(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  He fell beside her, balancing precariously on the sofa to keep from dropping to the floor, and she placed an arm over her eyes—she had seen the pose once in a French film and had always thought it to mean the woman had been satisfied—and they both rested in silence.

  At last, she removed her arm from her eyes. Her neck was stiff, and hurt from reclining without a pillow. She realized that he was looking at her, and that his features reflected growing shame—similar to those of a rough farm boy who has just learned that the female he had taken by force was none other than the Queen—and the enormity of his desecration was beginning to overwhelm him.

  Denise moved at once to prevent this reaction. She did not want his protestations of guilt, his apologies, his humbleness, and, in the end, his frightened avoidance of her. He must know that he had not pillaged a holy temple.

  ‘Merci, Oscar,’ she said softly. ‘C’est beau. I have never been loved better.’

  He blushed—that he could blush even now!—and sighed.

  ‘It is true,’ she went on. ‘You satisfied me.’

  The Adam’s apple skittered up and down, like a simian in a banana tree. ‘I am so glad,’ he was saying. ‘I was not sure.’

  ‘I am fulfilled, Oscar, and I thank you with all my heart.’ She glanced at her watch and sat up with dismay. ‘So late. It is difficult to leave you, Oscar—I do not know what I shall do—but I must hurry back to the hotel, before my husband returns.’ Her slip was still bunched at her waist, and quickly and chastely she drew it across her knees.

  He had watched her. ‘You are beautiful, Denise.’

  ‘Do not be naughty—or you will tempt me again.’

  He pushed himself to a sitting position. ‘If only it were possible—’

  She brushed his cheek with her lips. ‘It will be possible,’ she said, and then added, ‘You may as well know, I must see you every day I am here.’

  ‘I pray for that. When may I see you again?’

  ‘Tomorrow—tomorrow night in my suite.’

  ‘But your husband—?’

  ‘He is spending the evening in Uppsala, addressing the faculty. He will not return until long after midnight. You must come to me early—à huit heures du soir—I want to enjoy you in leisure. It will be heaven, I promise you.’ It will also, she thought, be the decisive turning-point of my marriage.

  When she had finished in the bathroom, had dressed, combed, made up her face, she returned to find that the blinds had been opened and that Lindblom, clothed, was regarding her possessively.

  She was gratified. She had performed well.

  ‘I was thinking how lucky I am,’ he said, ‘to have found—something besides algae—’

  She went jauntily to him, and gave him a hasty off-to-work, married kiss. ‘It is not you who are lucky, but I. To think that I believed only France was the land of love. How provincial and insular we French become. But I am learning, and you are teaching me. Au revoir, dear Oscar, and thank you. Do not be late tomorrow night. Every moment with you is important to my life.’

  Although it was already two o’clock in the afternoon of December seventh, the double bed in the Nobel suite on the fourth floor of the Grand Hotel was still occupied by a laureate.

  Except for several visits to the bathroom, John Garrett had not left his bed of pain all morning, or since. The major injury he had sustained in the Hammarlund garden was not corporeal but spiritual. His gut still ached from Farelli’s fist, and his right eye had swollen slightly, although he had not been hit in the eye but on the jaw. But these were minor hurts, and would pass away. What would not leave him was the laceration of his self-respect.

  The memory of what had happened to him was an affliction which no salve or pill could remedy. From the moment of wakefulness, early this morning, he had been reminded, by throbbing belly and jaw of his humiliation, and morbidly he had relived the scene many times in the hours that were behind him.

  Sometimes he thought that he had demeaned himself by his unusual behaviour. He had not struck, or been struck by, a fellow human being since he had come of age. He was an intellectual, a man of medicine, not an outdoor brawler. Fists settled nothing, except whose biceps were larger and who took more exercise. He had not meant to fight. It was just that the sight of Farelli, so self-assured at the party, had incited Garrett beyond control. And the drinks had been his final downfall. He was not a drinking man, and so that was wrong. If he had not had the drinks, he might not have swung at his rival. On the other hand, if he had not had the drinks and had swung at Farelli, he would have been sober enough to have won the fight. The righteous always won the fight, didn’t they? At any rate, he kept reminding himself, he had not meant to stoop so low, had only meant to put Farelli in his place with words, let him know that Garrett was no fool and had his number. He was sorry, too, that he had used the language he had used, and then, again, he was not sorry, for the charlatan deserved no better. But to have been knocked down, made to grovel at the criminal’s feet, that was what really rankled. And, almost as bad, to have had an outsider, Craig, witness this miserable subjugation.

