(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  The first call, and the two after that, were from Swedish newspapers. There was static on the wire, and Stratman had difficulty in hearing. He answered the questions that he understood, briefly, precisely, and promised each correspondent that he would give lengthier interviews in Stockholm.

  The fourth call was from Dr. Carl Adolf Krantz. Stratman recognized the name and was friendly. He thanked Krantz for his effusive congratulations and welcome. Yes, the voyage had been pleasant and restful. Yes, he and his niece would arrive at eight in the morning. Yes, they looked forward to meeting the reception committee and to participating in the programmes and ceremonies.

  During all these calls, Emily, having washed and applied light make-up, stood at the porthole, half listening, staring out into the rain-crossed night. Spotlights on the water had picked out the pilot boat, and the launch that followed shortly after. The ship was progressing slowly, among what seemed to be dozens of islands, and growing larger in sight was the framework of lights that must be the wharves and the city of Göteborg.

  At 10.20, Emily was brought away from the porthole, to join her uncle, by the noise at the door. At once, it seemed, they were surrounded by visitors. The purser was on hand to introduce a First Secretary of the Swedish Foreign Office, who had driven down from Stockholm and would ease their way through customs to the train. Four or five city officials, representing Göteborg, were introduced, and after mumbling their formal greetings, gazed upon Stratman with the awe they had once accorded Wilhelm Roentgen.

  For Emily, never leaving her uncle’s side, what followed was a continuous flow of movement. Led to the music-room, where two Swedish men and two women were stamping passports and checking money declarations, Emily and her uncle were met with silent respect and quickly passed through. From the rail of the open top deck—the downpour had slowed to a drizzle—she watched the ship ease alongside the huge wharf, seeing clusters of Swedes waiting with flowers and from somewhere hearing the strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.

  Following the First Secretary and her uncle downstairs, trailed by the Göteborg officials, she wondered if she would see Mark Claborn again. She hoped not, and she was relieved when they arrived at the head of the gangway, and he was nowhere in sight. With the others, she descended the gangway, pushing through the customs shed jammed with visitors, porters, officials, and arrived at the counter under a huge ‘S’ that held their five suitcases. The customs examiner was smiling. He had already sealed the cases without opening them. A Nobel winner, his smile seemed to say, could not be suspected of smuggling.

  ‘We had better hurry now,’ the First Secretary was insisting to Stratman. Two porters carried their cases, and followed them down the stairs to the street. It was raining harder again. The First Secretary’s Mercedes, guarded by two policemen, was a few yards away. Emily and Stratman gave their thanks to the city officials, hurried through the increasing rain, and fell into the back seat of the vehicle.

  The First Secretary took the wheel, and they were moving. In the rain, Emily could form no impression of Göteborg. The port at the mouth of the Göta River had a population of 400,000. This seemed incredible. The wet, cold streets were deserted. This was the street known as Södra Hamngatan, and that was Milles’s Poseidon Fountain in the Götaplatsen, and over there the Röhsska Museum of Applied Arts. While her uncle voiced his appreciation, Emily could make out nothing except two parks that seemed attractive but abandoned in the rain, and the rows of lights about the business district.

  They reached the first of the two Stockholm boat trains seven minutes before its departure.

  The First Secretary was all efficiency. He guided them to their adjoining compartments. He counted their luggage. He spoke in an undertone—obviously of Max Stratman’s importance—to the conductor who wore a black-and-yellow arm band reading ‘Sovvagn’. He shook their hands, first Stratman’s, then Emily’s, and said that he would see them late tomorrow at the Grand Hotel. Then he charged off, and almost instantly the train shook and began to move.

  Before Emily and Stratman could leave the aisle, the black-uniformed conductor reappeared.

  ‘Your berths are made,’ he told them in careful English. ‘There is no private toilet as in America, I am sorry. The one toilet is at the end of the carriage. We do not have a porter in each carriage, but if you ring, I will come swiftly. There is a pull-down basin to wash your hands. I hope you are comfortable.’

