The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  But now she was here on time, in fact with several minutes to spare. She dropped her gift parcels on the entry table, lifted a foot to push off one of the overshoes she had borrowed, and then the other, both still wet from the snow, and thinking all the time of what she had done and what might come of it.

  She had sent the message to Craig this morning, on an impulse born of the meeting with Lilly at Nordiska Kompaniet. For hours in bed the night before, she had lain awake, examining what Lilly had told her, examining her own life and character, examining her feelings towards Craig. Eventually she had slept, but by breakfast, she had known that she must see Craig once more. Nothing could come of it, she knew, but her affection for him was too great to allow their memories of each other to recall only the last meeting. He deserved more of her, and it was necessary that she explain herself to him. She would not reveal all of herself. That would be impossible. She never had to anyone, not even Uncle Max, and she never would in her life. But she would try to communicate something of it, some part, to Craig, so that he would know why she had acted as she had, and why she could never go on with him.

  She had not sent for him immediately in the morning because she had wanted to be by herself, in the clear air, on the snow-lined pavements, to sort out her thoughts and decide what she must say to Craig. Shopping had been the lesser activity, the self-subterfuge, and so she had walked and absently shopped and given her memory rare freedom. Now she was ready.

  Going into the sitting-room, unbuttoning her coat, the possibility arose that Craig might not call her at all. Perhaps he had not received her message. Or, perhaps he wanted no more of her. The last could be, but she did not seriously believe it. In any case, his curiosity would make him respond. That, and also the fact that he was a gentleman.

  For the first time, she saw the note propped against the lamp on the end table, where the sitting-room telephone also rested. The handwriting was familiar:

  Had to suddenly go out to a business lunch. See you soon. Room service says your gown will be back at 3. Love, UNCLE MAX.

  It surprised Emily that Uncle Max had gone out. When she had left to shop, he was still clumping about in his faded woollen robe and bedroom slippers. He intended, he had said, to spend the entire day resting and relaxing, so that he would have all his strength for carrying the medallion and diploma from the King. It was terrible, she decided now, the way the Swedes gave him no rest, a man of his years. But today was the last day of it, and then there would be fewer obligations.

  Inevitably, her mind went out to Craig. Anxiety mounted. It was 12.29. He should be calling her any second.

  And then the telephone on the end table rang.

  She snatched up the receiver, but tried to keep her tone calm. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Miss Emily Stratman, please?’ It was not Craig’s low, mellifluous voice, but a thin high Swedish voice.

  ‘This is Miss Stratman-’

  ‘Miss Stratman? Do not be alarmed. I call for Professor Max Stratman. At lunch, he suffered from the effects of a mild heart attack.’

  ‘Heart attack? Oh, no-’

  ‘Do not worry, Miss Stratman. He is in the best hands. He is having medical attention this moment.’

  ‘What happened? How is he? Is it serious?’

  ‘A mild coronary, Miss Stratman. He has asked-’

  ‘Who is this? Where is he?’

  ‘I am one of the attending physicians-Dr. Öhman-and Professor Stratman is now resting easily. He has asked to see you. I think it would be wise if you-’

  ‘Where? Tell me where. I’ll be right over.’

  ‘If you will be so kind as to write this down-’

  ‘Wait-wait-’

  Blindly, she sought for her pen in her coat, then remembered that it was in her handbag, and she found it and returned to the phone.

  ‘Go ahead-please hurry-’

  ‘Take a taxi to Sahlins Sjukhus. It is a small private clinic on the way to the Southern Hospital-two blocks before, on Ringvägen. Your driver will know exactly. I will be waiting for you.’

  ‘I’ll leave immediately.’

  ‘Miss Stratman-one point more. Professor Stratman reminds me it is imperative that you mention this emergency to no one. He is most desirous of avoiding publicity. I believe you understand.’

  ‘Tell him not to worry!’

  She hung up, tore off the bottom of Uncle Max’s note, where she had written the name of the clinic, clasped her handbag tightly, and rushed to the door. As she reached it, the telephone began to ring again. She knew this was Craig, but could not wait to explain-and remembered that her uncle wanted no one to know-and she let the phone continue its monotonous peal, and kept going, half running, to the elevator.

