He waited until Max Stratman had gone, and then he tried to imagine what had gone wrong, and could think of nothing. He went into the sitting-room, sailed his hat towards the sofa, yanked off his overcoat and dropped it on a chair, and opened the bedroom door.
He had expected it to be entirely dark inside, but it was not. The lamp beside the bed, which gave off a poor jaundiced-looking light, made visible only a portion of the bed and only a shoulder and arm that belonged to Emily. She was in the shadow of the light, and when Craig advanced to the foot of the bed, he could see that she had propped up a pillow and was settled back against it. She was fully clothed, except for her shoes, and her arms were folded across her bosom and her legs crossed before her. She seemed to be staring straight ahead of her, at some fixed point on the wall, and her eyes did not shift to Craig when he came into her field of vision. In no way did she acknowledge him.
He studied her delicate face, and it had the appearance of fragile chinaware accidentally broken and recently repaired.
‘Emily—’ he said.
She neither looked at him nor spoke to him.
‘—your uncle said you weren’t well and couldn’t come to dinner.’
‘I heard,’ she said listlessly, and still did not acknowledge him.
‘He said you wouldn’t even see me. If you’re not sick, it makes no sense. Has something happened?’
There was a movement of her head, and she acknowledged his concern at last. ‘I’m too tired to talk to you. Some other year, maybe. I’d prefer to be alone.’
He did not like the hurt flatness of her voice. ‘I’m not leaving you alone, Emily, until I find out what’s wrong.’
She did not reply, but turned her face from him, towards the wall, and at once he knew that it was serious. He came softly around the bed. He sat on the corner of the bed.
‘What is it, Emily? Is it something I’ve done—or not done? What? I’m completely mystified.’
‘Go away.’
‘Emily, what’s got into you?’
‘If you must know—’ she said. She turned her face towards him. ‘—I’ll tell you, and then I want you to go.’ She paused, and then she spoke. ‘Your sister-in-law was here this afternoon.’
He did not hide his confusion. ‘Lee—here?’
‘She came, and she had her picador sport, and she went. She said you and I were having an affair, and I was after you, and as proxy for your victimized wife, she would not permit it. She said you and I should not see each other again, and her arguments convinced me. That is all. My reserves are gone. I haven’t the strength to go into it with you. It’s too ugly, and I want you to go now.’
He was taken unawares by this event, but he was not astounded. The logic of Leah, the predictability of this, he should have anticipated from the night that she had made Emily her enemy. Still, how far had she gone? What had she been capable of saying? He tried to visualize the scene that had transpired, and he shuddered. Leah and Emily: the cat and the canary.
‘Emily, I’m sick at heart that you were subjected to this. But in all fairness, to both of us, I must know what Lee said to you.’
‘What does it matter? It means nothing now.’
‘Perhaps to you, but it means everything to me. I want to know.’
‘I don’t feel I should tell you.’
‘Emily, for God’s sake, this is no time for nice little games—sparing your tender feelings or my own. I’m as upset as you are, and I want the truth. I must have it.’
‘Very well, if you must. But I remind you, I don’t care. I don’t want a contest, no dispute, no more emotions. I just want to pay the price you are exacting to be rid of you.’ She seemed to steel herself, half turning towards him on her pillow. ‘Your sister-in-law was in my room when I came in. She had just had lunch with Märta Norberg—’
Craig nodded vigorously. He had been afraid of that lunch, and the detonation. One lunch, and two women scorned, and the inevitable fallout that maimed all at the periphery.
‘—and Norberg had given her an earful about you,’ said Emily. ‘First off, you were supposed to have seen Märta Norberg at her place last night. True or false? Oh, I don’t give a damn—’
‘True,’ said Craig. ‘I saw her.’
‘You were drunk and tried to seduce la Norberg.’
‘False and false again. I was sober as I am now. I did not lay a hand on Her Majesty. Do you want the truth?’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘She tried to seduce me—it’ll sound incredible—as part of a deal to make me write my next book to her specifications. I refused. Now she’s being vindictive.’ He paused. ‘Is that all of it, Emily?’
