The Ringmaster's Daughter Part 5

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 Ullevlseter 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 antic.i.p.ation. 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 cafe and bought a waffle and a cup of hot blackcurrant before going out to rest on the gra.s.s. 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 Ullevlseter. 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 gra.s.s 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 Ullevlseter 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 a.s.sociations and imaginative leaps. She possessed a refined, cognitive imagination and was the same cornucopia of thoughts, att.i.tudes 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 relations.h.i.+p.

Even as we sat out on the gra.s.s at Ullevlseter, 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.

When she'd had her pleasure, I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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, thras.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.terfly. The fact that Maria liked Puccini too gave me great pleasure. Years had pa.s.sed, but it was as if things had come full circle and we were again at the opera watching Madam b.u.t.terfly, the only difference was that now no one tried to refuse us a gla.s.s 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 b.u.t.terflies.

I wasn't surprised when Maria appeared one day at the end of August and said that our relations.h.i.+p 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 relations.h.i.+p.

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 relations.h.i.+p 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 on good terms with the girls who'd spent the night with me.

We went to the cinema and theatre together, and occasionally we'd go for long walks in the forests around Oslo. I told her several stories, though now only when she asked for them, but we no longer lay together in the bilberry bushes. We didn't share Maria's bed at the campus either.

The bilberries were ripe now. I missed her body.

One warm summer's evening when we'd thrown our- selves down on the manicured landscape in front of Frognerseter's cafe and restaurant, I spent several hours relating a long story about a chess game with living pieces.

This was after we'd spoken to a Scots couple who'd pointed across Oslofjord and remarked how like Scotland Norway was. I made the story up as I went along; it had a large cast of characters, and Maria was particularly impressed by the way I managed to think up all the Scottish names. The basic outlines of the story were these:

Lord Hamilton had been widowed early in life and lived on a large estate in the Scottish Highlands. From his childhood he'd been an ardent chess player and, as he also loved being out in the sumptuous garden behind his stately home, he'd built a large, outdoor chess board in the open s.p.a.ce between an intricate maze of clipped hedges and a fine fish-pond. The chess board itself consisted of sixty-four black and white marble slabs two metres square, and the chessmen, which were of carved wood, were between two and three feet high depending on the value and rank of the individual piece. The servants of the house might stand at the windows and watch their master moving about the marble slabs and s.h.i.+fting the huge chessmen late on summer evenings. He sometimes seated himself in a garden chair, and then it could be an hour before he rose to make the next move.

The laird had a loud bell that he rang when he wanted his butler to bring him a tray of whisky and water, and sometimes the butler would ask him if he wasn't coming indoors soon. He was solicitous for his master's health and, at the back of his mind, there was probably also the fear that Lord Hamilton's sorrow at the loss of his wife, combined with his pa.s.sionate love of chess, might one day turn his brain. This nascent anxiety was in no way diminished when one evening the laird told him to stand on the chessboard and pretend to be the black knight, as the real black knight had gone in for repair after a violent thunderstorm. For almost two hours the butler stood on the chessboard, and only occasionally in the course of the game did the laird come out on to the marble slabs and push him two squares forward and one to the side, or one square back and two to the side. When, finally, he was taken by a white bishop and could at last return to the house - though many hours before the game itself was over- he was cold and cross, but naturally most relieved as well.

When the laird moved the black and white chessmen, it was impossible to tell if he favoured one side or the other in the game.

This was because he was in fact playing both sides as well as he could, he was playing both for and against himself, so he both won and lost every game, unless it ended in a stalemate. But with growing frequency he would also carry all the chessmen off the board and place them on the great lawn. Then, for hours, he would sit staring out over the marble squares. His employees said that in this state he could see the chessmen on the board even though they weren't there, and so could play against himself without even getting up from his chair.

For a long time the butler had been doing what he could to make the laird think of other things besides chess, and one evening he suggested that Hamilton should hold a summer party as they'd done in the days when her ladys.h.i.+p had been alive. This was one of the rare evenings when the laird, who generally preferred his own company, had offered the butler a gla.s.s of whisky, and now they were both seated beside the fish-pond, whisky gla.s.s in one hand and lit cigar in the other. The laird sat for some moments following one of the carp with his eyes before he turned to the butler and signalled his agreement that a summer party was an excellent idea, but that he should prefer a masquerade.

