to prison for picking up a few ideas for a novel; but they get
mean over the years, and The Spider won't be able to call in
the money they owe him from the other side of the grave.
Or do you think he's nominated an heir, Petter? Has he
thought about that, do you think?'
No he hadn't. I'd made a huge mistake, it was embarrass-
ing. I'd not reckoned with the shameless.
'But he still has one way out,' I said. 'He can announce
that he waives his right to all monies the authors owe him.
Then the danger is past, all danger is past and the authors
won't have a motive for murdering him any more.'
He shrugged his shoulders. Was he smiling or wasn't he?
'I'm afraid things have gone too far,' he said. 'They say there
are already plans to get him.'
Get him, get him! It put me in mind of all the times I was
cornered as a child, of all the beatings I'd taken, of Ragnar
who broke my head so that I had to go to Accident &
Emergency and have twelve stitches.
I glanced out over the square in front of the massive
basilica and soon caught sight of the little man with his felt
hat and cane. The little homunculus was walking up and
down the piazza lunging at passers-by with his bamboo stick
as if the little thing was a rapier, but no one paid him any
notice. He ought to get a grip, I thought. Metre Man was in
danger of turning into a parody of himself.
Luigi appeared to have changed the subject, for he sud-
denly asked: 'Do you know anything about a novel called
Triple Murder Post-mortem?'
I flinched. He must have noticed my reaction. It was
Robert's crime novel which had been published in Oslo a
couple of years earlier.
'There is a Norwegian novel of that title,' I said. 'I don't
think it's anything for your market, Luigi.'
His laugh was almost one of resignation. Then he said:
'Oh yes, I've heard of the Norwegian version too, and that's
part of the reason I'm talking to you. But I also have in mind
a German novel which has recently been translated into
Italian. The Italian publisher told me he was rather dismayed
to discover, only a few days ago, that there is a Norwegian
novel based on exactly the same story, published in the very
same year as the German one. The stories are said to be so
similar that there's no question of coincidence.'
I felt my cheeks begin to burn. So Maria had struck again.
I tried to conceal my trembling hands from Luigi.
I remembered clearly that Maria and I had been together
on the campus, it was at the time we were trying to conceive
a child. We had gone out to the communal kitchen and fried
some bacon and eggs before mooching back into her bed-sit
and settling down on the sofa-bed again. It was then that I
told Maria the story of the triple murder post-mortem. I
made the story up then and there, scribbling down a few
rough notes when I got home, but I hadn't given it another
thought until I'd pulled it out for Robert years later. Then
I'd given the story a Flemish setting because his mother was
a Flemming.
'And what's the name of this German writer?' I asked.
'Wittmann,' said Luigi, 'Wilhelmine Wittmann.'
He'd stubbed out his cigarillo and now sat gazing out
across the Piazza Maggiore. 'It almost looks as if The
Spider has become a trifle forgetful in his old age,' he
said.
He didn't know how his words rankled. I'd always
exercised the greatest care to ensure that duplicates never
occurred. The only person who'd had any sort of privileged
position was Maria, but that was almost thirty years ago,
and long before Writers' Aid had got going. We hadn't
spoken for twenty-six years, and now, suddenly, she'd
begun to stir. Obviously I had to make contact with her
at once, it was quite unavoidable now. But then something
struck me, something I hadn't realised before: I'd never
asked Maria her surname. It may sound odd, but we'd only
known each other for a few months, and surnames weren't
much used in the seventies. The door of her bed-sit
on the campus had sported a ceramic tile with the name
MARIA which she'd painted on it in large, red letters.
As soon as the idea of pregnancy was mooted, she must
have consciously withheld both her address and surname.
I only had Maria's own word for the fact that she'd taken
a job as a curator in one of the Stockholm museums. I
mused at how small the world is, and yet how large a
haystack when you're looking for a needle.
'So, there'll be exciting times ahead,' I remarked. 'We
must keep up with developments. I'm not The Spider, but
of course I'll keep my eyes open. As soon as I hear anything,
I'll ...'
He cut in: 'That's good, that's really good, Petter.'
I felt stupid. I felt tired. I'd been tired since mother died.
I looked at him: 'What shall I do, Luigi?'
'Get away from Bologna,' he said, 'the sooner the
better.'
He said it with a smile, but his smile was equivocal.
I laughed. 'I think you've been reading too many crime
novels,' I said.
His smile broadened. Luigi had always been a joker.
Could he be bluffing when he said someone was threatening
my life?
Perhaps Cristina and Luigi had guessed that I was The
Spider, had taken a leap in the dark, and now Luigi was
sitting there mocking me? Triple Murder Post-mortem could
have been a title he'd got from a Norwegian publisher, or he
could always have taken an option on the book, and then
been surprised at how the same story had been written twice
by two different authors. It wasn't even certain that there
had been an article in the Corriere della Sera.
'You may need protection,' he said.
A bodyguard, I thought. The idea was a new and painful
one.
