The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  Was it caddish to project the comparison into bed? He sipped the cognac. It was wrong, but his mind unreeled the pictures. Sleeping with Denise, so fleshy, so tired, so inert, was like crawling into the womb. It was safe, easy, secure, never unexpected. It was nicely pleasurable. But Gisèle, taut, vibrating, aggressive, her magnificent flesh a wild and memorable offering, was-he considered a conservative description befitting a scientist-surfeiting? No. Enthralling? No. Captivating, yes, more, much more-captivating, satiating, and an indescribable ecstasy.

  The memory of what would soon be repeated now aroused him. He finished his cognac, then quickly undressed, laying out suit and shorts on a chair, and stuffing his socks into his shoes on the floor. Naked, he went to the cupboard, found the maroon silk robe Gisèle had recently bought him, and pulled it on, loosely knotting the belt.

  As he entered the bedroom, and halted beside the coiffeuse, she had just emerged from the bathroom. She was turning down the lights, all but the dim lamp behind the telephone on her bed-stand. As she moved, he could see the smooth outlines of her straight hips and thighs through the sheer mauve peignoir. When she turned to him, and saw his face, she smiled and straightened deliberately, her nipples revealed through the transparent chiffon.

  She sat on the bed, kicked off her mules, and fell back on the pillows, her arms outstretched towards him. ‘What are you waiting for, chéri?’

  He went to the bed, and lowered himself beside her, and as always, could hear his heart, as she also heard it.

  She reached across and pulled the cord of his robe. ‘Darling,’ she whispered, ‘my own-’ And then, ‘Viens vite-’

  Immediately, he slipped out of the robe and pressed against her. Eyes closed, sighing audibly, she parted her peignoir, and showed him herself. He placed his cheek against her breast, and she kissed his hair, and pulled him into her, and thus, in the familiar all-new way, they were joined.

  From the bed-stand, the telephone shrilly jangled.

  They froze in their embrace, as stiff, immobile, marble as satyr and nymph on a Pompeiian wall fresco.

  They listened. The telephone rang a second time, louder, and a third time, a thunderclap.

  ‘Let it ring,’ he whispered.

  ‘No,’ she said suddenly, ‘it might be Monsieur Favre-’

  She fumbled for the receiver, found it on the fourth ring, and brought it to her flushed face.

  ‘Hello-’

  ‘Mademoiselle Jordan?’ It was a woman’s voice. ‘This is Madame Marceau. Let me speak to my husband.’

  Gisèle lay petrified, gazing with bewilderment at Claude’s face above her. The telephone was waiting. She tried to find her voice again. ‘But-there is no one here-’

  ‘Put him on. This is important!’ It was a command.

  Gisèle was dumbfounded, helpless. Her poise was gone. She covered the mouthpiece fully, and looked imploringly at Claude. ‘Your wife-she knows-’

  ‘No, I cannot. Say anything,’ he begged.

  Gisèle would not return to the telephone. ‘She says it’s important-’

  The length of their exchange had given them away, and Claude knew it. Miserably, he disengaged his body from Gisèle’s, took the prosecuting telephone, and sat up, cross-legged, on the bed.

  ‘Denise? Listen to me-’

  ‘You listen, you rotten pig-you pull your trousers on and come home. The press is on its way-we’ve just won the Nobel Prize!’

  It was 5.07 in the afternoon when the telegram from the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C., clattered through the electric machine of the telegraph office located on West Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia.

  The mousy-haired girl, with thyroid eyes, on the machine at the time, pulled the message out with a rebel yell. ‘Lookit who won the Nobel Prize!’ she shouted. The other two girls came out of their chairs running, and the jubilation even attracted the three delivery boys, who had been shooting dice in the rear.

  Eventually, the exclamations and buzz of excitement brought Mr. Yancey, the manager, out of his cosy cubicle. He had been reading the Atlanta Constitution and drinking a coke, beside the heater, his favourite occupation on a dirty-grey, rainy afternoon such as this.

  He appeared buttoning his trouser top and buckling his belt around his flabby middle, and calling out, ‘What’s up? What’s up? What’s going on here?’