‘It’s not even the preface of it.’
‘Oh, Christ. What else?’
‘Must I?’
‘You’re damn right.’
‘I’ll make it brief. I hate this. Leah Decker said you killed your wife.’
He had feared this. What was there to say? ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘I’d had a few drinks, and we were driving, and I don’t know what happened. Technically, I did not kill Harriet. But by some moral standard—and Lee is Morality—I am responsible, I am, because I was drinking.’
‘And you’re a drunkard, she said.’
‘More or less, for three years, true. But since coming here—’
‘And you’ve given up writing and gone to hell, and your sister-in-law nurses you—’
‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. But I’m going to write again. I’m pulled together—if only you’ll—’
Emily interrupted him. ‘And you were in bed with her naked.’
Craig groaned. So this was how things were made to sound in a court of law, the half evidence, the half lies, the one-sided profile of truth? ‘Lee said that? Christ, the way it sounds!’
‘Either it’s true, or it’s not true.’
‘It’s true, but it’s a lie. A truth can be a lie. Were we in bed together without clothes? Yes, we were—’
‘Then—’
‘Wait! But it was she who was the aggressor. She was jealous of you, and she thought she could keep me this way, and when I went to bed, I found her there, but I didn’t—’
‘I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t care.’
Emily’s controlled evenness, her lack of emotion, made Craig suspect the extent to which she was seething inside. He must attempt to reason with her. ‘Emily, can’t you see that all this is the product of two angry, selfish women? I’m not worth all that devotion to distortion of truth. But here it is—and look what it’s done to you. Without examining Lee’s motives, you are swallowing it whole.’
‘Am I?’ said Emily, with her first flare of temper. ‘Then maybe you’re going to deny that you’ve merely been having fun with me, drunkenly dangling my scalp wherever it can be shown? How could Leah Decker know that we were out on the Hammarlund terrace—kissing?’
‘She said that, too?’
‘Norberg told her. Norberg said you bragged about it.’
Then, it came to him. ‘The bitch, the goddamn bitch. You know how Norberg knew that? In fact, she teased me with it. She knew that because that scum that walks like a man, Ragnar Hammarlund, has his whole house and outside bugged with hidden microphones—a business asset—and he’s in on everything. If you don’t believe me, ask Dr. Denise Marceau. I even warned her at lunch today.’
‘I’m not interested one way or the other,’ said Emily. ‘I don’t care about any of that, but only one thing.’ For the first time emotion began to pluck at her face, and she turned it away, and then went on in a low, almost inaudible voice. ‘I can’t stand that you made a public fool of me, that I behaved like a child. Maybe it could have happened to anyone, but I was the easiest to do this to because I’d never let my guard down before, never once, and now when I did, I did so entirely, and there was nothing to protect me, and now I’m so ashamed. It’s so hard for me to understand, still. You were nice—kind—thoughtful—beyond reproach—a
nd interesting—and the first man since I can’t remember when—the first I wanted to hold me and to kiss—and it deceived me because I began to think—’
Her voice trailed off.
‘Began to think what, Emily?’ he said quietly. ‘That I might love you? I do love you, Emily. I am in love with you.’
‘No, I don’t want to hear any more about that. I want only the truth about one thing. I know it’s wrong of me, but I can’t help it—because right now it’s the only thing that matters. All the rest—I don’t care—but this matters. While you were with me—all the time you were with me—were you sleeping—having an affair—with another woman?’
Craig’s chest constricted. It was known, and here it was. What could be said?