  When she emerged from the hotel lobby, almost falling on the slippery pavement, she started to call for a taxi, but at once a small Volvo with a meter drew up before her. She hurried inside it, as the uniformed doorman saluted her and closed the car door.

  The driver, a gentle, elderly man wearing a chauffeur’s cap and rimless spectacles, turned inquiringly.

  ‘Sahlins Sjukhus-a clinic before you reach the Southern Hospital-do you know?’

  ‘Yes, fröken, I take you.’

  ‘Please hurry.’

  He bobbed his head, shifting the gears, and the car jostled and they were off.

  The city sped by, white on white, the dim sun in the grey sky and the snowfall spent and the air blue-clean, but Emily was hardly aware of it. All that she could think was that Uncle Max had suffered a heart attack in this remote, faraway land, this foreign place, and that she was frightened for him and alone. Once she wondered if his visits to Dr. Ilman had been about his heart-she had always thought it strong and immortal-but none of that mattered, for now it had happened. She wondered if the Swedish doctor had told her the truth. Was the coronary a mild one? Was Uncle Max even alive? Yet he had sent for her. He must be conscious.

  And then, before she realized it, the taxi had drawn up to a kerb, and from the window she could see a narrow brick building, two pillars, two windows, a black door between. The elderly driver had come around to help her out, but she was through the snow and then on the pavement, before he reached her.

  She fumbled for her change purse and gave him a five-kronor note. ‘Never mind,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said, touching his cap visor. He pointed. ‘In that door, Miss Stratman.’

  She had already started towards the door, but she stopped now. ‘How did you know my name?’

  The driver bowed. ‘The doorman of the Grand Hotel has pointed you out to us.’

  It did not seem odd, and Uncle Max was waiting. Hastily, she went into the clinic. She was not surprised to find a blond, brawny Swedish intern, with wrists of a mechanic, solicitude written on his features, waiting to meet her.

  ‘Miss Stratman?’

  She acknowledged her identity.

  ‘I will take you to Professor Stratman.’

  He led her, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet which were shod in white tennis shoes, to the end of the short hall, then opened a door. She was in a reception room. The intern held open a second door.

  ‘The doctor is waiting for you,’ he said.

  She hurried into the office. The shutters had been drawn, and except for two lamps at the far end, the room was in shadows. She made out a chair before a glass-topped brown desk, and behind the desk, a tall swivel chair, and behind the swivel chair, his back to her, the doctor.

  ‘Dr. Öhman-’

  ‘Miss Stratman.’ He spoke before turning from the parted blinds. Unhurriedly, he reset the blinds, and at last, he turned to welcome her. ‘I am not Dr. Öhman,’ he said. ‘I am Dr. Hans Eckart. Please do sit down.’

  ‘My uncle-’

  ‘Sit down.’

  She clutched at the chair arm and lowered herself to the chair edge. Eckart had come to the desk, and now he sat across from her, smiling reassuringly. She was not reassured. She had come into the of
fice expecting a Swedish doctor, but the appearance of this doctor, unknown to her specifically, was known to her generally, had inhabited in many shapes her remembrance of times past, for the haircut, the monocle, the Prussian severity were all German, and she was repelled.

  ‘Professor Stratman-my uncle-where is he?’ she managed to ask. ‘How is he?’

  ‘He is quite well, I should presume. For an old man with a cardiac irregularity, he appears wonderfully active,’ said Eckart. ‘As to where he is, I have no more idea than you. For the last hour, I have tried to locate him.’

  ‘But you called-you said he had a heart-’

  ‘Yes, when I learned that he had not returned to the hotel, but that you had, I directed someone to telephone you. I am sincerely regretful it was necessary to frighten you with a fabrication. But it was necessary to bring you here on some pretext, so that I might speak to you. I had already spoken to your uncle some days ago. And I would have preferred to speak to your uncle again today. Since he was unavailable, it became important to have you here in his stead. As his proxy, so to speak.’ Eckart’s fingers drummed the desk, and he seemed to consider her through the monocle. ‘Yes, I am sure you will do very well. In matters like this, I am sure you and your uncle can speak in one voice.’

