(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  Craig had been entirely disarmed by her easy candour. She spoke of herself, of her husband, her lover, his mistress, as if they were marionettes she was manipulating. It was difficult to take this seriously, it had so much the flavour of traditional Gallic sex comedies, and yet, Craig perceived, his confidante had suffered, and was deadly serious out of a desperation now repressed.

  ‘A flaw?’ he repeated. ‘Yes, possibly one.’

  She leaned forward intently. ‘You must tell me.’

  ‘No one can fight fire with fire,’ he said simply. ‘You are a scientist. You should know that. Fire feeds fire. It doesn’t put it out. You may get your revenge and see destruction—that I won’t deny—but you speak of salvaging your marriage. I can’t believe this is the way. It’s not a plot I would write, because it’s psychologically wrong. You wanted my advice, Dr. Marceau, and I am giving it to you.’

  She had not expected this, and she was less assured, less gay. ‘What do you expect me to do? Just sit by, while he gets in deeper and deeper with this prostitute of his? I have tried that.’

  ‘I would suggest you try it longer. Sit by, go your own way with dignity, and that may make him more ashamed than anything else. But remain above him and make him less. Wait for him to tire of the other woman. The odds are heavily in your favour that he will come back to you, contrite, and with the single necessity to prove himself, hold his youth a day longer, a month longer, entirely out of his system.’

  ‘And what if he does not come back to me?’

  ‘That is the chance, of course. But what you are doing now—I think it is a longer shot. Men are more moral than their women. Once he learns of your behaviour, he will never be able to look at you in the same way again. And you won’t be able to look at yourself in the same way. Not only will you have lowered yourself to his level, lost the one superiority you now possess, but you will have soiled yourself. You’ll never feel quite the same, just as he won’t.’

  ‘You are not a woman, Mr. Craig.’

  ‘Indeed I am not. At the same time—’

  ‘Men have an opposite view of it. I feel no differently now, and will feel no different later, than I ever have. It is only true love that changes one, that damages beyond repair, not a frivolous copulation.’

  ‘Perhaps that is the French attitude. I can only speak to you from my background and moral precepts, American and Calvinistic.’

  ‘Understand me, Mr. Craig. In all my marriage of so many years, I have never cheated or shown disrespect in this way for my husband. Before my marriage, before I ever knew there was anyone like Claude on earth, I had several earnest young student affairs. These were not mere indulgences of the flesh. For, whatever you have heard of the French, there are many of us brought up moral and constrained, and raised strictly French Catholic. Those student affairs were, you might say, part of the growing process, like menstruation and development of the bust. They were a process of maturing, seeking life’s full potential, and a self-probing to learn if you could feel the way all the poets and novelists said you were supposed to feel. But when I was grown and I met Claude, there was never anyone else, no thought of it. Why should there have been? For me, the marriage was a contract, not to be lightly broken or ever broken. Furthermore, there was no need for infidelity, for I had nothing more to seek or prove. There was Claude, and there was our work, and that was enough for nine lifetimes. But when the work was done, and there was no Claude—what was there left for me, for the dull and serving wife, but a broken contract held in hand?’

  She halted, and Craig struck a match and put it to her fresh cigarette.

  ‘You mentioned your work,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t there be some absorption in finding new work and—’

  ‘Find new work? Just like that? You should know better. Mr. Craig. Is an author so different from a scientist? One does not find work—the work finds one. Maybe, from now on, the work will never find me. And if that happens, and Claude leaves me, I will know widowhood twice and at the same time. Surely, that would be too much to bear. For this reason, in the only way I can think of, I am fighting to keep Claude.’ She drew steadily on her cigarette and then sat back. ‘So—you still do not like my plot?’

  Craig threw up his hands. ‘What can I say? Criticism, without engagement, is not too easy to make accurately. It is just that I have the feeling, Dr. Marceau, that the plot, for better or worse, will resolve nothing. The solution must come by other means.’

  ‘Let it come by any means,’ she said. ‘Beggars are not choosers. But I cannot wait for happy accidents. I must go ahead.’