But Emily went on. ‘Märta Norberg told your sister-in-law you had boasted of it. I don’t remember your exact words now, but something about—you were doing all right for yourself in Sweden, making love to some girl—woman—every night—something like that. Leah misunderstood this. She thought I was that woman. I told her I wasn’t. She didn’t believe me. But I didn’t care about that. What I cared about—how can I put it? If you were having an affair with someone else—I don’t mean pickups or prostitutes—but if you were making love to someone else, while leading me to believe you were—were—interested in me, giving me reason to trust you and have faith in you and pride in myself—if you were doing that—I’d be too humiliated to forgive you. And I’ve let you stay now because, I suppose, I had to know the truth. Be honest with me. That at least I deserve. Is what you told Màrta Norberg the truth? Have you been making love to another woman while you’ve been seeing me?’ She stared at him apprehensively. ‘Have you?’
‘Yes, Emily, I have.’
The breath she had held she now let go in a small sigh. She closed her eyes briefly. The timbre of her voice was that of a young woman turning from the open grave. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘all right.’ And then, ‘At least you’re honest. I suppose it’s the only virtue you have left.’
‘I have one more. I love you, Emily.’
She moved suddenly into the yellow light, her glossy black hair reflecting the light and her green eyes flashing. ‘Stop saying that. I despise falsity. How can you say you love me, and how can I believe it? How can you pretend romance with one woman, and hours later—or before, for all I know—possess and make love to another? What kind of person are you anyway?’
‘Emily, try to understand.’
‘I don’t want to understand that kind of perfidy.’
‘Try to hear me out, Emily. I have a right to my side of it. You gave Lee hers, to my detriment, and now be generous enough to give me mine.’ He collected his thoughts, and then spoke with frank urgency. ‘On the way to Stockholm—no, it was first in Copenhagen on a tour, and then on the Malmö ferry—I met a pretty young Swedish girl, a good, decent girl, as good as you and more decent than I, but with standards somewhat different from our own. She never knew who I really was—doesn’t know to this day. I had merely met her, had drinks with her, and charming conversation, and that was all there was to it. Then, the evening of the banquet in the Royal Palace—remember?—when I became so drunk, and you had properly turned me away—well, after the banquet, there I was, plastered and floating in self-pity—Lee told you my condition in Miller’s Dam after Harriet died—so there I was, filled with guilts, loneliness, rejected—and I wanted someone to reassure me that I was a human being. Then, in my stupor, I thought of Lilly—not love or sex, because I was too far gone——I thought of a woman’s warmth—hadn’t thought of it for years, and I missed it—and then there was Lilly—that’s her name, Lilly Hedqvist—and impulsively I went to her, and without a word, a question, the slightest hesitation, she took me in, a stranger, foreigner, a nobody as far as she was concerned. She put me to bed, and I slept it off. When I woke up in the morning, I tried to sneak out and let her be, but she wouldn’t think of it. And so what happened—it just happened in a natural way.’
‘I don’t want to hear of your disgusting amorous conquests,’ said Emily with bitterness.
‘This was no conquest at all. I had a need to be wanted, and she had the gift of kindness. I don’t know what was in her mind, if anything. Maybe she sensed my emptiness, my defeatism—there I was, brought down by drink, and exhaustion, and too many years—and so she gave her love and restored my belief in life. If there is one other soul on earth who thinks you have some worth, then life is possible. When I left that morning, I had no planned thought of seeing her again. But then, soon, the need came—it was after another bad evening. I had been drinking heavily with a well-known Swedish writer, and he had some inside information about how I’d got the prize.’ He paused, considered, but then it did not matter. ‘He had evidence that I didn’t get the prize on merit, but because I was needed as a political pawn—my most popular novel was anti-Communist—and because I had so little that had been propping me up, this information shattered me. I wanted to go to you. But I was afraid of your own fragile sensitivity. So I went to Lilly because I had been there before and had come to believe she would not fail me. And she didn’t. That’s all there is to this great affair that Norberg goaded me into revealing—and I could kill myself for being so immature as to take her dare—but it was necessary, too. I won’t say more or less about Lilly than I believe is true. I have affection for her, respect and affection—why shouldn’t I have?—but what I have for you, Emily, is love.’