  ‘In matters like what?’

  Unaccountably, Emily dreaded to hear his reply. She sat straight in her chair. No facial muscle, no body or limb muscle, moved. Only the invisible antenna of her intuition now felt malignity and malevolence.

  Eckart did not answer her question directly. It was as if he savoured one more circumlocution. ‘If your uncle is ill at all,’ Eckart was saying suavely, ‘it is a moral illness that he suffers. You are here because I want you to assist us in curing him of this infirmity. I want you to assist us in making Professor Stratman recover his sense and his moral health.’

  She wanted to give him no satisfaction of weakness. She knew Germans. But, despite herself, her voice quavered. ‘You are not a doctor?’

  ‘If you mean-medical doctor-you are correct, I am not. My doctorate is in physics. My acquaintance with Professor Stratman goes back to our early years in Berlin.’

  In the deepest pit of her stomach, she was terrified. ‘What do you-what do you want of me?’

  ‘Little enough,’ said Eckart, as hospitable as if this were a light-hearted tête-à-tête. ‘We are not interested in you at all. We are interested in Professor Stratman. Your value to us is only as a means to an end.’

  ‘You still haven’t said-’

  ‘What we are after?’ Eckart pressed his monocle into the ridges below his brow and above his cheekbone. ‘You are correct to be so businesslike. You want to have this-this unusual drama done-so that you may return to your author friend. Yes.’ He took a chained gold watch from his vest and studied it. ‘There is not much time from now to the Ceremony, so I will be as businesslike as you.’ He leaned back in the swivel chair, and the spring protested twice. ‘Your uncle is a German who turned his back on his Fatherland in its hour of most dire need, to lend his support to exploiters and capitalists, the warmonger clique, who are the masters of so called democratic America. His genius, in a wrong cause, distresses us in East Berlin deeply. We have one object, and I have one assignment-to make Professor Stratman cease his dangerous tinkering-so harmful to world peace-for an irresponsible society, and to make him come to his senses and return to his beloved Fatherland. He is a German, and-’

  ‘He is not a German!’ Emily shouted.

  Eckart scowled. ‘You think you can change your blood with a paper of naturalization? I did not take you for a foolish child. Your uncle himself, Professor Stratman-in the latter days of the war, when we were at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute together-used to tell a story. I have not forgotten it. His story makes my point. One day, a wealthy American businessman was strolling with Professor Charles Steinmetz, the famous engineer who was deformed, past a synagogue in New York. “You know, Steinmetz,” said the businessman, “I used to be a Jew.” And Steinmetz said to him, “Yes, and you know, I used to be a humpback.” There is the story. Your uncle is a German, and before the eyes of the world, he shall be again-when he defects from the decadent West.’

  Emily heard this out with smouldering anger. ‘Nothing-nothing on earth-would make him go back to you.’

  ‘I hope you are wrong, Miss Stratman. And I hope I am not wrong in judging that your good sense coincides with your uncle’s good sense.’

  ‘About what? I still don’t know what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘I’m only trying to say in my diplomat’s way-forgive the verbosity-that there just may be something on earth that might help Max Stratman make the change.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If not something, then someone. For someone, to save someone, perhaps Max Stratman might reconsider.’

  Emily’s mood of fearlessness, fanned by hatred and a feeling of unreality that isolated her from this improbable interview, persisted. ‘Am I the someone?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘Are you threatening to hold me, abduct me? Is that what?’

  Eckart removed his monocle, shaking his head as if genuinely offended. ‘My-my-Miss Stratman-America has spoilt you, too. I believe you are all victims of those glorifying gangster films on television and in the cinema. I promise you-we do not drop hostages in canals and such nonsense. We have more civilized means.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do to me to make me or my uncle-’

  ‘Nothing, Miss Stratman? No barter at all? Are you so certain?’