  One of the girls passed the strip of tape to Mr. Yancey, and he read it, and grinned broadly. ‘Say now, say now, this is a big day for the capital of the South.’ Although the victor had been born more than three thousand miles from Atlanta, and had only made his home here the last three years, the hero-starved half a million Atlantans considered the great man their own, by adoption. ‘Biggest thing since old J. S. Pemberton concocted Coca-Cola,’ said Mr. Yancey. ‘Biggest thing since Margaret Mitchell.’

  ‘Lemme deliver it,’ one of the young boys piped up.

  ‘Not on your life, son, not on your life,’ said Mr. Yancey. ‘This is a solemn occasion. This is somethin’ Mr. Yancey does personally.’

  ‘Bet you just want to have yourself another look at that Miss Emily,’ said the mousy-haired girl, daringly.

  ‘Take care, sister,’ said Mr. Yancey. ‘This here message is too important. You get it ready now.’

  He waved the strip of tape. ‘Man, oh man,’ he said, and then, before releasing the message, he read it once more.

  IN RECOGNITION OF YOUR DISCOVERY AND INVENTION OF A PHOTOCHEMICAL CONVERSION AND STORAGE SYSTEM FOR SOLAR ENERGY AND OF YOUR PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF SOLAR ENERGY TO PRODUCE SYNTHESIZED SOLID ROCKET PROPELLANTS THE NOBEL FOUNDATION OF STOCKHOLM ON BEHALF OF THE ROYAL SWEDISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCE IS PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE TODAY BEEN VOTED THIS YEARS NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS STOP THE PRIZE WILL BE A GOLD MEDALLION AND A CHEQUE FOR FIFTY THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS STOP THE AWARD CEREMONY WILL TAKE PLACE IN STOCKHOLM ON DECEMBER TENTH STOP DETAILS FOLLOW STOP HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS STOP

  The message was addressed to DOCTOR MAX STRATMAN ONE THOUSAND FORTY FOUR PONCE DE LEON AVENUE ATLANTA GEORGIA…

  For Max Stratman, at the age of sixty-two, it was always a pleasure, which few people would understand, to lie on the hard table in the darkened room beside the elaborate electrocardiograph equipment, while an efficient, antiseptic nurse dabbed the paste on his chest, arms, and legs, and then applied the electrodes with their five lead wires-one to his chest, two to his arms, and two to his legs. This experience, in which he engaged twice a year at the behest of the United States government, was soothing, relaxing, and always conductive to clear thinking.

  This afternoon, however, as Max Stratman stretched on the table, chest, arms, legs bared, half watching the tall bespectacled, comely nurse attach the cool electrodes to his skin, his pleasure, for the first time in memory, was shadowed faintly by apprehension. He reasoned that the apprehension had entered into the EKG test because today the test was especially important.

  In the three years past, since he had accepted the government’s offer to join the high-level staff of the Society for Basic Research outside Atlanta, he had attended these checkups, one in January and one in July, as a matter of routine. But now it was only mid-November and the next checkup was not due for two more months, yet here he was supine on the table, teeming with electrodes and wires, not as a matter of routine but as a volunteer.

  Max Stratman was as pragmatical as the Teutonic forebears on his father’s side of the family. He rarely rationalized any position, but met it head on. He knew exactly why he had telephoned Dr. Fred Ilman yesterday, at Lawson General Hospital, a mile from the Society building, and had requested an immediate appointment. In the first place, there was the surprising and exhilarating offer from Washington, D.C. The offer was critical to Stratman because, projected over the next two years, it might fully solve a personal problem, a certain responsibility, that had been weighing heavily upon him. Yet he had been made to realize that accepting the offer would mean changing his way of life, would put more strain on an o
ld, ill-used, and often reluctant physique. Still, the change was something to be desired, a godsent gift, because it would alleviate his one major worry. The question he had asked himself, after the Defence Department call, was this: could he dare to undertake the change?

