'd had with Luigi in Bologna. Nor
was there a single word in the article about either the
Norwegian or Italian versions of Triple Murder Post-mortem.
I couldn't quite be sure if there really were any plans to
kill me, but I wouldn't allow any suspects the benefit of the
doubt.
I crossed the busy coast road and sat down in a pizzeria on
the beach. I ordered a tomato salad, a pizza and a beer.
I had to have my eyes about me the whole time. I no
longer believed that anyone had followed me from Bologna,
but it wasn't inconceivable that, for example, a British or
Scandinavian publisher had combined a trip to the Book
Fair with an Easter holiday in southern Italy afterwards. The
Bologna Book Fair was always either just before, or just
after, Easter.
While I waited for my order, I read the paper, but I also
became aware of an attractive woman in a yellow dress and
white sandals. She might have been about thirty and sat by
herself at one of the neighbouring tables. She tried to light
a cigarette with a pink lighter, but without success. All at
once she got up, crossed to my table and asked if I had any
matches. She spoke Italian, but it was easy to hear that she
wasn't a native. I told her I didn't smoke, but just then I
caught sight of a lighter lying on the table next to mine. I
simply picked it up, without asking the German tourists'
leave, and lit her cigarette before replacing the lighter and
nodding my thanks to the Germans. When I'd eaten and
paid my bill, I waved to the woman with the cigarette as I
went. She sat drawing something on a sketch pad, but she
gave me a serenely enigmatic smile and waved back. I was
certain I'd never met her before, for if I had I'd certainly
have remembered such a special face.
I walked up through the town and went into the Museo
della Carta in an old paper mill. Amalfi was one of the first
places in Europe to manufacture paper. An elderly man
demonstrated how they pulped wood prior to pressing and
drying the wet sheets. He still made paper the old way - a
tradition, he explained, that went right back to the Arabs of
the twelfth century. He showed me the exquisite writing
paper he'd made and how a watermark was formed.
It was hot, but I was determined to take one final walk in
the Valle dei Mulini before I left Amalfi. I'd been up there
once before, and then as now it had been hard to negotiate
the alleys that led out of town, but soon I'd left civilisation
behind me.
Luxuriant lemon groves flanked the path on both sides. The
trees were covered in black and green nylon netting to protect
the lemons from wind and hail. I greeted a little girl who was
playing with an old hula-hoop, but saw no trace of the black-
clad woman who, a week before, had leant from a window
and given me a glass of limoncello. The Easter sunshine had
coaxed out hundreds of tiny lizards. They were extremely
timid. Perhaps people didn't come along here very often.
I put the last house behind me and passed an old aque-
duct. I was walking on a gravelled hiking path called the Via
Paradiso, and its name was apposite. Soon the Via Paradiso
had become an idyllic, riverside cattle track in the bottom of
the lush valley.
The last time I'd walked here I hadn't met a living soul,
but now all of a sudden I heard the sound of snapping twigs
on the path behind me. Next moment she was by my side. It
was the woman in the yellow dress.
'Hello!' she said, still in Italian, smiling broadly, almost as
if she expected to find me here. She had deep brown eyes
and a profusion of wavy, dark blonde hair.
'Hello!' I replied. I cast a wary glance down the path, but
she was alone.
'It's so lovely up here,' she said. 'Have you been before?'
'Once,' I said.
Clearly she couldn't decipher that I was a foreigner. She
pointed to a waterfall fifty metres ahead. Then she said:
'Shall we bathe?'
This line alone was sufficient to convince me that I'd met
the woman of my life. We'd never seen each other before,
she was wearing white sandals and was dressed in nothing
but a thin summer frock. It was sweltering hot, neither of us
looked particularly prim, but suggesting we should bathe
together was very uninhibited.
Shall we bathe? The three words were pregnant with sub-
text. She both did and did not mean that we should jump
into the waterfall together. She was saying that the sun was
hot. She'd pointed to the waterfall and called it refreshing
and beautiful: it was tempting. She had posed the brief
question to see how I'd react. She was saying that she liked
me. Now she wanted to see how I responded. She wanted
to watch me disport myself. She was setting the tone, the
three words were a tuning fork. The woman in the yellow
dress had said that she was willing to walk with me, but that
she would rather not have any heavy conversation. She was
saying we had nothing to be ashamed of.
