where Beate's trainers really came into their own. An hour
later we'd arrived at a viewpoint called Lucibello. From here
we looked down on Amalfi and far across the Sorrento
Peninsula. Beate stooped and picked a large bunch of
birdsfoot-trefoil, which she offered to me. 'There you are,'
she said, 'some Easter flowers.' I told her that another name
for these yellow pea flowers was babies' slippers, and I
showed her why.
We began to descend towards Pogerola. I had the babies'
slippers in one hand and Beate in the other. At one point
Beate said that we could get married and have children. She
didn't mean it, but it was sweet of her to say it all the same.
She intended it no more literally than when she'd spoken
about bathing together in the waterfall the previous day. I
replied by telling her that I'd been thinking about inviting
her to go to the Pacific with me. Beate just looked at me and
laughed. But now I'd broached the subject.
At Pogerola we went to a bar and ordered a sandwich and
a bottle of white wine. We sat outside enjoying the view,
we had coffee, limoncello and brandy. I got a glass of water
for the babies' slippers.
As we began to walk down the broad stone steps towards
Amalfi, she said: 'You write novels, but didn't you also say
you work for a publishing company? Isn't that a difficult
combination?'
She wasn't chatting now. She wanted to know who I was.
I decided to tell her just enough for her to be able to
recognise me as The Spider if she'd ever heard of the
phenomenon. I said I helped other authors to write. I
mentioned that I sometimes gave them ideas for things to
write about, I might even supply them with notes that they
could build on. 'I've always had more imagination than I
could use myself,' I said, 'it's a cheap commodity.' I said
that. I said imagination was a cheap commodity.
Beate's reaction was obvious � she responded with silence
and introspection. There could have been several reasons for
this. She could finally have identified me as The Spider, or
she might indeed be part of the conspiracy. At least it could
be assumed she'd read the little article in the Corriere della
Sera - she'd said herself it was important to read this
particular newspaper to keep reasonably abreast of things -
and she'd made special reference to its cultural section. But
her reaction wasn't necessarily linked to anything she'd
heard about a 'spider'. She'd had enough to react to anyway
- I'd described a pretty bizarre occupation.
I talked a bit more about fantasy and helping authors.
Occasionally she'd shake her head, as if she were becoming
more and more pensive. I made a radical decision. I said I
wanted her to read something I'd spent the past few days
writing at the hotel. I said I could translate it into German
for her. I didn't want to keep any secrets from Beate, there
had to be an end to all this pretence. I thought again about
the two of us travelling and settling down on a different
continent. Perhaps we were both running away from
something - she'd already moved to southern Italy for the
summer. I'd decided to try to live the rest of my life as a
decent human being. I'd only got one life, and now I
wanted to live out the remainder of that existence.
It was six o'clock. My legs were a bit weary after all the
wine and walking, and we decided to sit out on a bluff and
watch the sunset. Beate said little, but soon I launched out
into a lengthy fairy tale. I didn't often look at her during the
course of the story and maybe this was because it took shape
as I spoke. I can't remember all the details, but these were
the outlines of the story:
Once long ago, in the town of Ulm on the River Donau, there was
a large circus. The ringmaster was a handsome man who soon
became inordinately fond of the beautiful trapeze artiste, Terry. He
proposed to her, and a year later she bore him a daughter, who was
christened Panina Manina. The little family lived happily together
in a pink caravan, but the idyll was to be short lived, for just a year
after her daughter was born, Terry fell from the trapeze and was
killed instantly. The ringmaster mourned his wife ever afterwards,
but at the same time became more attached to his daughter as she
grew up. He was glad, naturally, that Terry had managed to bear
him a child before she was suddenly snatched away. He had been
bequeathed a living image of his wife for, as the days and the weeks
From the age of eighteen months she would occupy one of the best
seats at the circus and watch the performance intently. During the
intervals she would sometimes get a lick of candy-floss from one of
the clowns, and before she was three she could find her way to and
from her seat without help or assistance. Soon both audiences and
artistes began to regard her as the circus mascot, and it wasn't
unknown for people who'd already been to the circus to come back
again just to see Panina Manina, because she was a completely new
experience every night � you could never predict what she'd get up
to. And so the audience always got two performances for the price of
one: they watched the evening's show, but they also sat watching
Panina Manina.
It wasn't unusual for the little girl to clamber over the wall of the
ring and take part in the performance itself. She was allowed to do
this because the ringmaster felt so sorry for his poor little daughter,
who'd lost her mummy, that he wished her all the happiness she
could find. These special contributions were always totally spontan-
eous. Suddenly the roly-poly little child would get caught up in one
of the clowns' routines, or she might run into the ring between acts
and do her own little piece, perhaps with a ball she'd borrowed from
the sea-lion, a couple of bowling pins she'd wheedled from the
jugglers, a hula-hoop, a small trampoline or a spoof water-pistol
she'd found in the props store. Panina Manina always got a great
round of applause for these ad lib performances and, as time passed,
the feeling of excitement before a show had more to do with what the
ringmaster's daughter might get up to, than with the long list of acts
in the circus programme.