  There would have been no question at all, had he not recalled the results of his last cardiogram in the summer. At that time, Dr. Ilman had cheerfully informed him, displaying the strip of graph paper that bore the curve of his heartbeat, that a minor irregularity was in evidence. But it was minor, Dr. Ilman emphasized, of no importance, provided that Stratman did not drastically change his habits. If Stratman continued to live like a sloth, without peaks or valleys of excitement, without excessive activities or long hours or pressure, he might continue his doubtful way of life-his erratic diet, daily beer, meerschaum pipe, lack of exercise-and possibly live forever.

  ‘After all, you’re not a youngster any more, Max,’ Fred Ilman had said on that occasion. ‘If you were a much younger man, and you came up with this minor irregularity, I would suggest a special regime against the future-oh, you know, lighter diet and low fat, no drinking, cut down on smoking, moderate exercises. But you are sixty-two, and to suggest any drastic changes, to rock the boat, could be worse then letting you sail along, at moderate speed, as you are now doing. So go back to your drawing-board and your quantum nonsense and your solar sleight-of-hand, and don’t bother me until next January. Just stay as sweet as you are, and my regards to Emily.’

  But now, there was suddenly an urgent necessity to rock the boat, and Max Stratman was having a cardiograph test in November, not January, because the decision must be made by the weekend.

  The nurse had finished applying the electrode to the first paste spot on his chest, and now she turned back to the EKG machine. ‘All right, Professor Stratman,’ she said, ‘we’ll begin. It’ll only be a few minutes.’

  The machine behind his head began to whir. The strip of graph paper, recording the superficial biography of his physical heart, began to emerge with its coded story. Head turned on the pillow, Stratman watched it a moment, unaccountably pleased that the nurse had referred to him as ‘Professor’, in the old-fashioned European manner, rather than as ‘Doctor’, in the less dignified American style. Herr Professor, it had always been, until 1945, when Walther had got him to the Americans, just before the Russian authorities came calling. Still, he had not minded the informality of the Americans, because they compensated for social failings by their genuine friendliness, their appreciation of his small genius, and, above all, because they brought him to a wondrous climate of freedom. Not once, it seemed, since he had been spirited out of Germany, had he glanced back over his shoulder to see who might be listening.

  The nurse was manipulating the electrode on his chest, moving it from spot to spot like a chess piece, and Stratman observed her quietly. After a while, he tired of this and stared up at the white ceiling and the glass light fixture. His preoccupation had always been mental, above the shoulders, and hardly ever had he been concerned with his body. Now, he was conscious of his body, that his brain had remained forever young whereas his traitor body had grown old.

  Fastening on the last idea, Stratman tried to recollect if he had ever thought of his body as young, that is, young as his brain, and he found it difficult to recollect one instance. Then, at once, he recollected several instances. He had been young that Christmas Day in Frankfurt, when he had skipped through the snow after his father and discovered the new pony shivering behind his father’s distillery shed. And he had been young, later, when the family had the house in the outskirts of Berlin, and one magical afternoon they all drove in the trap to a barn, with makeshift chairs inside, where jumpy images were thrown on a screen, and he heard everyone praise the new invention known as cinema. And he had been young that day on the Ku’damm, holding Walther’s hand, peeking between the rows of people ahead, when he had caught a glimpse of the resplendent Kaiser astride a white horse, followed by the goose-stepping, steel-helmeted troops.

  After that, it seemed, especially in the Gymnasium and at the University of Berlin, he had always been old, and he could never quite remember that he had ever appeared different than he appeared today, to himself, reclining on this table. He peered down his chest at the rest of his body and smiled privately: a bleached porpoise, having an EKG.

  The numerous photographs of him that appeared in the American newspapers and magazines did not upset him, despite the way they made obvious his ugliness. In fact, it seemed, the Americans rather cherished him this way. He was their image of a German Herr Professor-or Doctor, if you will-of the old school. Max Stratman was five feet seven, but seemed shorter, more diminutive, because he was hunched. His head was massive, too large for his body, and his forehead seemed to recede to infinity because he was bald except for a bristling hedge of grey hair surrounding the extremities of his head. His face was round, red, wrinkled, and his nose perfectly bulbous. He wore thick-steel-rimmed bifocals at his desk, and squinted myopically when he did not wear them. His face was not formidable, but wise and sympathetic, and he was quick to smile, to see the humour of almost anything, himself foremost. He was pudgy and rumpled-‘his clothes look like they have been borrowed from a scarecrow three sizes larger’, a news magazine had recently remarked.