  By the time Emily had entered her compartment, the noisy train was catapulting along at breakneck speed. The compartment was tiny but, she was sure, luxurious by Swedish standards. Everything seemed wooden, except the gleaming steel lever that secured the door.

  She was more tired than she had realized. She snapped open the overnight case on her berth, removed her toilet articles, then opened the washbasin. The hot and cold water taps were both cold. She did not mind. With a tissue, she shed her makeup. Then she brushed her teeth, washed and found a towel on the berth to dry. Lifting the basin back into the wall, she searched for a comb, and pulled it through her short bobbed hair twenty times.

  She undressed with haste, slipped into her white pleated nightgown, placed the overnight case on the floor, and slid between the tight covers of the sleeping berth. When she laid her head on the pillow, she found no comfort. It was both hard and too high. Poking behind the mattress, she found a second pillow, a hardpacked maroon roll, underneath. The Swedes are Spartans, she thought. She decided against removing the red roll. She would be a Spartan, too.

  About to dim the lights, she heard her uncle through the compartment door. ‘Emily—wie geht es dir?’

  ‘Yes? Come in.’

  He entered, tentatively, glanced about. ‘Are you comfortable, Emily?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ she lied.

  He balanced himself against the wall. ‘It is going very fast.’ He squinted at her. ‘You are not sorry you came?’

  ‘Of course not, Uncle Max. Whatever gave you that idea? I can’t wait to get to Stockholm. Can you?’

  He tried to reinforce her enthusiasm. ‘I think it will be an unforgettable week. Not so much this Nobel Ceremony, but the excitement, the new faces. My main wish is that you have a good time.’

  ‘I will. Don’t you worry. Get some rest.’

  ‘Yes.’ But he was reluctant to leave. He looked down at his niece, so small, so childish, on the large berth. ‘Emily, I am sorry about what happened tonight.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens. It is life. Only it should not happen to you.’ He hesitated. ‘I was wondering. Is there—is there anything more you want to tell me?’

  ‘It’s out of my mind, Uncle Max.’

  ‘Good, Liebchen, very good. You think you will sleep?’

  ‘I took a tablet.’

  ‘Good night. The conductor will wake us in time.’ At the door, he halted again. ‘Fix the latch when I go.’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Max. Good night.’

  After he was gone, she did not bother with the latch. She dimmed the lights, and rested on her back, one arm behind her head. The train bounced beneath her, but that was not what made sleep difficult. For the first time in years, she thought of her past, the time before America, her girlhood. Then she thought of the curiously arid, placid period of growing up in the new country. Her mind touched on her resolution, made when she had gone aboard the ship, the determination to become a complete woman, and her consequent failure. The resolution illuminated the events of this night.

  That poor young man on the boat, she thought. He was only my guinea pig, and he did not know it. She could hardly remember his name now. But anyway, he deserved more. He would never know how he had been used, and to what extent her experiment had been unsuccessful. She had known psychiatrists, and she had read Freud and Adler, and sometimes she had the objectivity to point their perceptions inward on herself. It was crystal-clear to her now that, unconsciously, she had fully provoked the incident. The drinking had been deliberate. The invitation for six o’clock. The being stark-naked in the showe
r at six with both doors open. She had invited the ultimate act, not knowing that she had, and expected that he would come as he had, not knowing that she had done so. At the same time—how confusing—her saner conscious ego had not wanted it at all, had feared and despised it. The result had been inevitable. It would forever be inevitable, she knew.

  The body, the lie of a body that provoked, the figure stretched below her, detached from her meditations, was her body and she could not disown it, she knew. She did not like it this night, nor any other night in memory. It was crippled inside and soiled outside, and she wished it was not her body, as she had often guessed in Atlanta that some blacks had wished to be white and could not understand a God that had so shown his displeasure. Like them, she resented the curse of Ham, and wanted normality—whatever that was—well, normality, that meant belonging, acceptance, no fears.

  It had been 6.18 when the young man had gone from her stateroom. No one would understand, but that had been the exact time that the last of Emily Stratman had died. Did the Nobel people know that their laureate in physics was arriving with a corpse? The celebrated Professor Max Stratman and corpse. Stockholm. She played the word-association game. What does the word Stockholm mean to you, Miss Stratman? Quickly, now, what? And she replied, quickly, trepidation, dread, anxiety, fear, men. All one and the same, all finally—men.