Only the Russian clown, Piotr Ilyich, was unhappy with the
state of things. He disliked Panina Manina breaking into his
routines, and it annoyed him that she almost always got the loudest
applause. He made up his mind to put an end to this nonsense, and
one day in the interval he had her abducted. As usual Panina
Manina had approached the clown as he stood selling candy-floss
outside the big top, but this time he had an accomplice in the shape
of a Russian woman who was visiting the town. Her name was
Marjuska, and she'd been paid by Piotr Ilyich to take Panina
Manina back to Russia with her. And so it came about that the
unfortunate girl grew up on a poor farm near a small village deep
in the Russian tundra. The woman was never nasty to Panina
Manina because she'd always yearned for a daughter, but the girl
missed both her daddy and the circus so much that she cried herself to
sleep every night for a year. Until one night she forgot why she was
crying. But still she went on crying, for Panina Manina was still
just as sad, the only difference now was that she didn't know why.
She no longer had the faintest memory of the circus she'd come from,
forgotten was the smell of sawdust, and forgotten, too, the notion
that she had a father in afar distant country.
Panina Manina grew up to be more and more beautiful until at
last she was the loveliest woman east of the Urals. This was at the
time Stalin ruled Russia, but her foster-mother was a trusted
member of the Communist Party and one day Panina Manina
moved to Moscow where for a couple of years she earned her living as
a model for some of the Soviet state's greatest artists. Coincidence �
and life's coincidences is what this story's all about � coincidence
dictated that one summer's day she arrived in Munich, not far from
Ulm. Now, her father's circus had come to Munich, and as Panina
Manina went about taking in the Bavarian capital, it happened that
she caught sight of the big top. She walked towards it, indeed it was
almost as if something drew her towards it, but still she couldn't
remember that she'd once been a true circus girl herself, for the tent
was now in a different town. But deep down inside her there must
have been something that recalled the ring with all its clowns and
processions, the wild rides and the trained sea-lions. A large crowd
had gathered outside the tent as it wasn't long to the start of the
evening performance. Panina Manina went to the ticket window
and bought the best seat she could get, for she'd travelled far, and in
those days it was a great treat for a Russian girl to watch a modern
circus in Munich. In the covered way leading to the big top she
bought a stick of candy-floss, and though it was a bit odd for an
elegant woman to be seen sitting in the front row licking a stick of
pink candy-floss, Panina Manina had been determined to try the
sweet confection � it wasn't exactly everyday fare where she came
from. The performance began: first the great procession with all the
animals in the ring, followed by the most daring of trapeze acts, then
clowns and jugglers, bareback riders and trained elephants.
extraordinary happens. All at once, Panina Manina loses control of
herself, climbs over the barrier and runs out into the circus ring with
candy-floss in one hand and a wide-brimmed woman's hat in the
other. She begins to dance and jump about, but she isn't dancing as
you'd expect a grown woman to dance. Panina Manina gallops
uncontrollably around the ring the way a small child might run
about a large floor. At first the audience breaks out into peals of
laughter, thinking that this is the start of another funny act, but
when the good citizens of Munich � who are renowned for their
prudishness � realise that the woman with the hat and candy-floss is
just mad or drunk or perhaps even high, they begin to hiss. For a
few seconds more Panina Manina is in ecstasy, then she catches
sight of an imposing man standing before the large orchestra holding
a riding whip. It's the ringmaster. Panina Manina sinks down into
the sawdust, she begins to sob and then to weep miserably, because
now she's beginning to understand what a fool she's made of herself.
In that same instant the ringmaster realises that the hysterical
woman is his daughter. He strides across the ring towards her, she
looks up at him, and now Panina Manina also remembers that
she's the ringmaster's daughter, for blood is thicker than water. The
ringmaster decides to cancel the rest of the performance. He looks
up at the conductor and tells the orchestra to play the melody
'Smile' from the Chaplin film Modern Times. And so he sends
the audience home. He thinks he's probably finished as a ringmaster
because Munich's populace seldom overlooks a faux pas, but the
ringmaster is happy all the same. He has found his own dear
daughter once again, the greatest of all circus tricks, and now he will
spend the rest of his life with her.
Beate hadn't uttered a word while I'd been speaking. She
seemed all but paralysed, and when I'd finished and looked
in her direction, she appeared dejected. I tried to cheer her
up by saying that the story had a happy ending, but she
remained glum. Before I'd begun to narrate she'd been
holding my hand, but soon after she'd dropped it. I was
surprised that a fairy tale could have such an affect on her.
She was taciturn and sat there almost tight-lipped.
Eventually she asked me how old I was. I said I was forty-
eight. 'Exactly forty-eight?' she asked, and her tone was
frigid. I couldn't see why the extra months made much
difference, but perhaps she was keen on astrology. I said I
was a Leo and had turned forty-eight at the end of July.