  What had followed, he kept remembering, had not been too bad. His eye had not yet begun to puff, and, reinforced by more drink, he had survived the formal dinner. When Saralee had put him to bed, he had told her everything—his version, of course—and she had sympathized, wifely moved and upset, and had spoken darkly of putting the police after that unruly Italian hooligan.

  Now it was morning—no, afternoon—and he was still in his bed, too distressed and heartsick to leave it and commune with the hostile world outside.

  The door buzzer sounded, and he heard Saralee call from the sitting-room, ‘That must be Dr. Öhman. I’ll get it.’

  Garrett propped himself higher on the pillow, wondering why Öhman had come. Then, through the parted drapes, he saw that the visitor was not Öhman at all, but the white-coated room-service waiter who had called for the lunch tray.

  When the waiter had gone, Saralee came to the foot of the bed.

  ‘Are you feeling any better, John?’

  ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘Dr. Öhman should be here soon. Do you want to get out of your pyjamas and dress?’

  ‘No, I’ll see him here.’

  After Saralee had returned to addressing her postcards, Garrett left his obsessive reliving of last night’s horror, and tried to put his mind on Öhman. At eleven o’clock in the morning, Öhman had telephoned, and Saralee had taken the call. Öhman had sounded, she said afterwards, excited, bursting with some kind of news. He had inquired if Garrett would be free in the afternoon, because if he were free, there was something extremely important Öhman must tell him. Saralee had covered the mouthpiece and repeated this to her husband, and Garrett had waved his hand negatively, muttering that he wanted to see no one. But then he had said, ‘Ask him what it’s about.’ Saralee had asked what it was about, listened, and said to her husband, ‘It’s about Farelli.’ At once, Garrett had been curious, and eager to see an ally. ‘Tell him to come over at two.’ Now it was just past two, and Garrett was waiting and wondering. What he wondered the most about was whether Öhman had learned of the fight, and was coming to warn him of trouble. And again, obsessively, his mind relived the fight.

  It was 2.10 when Dr. Erik Öhman, a thin leather briefcase under his arm, arrived. His pugilistic face was alive with good cheer, but at once sobered when he found his friend in bed, marked by recent combat.

  The moment that Saralee had departed with Öhman’s overcoat, the Swede pulled a chair up to the bed, studied Garrett’s bruised profile, and clucked with concern. He scratched his short cropped reddish hair with stubby fingers.

  ‘Uhhh—Dr. Garrett, my good friend, what has happened to you? Did you fall down some stairs—or bump into a door?’

  ‘I was slugged by that drunken bastard Farelli,’ said Garrett with vehemence.

  Öhman seemed confused. ‘He actually hit you?’

  ‘Not once, but several tim
es. And he kicked me when I was down.’

  ‘But Dr. Garrett, this is—uhhh—shocking, shocking!’

  ‘Absolutely the truth. Last night, Saralee and I had dinner at Ragnar Hammarlund’s—all the winners were there—and Farelli, of course. He was drinking, and so was I, and I’ll admit I was sore as hell at him. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind how he, knowing you were a friend of mine, put one over on me by using you and your good work for a publicity stunt. So, at one point, I decided to tell him that you and I knew what he was up to, and we didn’t think he was being ethical. Well, we went outside, to talk privately in the garden, and one thing led to another, and he blurted out something insulting—I forget what—and I made some kind of innocent movement to warn him—maybe I waggled my finger under his nose—something like that—and without any chance for preparation on my part, he became violent—’

  ‘He gave you that black eye?’

  ‘Yes. Just out of nowhere—socked me in the stomach and then a couple of times in the face. I was off balance, not ready, and I tripped and went down. And then he kicked me. I would have killed him, I swear, only someone overheard us, saw us, and intervened.’

  ‘Anyone who can do you harm?’ asked Öhman, worried.

  ‘No, not at all. It was one of the other winners—Craig, the writer. He stopped Farelli from kicking me, and he kept me from fighting back.’