  My crazy mind, she thought, wandering. Wonderful, drugful tablet, work, go on, work. When will I sleep? . . .

  On the sunny, late morning of December 2, Carl Adolf Krantz, Count Bertil Jacobsson, and Ingrid Påhl were once more, the second time this morning, the fourth time in two days, seated in the rear of a Foreign Office limousine, en route to the Arlanda Airport. Because two winners and their relatives—Dr. John Garrett and his wife Saralee Garrett, and Mr. Andrew Craig and his sister-in-law Leah Decker—were arriving at 12.35, on the same flight of the Scandinavian Airlines System from Copenhagen, another Foreign Office limousine had been dispatched half an hour earlier to the air terminus.

  To make this seventy-minute ride more bearable, Jacobsson had deliberately placed himself between Krantz and Påhl. He wished no more bickering. He wanted unity before the final reception duty was performed.

  Carl Adolf Krantz, however, was in no mood for bickering this late morning. His spirits were high, his beady eyes bright, his goatee bristling, as he continued the monologue he had begun after they had finished breakfast with Stratman and his niece and left them in the Grand Hotel.

  He had been praising, without restraint, Stratman’s findings in the field of solar energy, and now he was extolling the winning physicist’s background and character.

  ‘Did you ever meet a more remarkable man?’ he asked, and did not wait for an answer. ‘Wisdom shines in his face. And his true modesty. So rare to find in a famous man. One of the marks of greatness, I would say, a humility that confesses, “Yes, I have gone so far, but there are more curtains to lift, let us go on, let us go further.” I tell you both, I cannot recollect another laureate who has impressed me more.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Ingrid Påhl.

  ‘Yes, I liked him,’ Jacobsson agreed. ‘I hope he did not mind our staying for breakfast.’

  ‘I am sure not,’ said Krantz.

  ‘I wonder. I had the feeling he was weary—’

  ‘He is not a youngster,’ said Krantz, ‘and he has had a long trip. Besides, it was not weariness I detected so much as a sense of a genius whose mind is still on his work. After all, as he told us, he is continuing with his solar investigations. He has only begun. We have just come along and interrupted—’

  ‘He seemed perfectly fine to me,’ said Ingrid Påhl. ‘It was his niece—I thought she was a little strange.’

  ‘How so?’ Jacobsson wanted to know.

  ‘Remote—and—oh, scared.’ Ingrid Påhl considered the judgment. ‘To begin with, at the depot. She was separated from him for a moment when the photographers closed in, and she appeared frantic. I saw her face. That was just one thing. For the rest of the time, she was withdrawn. I do not know—as if she were not part of the group, a stranger—’

  ‘She is a stranger,’ said Krantz.

  ‘At any rate, an interesting young lady. I studied her face. Flawless. She is going to create quite a stir in our little social whirl.’ lngrid Påhl leaned across Jacobsson. ‘And she does not look a bit like Dr. Stratman,’ she added to Krantz.

  ‘No reason why she should,’ said Krantz. ‘She is his brother’s child.’

  ‘What happened to the brother?’ asked Ingrid Påhl.

  ‘How the devil should I know?’ said Krantz testily.

  Ingrid Påhl opened her voluminous handbag and brought out her cigarettes and holder. ‘Well, they are settled, thank God. Now, Bertil, what about this noon’s visitor? I know all about Andrew Craig. But this Dr. Garrett—’

  ‘You read the typescript I gave you, did you not?’ asked Jacobsson.

  Ingrid Påhl had the light to her cigarette, shook the flame off the match, and dropped it to the floor. ‘I read it twice. It was all about his work. What about the man? What are we to expect?’

  ‘There is little I can tell you,’ said Jacobsson. ‘He lives in this city near Los Angeles, California, and has three children. He had no reputation in academic circles until he and Dr. Farelli made their heart transplantations. I do not think he is wealthy, but I believe he is well off. I have read excerpts of his speeches in the press. They seem fairly routine. I have the picture of a rather single-minded, dedicated man, with few outside interests—’

  ‘Dull, you mean,’ said Ingrid Påhl.