We began walking down towards the town. She wore a
resigned, almost injured, look. 'Perhaps you'd hoped I was a
little younger?' I asked. She just snorted and shook her head.
She said she was twenty-nine, and I realised she was exactly
the same age as Maria had been in the summer of'71. Time
had stood still, I thought, and now Maria had returned. It
was Easter Sunday, and Maria had risen from the dead. It
was an alluring thought.
Beate's mood had changed totally. She didn't need to
be part of any conspiracy to have heard of The Spider, I
reasoned. She had one foot in the book industry herself, and
down in the valley she'd confided to me that she'd begun to
write, and it might well be that what she'd heard of The
Spider wasn't particularly flattering. For all I knew she might
be the daughter of one of the authors I'd helped. I recol-
lected that at least one of them lived in Munich, a man in his
mid-fifties whose family I knew nothing about.
It was a tense and difficult situation, but I felt sure we
could get over whatever was troubling her if only I could
discover what it was. I'd managed to surmount unpleasant
situations before. Beate had told me that her mother had
died suddenly only a few months earlier and that she'd been
very attached to her. It was hardly surprising that she
suffered from mood swings. I'd once lost a mother myself.
We walked past a farm where a couple of dogs snarled,
and some fussing geese waddled about a dirty coop. Just
before we took the last steps down to the main road, Beate
stopped and looked up at me. 'You shouldn't have told me
that story!' she exclaimed. Then she burst into tears. I tried
to comfort her but she just pushed me away.
'Was it really that sad?' I asked.
'You shouldn't have told me
that story,' she repeated. 'It
was stupid, terribly stupid!'
She looked at me, lowered her gaze, then peered up at me
I was the one who'd unsettled her.
I was completely at a loss. I enjoyed being with women
I couldn't fathom, but this was no fun at all. I must
have touched a raw nerve. Perhaps she'd identified with
the ringmaster's daughter - after all, I knew nothing about
Beate's past. It wasn't often a story had such a powerful
effect, but it had been a long day, a day of many strong
impressions.
Suddenly she looked up at me again and there was fire in
her eyes as she said: 'We must forget we ever met. We can't
tell anyone about this, ever!'
I didn't understand this violent attack. I'd had previous
experience of sexual escapades being superseded by a kind
of contrition � it was something I'd discovered to be a
peculiarly feminine characteristic � but this was quite
different. Beate wasn't the sort to take being lulled by
a thunderstorm to heart. And if she had felt remorse,
she'd surely have kept it to herself, or at least not pushed
the blame on to me. It wasn't Mary Ann MacKenzie I'd met
in Amalfi.
'We must forget everything, don't you see?' she repeated
tearfully, then continued: 'We must promise never to meet
again!'
When I didn't respond, she said: 'Don't you understand
anything? Don't you see that you're a monster?'
Her anxiety was infectious. Perhaps I was an ogre - the
thought had struck me. There had been the vague notion
that all my synopses and family narratives were perhaps
nothing more than my own macabre tango with a terrified
soul.
There was something I couldn't recall, something big and
painful that I'd forgotten ...
She'd stopped crying. Beate was brave, she wasn't a
person who wept for show. Now only hardness and
coldness remained. I didn't recognise her, I had no idea
what sort of cross she had to bear, and now her armour was
impenetrable.
'I'm scared, I'm scared for us both,' she said.
Perhaps it was a clue. Perhaps she knew about the plans to
kill me, she just hadn't realised that I was The Spider, not
until now, not until I'd revealed how I helped authors. It
hadn't sunk in properly until I'd told the long tale of the
ringmaster's daughter, and still she hadn't been quite certain
until I'd divulged my age. She had looked into The Spider's
eyes and they weren't just one pair of eyes, but many.
They'd frightened her. She'd known The Spider was a
monster, but she had allowed the monster to seduce her
before she'd managed to identify him. She knew about the
plans to kill me, and now she was scared for us both.
We passed the police station and walked in silence
through the town. From windows and cornices and small
balconies fronting the street Amalfi's washing hung out to
dry, T-shirts and bras fluttered in the gentle breeze like the
semaphore signals from a simple existence. This humdrum
life felt like the promised land to me now, but Beate's steps
got faster and faster, it was almost impossible to keep up with
her, and she didn't stop before we were down on the
seafront. I didn't know where she lived, but our ways parted
here.
I touched one of her shoulders, and she seemed to freeze.
'I don't understand,' I said.
'No, you don't understand,' she said. 'And I can't speak it
either.'
She shook off the hand I'd laid on her.
'Are we never to meet again?' I asked.
'Never,' she replied. Then she added: 'Perhaps one of us
must die. Don't you even understand that?'
I shook my head. She was out of kilter. Again I thought of
Mary Ann MacKenzie. I didn't know what I'd set in train.
'Never again, then,' I said.
But she'd reconsidered. 'Perhaps we must see each other
again,' she said now. 'In which case it should be tomorrow,
but that will be the very last time.'