(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Then I do not understand you.’

  Emily tried to smile gratefully. ‘How can you? I don’t understand myself.’

  ‘You must change, or there will be no hope for you.’

  ‘I cannot change,’ said Emily simply.

  She had gone beyond Lilly’s depth, she knew, because she had guarded what was within her and had chosen to hide behind enigma, and now, watching the wholesome Swedish girl finish her coffee and prepare to return to work, she felt the blackness of despair. For the conversation, so one-sided, open on Lilly’s side, closed on her own, made it clear to her at last, the extent to which the fault was her own and not the fault of Andrew Craig. To have turned him away, when she had known that she loved him, and now, to keep him away, when she knew that he loved her, was the stark revelation of the illness within that had not been healed.

  She had never believed that she would hear the final dooming toll of the death of the heart, but she heard it now. She listened. It was against her eardrums, heavy as the beat of her heart, and she surrendered to the knowledge that she was incurable, and she would not have Craig or any man, because the disease had eaten away her ability to love, and there was nothing more to give, because there was nothing left.

  In Carl Adolf Krantz’s apartment, it was now a few minutes before eight o’clock in the evening.

  Daranyi had pretended to be finished with Emily Stratman, and then he had reported a few bits of scattered gossip on this one and that one, and then suddenly, as he folded his sheaf of papers, ‘Oh, there is one more thing.’

  Deliberately, he returned the sheets to his right-hand jacket pocket, and as deliberately, he tugged two large photocopies and six smaller ones, folded and held together by a brass paper-clip, from his left-hand pocket.

  He held the photocopies a moment, disliking this part of it and sorry for himself, and aware of Krantz’s wondering face behind the fern.

  ‘About Miss Stratman,’ said Daranyi. ‘I had almost forgotten. Your short biography of her interested me, the fact that she had been interned in Ravensbruck concentration camp during her adolescence. It occurred to me that it might be useful, on a long chance, to learn something of the people Miss Stratman had known in those years, and if any of her old associations had carried over, for her or Professor Stratman, to the present day. It occurred to me, also, that among the millions of old SS documents that had not been destroyed, that had been confiscated after the war, there might still exist one on Miss Stratman’s history. Since I had a friend who has the proper connections in West Berlin, I suggested that he do what he could. His success was remarkable. Photocopies of Miss Stratman’s SS file came to my hands late this afternoon. The dossier may have no real value to you, but still, one never knows, and I thought it might be of certain interest.’

  ‘Let me have a look,’ said Krantz.

  Daranyi half rose and handed the two large photocopies and the six smaller ones across the top of the plant to his employer.

  ‘You will note,’ explained Daranyi, ‘that there are two sets of photocopies. The larger set is the copy of a summary of the report of Miss Stratman’s military psychoanalyst. You may find something useful in several unfamiliar names referred to—Frau Hencke, Dr. Voegler, Colonel Schneider. I am sorry I had no time to trace their histories. The smaller sheaf of photocopies represents a copy of an exchange of formal correspondence between departments of the Red Army and the American Army. Since the correspondence concerns Miss Stratman, it was also found in her file. Only one new name springs up in that correspondence—Dr. Kurt Lipski—not identified, but presumably a physician. I made a cursory check of my German library and found mention of three K. Lipskis of some importance in science today—one a naturalist, one a dermatologist, and one a bacteriologist. Nothing significant.’

  Now Daranyi sat back, fingertips touching, eyes never leaving Krantz, as the other read the documents to himself. Krantz’s upper lip wriggled beneath his moustache, but his face betrayed no other reaction. At last, he looked up.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ he asked, and Daranyi detected that his tone was over casual.

  ‘You know, Dr. Krantz, I try to keep my sources—’

  ‘It does not matter. Merely personal curiosity as to how authentic—’

  Yes, Daranyi decided, over casual, and therefore, it has value. ‘It is completely authentic,’ he said. ‘I will say this much. I have an English friend, a newspaperman now in Stockholm, who is down at the heels. He is underpaid and forever in debt. He, in turn, has a friend who works in British Intelligence in West Berlin—a Scotch girl—a filing clerk. My newspaper friend offered to telephone her, and I supported this. When he advised me what was available, I agreed to give him—he must give half to her—nine hundred kronor of the expense money you gave me. That is steep for something that may have no value, but I thought I would risk the investment. I hoped you would find it illuminating in some way.’