  This was as he saw himself in the University days, and this was as he saw himself today. Apparently, nothing about him had grown older than old, through the decades, except maybe his heart. Maybe. Ach, we shall see, he thought.

  He heard the nurse’s voice behind him. ‘That’s it, Professor Stratman,’ she said, tearing the graph paper strip from the machine and placing the roll on a small desk.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Stratman politely.

  ‘It was an honour, Professor,’ she said, as she removed the electrodes from his chest, arms, legs, and wiped the paste from his body.

  He watched her curiously, She had said, so respectfully, that it was an honour. He had thought that he was old hat here. Squinting at her now, he realized that she had not been at Lawson General Hospital, or at least not with Dr. Ilman, when he had been here in the summer. She was new. He admired her tallness, short haircut, pert, intelligent face, trim white uniform. She was not Emily, of course, but still he admired the handsomeness of American young women, and especially the Southern ones.

  As she returned to the electrocardiograph machine, he nodded at the instrument. ‘An interesting and valuable toy, gnädige Fräulein,’ he said. ‘One day there will be better machines, deeper probing, more sure. But, for its limitations, it is good. It is a fact I knew quite well the man who invented the EKG.’

  ‘You actually knew him?’ She was as impressed as if he had said that he had known Pasteur.

  ‘Yes-yes. Willem Einthoven, a Hollander. I spent several weeks with him once in Rotterdam. He won many prizes for that gadget-even the Nobel money.’

  ‘I bet you’ve known everyone, Professor. Dr. Ilman says you knew Einstein.’

  ‘It is true. Albert, I knew well. I met him first in Berlin -ach, what times, what times we had-and then I would see him, occasionally, in Princeton. A terrible loss, not only for science, but for humanity. You know Fräulein, good men there are not many-most men are good, yes, but always, always, for reasons-but Albert, he was a good man, pure and simple, no reasons.’

  ‘When he talked, could you understand him?’

  ‘Understand him?’ Stratman sat up. ‘A child could understand him, if she listened. I remember, once, somebody, an ordinary person, asked him to explain his theory of relativity, of time, of why all motions of the universe are relative and not absolute, and you know what Albert said? He said, “My friend, when you sit with a nice girl for an hour, you think it is only a minute-but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it is an hour. Relativity!” ’

  Both the nurse and Stratman laughed, and then he requested his pipe and pouch. While the nurse found them in his unpressed jacket, Stratman went on. ‘I will t
ell you one Albert Einstein joke for your friends. There was a Mr. Goldberg who wanted to know about the Einstein theory, and when it was explained to him, he nodded. “I see,” he said, “and from this he makes a living?” ’

  The nurse screamed with delight, and Stratman chuckled and was happy. At last, he stood up on his bare feet and began to fill his pipe. ‘Now, if you please, enough of Albert Einstein. We must devote ourselves to Max Stratman. I will dress.’

  ‘No, please, Professor-’ She grabbed up the EKG graph paper. ‘Dr. Ilman must see the results first. He sometimes makes us do it again. Will you please wait, as you are, until I show him this? Excuse me-’

  She was gone. Max Stratman shrugged, put a flaring match to his well-seasoned meerschaum, and felt the chill on his feet. Despite her injunction against dressing, he decided to sit down and pull on his socks and shoes. As he did so, slowly, seated on the chair beside the desk, he reviewed with precision the events of yesterday.

  The call from Washington had been from the Secretary of Defence. The civilities had been brief. The Secretary had asked him, bluntly, if he would care to undertake a bigger, more vital job, at more than twice the money he was now being paid at the Society. Although Stratman was an international figure of renown, the salary that he received for thinking and speculating at the Society for Basic Research was comparatively modest. The new sum offered him was, by his terms, staggering, and immediately he saw that it would completely cancel his debt to Walther and solve his problem with Emily. He evinced his interest.