For an hour or two they sat there drawing up a guest list, but from the moment Hamilton mentioned that he wanted precisely 31 guests, the butler's suspicions were aroused, for he was all too aware that there were 32 pieces in a game of chess, and his two-hour ordeal on the chessboard at the laird's heartless behest was still fresh in his memory. The laird made no bones about the fact that one of the objects of the prospective masquerade was a chess tournament with live chessmen as a kind of after-dinner entertainment. An invitation was sent out several days later announcing that a chess masquerade was to be held at the Hamilton mansion at which the respective guest was requested to come dressed as a king, queen, castle, bishop, knight or p.a.w.n. The guests who were to be p.a.w.ns really were sons of the local soil, eight farmers and eight farmers' wives, and the pieces were either army officers, senior officials or representatives of the n.o.bility or aristocracy.

The butler wasn't surprised when everyone accepted the invita- tion, because although Lord Hamilton had been a grumbler of almost unrivalled proportions in recent years, both he end his house stood in high regard. With the single exception of the Duke of Argyll, who'd been invited to come dressed as a king, the laird outranked all his guests. For the farmers who'd been invited, the mere chance to visit the Hamilton estate was an occasion in itself, an almost inconceivable event in a society where, even beyond the confines of the chessboard, a very rigid system of rank and order held sway.

During the weeks prior to the party, which was to be held on Midsummer's Eve, the forthcoming masquerade was the sole topic of conversation in the locality. One of the farmers had to withdraw just a few days before the great event because of illness in the family, but there was no difficulty in finding another agricultural couple. There were plenty of farmers in the district, and they didn't have to be all that particular about their costumes - they were only going to play themselves, after all.

The great day came, and even during the banquet many new acquaintances were being cemented across social divides. After dinner, coffee and dessert were served in the garden, and shortly afterwards Lord Hamilton rang his loud bell and requested his guests' attention. Everyone was already aware that a game of chess was shortly to be played on the marble flags with themselves as the living chessmen, but the laird had first to allocate each one his or her particular place on the board.

At table, the seating had been fairly informal and at least seemingly unplanned, but this was far from how it was on the chessboard. First, the laird arranged the p.a.w.ns: eight men and an equal number of women. Farmer MacLean was placed as a white p.a.w.n on a2 with his wife opposite as the black p.a.w.n on a7. On his right stood Mrs MacDonald on b2, and she faced her husband, the black p.a.w.n on b7. This carefully worked-out pattern meant that all spouses could observe one another across the chessboard, and they could also keep an eye on how their other half was doing with the farmer or farmer's wife to the left or right of them. Precisely the same logic was applied to the pieces. The white knight, Chief Constable MacLachlan, took up his position on b1 behind Mrs MacDonald and with his own wife as the black knight on b8 behind farmer MacDonald on b7. There were sixteen women and sixteen men on the board, there were two sides and two s.e.xes facing each other, always divided by marriage. The only thing that disturbed this symmetry was the placing of the kings and queens. Lord Hamilton himself took up position as the white king on e1, he had the d.u.c.h.ess on his left as the white queen on d1 and she was opposite the Duke of Argyll as the black king on e8. But Lady Hamilton was no longer amongst them. Hamilton had therefore given the role of black queen on d8 to a widow called MacQueen of whom he was rather fond and to whom, when by some rare chance he met her in town or at the cemetery, he sometimes chatted.

The two kings were the only people who ever decided which pieces to move, the other guests were no more than extras in the formal aspect of the game. Lord Hamilton had made no secret of the fact that the game itself might take some time, perhaps until well into the small hours, as both the duke and he were very experienced players, but the match was also to be a social game in which all the partic.i.p.ants would have ample opportunity to get to know one another. Each chess piece was a living soul, and the guests were exhorted to entertain each other as best they could while they waited for the laird and the duke to make a move. Then gradually, as the chessmen fell, they could continue their informal socialising out in the s.p.a.cious garden.

Lord Hamilton made his opening by ordering the white p.a.w.n - it was MacArthur - to advance two squares from e2 to e4, and the Duke of Argyll retaliated by moving Mrs MacArthur two squares up from e7 to e5, and the game had begun. The butler, chasing about the chessboard with drinks for those who wanted them, was the best witness to what ensued. He didn't find chess particularly engrossing himself, but soon - and with interest - he noted the rising suspense on the marble flags. Only one of the many climaxes will be highlighted here, but it was the most important one.

Mary Ann MacKenzie was an uncommonly beguiling young woman in her mid-twenties. She appeared on the chessboard as the white p.a.w.n on d2 opposite her husband Iain MacKenzie on d7.

Iain was several years older than her and had always had a reputa- tion as a bit of a Casanova. Even after marrying Mary Ann he'd had several mistresses, and he'd also flirted with several of the local married women, a couple of whom were present on the chessboard that night, a gla.s.s of sweet wine in their hands.

