(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  He was surprised to see that everyone at the table was rising. With a start, he realized that the Royal Banquet was ended and that the King had departed. With difficulty, he pushed himself to his feet.

  ‘There’ll be coffee in the salon,’ Ingrid Påhl was saying.

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  He noticed that Leah was engaged in conversation with a diplomat, and had preceded him. He fell in beside Ingrid Påhl and returned to the salon, where a long buffet held the coffee.

  His meditations at the table had disturbed him, and now he wanted to avoid formal company and idle talk and to think himself straight in privacy. He was in no mood for Emily now and less in a mood for Leah. He wanted to flee from the rejecters, the embodiments of disapproval.

  Nearby, Count Bertil Jacobsson stood momentarily alone, fixing one of his decorations. Craig went to him.

  ‘Count,’ he said, ‘when you see my sister-in-law, Miss Decker, tell her I left early, I wanted to walk back to the hotel, get some air.’

  ‘Certainly, Mr. Craig.’ Jacobsson did not hide his concern. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Never better. Memorable evening. Excellent dinner.’

  ‘You’ll be pleased to know His Majesty was positively delighted with you.’

  ‘Tell that to my sister-in-law, will you?’ He wanted to add: and tell it to Emily Stratman, too. But he refrained. He said, instead, ‘And by the way, thanks, Count.’

  With that, Craig went for his hat and overcoat, and then left the Royal Palace.

  He waited on the windswept kerb, in front of the lonely small hotel, for the taxi that he had summoned from the cheap bar inside. A waiter had directed him to dial 22.00.00, and he had, and then given the girl his address and name, and she had said, ‘Bil kommer’, which the waiter had told him was good, and now in the cold, he waited for the taxi.

  The last time that he had looked, it had been near midnight, and now it must be much later. After leaving the palace, he had walked and walked, not covering much ground in his old man’s walk, staggering sometimes, and leaning against frozen walls of darkened buildings. In the late winter hour, the city had been desolate of life, and without sound except for the heavy clop of his shoes on the pavement and stones and the occasional whirring passage of a motor vehicle. When his nose, mouth, and chin felt numb, almost frostbitten, he had found the gloomily lit hotel in the side street and the empty bar, and for half an hour had defrosted himself with whisky.

  For the most part, his brain had been too soggy to entertain logical thought. But an immediate matter had frequently drifted in and out of his head, until, in the bar, he had captured it and made a decision. This night, it seemed, he had reached the nadir of his existence. A glamorous occasion, of which he had been a part as a highly honoured guest, had proved one more of life’s Waterloos. For a moment, in that occasion, he had come alive, felt old stirrings, and because he was no longer armed to be alive, he had failed and sunk back into easier demise. Yet strangely, in all his walking, some persistent fragment of an emotion—infinitesimal but pulsating—survived. The emotion, long dormant, was identifiable: the desire to be loved, not pity-loved, not respect-loved, but simply loved.

  When the emotion came clear, he knew what must be done. In sobriety, it would have been madness. Insobriety had a logic all its own. Craig had made his telephone call for the taxi, and now on the kerb, worn and quivering, he waited.

  At last, the black sedan with the meter arrived. Craig ducked into its rear seat. For seconds, he searched for his wallet, then located it, and removed the slip of paper that he had found attached to his bottle on the train from Malmö.

  ‘Drive me to Polhemsgatan 172C,’ he said.

  The ride was fast and skidding and of brief duration. He gave the driver a large note, so that he would not have to figure out the kronor, accepted the change, handed over a three-kronor tip, and found himself before a seven-storey apartment building. On the glass door hung a wreath of Christmas lights, disconnected. Craig punched the buzzer, and the door sprang open. He entered.

  Above each letterbox, in the hallway wall, was a name, an apartment letter, and a floor number. The fifth from the right read ‘Fröken Lilly Hedqvist, Apt. C., Fl. 6.’