  Krantz shrugged. ‘I cannot tell.’ And then—over casual, over casual—‘By the way, has anyone else seen this?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Well, no matter. It really gives us nothing, but I will retain it as a curiosity.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Krantz stood up, to indicate that the interview was terminated and the business of the evening was concluded. ‘For your part, Daranyi, you are to be congratulated, as ever, a thorough job well done. For our part, and I hate to say this, you have uncovered nothing of real value, nothing that can solve our little problem. Still, you have done what you could in a limited time, and for that, we on the committee concerned with this are grateful. I told you, the other day, your recompense would be generous. I believe you will be more than satisfied. I have discussed payment with my colleagues, and they have agreed with me that your services—considering the small amount of your time we have taken—are worth ten thousand kronor. I have the envelope—’

  Daranyi had remained in the leather chair, and he remained seated still. ‘No,’ he said plainly.

  Krantz had begun to move towards the mantelpiece, but now he halted and turned. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said no—meaning ten thousand kronor is insufficient for what I have done.’

  ‘What do you expect?’

  This was the long-awaited moment at last. ‘Fifty thousand kronor,’ said Daranyi.

  Krantz looked stricken. ‘Are you mad, Daranyi? You are pulling my leg.’

  ‘Your wallet, perhaps, but not your leg.’

  ‘You seriously think we would give you fifty thousand for that batch of prattle and pap?’

  ‘I seriously think you will. I have a notion I have done well for you.’

  ‘You have done nothing. Fifty thousand kronor? Why, you will consider yourself fortunate if I can have your fee raised to fifteen thousand.’

  Daranyi sat Buddhalike, as immovable, as superior, on the chair. ‘The price is fifty thousand for my work’—he paused, and concluded—‘ and my discretion.’

  ‘Discretion, is it? I have never dreamed you would stoop so low as blackmail. Do you understand the position you are in? I could have you thrown out of this country in two minutes.’

  ‘I have counted on that. Eviction would coincide with my own plans. You see, the moment you have paid me, I will buy my air ticket to Switzerland. A second cousin of mine has taken residence there and plans to open a rare-book shop, and wants a partner. I think Lausanne will be more healthy than Stockholm. And I think there is more of a future today in rare books than in—research—and documents.’

  Krantz was livid. ‘Now you want to jew me out of the money to finance you?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You are a greedy devil. Where is your sense of proportion and self-respect?’

  ‘I have just regained both.’ He smelt his victory, and he came lightly to his feet. ‘I have done my part. Now you do yours. Fifty thousand.’

  Krantz stared at Daranyi with distaste. ‘You cannot be dissuaded from this crime?’


  ‘No.’

  ‘I would have to talk to my friends first. It could not be fifty thousand in any case, perhaps closer to thirty thousand.’

  ‘Forty thousand is my bottom.’

  ‘I will not bargain like a tradesman,’ said Krantz. ‘All right then, forty thousand.’ He picked up a Spanish hand-bell and shook it. ‘Ilsa will show you out.’

  Daranyi made no move. ‘When do I have my fee? Tomorrow is my deadline, tomorrow before the Ceremony.’ He would remind Krantz of the price of forfeit. ‘While the world press is still here.’

  ‘You will have your Judas money. I will send the cash in a plain envelope by messenger to your apartment. . . . You know this is our last meeting.’

  ‘I had hoped it would be. Good-night to you, Dr. Krantz. And if ever you are in Lausanne, and in need of a rare edition—’

  Daranyi permitted himself to smile, and Krantz glared and said, ‘Good-night!’

  Daranyi opened the door, took his coat and hat from Ilsa, and hurried out.