  ‘Just as well. It might have become uglier.’ He shook his head. ‘This—uhhh—this Farelli, I knew he was a bad one, after you told me the truth, but I could not have imagined he would resort to such a performance.’

  Garrett touched his discoloured eye. ‘He is a man without morals, capable of anything.’

  ‘I see that,’ agreed Öhman. It grieved him to find his generous American mentor prone on his bed, so brutally victimized, and he became pensive. ‘Dr. Garrett, what will you do about this Farelli?’

  Garrett shrugged helplessly. ‘I no longer know how to cope with him. I suppose you can say I am the martyr to my civilized Christian training. Men like you and me are taught to behave ourselves with dignity and forbearance—and, suddenly, when we are confronted with a barbarian who behaves like a pit viper, we are lost. I confess my failure—I do not know how to contend with this beast—this dangerous—’

  ‘Dr. Garrett—’

  There was something about Erik Öhman’s expression, so set and avenging, that made Garrett halt his tirade in mid-sentence.

  ‘—I have a way for you to contend with Carlo Farelli,’ said Öhman.

  Öhman’s statement, uttered like a sentence of doom from a bewigged justice on the bench, alerted Garrett’s senses. He waited. Was there hope?

  ‘Uhhh—at first—I was not sure if I should come to you with this.’ He had brought his thin leather briefcase to his lap. ‘It seemed to me too inconclusive. Yet, if it could be proved, your case would be won in a single stroke. You would not only silence Farelli, you would destroy him. He would vanish from the earth.’

  Garrett sat up straight eyes burning fanatically. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I will explain. Uhhh—after our meeting at the Caroline Institute—after you had convinced me that Farelli was taking credit for sharing a discovery that was not his but yours—and now even attempting to steal your credit too—I decided too—uhhh—casually—uhhh—look into Farelli. If nothing more, at least to try to understand such a man being in medicine. As you know, as I explained at our meeting, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science appoints expert investigators to look into the cause of each candidate—I and another investigated you—and two of my colleagues at the Caroline—they had investigated Farelli. These studies are thorough. I had told you how, back as far as the turn of the century, our committee sent two men to St. Petersburg to—uhhh—see what they could see about Pavlov. To be confidential with you, our medical investigators—they not only verify a discovery and determine its importance, but—and this must remain in this room—they report on the—uhhh—character, responsible character, of the discoverer. Well, Dr. Garrett, such an investigation was made of Carlo Farelli.’

  All through this recital, excitement had mounted within Garrett. He could not be mistaken. Something of vital importance was coming. ‘You—you said on the phone you had something important. Is it about Farelli? Did you find out something about that dirty—?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Garrett could not modulate his voice. ‘What did you find? Tell me—I’ve got to know!’

  Öhman had slowly drawn the zipper back and opened his briefcase. He fingered through it, and removed two thin sheets of typescript.

  ‘As you no doubt know,’ said Öhman, ‘Farelli’s background is—uhhh—colourful.’

  ‘I don’t know, except what’s been in the papers.’ And then, he asked urgently, ‘What do you mean—colourful?’

  Öhman tapped the typescript. ‘It is here. This is not the original investigation report. But one of the men who took part—an old friend and former schoolmate—a cardiac specialist like us—he told me from memory what he had found, and I took notes, and then I typed it myself. Of course, it might be possible to see the original report—through my friend—or someone. It is filed away, but I am sure it would be no different from what I have in hand. My friend has the memory of a bull elephant.’ Öhman examined the top sheet in his lap, and then looked up. ‘You know, of course, that in the last days of 1941, when Mussolini had already declared war on Russia and the United States, Dr. Farelli was placed under arrest by OVRA, the Fascist Secret Police?’

  ‘I don’t know the details,’ said Garrett. ‘He bragged to me once that he was in prison during the war.’

  ‘Yes, that has been verified,’ said Öhman. ‘It must be admitted, on his behalf, that he has a long record as an anti-Fascist. Even as a student in medical school, Farelli opposed Mussolini’s adventure against Haile Selassie in Africa. When the Second World War came, Farelli, along with several other young doctors, signed an open letter published in Il Popolo di Roma opposing it. Late in 1941, the OVRA learned, through an informer, that Farelli had acted as a physician giving comfort to Il Duce’s underground enemies. At once, the carabinieri came and confined him to the Regina Coeli prison in Rome.’