  Dizzily groping his way in the faint light, Craig reached the elevator. It was an unusual triangular cage, meant to accommodate two thin Lilliputians, and Craig stuffed himself into its confines as into a foxhole. He squinted at the buttons, hit No. 6, and ground upward to the topmost floor.

  When the elevator shuddered to a halt, Craig squirmed out of it. The short, dim corridor swam before his eyes. He wondered if he would make it, or should—the search for love seemed less reasonable now—but suddenly, he knew, this was a better folly than returning to the Grand Hotel and Leah.

  With one hand on the wall to support himself, he traversed the corridor. The last apartment door, near the window and fire escape, bore the letter ‘C’. He rapped gently, and when there was no immediate response, he rapped harder.

  Her voice came from behind the partition. ‘Ja?’

  ‘It’s I,’ he said.

  He heard the lock turn, the door opened partially, and then, at once, it opened fully.

  He recognized only the cascade of golden hair. ‘Mr. Craig,’ she whispered with concern, drawing her lavender robe about her.

  She swung back and forth before his eyes, like a metronome, and he made one desperate effort at courtliness. He removed his hat, he thought, and said, ‘Miss Lilly—’ and could not remember her last name.

  ‘Come in, please.’

  Her tone was so beseeching that he obeyed at once. His impaired vision could only furnish part of the single room: a mosaic on the wall over a pinewood divan with striped cushions; a glass coffee table on a black tubular frame; two wicker chairs; a small television set; a double bed pulled down from a recess in the wall. Somehow, he reached the bed, and came down on the fat eiderdown.

  She was before him, he knew.

  He tried to explain. ‘Lilly, I—I’m very drunk—and very old—and don’t care—except—tonight—I wanted to be with someone who would know and not mind—and I thought of you, Lilly. Do you mind?’

  She knelt before him. ‘Oh, Mr. Craig. I am happy for me that you came.’

  ‘I’ll just rest a little and go back to the hotel.’

  She took his chilled hands and rubbed them, transmitting her warmth into him. ‘You will stay. I will take care of you. Lie down, lie down and sleep.’

  He felt satisfied and welcomed, and then realized that she had taken off his overcoat and jacket and that his head was deep in the feather pillow and that his legs had been lifted on the bed. She was undoing his collar and shirt, he thought, and she was above him, tending him, and perhaps what had brushed his cheek was her breast. It was wonderful to imagine this before sleep, and then, at once, he slept.

  He became conscious behind his eyelids, and he waited, motionless, while gradual awakening crept downward through his outstretched body.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw the thin drapes, and he saw that the city was still dark behind them. The room in which he lay was partially illuminated by some night lamp out of sight, and from a far corner came the hushed purr of radiator heat. He had expected to find himself in his upstairs bedroom at Miller’s Dam, and then remembered that he was in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, and then, with increasing bewilderment, he understood that he was in a room unknown to him.

  Against the gravity of sleep weight, he sat up with effort, pushing off the blanket. Except for his shorts, he was naked. He had no memory of undressing for bed, when suddenly the last memories of the night flooded into his brain. The image came clear—the cascade of golden hair, the lavender robe—and he swivelled from his sitting position to fill in the rest.

  Lilly Hedqvist, curled beneath the blanket, slept a few feet from him on the double bed. She slept with the easy innocence of a child girl, strands of her tangled hair across her cheeks, hiding all but the beauty ma
rk above her mouth. The blanket was drawn to her shoulders, so that only the flimsy white straps of her nightgown were visible.

  Studying her in this unguarded moment of inanimateness, Craig was touched. He had invaded her privacy, a stranger, a foreigner, a drunk, and she had taken him in with unreserved kindness and open trust, and offered him her care and her bed. Craig owed her much, he knew, and what he owed her first was to leave her undisturbed and to remove himself from her presence.

  Reluctantly, he eased himself off the bed, wishing he had been given this meeting before the time of his disintegration. But then, he told himself, this meeting would not have occurred, for it had been born of pity—hers for him, and his for himself.

