(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘People are known to change their minds,’ said Eckart hopefully. ‘Possibly, one day, I can make the inducement higher.’

  ‘Never high enough.’

  ‘I can hope. We shall see. . . . Will you have a dessert, Max?’

  Stratman shook his head. ‘No. I think I have had just about all I can stomach for one day.’

  Except for the inadequate circles of artificial light thrown by the street lamps, the city of Stockholm was pitch-black at 5.40 in the afternoon, the time when Andrew Craig returned from the Stock Exchange Hall to his suite in the Grand Hotel.

  The last lecture had been successful, but enervating. Despite his physical weariness, he felt at peace within himself. The reception accorded him by the university students, and their faculty, had shored up his writer’s pride, and it reinforced the tenuous structure Jacobsson had built for him at the Swedish Academy on the ruins of his old self. The frivolous lunch with Emily, in the Stratman suite, had also played a positive part in his well-being. Gradually, Emily was beginning to accept and trust him, and for the first time in three years, he was enjoying companionship with a young woman of his own choosing.

  The terrible guilts of the night before, revived by Leah’s hysterical offering, he had managed to put aside. What remained in mind was the vivid sensation of Emily’s living presence, and the growing knowledge of his own rights and his own worth. This precarious resurrection of himself, as author and man, had made him vow, in the late afternoon, that he would not again drown himself in drink.

  The fact that now, sprawled on the sofa of his sitting-room, he held a double Scotch with water in his hand was in no way a breaking of the vow. Craig knew his history as a drinking animal. There was the normal Craig, in the indistinct Harriet days, who, like most men, would have a relaxing double before dinner, and no more. And there was the suicidal Craig, of recent years, who would have a compulsive fifth or more, after the double, in the daily descent to oblivion.

  Tonight—it was already 6.14—he was the normal Craig, with the relaxing double before dinner, and there would be no more.

  He was appreciative of his solitary confinement in the suite. He would like to have had dinner with Emily, of course, but she had promised to accompany her uncle, and members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, to the opera. On the other hand, if the opera took away pleasures, it gave them, too. For, upon arriving in the entry hall, he had found a brief note from Leah that she was off to dinner with Mr. Manker, and then, like Emily, to the opera, also. He wanted none of Leah this night, and so he blessed the opera, and he drank his drink.

  He enjoyed being alone to reflect. And he enjoyed his drink, because it would be his only one, and he could taste and savour it and not use it as a lethal potion. What would he do this evening? He would buy some American magazines at the news-stand in the lobby, dine by himself at an isolated table in the Winter Garden, and then come back to the suite. He would change into his pyjamas, crawl into bed, make some notes on Return to Ithaca—several ideas for scenes had occurred to him in the last day or two—and then read a new English biography of Kierkegaard that the students of Uppsala had given him. He would fall asleep early, and awaken early, refreshed, and take Emily out for breakfast and a long walk.

  He finished his drink, went into the bathroom, rinsed the glass and left it beside his toothpaste, found his tie and knotted it for dinner. He had pulled on his dark grey suit jacket, when he thought that he heard someone at the door. He went to the curtain and listened. The knocking was repeated.

  He hurried to the door and opened it.

  A young lady stood beyond the door frame, in the corridor. ‘Hello, Mr. Craig,’ she said.

  He did not recognize her. A Robin Hood hat was tilted above her auburn bangs. She had a nose like the beak of the common tern. Her lips, closed, seemed to give her no more than one lip. She was garmented in a thick coat of military cut, and under an arm, like a diplomatic pouch chained to a wrist, she carried an oversized black leather handbag.

  As she prepared to introduce herself again, her eyes began to blink disconcertingly, and Craig immediately established her identity. ‘Don’t you remember?’ she asked. ‘I’m Sue Wiley of Consolidated Newspapers.’

  He remembered, and he wanted to slam the door in her face, but he was too sober for rudeness. ‘What can I do for you?’ he said coldly. ‘Or are you here to see if I can walk a straight line?’

  ‘I’m sorry that upset you so, Mr. Craig. I was only doing my job. How am I supposed to get stories, if I can’t ask questions?’