‘Please don’t—’
‘A man knows these contradictions are possible. On the one hand, I could accept one young girl’s sympathetic tenderness and physical love—and on the other, at the very same time, give my heart to another woman who seemed unattainable.’ He stopped. Then he said, ‘There’s my explanation. I can add nothing more to it, if you have no understanding of it.’
Emily was gazing fixedly at the opposite wall once again. For some seconds she did not speak, and at last she spoke without looking at him.
‘I wish I had such understanding, but I don’t have it,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand such things about men in general or you in particular. Maybe by some neutral judgment, you are in the right, and I am in the wrong, but this is what I am, and I have to live with my emotions and expectations.’ She paused, and now spoke with rising intensity. ‘I can’t bear looking at you or being near you or being touched by you, when I know that for days I was being treated like a pitiable half-woman—which I may be—and being courted—if that is what you were doing—by the least part of you, and knowing that you only found even this possible because the most of you had to have and could enjoy a full woman in the night. I can’t find the right words—it’s all nerve ends—but it has to do, for me, with feeling inadequate and somehow cheapened.’
She turned her head towards him. ‘You say you love me. I don’t know how it is possible, and I don’t know what the word love means to you, but I know what it means to me—and—and with me it is a different word altogether. But if you do have—let me say regard—if you do have regard for me, then the best thing you can do is to leave me alone.’ Her hurt green eyes had filled, and he had a sudden impulse to hold her—or shake her, or make love to her—but he could do nothing.
‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Go to your Swedish friend, and let her fill your wants—let her love you again and again—but just don’t come near me, not now and not ever.’
She jerked her head away from him and buried her face in the pillow.
Craig lifted himself off the corner of the bed and dragged his feet across the carpet to the doorway and through it. He retrieved his hat and coat, all too slowly, hoping beyond hope that she had the inconsistency of all women—as Harriet had once had—and that she would recall him, because she loved him, too.
But no voice beckoned from the bedroom.
Craig went to the entry, and then into the hotel corridor, closing the door softly behind him.
He felt dislocated in time and purpose. He had no taste for dinn
er. His appetite was long gone. He had no interest in his room, where Leah might lie in wait, expecting his anger and relishing another opportunity to remind him of his debt. He had desire for nothing but oblivion.
He made his way to the elevator and descended to the bar.
He was lifted skyward in the triangular cage at Polhemsgatan 172C, and when it creaked to a halt at the sixth floor, he fumbled to open the cage and be out of it.
Only once he stumbled, which was not bad, not bad at all, he congratulated himself, for one who had been drinking steadily, alone, for over three hours.
He knocked on the door with the ‘C’ and squinted at the window and fire escape nearby and he waited. It was important that she be in tonight, the most important thing in their lives.
And then came her voice through the panel. ‘Ja?’
‘It’s me.’
The door flung open, and Lilly Hedqvist was his own, the cascade of golden hair, the welcome smile accentuating the beauty mark, the lavender robe.
‘Mr. Craig, I am so happy to see you.’
He directed himself in a straight line to the mosaic on the wall, and then sat clumsily on the hard, straight sofa beneath the mosaic.
‘Lilly,’ he said, ‘I am loaded to the gills. Do you want to throw me out?’
‘To have you run over by a car or maybe faint? Never. You will stay right here, until I say you are all right.’
‘And also I’m hungry. Haven’t eaten since noon.’
‘I will cook for you,’ she said gaily.
‘Only eggs. Scramble ‘em. And black coffee black.’
‘You are so easy to please.’
He had tried to find his pipe and tobacco, and did, and then dropped both. Quickly, Lilly picked them up.
‘I will fix it,’ she said. She dipped the pipe into the pouch, and packed it, and gave it to him. Then she lit it. ‘There. And do not burn my sofa.’
‘You’ll make some man a good wife,’ he said.
She started for the kitchenette. ‘I hope so.’
‘But I won’t let you,’ he said. ‘Because I want you to make me a good wife—me—not some man.’
(1961) The Prize Page 72