I remembered Luigi's admonition and said: 'Perhaps we
could do that tomorrow.'
She had inclined her head slightly. She had been testing
me and I'd given the best answer she could hope for. It was a
Solomonic answer. Had I immediately ripped off my shirt
and begun loosening my belt, I'd have made a fool of myself.
The invitation wasn't that literal. It was a rebus. If I'd said
that I never bathed in waterfalls with women I didn't know,
I would again have failed the tests she'd set me. Hiding
behind such general norms would have been over-starchy, it
would have been a rebuff.
She laughed. 'Come on!' she said. And we began walking.
She walked a pace ahead of me on the path.
Her name was Beate and she came from Munich. She'd
been
a week in Amalfi too, but she mentioned she was
staying all summer. She painted watercolours, had rented a
bed-sit from an affable widow, and was due to hold a big
exhibition in Munich at the end of September. I'd have to
come to Munich then, she told me. I promised - I couldn't
really do otherwise. The previous year she'd had a small
exhibition of scenes from Prague after spending a couple of
months in the Czechoslovakian capital.
We had switched to German. It was easier for me to speak
German than for Beate to struggle on in Italian. I could hear
that she hadn't been born in Bavaria and thought there had
to be a reason why she didn't say where she came from. I
don't know where I got the notion that her parents might be
Sudeten-Germans, but it was probably due to her mention
of Prague.
I didn't tell her exactly what I was called, but I used a
suitable pseudonym. I looked her right in the eyes as I said it.
I needed to test her out. She gave not the least reaction to
the pseudonym.
I wasn't a fool. Perhaps even now I was in love, but I
wasn't irresponsible. I couldn't shut out Luigi's warning.
She didn't ask my surname, but I told her I was Danish and
lived in Copenhagen. She didn't react to that either. I told
her I was the editor-in-chief of a Danish publishing com-
pany, which was quite plausible. I'd brought a laptop and
some work to Amalfi, I explained. I needed to get away for a
while. I thought it sounded reasonable. But I'd under-
estimated her.
'Work?' she queried.
'Some editorial work,' I said.
'I don't believe a word of it,' she said. 'No one travels
from Denmark to southern Italy just to concentrate on
"editorial work". I think you're writing a novel.'
I couldn't lie to her, she was much too clever.
'All right,' I said. 'I'm writing a novel.' Then I added: 'I
like it when you see through me.'
She shrugged her shoulders. 'What is your novel about?'
I shook my head and said I'd promised myself not to talk
about what I was writing until it was finished.
She accepted my answer, but I still wasn't sure she believed
me. Was it possible that she knew who I was? If Luigi's hint at
an intrigue had been a joke, I'd never forgive him.
We passed the moss-covered ruins of several paper mills.
Beate pointed out flowers and trees and said what they were
called. We spoke about the Jena Romantics' fascination
with ruins and the traditional countryside. We talked about
Goethe and Novalis, Nietzsche and Rilke. We talked about
everything. Beate was a fairy tale, she was a whole anthology
of fairy tales. She was no straightforward type, she had a
multiple personality. I felt she was like me.
It's not often I'm captivated by a woman, but on the rare
occasions when I do meet a woman I fall for, it doesn't take
me long to get to know her. It is those you don't like that
take the longest time to know.
After we'd passed the ruins of an ancient mill called
Cartiera Milano, a path turned off to the right. Beate asked
me if I'd been to Pontone. I knew it was the name of a small
town that lay on the saddle of hills above Amalfi, but I
hadn't been up there. 'Come on!' she said and beckoned me
to follow. She had a map and told me that the path was
called Via Pestrofa. My inability to work out any etymology
behind the name irritated me.
We put the valley behind us and joined a stone-paved cart
track with high kerbstones on either side of it. We halted
several times and looked down into the valley. We could
still hear the deep roar of the waterfall we were going to
bathe in next day, but soon its sound subsided and merged
into the gentle chatter of the river that still reached us from
the depths of the Valle dei Mulini.
We were short of breath by the time we got up to Pontone
an hour later. We had talked continuously and we were
already well enough acquainted for each to know that the
other had a secret in life. I was afraid to let her know my
intimacies, and she seemed just as anxious that I shouldn't