I felt even more foolish. For once I was bereft of
imagination. External pressure had laid a heavy lid on the
force that welled up from within. I was empty of words. The
most intelligent thing I could find to do was laugh. But it
was far too cheap a reaction, and certainly nothing to boast
about.
'It's no laughing matter,' Luigi said.
I was incensed. I was furious because I couldn't tell if he
was bluffing. I got up and left some money on the table for
the wine.
'Are you staying at the Baglioni?' he asked.
I made no reply.
'Where will you go?'
When I didn't answer that either, he stuck his thumb in
the air.
'Maybe you should be a little careful with women,' he
said.
'What do you mean by that?'
He grinned. 'You have the reputation of being a bit
reckless. It's supposed to be your only weakness. What do
you think?'
I didn't think he seriously intended me to answer. I didn't
answer. He understood, Luigi was no fool. Were two men
going to sit in a caf? discussing what they did with w
omen?
It was certainly not worth raking over, it would be too tacky
for words.
'They might send a decoy. Perhaps some old girlfriend.'
I snorted. 'You read too many spy novels,' I said. I tried to
laugh. I couldn't tell what he was playing at!
He handed me his card. 'Here's my phone number,' he
said.
I picked up the card and read it. I can memorise num-
bers easily. Then I tore it up and put the bits in the
ashtray. I looked into his eyes. I knew I might never see
him again.
'Thanks,' I said and left, turning quickly as I felt a tear
begin to squeeze out.
It wasn't the threat of a conspiracy that had upset me.
Deep down I thought that Luigi had been thrashing about in
the dark. He probably thought we'd be having a drink
together at the fair tomorrow afternoon. But I knew that
Writers' Aid was nothing more than a memory now. It
didn't feel like liberation to me, more like coercion.
I walked down to the hotel feeling as if my feet had lost all
contact with the ground. Perhaps the problem was that my
feet had never touched the ground. I'd been on a cloud all
my life, I'd been floating around on a cloud. I'd been
operating as a brain divorced from everything. There had
been only two spheres: the world and my brain, my brain
and the world.
I'd had more imagination than the world could make use
of. I'd never really lived life, I'd been compensating for it. I
didn't know if I'd been punished by my mother, or by Maria
or by myself.
*
I slept for a few hours and was in the hotel lobby at the crack
of dawn next morning. It was quiet out in the Via Indepen-
denza, but I felt I was being watched by a young man as I
checked out. He was sitting in a leather armchair, pretty well
hidden behind a newspaper. It was impossible to judge if he'd
just got up, or if he hadn't yet made his way to bed. When I
went out into the street and got into a taxi, he followed. I
didn't see him get into a car, but I believe I caught a glimpse
of him again at the airport. He had an earphone in his ear, and
it didn't suit him. I think I must have been quicker off the
mark with my boarding card than him.
When I arrived at the gate, boarding had already begun,
and just a few minutes later we taxied out and took off. I was
in seat 1A, I had asked for it specially. I preferred to look out
to my left. I was bound for Naples, it was the first flight from
Bologna that morning. Twenty minutes later there was a
plane to Frankfurt with a connection for Oslo.
As soon as we'd reached cruising altitude, I lowered the
back of my seat, and an almost transfiguring peace en-
veloped me. Soon an episode from my childhood returned
to my mind. It was a real memory, but it was something I
hadn't thought about since I'd been a boy. Everything had
passed so quickly, I was already as old as my mother when
she died. This was the story:
I'd learnt to read and write by the time I was four. My
mother didn't teach me, she thought I should wait until I
started school. I learnt to read by myself, and I seem to recall
that I'd pulled an old ABC from the bookshelf completely
on my own initiative. I didn't consider it inordinately
difficult to keep track of twenty-nine letters.
Once when I was at home on my own, I picked up a red
crayon and went into my mother's bedroom. Her bedroom
had two large windows with blue curtains in one wall with
a fine view out over the city. White wardrobes occupied
another wall, but on the other two there was nothing but
white wallpaper. It was boring. I think I felt sorry for my
mother. At least I had a picture of Donald Duck on my
wall.
I had made up a lovely fairy tale in my head, I'd been
working on it for days, but I hadn't let on about it to my
mother. The fairy tale was to be a surprise. I took the red
crayon and began to write on the white wallpaper. I had to
stand on a chair to begin with because I needed the entire
wall, I needed both walls. Several hours later I was finished. I
lay down on mother's bed and read all through the long
story I'd written on the wall. I was so proud, now my
mother could lie in bed every evening and read the lovely
story before going to sleep. I knew she'd like it, it was a
beautiful story, and perhaps she'd like it even more because
I'd made it up specially for her. If I'd invented a story for
myself it would have been different, and if I'd cooked up a
fairy tale for father, it would have been different again. But
my father no longer lived at home, he hadn't done since I
was three.
I lay on the bed waiting for mother. I was looking
forward to her return, I was giddy with anticipation. I'd
often have a small surprise ready for her, but this was quite
different, this was a big surprise.
There, as I sat on that plane to Naples, I suddenly recalled
the sound of my mother letting herself into the hall that
particular afternoon. 'Here!' I shouted. 'I'm in here!'