  He padded after the bathroom, opening a cupboard by mistake, and then finding the bathroom. With the fluorescent light on, and the inevitable mirror before him, he tried to see in the reflection what Emily Stratman had seen before midnight and Lilly Hedqvist had seen since midnight. He saw a gaunt and angular face ravaged by weakness, and it sickened him. Turning on the tap, he doused his face in cold water and then washed. He rinsed his mouth. Briefly, he felt revived. He was sober and, incredibly, without a hangover. He took a silent vow: a new leaf, no more drink, no more self-destruction, no more anti-life.

  Tiptoeing into the living-room, he picked his shirt and trousers off the chair beside the bed, and then, suddenly, as he stood there, he was too fatigued to dress. He wanted only the bed again, that and an infinity of warmth and peace, and a later awakening to a world where something mattered. Weary and dispirited, he lowered himself to the edge of the bed. He sat hunched, inert, knowing it was almost nine of a dark winter’s morning, knowing Leah waited and the Nobel committees waited and the programme waited, and he was not ready for celebrations.

  ‘Where are you going, Mr. Craig?’

  Lilly’s voice startled him, and he spun around. She was on her back, beneath the cover, head turned towards him, one hand brushing the hair from her eyes and the other holding the blanket to her throat.

  ‘To the hotel,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get away without awakening you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t want to compromise you.’ He considered this. ‘No, that’s not it at all. I was ashamed to face you.’

  ‘There is no reason for shame.’

  ‘The way you saw me—’

  ‘I saw a man who drank too much and was tired. I did not care. I had thought of you—the funny time we had on the Malmö ferry—and I was glad you thought of me and came to me.’

  ‘Yes, I did think of you.’

  She pushed herself upright, against the pillow, still holding the blanket before her. With her free hand, she patted the bed. ‘Come here, Mr. Craig.’

  He dropped his clothes, and went around the bed, and sat beside her.

  ‘Why did you think of me last night?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know exactly, Lilly.’

  ‘You do know.’

  ‘I wanted to be alone at first, and I was beaten, and then I didn’t want to be alone—I wanted companionship—and you came to mind—I had enjoyed you—and somehow I came here.’

  ‘But you have not had companionship, as you say. You have slept, and now you go, but you are still alone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is this the way you want it—to still be alone?’

  ‘Lilly, for God’s sakes—’

  ‘No, you must be truthful with me and yourself. You must learn that. Why did you really come to me?’

  ‘All right, you asked—because I wanted you, dammit—’

  ‘You wanted me,’ she repeated, flatly, levelly, without the inflection of a question. ‘Yes, that is true. Then why are you afraid of it? Why do you make such complexity of loving and being loved? Why do you come alone and go alone?’

  ‘It takes two—’

  ‘We are two.’ She threw the blanket off her body and held out her arms. Immediately, he was beside her, in her arms, embracing her, kissing the hollow of her throat and neck and cheek.

  ‘Wait,’ she said softly, ‘we are still apart.’ She settled his head on the pillow, and bent and disrobed him completely. Then she took the hem of her white nightgown, and, gathering the nylon folds, she lifted it and pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor. ‘There, now we are the same, both nudists.’

  She was on her knees, posing for him, smiling. He studied her sensuous young body with pleasure. From the pink expanse of her chest her bust developed gradually, in a classical protruding curve, to the great circles of red nipples with their hardening points, and then the breasts rounded back into the full flesh of the body. The breasts were young and bursting, suspended straight outward, yet were not appendages but part of a symmetry of the whole, all faultlessly circular, like her rounding belly, the navel almost hidden, and the hips and thighs.

  She came off her knees and stretched out full length, pulling his head down between her breasts. ‘You are tired, I can see, but now you will not rest alone.’

  For a long time, he lay against her bosom, luxuriating in the pervading heat and knowing peace within himself, until slowly, slowly, tranquillity was kindled into desire. He began to kiss her, and could hear her heart as he heard his own. And now she had his head in her hands, and kissed his forehead and eyes, and at last, his lips.

  ‘Lie back,’ she whispered. ‘Yes—’

  He felt his shoulder blades on the bed, but still held her waist, as she came over above him, encompassing him, burning her flesh into his until her flesh was fused to his trunk, and their corporeality was consummated.