  ‘There are jobs and jobs,’ said Craig. ‘Lizzie Borden had a job, too.’

  ‘She was acquitted,’ said Sue Wiley. ‘Look, Mr. Craig, I told you I’m sorry if—’

  ‘I’m not going to invite you in,’ said Craig, ‘and I’m not just going to stand here. Tell me what you want.’

  ‘I have someone downstairs who’d like to meet you—someone I think you’d want to know—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘At your press conference you praised Gunnar Gottling as the most talented writer in Sweden. He’s in the lobby. I promised to introduce you.’

  Immediately, Craig was interested. Still, he hesitated. ‘What’s Gottling got to do with you?’

  ‘I happened to meet him in the line of duty. I’ve been interviewing all prominent Swedes about the Nobel Prizes. I arranged to see Gottling this afternoon. We had some drinks. He’s a great talker and bursting with information. Anyway, your name came up, naturally, and he had a lot of things to say about you and the literary awards. I told him you were at the Grand and asked if he’d like to meet you, and he said he would. I suggested maybe the three of us could have dinner. So he drove me over—’

  ‘Miss Wiley, I’d like nothing better than to meet Gunnar Gottling. But not with you, no thanks.’

  Sue Wiley’s brain digested, calculated, and computed rapidly, from long training. She fed the machine Gottling. She fed the machine Craig. She fed the machine herself. Apparently, the combination did not add up. One click, and she subtracted herself. Gottling and Craig added up. Another click. When flint struck flint, there would be a fire. If she could not have the story first-hand, she could have it second-hand. Reinforced by alcoholic fuel, Gottling would give her the result tomorrow. Click.

  ‘All right, Mr. Craig, no hard feelings,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want me around, it’s your privilege. I’ve got my story from Gottling already, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll limit myself to good Samaritan, and maybe you’ll give me one mark on the credit side of your judgment ledger. I’ll introduce the two of you and make myself scarce. How’s that?’

  Craig remained suspicious. This was a young lady who did not wear altruism well. He watched her blinking eyes. ‘You’ll make yourself scarce? How scarce?’

  ‘Totally, completely. I’ll introduce you and vanish into thin air. I’ll even drop dead, if that’s your wish.’

  Craig still did not like Sue Wiley, but he could no longer be suspicious. A meeting with Gottling, on an unplanned evening, was irresistible. He admired Gottling’s uninhibited, earthy, iconoclastic prose. Craig as author had breathed life again, and now he wanted to sustain this existence. Dinner with another writer, a foreign writer, one whom he admired, would be stimulating. ‘Okay,’ he said to Sue Wiley. ‘Let me get my overcoat.’

  They went through the corridor together, and then down in the elevator, without exchanging a word.

  As they emerged into the bustling lobby, Sue Wiley pointed across the way towards the news-stand.

  ‘There he is,’ she said.

  Gunnar Gottling was stamping around a table at the far end, hands clasped behind him, ignoring the stares of whispering guests. What Craig saw first was a barrel figure of medium height, made to appear shorter by his bulk. He wore an eccentric fur cap and a mangy fur coat, open and billowing, as he paced. As they drew closer, Craig could make out the fierce Cossack face. The brow was narrow Cro-Magnon. The eyebrows were shaggy and unkempt,
like strips of rug samplings. The sunken eyes were more red than brown, because they were bloodshot. The moustache was not a mere lip adornment but two wild bushes of hair that covered the mouth and portions of the cheeks. The chest was that of a bartender at the turn of the century, and the jacket over it was pocked with drink stains and cigarette holes.

  ‘Mr. Gottling,’ said Sue Wiley, ‘this is Mr. Craig.’

  Gottling gargled and coughed, and enveloped Craig’s hand in his own, crunching it. ‘So—so—so,’ he growled.

  ‘I know you were both looking forward to this meeting,’ said Sue Wiley, trying to watch both men at the same time.

  ‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed two of your books, Mr. Gottling,’ said Craig.

  ‘You are a good reader,’ said Gottling. ‘About your writing—we will talk soon. First, we must drink.’ He looked about the lobby, sniffing with distaste. ‘This stinks. It’s for the fat ones. Are you a fat one, Craig?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Flesh and gut flabby with security and gadgets and showing the Joneses?’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Craig.