  Krantz went to his study door and closed and bolted it. Then he hastened across the room to the glass door and peered down into Norr Mälarstrand. Not until Daranyi was briefly visible, below, did he leave the point of vantage.

  Hurrying on his short legs, he went to the sitting-room door behind his chair and knocked three times. He heard the tumble of the lock, and stepped back. The door opened.

  Briskly, polishing his monocle with a handkerchief, Dr. Hans Eckart came into the study.

  ‘You heard everything?’ Krantz asked anxiously.

  ‘Every word.’ Eckart placed the handkerchief back in his pocket and adjusted his monocle.

  ‘He kept staring at the plant,’ said Krantz. ‘I was nervous all the time that he would see the microphone.’

  ‘No one could see it,’ said Eckart.

  Krantz danced closer to his patron, jittering. ‘You heard him about the money—’

  ‘Never mind about the money. That Hungarian nincompoop’s usefulness is ended anyway. I will see that he is paid.’

  ‘Was there anything in his information that—?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eckart curtly. ‘The SS file on Emily Stratman. Let me see it at once.’

  12

  * * *

  IT had snowed all the night through, gusty flurries of large flat flakes, dry and adhering to where they fell, and on the early morning of December tenth, it was snowing still. The flurries had ceased, Count Jacobsson observed from his parlour window above the Foundation, and now the crystalline flakes floated lazily downward like confetti, and clung to every surface, and built one on the other, so that Sturegatan and the park below, and all the city of Stockholm encompassed by the eye, lay snug and white under a powdery blanket that rose and fell into the darkness beyond sight.

  We are regally cloaked, thought Jacobsson, majestically covered by a royal cape of white to herald our climax day of Nobel Week.

  He heard, behind him, the ponderous movements of his stout housekeeper, who came three times a week to clean his bachelor quarters, and listened as she set his breakfast on the oval table. He waited for her to leave, continuing to enjoy the snowfall, and when she was gone, he turned from the window and took his place at the table.

  He had been too preoccupied with the problems of the big day ahead to think of breakfast, but now his appetite was whetted by the hot tiny sausages and scrambled eggs, the toast spread with red whortleberry jam, the choklad, and he began to eat ravenously. After he had devoured the sausages and eggs, and begun to sip the cocoa and munch the toast, he opened the three morning newspapers piled at his right hand. Each, he noticed, had picture spreads and long stories about the afternoon Ceremony, on its front page.

  It was only after he had finished his cocoa that he opened the green ledger containing his Notes of a decade ago, now lying to the left side of his plate. Upon awakening, and welcoming the celebration of snow, he had remembered the entry he had made that decade ago. It had been made shortly after reading a memoir by Rudyard Kipling, and this morning had reminded him of that old entry.

  Lovingly, he opened his ledger, scanning the endless waves made by his pen on every page—how firm his hand had once been!—flipping the pages, seeking what he had remembered, until he found it at last.

  This entry in the Notes contained some reminiscences of King Oscar, who had awarded the prizes at the first six ceremonies held in the years just before his death, then touched upon his successor, King Gustaf V, with whom Jacobsson had become so friendly. Then the Notes continued:

  I have finished reading Rudyard Kipling’s recollection of his trip to Stockholm, of his arrival in our city immediately after King Oscar’s death. I am setting down some of Kipling’s impressions as he came here for his Nobel Prize in 1907. He wrote: ‘Even while we were on the sea, the old King of Sweden died. We reached the city, snow-white under sun, to find all the world in evening dress, the official mourning which is curiously impressive. Next afternoon, the prize-winners were taken to be presented to the new King. Winter darkness in those latitudes falls at three o’clock, and it was snowing. One half of the vast acreage of the Palace sat in darkness, for there lay the dead King’s body. We were conveyed along interminable corridors looking out into black quadrangles, where snow whitened the cloaks of the sentries, the breeches of old-time cannons, and the shot piles alongside of them. Presently, we reached the living world of more corridors and suites all lighted up, but wrapped in that Court hush which is like no other silence on earth. Then in a lit room, the weary-eyed, overworked, new King, saying to each the words appropriate to the occasion. Next, the Queen, in marvellous Mary Queen of Scots mourning; a few words, and the return piloted by soft-footed Court officials through a stillness so deep that one heard the click of the decorations on their uniforms. They said that the last words of the old King had been, “Don’t let them shut the theatres for me.” So Stockholm that night went soberly about her pleasures, all dumbed down under the snow.’