  ‘Then I wish you luck, believe me. If I can help in any way—’

  ‘You have helped me enough. I will read your books. . . . Here, they have left the menu. Whatever is Friterade sjötungsfileer med remouladesås?’

  Craig signalled for the waiter, and then, with his guidance, they studied the luncheon menu. Except for the pickled herring, salad, and mushrooms, they skipped the smorgåsbord and ordered a fillet of sole, to be accompanied by glasses of cold brännvin.

  No sooner had the waiter gone than his place was filled by the figure of another man. Both Denise and Craig looked up as one to find Dr. John Garrett before them. His features wore their perpetual anxiety, even the purple bruise under his right eye seemed jump, and he pinched nervously at his grey worsted suit.

  ‘I thought I’d tell you, Dr. Marceau,’ he said, ‘they’re paging you in the lobby. There’s a phone call.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Dr. Garrett.’ She rose and said to Craig. ‘Excuse me a minute,’ and then hurried off behind the pillar and through the tables.

  Garrett remained standing, searching the busy room for someone. At last, he brought his attention back to Craig. ‘Do you happen to know Sue Wiley? She’s the—’

  ‘I know her,’ said Craig, and added, ‘unfortunately.’

  ‘Have you seen her around?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, and I don’t want to.’

  ‘She was supposed to meet me here,’ said Garrett. ‘She has a lunch somewhere else, but she had an interview here in the morning and said she’d see me for a minute. Maybe she got tied up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t concern myself about her,’ said Craig. ‘If you can help her, she’ll be around.’

  Garrett seemed suddenly agitated. ‘What did you mean by that—if I could help her?’

  ‘Why, nothing at all. Only you’re a laureate, and she’s doing a hatchet job on laureates, all of us and those in the past, and so she won’t pass up a chance to see any one of us. Why don’t you sit down? Keep us company until she comes around.’

  ‘If you don’t mind?’ Garrett took the chair facing the lobby entrance, peered off expectantly for a moment, and then turned to Craig. ‘You don’t like Sue Wiley, do you?’

  ‘I think I’ve made that clear.’

  ‘Would you trust her at all? I mean—I know about her sensationalism, but she has a reputation—a big organization behind her—and the press has some integrity.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust her under any circumstances,’ said Craig flatly.

  This appeared to fluster Garrett. ‘But I mean—there are often special circumstances. For example, I’m always reading about reporters going to jail for a day or two, rather than divulge sources of their stories. Miss Wiley told me this once happened to her.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t think Wiley would go to jail an hour to protect her own mother.’

  ‘You’re just sore at her.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Craig.

  ‘There’s good and bad in all of us,’ said Dr. Garrett.

  ‘And some of us believe what we want to believe,’ said Craig. ‘I don’t know what you’re seeing her about, but you had better be prepared to explain that mouse under your eye.’

  Garrett touched the bruise. ‘Does it look bad?’

  ‘On someone else, no, but on a Nobel Prize winner, it might provoke questions.’

  Garrett squirmed in his chair. ‘I gue
ss you’re right. I’ll think of something.’ He hesitated, then went on. ‘I never got a chance—I mean—I guess I should give you my thanks for breaking-up that fight the other night. It was foolish. I shouldn’t drink.’

  ‘I’m glad I was there,’ said Craig. ‘He’s a big man. He could have killed you.’

  Garrett said nothing, and then he said, ‘Maybe, but I would have killed him first.’

  ‘I won’t ask you what started it, only I can’t conceive of anything on earth that would make two—well, let’s face it—famous men—make two of them risk their reputations—’

  ‘Mr. Craig,’ Garrett interrupted, ‘there are times when you don’t think of consequences. Self-preservation is man’s first instinct. This was self-preservation—in a way, self-defence.’

  ‘I had the impression you started the fight.’

  ‘That night, yes, I plead guilty. But with moral justification. The original provocation came from Farelli. He stole my discovery, and if that wasn’t enough, to get half my prize undeservedly—now, he’s trying to get it all.’

  The waiter appeared with the two modified smorgåsbord plates, and Garrett stopped speaking.