  ‘What are you trying to do, make him out a hero?’ said Garrett bitterly. ‘We were the heroes, if you want it that way. You were at least neutral and gave help to refugees, and I was in the landing on Iwo Jima—but, whatever you say, Farelli was an Italian—’

  Öhman saw how troubled his friend was and forgave him his lack of objectivity. ‘I am only quoting our neutral report,’ said Öhman. ‘But, Dr. Garrett, I am leading up to something—of importance, as I promised you.’ He rattled the papers in his hand. ‘As I was saying, Farelli was confined to the Regina Coeli prison in Rome, and later, according to our records, he was shipped to another prison, near Parma, an old castle where political agitators were kept and sometimes shot. So far, all well and to the good for Farelli. But then our Academy investigator—the friend of whom I speak—found a mystifying, inexplicable piece of information.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Uhhh—hear this,’ said Öhman. ‘The next we know of Farelli, he turns up as a doctor—no longer a prisoner, but a doctor—in Nazi Germany.’

  The intake of Garrett’s breath hissed through the silent bedroom. ‘Nazi Germany,’ he repeated, as if it were a blessing. Then quickly, ‘How do you know? Is there proof?’

  ‘That is the point,’ said Öhman seriously. ‘By our standards, the evidence is flimsy, almost cryptic, but it is evidence. For a while, I was unsure, and was going to withhold it from you. It was so fragmentary. It could be misleading. On the other hand—’

  ‘Read it to me.’

  ‘—I felt, in view of Farelli’s behaviour towards you, in view of our—uhhh—friendship, I owed it to you, in all fairness, as something you could think about and measure.’ He lifted the typescript from his lap, but still did not consult it. ‘As you know, Dr. Garrett, the German medical
profession, which we esteemed so highly in the years before Hitler, which we showered with Nobel honours—the German medical profession disgraced itself in the Second World War.’

  Garrett remembered the stories from Nürnberg in 1947. ‘You mean the Nazi medical trial before our tribunal at Nürnberg?’

  ‘I mean what led to it. Throughout the war, almost two hundred German physicians comported themselves in such a manner as to make the Marquis de Sade appear sweet and gentle by comparison. These German doctors employed helpless human beings—Jewish men and women, Polish and Russian prisoners of war, their own nationals who opposed Hitler—instead of guinea pigs and rats, for their sadistic experiments. I am—uhhh—it is sickening to know the truth of their record. Do you recollect the record?’

  ‘It was so long ago,’ said Garrett. ‘And, anyway, I was in the Pacific.’

  ‘For their insane experiments, these long-worshipped doctors injected human prisoners with typhus, deadly typhus. They sterilized the sexual organs of Jews with X-rays, and murdered most of them. They tried out synthetic hormones on defenceless homosexuals and killed some. They injected yellow fever into persons, not animals. They tried out poison gas on persons, not animals. They made artificial abscesses on persons, not animals to study blood poisoning. They severed healthy limbs in order to experiment with transplants. The list is too nauseating—I will not go on.’

  He stared down at the typescript. ‘Then, one day, with the approval of Himmler and the Reich Air Ministry, they undertook a long series of horrible experiments—in the name of aviation medicine, and presumably designed to learn valuable information for their Luftwaffe pilots—with a decompression chamber, to study heart action at abnormally high altitudes. These tests were the ultimate in—uhhh—savagery. According to my notes, Dr. Sigmund Rascher had proposed the tests to Himmler, and Himmler had approved. The decompression chamber was moved into the Dachau concentration camp, and, one by one, these prisoners were led into the torture chamber—and the air was let out of the box—so that the prisoner, without oxygen or any equipment—the guinea pig—would reflect the human condition of a flyer in rapid ascent to an altitude of thirteen or fourteen miles. It was terrible, Dr. Garrett. I have heard the case histories. In the first minutes, perspiration and lack of control; in five minutes, spasms; in eight minutes, the dropping of respiration; in twelve minutes, boiling of the blood and rupturing of the lungs, with the human victim tearing out his hair in bunches and gouging out the flesh of his face to relieve his suffering, and attempt to find oxygen when there was no oxygen—and all this while, the—uhhh—doctors were studying the victim through an observation window, and checking their cardiographs, and later, making their calm autopsies on the corpses.’