  Softly, Jacobsson closed his ledger, evoking his memory of the myopic, forty-two-year-old Kipling strolling through the Old Town in 1907, and conjuring up a picture of the city on the Ceremony day of that year, a field of snow then, as it was this day. But Jacobsson reminded himself that this day there was a difference. This day there was no mourning, except as men everywhere mourned the advent of the frightful nuclear age—in 1907, there had been reason to award a Peace Prize, and now there was no reason at all—but at least, this would be a better day, the city would not be ‘all dumbed down under the snow’, and there would be festivity and formality and new fodder for his precious Notes.

  Glancing at the time on his clock—the numbers were Roman numerals and the clock had belonged to his grandfather—Jacobsson saw that the beginning of this long, ceremonious, climactic day was at hand. Pushing himself from the table, carefully, to avoid the twinge of pain that often came from his back, he regarded his person in the gilt mirror, and was satisfied that his tie was correct. Taking up his cane, he plodded out of the parlour to the chillier staircase, and then descended on foot to keep his meeting with the select members of the foreign press.

  When he entered the conference room of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, he observed, with satisfaction, that the response had been excellent. The oxhide chairs, used by the judges, were now filled by the press, the majority of those seated being ladies. The men, smoking and conversing, were standing all about the green room.

  Jacobsson’s entrance brought all fourteen occupants of the room to varied degrees of attention. Jacobsson accepted his manila folder from Astrid Steen, and as he passed the length of the green room, nodding courtly but vague greetings, he recognized Sue Wiley across the table before the marble ledge, and beside her an older Frenchwoman who represented a French periodical, and he recognized also correspondents from London and Manchester and New York and Hamburg and Barcelona and Tel Aviv and Calcutta.

  At the foot of the table, beneath the oil portrait of the dono
r, one painted in 1915, Jacobsson took his position and surveyed the gathering.

  ‘The Nobel Foundation welcomes you to the final day of Nobel Week,’ said Jacobsson. ‘I trust you find the weather agreeable. You will see that of the three bronze busts that decorate this conference room, one is missing this morning. The bust of Alfred Nobel was moved, last night, to the stage of Concert Hall, so that he may, as ever, in spirit if not in fact, be present during the Ceremony late this afternoon.’

  He paused, opened his manila folder, and extracted a three-page, duplicated schedule with the heading: ‘Memorandum. Dec. 10th.’

  ‘Before replying to any questions you may have,’ said Jacobsson, ‘I will read to you the official memorandum we have sent to each one of the six prize-winning laureates. Mrs. Steen has extra copies of this memorandum, and they will be available to you as you leave. I shall now read you the contents of the official memorandum.’

  Holding the duplicated schedule close to his face, he read it aloud in a deliberate and dry monotone:

  ‘The festival ceremony in connection with the distribution of the Nobel Prizes will take place in Concert Hall—Konserthuset—beginning 5 P.M. sharp. The persons invited have been asked to occupy their seats in the large assembly hall not later than 4.50 P.M.

  The Nobel laureates with their families will please enter Concert Hall through the side entrance—Oxtorgsgatan 14—about 4.45 P.M. They will be escorted to the place from their hotel by two attendants, both attachés. Owing to the possible congestion of traffic around Concert Hall, it may be advisable to start from the hotel at 4.20 P.M.—not later. Autos will be reserved for the purpose and will be in waiting before the hotel at the fixed hour.

  At 5 P.M. sharp His Majesty the King, with the members of the royal family accompanying him, is expected to leave the parlour reserved for them in Concert Hall and enter the large assembly hall. Their arrival will be announced by trumpet calls, thereafter they are to be greeted by the royal hymn.