Over the years, everyone in the district had felt considerable sympathy for lovely Mary Ann. It was whispered that not only was MacKenzie unfaithful to her, but he was also a tyrant at home. So they were two diametrical opposites. Of Mary Ann it was said that she was probably the sweetest-natured young girl in the entire Scottish Highlands. She was so wonderfully captivating that it was no exaggeration to say that everyone who met her fell in love with her almost instantly. And not only men. There was something so singular about Mary Ann that even many women had to admit to having sleepless nights filled with tender thoughts of her.

If Iain was a potential cause for anxiety who'd at times threatened the stability of a number of local marriages, the same, paradoxically, could not be said of Mary Ann. When both a farmer and his wife felt themselves drawn to the selfsame person they usually remained on good terms, and so this mystifying woman often merely served to strengthen the marriage bond. It may perhaps be added that even the physical love between a couple could be spiced up by a common yearning for Mary Ann MacKenzie.

The very first to be taken on the board that evening at Lord Hamilton's was Mary Ann. And so she was free at once to wander round the large garden, to stroll in the exquisite labyrinth of clipped hedges or to stand by the pond and throw breadcrumbs to the fish. It was obvious that Iain felt uncomfortable about the freedom she'd been granted so early in the game. Right from the very start he followed his wife with a watchful gaze.

The next person who had to vacate the marble squares was Aileen MacBride, who'd been the black p.a.w.n on g7. Mary Ann was so intoxicated by the great garden, the lovely summer evening and all the wine she'd drunk, that she immediately took Mrs MacBride's hands and began to dance about the s.p.a.cious lawn with her. Next, they ran hand in hand into the maze, and a number of the chess pieces caught glimpses of Aileen and Mary Ann standing there kissing and caressing one another. Hamish MacBride also took in what was happening behind the topiary but, far from feeling jealous, he rejoiced on his wife's behalf, for he felt certain that if he'd had the opportunity, he would have been the first to fondle Mary Ann himself. It was a long while before other guests were free to step off the marble slabs.

This is a very complex story and one that has been the subject of much commentary and a.n.a.lysis, but I'll give it here as briefly and concisely as humanly possible.

It was an enchanted evening, it was as if good spirits and guardian angels held their protective wings over what happened that Midsummer's Eve. The laird and the duke concentrated ever more deeply on their game as it moved slowly towards a conclusion, and gradually the garden became full of elated guests who'd been released from the chessboard. They all swarmed about Mary Ann, and even the officials and their wives who'd never met her before, now began to flock around her full of adulation and desire.

For the first time in her life Mary Ann felt free to be herself and give of her boundless love and, though there was no malice in her, she relished the sight of Iain continuing to be pushed this way and that on the marble squares by the duke. For Iain MacKenzic was kept on the chessboard right up to the moment, not long before dawn, when the Duke of Argyll checkmated Lord Hamilton.

Mary Ann had good cause to fear that Iain would punish her when they got home, but she wasn't thinking that far ahead now. She thought instead of Iain's many years of unfaithfulness and decided that there was some justice in the world after all. It was still her night.

Gradually, as the pieces on the chessboard thinned, the party got more riotous and it was said that Mary Ann shared her love with everyone in the garden that night. All that time, Iain MacKenzie had to stand quietly on the marble slabs witnessing his own wife being belle of the ball and the object of an almost collective l.u.s.t, a sensual sport in which, on this one night, Mary Ann was more than willing to be enveloped. In a sense, therefore, MacKenzie found himself standing in the corner. He was quite powerless to do anything, because it would have been thought deeply shameful to ask to be released from the chessboard before the game was over. It would have been like spurning Lord Hamilton's hospitality. But he raised his arm more and more often as a sign to the butler that he wanted the whisky gla.s.s in his hand replenished. Soon, though he wasn't as steady on his feet as before, he could still keep a constant watch on Mary Ann who, time and again, ran playfully in amongst the hedges of the maze with some new woman, man or married couple. Jealousy was banished from the laird's garden that night.

Everyone loved Mary Ann and in a way, through her, everyone loved each other.

No sooner had Lord Hamilton conceded that the Duke of Argyll had checkmated him and shaken hands on the outcome, than Iain MacKenzie lurched out into the garden to search for his wife. He discovered her sitting on the gra.s.s closely entwined with both the MacIvers, but he pulled her away and slapped her hard across the face with the flat of his hand. In a matter of seconds, however, he was surrounded by a dozen p.a.w.ns and pieces from the chess game and Chief Constable MacLachlan, who'd served his time as the white knight, took him into custody.

Mary Ann didn't leave the Hamilton estate that morning. Her marriage to Iain was clearly irretrievable and the laird, who needed a new housekeeper anyway, offered her a home.