  All reason left him, and as he gave himself to sensation, he gasped, ‘Thank you, Lilly—’

  Her voice was far away, and reached him from a distance, riding the surge and swell of a breaker. ‘Never—thank me—never,’ she whispered. ‘Lovers do not thank—’

  And the rest was her sigh lost and suffocated by the onrushing whitecap of passion.

  ‘Lilly—Lilly—’

  Her breath was on his cheeks and her oscillating murmurs were in Swedish, and he opened his heavy eyes and saw her, almost unreal with her tumbling flaxen hair and swaying breasts and creased belly, like some transported Norse goddess.

  He wanted to tell her that she had come from heaven, but then she curled forward, closer and closer, her presence flowing over him, so that it was not a breaker that engulfed him but lava, and he could not speak. Her open mouth touched his, and he thought she whispered, ‘Freya.’

  And he remembered Freya, Swedish goddess of carnal love, and he was shorn of control, and all gentleness was out of reach. He took her arms, and pulled her down, rolling her over to her side, so that they were side by side. The waves again buffeted him, and consciousness flickered low, but she managed to hold him to her. And suddenly he was released from the eddy, freed of the vortex, and lay spent in her arms.

  ‘Do not move,’ she said, and seconds later, she gave a convulsive shudder, and fell back, hands covering her eyes.

  After a while, she removed her hands, and opened her eyes.

  ‘Du är inte ensam,’ she said. ‘You are not alone.’

  But he had not heard her. He slept.

  6

  * * *

  IT was early afternoon when Andrew Craig returned to the Grand Hotel.

  His mood had improved over the previous day. Physically, he felt cleansed of old poisons, and consequently rested and at ease. For the first time in several years, he had slept without drink or drug, and the sleep had been dreamless and relaxed.

  When he had awakened, in a natural way, he had found the place beside him in bed empty. Of Lilly there had been left only a note pinned to the pillow:

  DEAR MR. CRAIG, the coffee is on the stove, and you can heat it. I am off to work. I hope we will meet again. LILLY HEDQVIST.

  After dressing and coffee, he had added a line in reply to her note. ‘I’ll see you soon’, he had written—and then he had gone down into the street. Outside the entrance, th
e elderly portvakt, the Swedish doorkeeper of the apartment, had been kneeling, adjusting the Christmas lights. Craig had almost bowled him over. But the old man had not been annoyed, had even been friendly, as if Craig were one of his tenants, and Craig guessed that Lilly had spoken to the portvakt of him.

  Daylight had come to the city, and the air was windless and surprisingly mild, almost balmy. The sun hung high and bright in the cobalt sky, and Swedish pedestrians appeared gay and appreciative of the spring interlude.

  Carrying his overcoat on his arm, Craig had made his way leisurely to the nearest square, noticing that the colours everywhere, and of everything—the women’s clothes, the pottery on a sill, the yellow furniture in a store window, the red-ribboned holiday packaging in a Tobak shop—were more vivid than before, either because of the sun or because of his own sobriety.

  At the square, he had hailed a taxi and been driven back to the hotel that he had not seen in seventeen hours. Only when he was in the elevator, ascending, did he suddenly remember Leah and the new day’s official programme. He could not recall what the Nobel people had scheduled for this day, but he hoped, for their sake, it was not important, yet, for his sake, sufficiently interesting to have removed Leah from the premises. If Leah was in, he would have to have an excuse, and a plausible one—the more difficult to conceive, he told himself wryly, because he had not written fiction for so long—or suffer her chastisement. What he needed was a respite, time to think of a likely story, and he prayed fervently that Leah was out.

  When he entered the suite, his agnosticism was confirmed. His prayer had not been answered. Leah’s handbag stood unyielding and stern, like a motorist’s warning sign, on the hall table.

  Leah sat stiffly on the maroon chair in the living-room, holding the telephone in her lap, her bunched features as reproachful as those of a young widow.