  Jacobsson’s face looked pained. To him, no winner of the Nobel Prize could possibly be dull. ‘I would prefer not to characterize him in that way. Rather, I would say that he is a man whose work is his world. Perhaps he is not so colourful in personality as Dr. Farelli, but more the typical, businesslike American scientist who has collaborated in producing a marvel for humanity.’

  Ingrid Påhl’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Collaborated? I did not know he and Farelli worked together—’

  ‘No, no.’ Jacobsson hastened to amend his statement to lngrid Påhl. ‘I used the word only in its broadest definition. They researched separately, and made their discoveries, of an identical nature, quite apart but at the same time. Not unfamiliar in science, as Carl will tell you. You may recall that Dr. Farelli confessed he and Dr. Garrett had neither met nor corresponded.’

  ‘Then this meeting in Stockholm will be their first?’ Ingrid Påhl savoured the drama. ‘I wonder what they will have to say to each other.’

  ‘They will devote hours to discussing immunity mechanism,’ said Krantz, ‘as well as organ banks for the heart, pancreas, and liver. Appetizing.’

  ‘In any case, you may both have an opportunity to hear what they discuss,’ said Jacobsson. He bent across Krantz for a view through the window. ‘We have not far to go. I presume Dr. Garrett and Mr. Craig have had an opportunity to become acquainted in this last hour since Copenhagen. I rather hope so. It’ll save us the formal introductions. . . .’

  The French-made Caravelle jet, that had taken off from Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen at 11.20 in the morning, had been airborne fifty-five minutes and was twenty minutes out of Stockholm.

  It was now precisely 12.14, according to Saralee Garrett’s platinum wristwatch, a gift of John’s on their recent fifteenth wedding anniversary, and she wished desperately that it were 12.25 and that they had already landed. She wanted them to be swept up in a busy social programme, so that her husband would have no more time alone with his ulcerating obsession. Tiny and thin as a hummingbird, Saralee’s outward appearance belied her inner resilience. But the last hour with John had proved almost more than she could bear. From the corner of her eye, she espied her husband once more studying the three Copenhagen newspapers, and she knew that he was fuming.

  Dr. John Garrett was, indeed, fuming. He would not even allow himself the comfort of sitting back and enjoying the soft leath
er seat in the aeroplane. Instead, he leaned forward tensely, in the attitude of a pugilist stalking a formidable foe and awaiting an opening. He jabbed nervously at the three newspapers in his lap, as if they were the embodiment of his opponent, and, indeed, they were, for Dr. Farelli’s smiling, cocky Latin countenance mocked him from a photograph on each front page.

  Ever since that afternoon seventeen days ago—when he had been lifted to the heights by the announcement that he had been honoured by the Caroline Institute of Stockholm for his achievement, and then dropped into the deepest pit of disappointment by the further knowledge that he had to share this achievement with an arch-enemy he did not know—Dr. John Garrett’s mental and pathological state had been one of simmering resentment.

  The high regard of his colleagues in Pasadena, Los Angeles, the entire nation, the celebrations that followed, had not been enough to calm him completely. Everywhere, praise had been tempered by acknowledgement that his victory was a joint one. True enough, Life Magazine had published separate half-page photographs of Farelli and him, but Time and Newsweek, while giving him fifty per cent of the text of their stories, had run photographs of Farelli alone. Worse, by far, were the long accounts in Science News Letter, Scientific American, and Science. They had all assigned special correspondents to interview him at the Rosenthal Medical Centre in Pasadena. The correspondents had been courteous and patient. Garrett had been voluble and winning. He had felt positive that his visitors had been dazzled. Yet, when their stories appeared—so important to him in these, his popular trade papers—between seventy and eighty per cent of the stories were concentrated on the specific accomplishments of Dr. Carlo Farelli. In each account—although possibly he had been over sensitive—he had the definite impression that he had been permitted to tag along as the poor cousin.