  Suddenly the self-righteous fury went out of her, and she was less certain. ‘I repeat it-nothing. You can kill me-’

  ‘Please, Miss Stratman, do not offend me again. I am a scientist and a scholar, not a savage. You are my guest, and I am your host. In the end, you shall see, we will both benefit from this brief meeting. You have someone I want-your uncle-and I have someone you want.’

  Eckart had been leaning forward, but now he was erect in the chair, adjusting his monocle to its place. Deliberately, he rose, pulled his short suit jacket straight, and slowly he came around the desk, ignoring Emily as he went to the door through which she had entered.

  Emily’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair, and the pulses of her wrists throbbed, as she turned to watch him.

  He opened the door to the reception room, and he was nodding to someone out of sight. ‘All right,’ he was saying, ‘she is ready to see you.’

  Eckart stepped aside, almost deferentially (how curious), like a chamberlain about to announce the entry of nobility, and at once the figure of an elderly man filled the doorway. The light of the reception room was behind him, and the office was darkened, so that momentarily he was only an outline in black.

  Slowly, he shuffled-was there a barely perceptible limp?-into the room, towards Emily, the colourless black of his outline giving way to human features and figure. He came past Emily, and then hesitantly around in front of her, and a few feet before her he halted, as if to inspect her and himself be inspected.

  Now, at last, he was clearly visible to her troubled eyes, a stocky old man, slightly bent beneath time, attired in a heavy dark grey unfashionable worsted suit, the suit wrinkled and rumpled as if he had travelled steadily in it and had had no time to send for the valet. She stared without embarrassment, not because he was unusual, but because he was so usual, so almost known and faintly familiar, like one whose face you cannot quite place or whose name is almost at the tip of your tongue.

  His head and face held her. The head was massive on a short thick column of neck. The hair was sparse but sufficient, shining white and carefully combed sideways from a wide part above one ear. The face was chapped rough red, all symmetrical and firm despite streaks of age, except for the prominently bulbous nose, which disconcerted her because it was known to her.

  Still mystified and curiously detached, Emily could see that the kindly red face-so familiar, so once-known-was alive with emotion, the eyes watery and blinking, the bulbous no
se sniffling, the lips trembling.

  The familiar stranger swallowed and shook his head. ‘You do not recognize me, my little goose?’

  That instant she recognized him, or thought she did, and even as her knotted fists pulled her to the edge of the chair, looking up at him, she rejected the possibility. Yet the bulbous nose, the timbre of his voice, the intangible cord between them that was drawing her out of the chair and unsteadily to her feet, could not be dismissed. Above all, the phrase of endearment this stranger had used so easily, so naturally, as if this was homecoming and they had simply resumed again. My little goose. Where had she heard it before and from whom? Where… back and back and backward the years… when he had carried her round and round the old, oak-lined living-room, on his shoulders, aloft, propping her high, holding her, round and round, faster and faster, as she squealed and kicked, and he laughed and laughed… little goose, little goose… and again, again, leaving her, beribboned, groomed, starched, wide-eyed and pale, at the gymnasium with the frocked teacher… you are growing, a young lady now, my little goose… and once more, with pain, with wrenching… in the drizzle, at the door, down the steps to the street between the efficient, unsentimental brown-shirts… I will write, Rebecca, I will have you out, soon, soon… soon, Rebecca… soon, my little goose…

  His caress of love. Only his. No other.

  She stood before him now, clamped immobile by a paralysis of disbelief. The massive, venerable face blurred an instant and then an instant stood in bold relief, as if cut from granite and now weather-beaten: the matted white hair, the tear-filled brown eyes, the working stubbled jaw.

  Eckart’s brisk voice was behind her, engulfing the incredible seconds and dim years, captioning the moment. ‘Miss Stratman-you must know him, of course-Walther Stratman, your father-’

  ‘Papa.’ Her voice spoke, not she, to herself, not to the familiar stranger.

  ‘-missing, but not dead, it turns out,’ Eckart went on behind her. ‘He’s been alive all these years-in custody of the Russians after he helped your uncle escape-working for his captors. But now he is here in neutral Stockholm. It is a miracle I have managed for you-he is free at last.’