  ‘The lady will be right back,’ Craig told the waiter. Then he asked Garrett, ‘Will you join us?’

  Garrett shook his head. ‘Thanks, I’m not hungry.’ He spoke absently, as if his mind were elsewhere, and the moment that the waiter had gone, he addressed himself earnestly to Craig. ‘I suppose I can talk to you,’ he said. ‘I am desperate for some advice.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m capable of helping myself, let alone anyone else,’ said Craig, and he picked at the salad with his fork.

  ‘I mean, besides my wife, you’re the only one who knows about Farelli and me.’

  Craig remembered Märta Norberg and Ragnar Hammarlund, but kept his silence.

  ‘I have an awful problem, Mr. Craig. I make up my mind, and then I’m not positive about it. To tell the truth, and this is between us, I even telephoned my psychoanalyst in California last night—long distance. I’ve been overworked and upset this last year, and I’ve been in group therapy—and Dr. Keller has been extremely helpful, settling—’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I couldn’t give you better advice.’

  ‘Dr. Keller wasn’t in. He’s out of town for two days. And now I have to make this decision—in fact, right now. I had made it when I phoned Sue Wiley to meet me, but suddenly here I am, and I’m not sure.’

  Craig was reluctant to become involved in an intramural squabble, but the fact that Garrett was involving Sue Wiley made whatever it was sound more ominous. ‘What’s the problem?’ Craig asked. ‘Are you going to tell the Wiley woman that Farelli took a poke at you?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. This is much more—’

  ‘What is it then?’

  Garrett dug a hand into his pocket and brought out a folded typewriter sheet. He unfolded it and handed it across the table to Craig. ‘Read that.’

  Casually at first, and then carefully, Craig perused what was entitled ‘Report to German Experimental Institute for Aviation Medicine’ and signed ‘Dr. S. Rascher, 3 April, 1944.’ He almost missed Farelli’s name in the first reading, and then he saw it plainly, and read the document a second time.

  Craig looked up. ‘What is this supposed to be? Is it what I think it is—those doctors who were tried at Nürnberg and hung for experimenting on human beings?’

  ‘Exactly. And all Hitler’s allies co-operated in supplying doctors, and Farelli was one of them. There it is—black and white.’

  Craig stared at the paper in his hand. ‘Where did you get hold of this?’

  ‘It’s authentic, all right. A friend of mine in the Caroline Institute made those notes from someone who had seen the photocopy. When the Nobel people were investigating Farelli—they investigated me, too—they found this out, in tracing Farelli’s war history.’

  ‘I read he was an anti-Fascist, arrested—’

  ‘Only to a point,’ said Garrett excitedly, as if he were happy at his rival’s weakness, ‘and then—well, there you see it—he decided to play ball and went to Dachau and collaborated with those medical murderers in torturing and putting helpless prisoners to death in experiments.’

  Craig dropped the paper to the table. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said.

  ‘There it is,’ insisted Garrett doggedly.

  Craig looked at Garrett’s glowing, unnatural face, and was dismayed. ‘And this—this so-called evidence—is this what you are giving to Sue Wiley?’

  ‘Well, I—I thought it seemed the right—’

  ‘Is that your problem?’ persisted Craig. ‘To do or not to do? Is that what you can’t make up your mind about?’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind—’

  ‘But still you’re not sure. Your conscience bothers you. And so you want someone else—your psychiatrist—me—anyone—to give our approval, so you’re not alone.’

  ‘Well, not exactly.’

  ‘You want my advice?’ asked Craig.

  ‘Yes, that’s why I showed you—’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ said Craig with all the firmness he could muster. ‘Tear this up and forget it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said forget the whole thing. What kind of revenge is this—to destroy an eminent physician, destroy him utterly, in return for a punch on the jaw?’

  ‘It’s not revenge at all,’ protested Garrett.

  ‘What is it then—righteousness? Cut it out. Who appointed you supreme judge of all men? If a Nobel investigator, an informed and intelligent and balanced man, saw fit to weigh and reject this, why should you veto him and place your sole judgment, emotional and prejudiced, over an expert’s? Who are you to do this?’