She was livid. She was absolutely livid. She was beside
herself even before she'd read what I'd written on the wall.
She yanked me off the bed and threw me on the floor, she
slapped me hard on both cheeks, then she dragged me out
into the corridor and locked me in the bathroom. I didn't
cry. I didn't say a word. I heard her ring my father, and
heard how she was angry with him too. She said he had to
come to the flat and hang some new wallpaper. And several
days later, he did. The smell of glue hung about for weeks. It
was humiliating.
It was a long time before my mother let me out of the
bathroom. First she had her dinner, drank her coffee and
listened to the first two acts of La Boheme. She said I'd
better start getting ready for bed. I did exactly as I was told,
but I didn't utter a word. I didn't talk to my mother for
several days, but I did everything she told me. Finally, she
had to coax me to start talking again. I said I'd never write
on the wall again nor, I declared, on paper either, not even
loo paper. I was very resolute and in a way I kept my
promise. After this episode my mother was never allowed
to see anything I'd written, not so much as a syllable. She
couldn't look at my homework either. This was sometimes
brought up with my teachers, but they agreed with me. I
was so good at doing my homework on my own, they said,
that it wasn't necessary for mother to see my books. Quite
right too.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that this event was what put
me off being a writer, but it was certainly what made me
stop drawing. There was little point in drawing when I had
no one to show my drawings to. I think I can remember
being struck once by the impossibility of checking whether
mother would be able to read what I'd written if I ever
published
a book that had thousands of copies printed. But I
was never going to expose myself like that. I'd exposed
myself in my mother's bedroom, that was the writing on the
wall. Mother would never get the chance to stroll into a
bookshop and buy a book with my name on it.
I turned down the air hostess's invitation to breakfast and
tried to sleep, but after a few minutes' doze, I jerked back
into wakefulness again. I glanced down at the even
Umbrian landscape. I was forty-eight, half my life lay
behind me, seventy-five per cent of my life lay behind
me, perhaps more, perhaps ninety per cent. Life was so
indescribably short. Perhaps that was why I wouldn't put
my name on a book jacket. That thin veneer of culture, of
human glory and affectation, drowned in insignificance
by comparison with the colossal but fleeting adventure
through which I was now journeying. I had learnt to
ignore the insignificant. Ever since I was a child I'd known
of a timescale quite different to that of weekly magazines
and the autumn's annual crop of books. When I was small,
my father and I had seen a piece of amber which was
millions of years old, and encased within it was a spider that
was just as old. I'd been on earth before life began four
billion years ago, I knew that the sun would soon be a red
giant, and that long before that the earth would be a dry
and lifeless planet. If you know all this you don't enrol for
an evening course in DIY. You haven't the placidity of
mind for it. Nor for a 'writing course' either. You don't
mince about caf?s saying that you've 'started writing
something'. Perhaps you do write, there's nothing wrong
in that, but you don't sit down to 'write'. You write only if
there is something you want to say, because you have a few
words of comfort to give other people, but you don't sit
down behind a desk in a spiral of the Milky Way and
'write' something just for the sake of rtn
or of <>. But the poets
posed on the catwalk. Climb aboard, ladies and gentlemen!
Welcome to this season's collection from Kiepenheuer &
Witsch. We have a creation here that should be of special
interest to you. This is a superb Armani novel, unrivalled
in its genre. And here we see Suhrkamp's lyric fashion
icon ? 'mit Poetenschal nat?rlich ... und mit Ord und Datum,
bitte!'
I was tired. But now Writers' Aid was at an end and a
literary epoch had passed. I would never again return to the
big book fairs. I had decided to try to salvage my life.
When we landed at Naples, I was the first passenger off the
plane. I ran through the arrivals hall, jumped into a taxi and
told the driver to take me to Amalfi. He couldn't have been
asked to do such long trips very often.
I'd never been to the Amalfi coast before, but over the
years many people had suggested I spend a few days in that
charming town on the Sorrento peninsula. Maria had
spoken of Amalfi, she had once been there with some
girlfriends. Robert, too, talked constantly about his trips
to southern Italy, in the days before Wenche had left
him.
We drove past Pompeii, and I tried to imagine the
townspeople in the final few seconds before the volcanic
eruption. As soon as I'd got one clear image, I'd do my best
to erase it again. What I had seen could be summed up in
one word: vanitas. Then the blow fell. Then the rage of
Vesuvius poured down over all the pretentiousness.
When we'd left the mountain behind us and were driving
through lemon groves towards the coast, I asked the driver
to take me to a hotel I'd heard of. I'd no idea if the Hotel
Luna Convento had any vacant rooms, but Easter was still a
full week away.
There were lots of vacancies. I asked for room 15, and was
told it was free. I said I wanted to stay a week, and not long
afterwards I was sitting in front of a window looking out
across the sea. There was a pair of large windows in the
room, and Metre Man was already peering over the sill of
the other one, scanning the ocean as well. The sun was still
low in the sky, it was only a quarter past nine.