  ‘Don’t let that Nobel bribe get you that way. That’s Judas money. It sells you out to conformity, to pleasing, to commercialism. Never a damn honest word written by any prize winner, after he got the boodle. Christ, this place stinks. Where should we drink and eat?’

  Sue Wiley caught Craig’s glance, and quickly said, ‘Count me out, Mr. Gottling. Work, work, you know—’

  Gottling glowered at Sue Wiley. ‘What do you mean—work? For a female, that atrophies the ass. The best thing you can do, young lady, is go out and get yourself laid.’

  Gottling’s voice acted like a sonic boom, and there were many in the lobby who turned, wide-eyed and horrified. Craig wanted to crawl under the table. But Sue Wiley was the product of countless city rooms and pressrooms, and she did not flinch. ‘Mr. Gottling, thank you for your advice, but I like my work. And thank you for the interview. It was swell. I hope you’ll see me again. And good-night, Mr. Craig.’

  She took her leave with dignity.

  ‘Cerebral and sexless,’ grunted Gottling after her. ‘Your typical American dame.’

  ‘If she were typical, I’d give up my citizenship,’ said Craig. ‘I promise you, she’s not.’

  ‘Not? The hell she’s not. How many American women you with, Craig?’

  ‘I don’t, know. A dozen. Two dozen. I’ve never counted.’

  ‘I, Gunnar Gottling, have counted. I did not count after the first one hundred. All of them the same, the same, except the Polacks. All the same. Ouija boards have got more movement.’ He snorted. ‘I know where we’ll fill up. Ever been to Djurgårdsbrunns Wärdshus?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘If you been there, you’d be sure. Best tavern in Sweden. Fifteen minutes from here, out in the park. Come on.’

  Gottling stalked out, with Craig towering over him, a stride behind. The frozen night air hit them with a blast, and they both staggered, then bolted for Gottling’s compact Volvo station-wagon.

  A few minutes later, they were speeding to the outskirts of the city. Craig suspected that his host was myopic, but too vain to wear spectacles, for Gottling hung over the wheel, his eyes squinting through the close windshield, as he concentrated on the road ahead.

  ‘You like my English?’ boomed Gottling, as he wrenched the car around a turning.

  ‘It’s colloquial enough. One would think you’d lived in the United States.’

  ‘Where do you think I lived? Six years in your lousy country when I was a kid full of piss and vinegar. Got me off a Norwegian freighter and thumbed my way to Chicago. Worked in the stockyards and as a bouncer and then mixed drinks in a joint on the South Side. Used to spend my day off in Comiskey Park so I could get drunk with company and yell, and spend every night humping those coloured girls. Ever tried that for luck, Craig?’

  ‘Never. Only for lack of opportunity.’

  ‘You missed nothing. They smell good, and they got big tits, and they go through the motions, but they’re over-rated. The white boys imagine too much. Expect all kinds of African animal pleasures. Not so. Those coloured broads in Chicago are too neurotic and bound up and angry. How can you give out to someone you resent? So it comes out just like with the white broads—except the Polacks, they’re special. They got the tiger in them.’

  ‘Why did you go to the United States, Gottling?’

  ‘Like I said, I was a kid, piss and vinegar. And I’d done my share of reading. In those days, Sweden wasn’t for poor kids. That was before all this fancy welfare state crap. In those days, there was the muck-a-muck on top, and the serf on the ground. I wanted a place where I could flex my muscles and be what I wanted to be. It was either Russia or the United States. Well, I didn’t go for that Bolshevik crap, never did, and still don’t. No lousy commissar’s ever going to tell Gunnar Gottling what to do. So I took a flyer at the United States. That was crap, too. Blue laws and puritans and bloomers. Except for some cases used for advertising in your history books, the real story was—the poor stayed poor, and the rich got richer. Democracy. Ha!’

  In the darkness of the bumping car, Craig looked at this outspoken, angry man. ‘I know what you’re against, Gottling. What are you for?’