  Garrett began to shake. ‘A criminal should be punished,’ he said too loudly, so that several at the next table turned to stare.

  Craig lowered his own voice, ‘You’re sentencing him to death without trial. Turning this unproved paragraph over to Sue Wiley is like giving a five-year-old boy a loaded Lüger and telling him to go out and play cowboy with the kids. She’ll plaster this a mile high around the world. You’ll ruin Farelli forever.’

  ‘If he deserves it—’

  ‘And what if he doesn’t deserve it? What if he can prove this is a mistake? Who’ll remember or pay attention to the retractions. They’re not worth headlines. For the rest of his life Farelli, no matter how innocent, will be the Nazi collaborator who helped kill at Dachau.’ Craig tried to reach the troubled man across from him with anything, even flattery. ‘Dr. Garrett, try to see yourself as others see you. Today you are world famous, Farelli or no Farelli. You are known, respected, applauded—and deservedly. Your discovery is one of the most remarkable in history. You don’t have to stoop to defamation of character to secure your own place. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘But letting a criminal—’

  ‘Who says he’s a criminal besides you?’

  Garrett pointed to the sheet of paper between them. ‘The evidence is obvious.’

  ‘It’s circumstantial,’ said Craig, biting the words. ‘Were you there? Did you see it? Have you found actual reliable witnesses? Have you heard Farelli’s side of it? No, I’m sure not. All you have is a scrap of paper.’ He snatched up the paper and read the one line, ‘ “Dr. C. Farelli, Rome.” ’ He looked up sternly. ‘Is that enough, Dr. Garrett? Farelli is an Italian name, and so is Carlo, both common. There must be countless Carlo Farellis the length and breadth of Italy. And some of them physicians, and some of them with war records. Coincidences happen too often, and too often innocent men are injured for life because people refuse to believe in coincidences.

  ‘I remember reading of a renowned criminal case, a lamentable true story—Adolf Beck, that was his name—he was the victim of circumstantial evidence and misinformation. Just before the turn of the century, a Dr. John Smith was arrested for swindling women out of jewellery. He was arrested, jailed, released. Years later, there occ
urred another series of similar swindles and a Norwegian chemist residing in London, one Adolf Beck, was arrested, identified by ten women, but what really convicted him was the old file on Dr. John Smith. This Beck’s features, build, scars, handwriting were identical to those of Smith, and so the court decided that Beck was none other than Smith, and he was sentenced to six years in prison. He protested his innocence in sixteen petitions, to no avail. He was released from jail—in 1901, I think it was—and three years later, he was back in jail for swindling jewels a third time, although he pleaded that he was innocent and that it was all a case of mistaken identity. Then, after this long travail, two chance things happened to save Beck. An old identification of the original Smith, overlooked so long, was found, and it said that Smith was circumcised—and Beck was examined and he was not circumcised. And then a man named Thomas was arrested in the act of selling swindled jewels, and he turned out not only to resemble Beck, but to be the original Smith who was, indeed, circumcised. So after all those years in jail, his life ruined, Adolf Beck was freed. And all because of coincidence, hysteria, a mistake in identity.’

  Craig halted his impassioned account and glared at Garrett. ‘Do you want to take the risk of having an Adolf Beck on your conscience, Dr. Garrett?’

  Garrett had grown pale and smaller, and Craig pressed his point harder.

  ‘It’s not only that there may have been another C. Farelli at Dachau. What if there was none at all, and this was merely a diabolical trick, this insertion of the name of an anti-Fascist, by one of Farelli’s blackshirt enemies, by Mussolini himself? At the worst, supposing Farelli had indeed been there, your Farelli, our Farelli. Maybe his attendance was enforced at the point of a gun—to obtain his diagnosis and advice. Maybe he was there and did not participate in the actual murders at all. There are all those possibilities, and more. Are you the one to say none of these is correct and only your angry indictment—Farelli capitulated, volunteered, killed others—is the true one? Will you accept that responsibility fully—and tonight, on thin evidence, see a valuable colleague ruined by unprincipled scandal? The decision is yours to make, Dr. Garrett, not mine—your own and no one else’s.’