  ‘Anarchy, pure and simple. I talked to those boys down in Barcelona once, several years back. They got it right, if they ever come out in the open. Anarchy, that’s right. Back to the tribes and freedom absolute. That’s my allegiance, to that and the Republic of Gottling. Three bona fide citizens in the Republic of Gottling—me, myself, and I. Title of my autobiography, if I ever get down to writing it.’

  He drove in silence, and then took his eyes off the road a moment.

  ‘You said you read my books, Craig. Which?’

  ‘The two published in English. The one about the Lapland girl who comes to Stockholm, and what civilization does to her. And the other one, about the farmer who gets a job in—in Malmö, I think—and brings his family to the co-operative housing place.’

  ‘Did you like them?’ he asked brusquely.

  ‘I told you, they were damn good. A little long, a little rough, but first-rate.’

  ‘You’re damn right. I wish I could say the same for your books.’

  Craig stiffened. ‘Say whatever you want. This isn’t the Boy Scouts of America on an outing.’

  ‘You’re a featherweight, Craig. You write scared. That’s what makes you a featherweight.’

  There was a squeeze of resentment in Craig’s chest. Who the devil was Gottling anyway? The bully boy of unread literature. Craig was not letting him get away with anything tonight. ‘Who writes scared?’ he said. ‘I’ve tackled important themes, problems. That’s more than you’ve done.’

  ‘Don’t go thin-skinned on me,’ mocked Gottling. ‘I know your goddam important themes. But why sneak off and do your hollering a century or two ago? Now’s the place, in this world, among the bastards of this world, to do your sounding off. Belt them head on. The day you do that, you’ll be great, the champ. Right now, you’re only cute, a fancy Dan who gets it on points, but nobody knows if he’s got a punch. Know what I mean?’

  Craig knew too well what he meant, and he knew what Harriet had once meant, but tonight he did not like it at all. He had come out with Gottling, he realized, to have his ego further inflated. And now, this. His ego had been too recently revitalized to stand up under punishment.

  He sat sullen and wordless.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Gottling. He yanked the wheel, and they spun off the road, parking at the foot of a flight of stone stairs. These climbed to the entrance of a building that resembled an eighteenth-century English inn.

  It was too cold to linger outside in the Volvo station-wagon. They hurried up the steps and into the warm reception room of Djurgårdsbrunns Wärdshus. As a waitress helped him off with his overcoat, Craig observed, to his left, the main dining-room, immaculate white tablecloths and several e
arly couples, and to his right, the bar-room, which was more densely populated.

  ‘What’ll it be, Craig?’ Gottling wanted to know. ‘Food or spirits?’

  ‘I could stand a drink.’

  Gottling grinned grotesquely from beneath the ferocious moustache. ‘I can see we’ll get along.’

  They made their way into the noisy bar-room. There were about a dozen men in the room. Some were on stools at the bar, several watched a Swedish play on the television set, and the rest hunched about the wooden tables. Almost everyone, it seemed, knew Gottling, and they greeted him with affection, and he cussed at them with affection. He led Craig to a corner table, somewhat apart from the others, and they settled on chairs covered with a plaid material as thick as horse blankets. Gottling ordered a double gin on ice, and Craig ordered a double Scotch on ice, and they both waited, pretending to be absorbed in the activity of a young man throwing darts at a worn board beneath the television set.

  When the drinks came, Craig downed half of his in a single gulp, enjoyed the familiar spread of heat through his veins, and then drank again. He became aware of Gottling’s gaze and half turned to meet it.

  Gottling nodded in approval. ‘I’d heard you were a drinking man, Craig. I think that’s why I bothered to come out and meet you.’

  ‘Who said I’m a drinking man?’

  ‘That dame with ground glass in her genital canal—your Miss Wiley.’

  ‘That bitch.’

  ‘If she didn’t tell me, I’d know anyway. I can spot a pro when he bends his elbow. Amateurs sip and suck and nurse, and they make it a secondary occupation. But the pros, you and me, we pour it down like we know there’s a lot more where that came from and like it’s the most important thing, which it is, except for an occasional lay and sometimes writing.’

  ‘I don’t like drinking, Gottling. I take it the way Socrates took the hemlock cup—a necessity better than living.’