Prizes

by Erich Segal

  “It might be my service,” Charlie explained apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’ll take it.”

  He walked over to the phone, answered, and then said immediately, “I was wrong. At crazy four in the morning somebody wants you, Anya.”

  She moved slowly. After all, there was nothing that important in the outside world. And she did not care who wished to communicate with her from that alien territory.

  “Mrs. Coopersmith—I should say Dr. Coopersmith—this is Professor Nils Bergstrom of the Karolinska Medical Institute in Sweden. Forgive me if I’ve awakened you.”

  “That’s all right,” Anya mumbled absently. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “I assume you have some idea of why I’m calling,” he said gently.

  “I can guess,” Anya whispered, wondering if she would have the emotional strength even to thank this man for what was clearly intended as a gesture of kindness.

  “It gives me deep satisfaction to inform you—in strictest confidence—that at noon today in Stockholm, two hours from now, we will announce this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine. And the academy will honor the invention of MR-Alpha as first put forth in the New England Journal by you and your husband and his team.”

  Professor Bergstrom continued to speak, but his words were merely a meaningless flow of syllables pouring over Anya’s consciousness.

  She once again thanked him and hung up.

  Now, with tears streaming down her face, she stared at her husband’s friend. “He’s won—Adam’s won the Nobel Prize.”

  The impulse to rejoice was so strong in Charlie that he succeeded momentarily in forgetting his friend’s terrible affliction. He bounded from the chair. “Fan-tas-tic! Have you got any champagne?”

  “Yes,” she replied diffidently. “But I don’t feel it’s proper before—you know—Adam is told. I mean, made aware.”

  Immediately chastened, he agreed. “You’re right. So what I’ll do is stay with you till he has a clear moment. If you don’t mind, Anya, I’d really like to share his happiness. It would mean a great deal to me.”

  “Of course.” She nodded. A moment later they were in Adam’s bedroom looking down at him. His face—still unlined and still handsome—wore an expression of tranquility.

  “Should we try to wake him?” Charlie asked.

  “We both want to, so let’s take a chance,” she replied.

  Anya touched him and said softly, “Adam.”

  Her husband’s eyes slowly opened. He gazed at her and for a moment said nothing. His glance then fell on Charlie. Then back to his wife.

  “An-Anya,” he murmured. “How are you, darling?”

  She exchanged glances with Charlie. “He’s lucid. We can tell him. He may forget it in half an hour, but at least he’ll understand now.” She took his hand.

  “Adam, we’ve got something wonderful to tell you,” she began. “You’ve won the Nobel Prize. It won’t be officially announced for another two hours, but you’ve won.”

  He looked at her incredulously and shook his head. “No, no, you’re wrong,” he objected. “But Adam—”

  “No, we won,” he corrected her. “Without you …”

  And then, abruptly, there seemed to be a short-circuit in his brain. His eyes glazed and he became silent as a stone, no longer present.

  “He knew,” Charlie insisted. “He was all there when you told him. Don’t you agree?”

  She nodded. Then the two of them helped settle the disoriented patient back in bed.

  Later, Anya was scrambling some eggs for Charlie before he left for the hospital, when the phone rang again. It was Prescott Mason.

  “Have you heard?” Triumph colored his voice.

  “Yes,” she responded quietly.

  “Splendid news, isn’t it?” Mason shouted like a cheerleader, clearly angling for a pat on the head.

  “Yes, yes,” she agreed. “You did a good job.”

  “Listen, Anya,” Mason said emotionally, “I don’t deny that we lobbied. But they don’t give out Nobel Prizes without merit.” He hesitated, and then added softly, “Now comes the hard part. At least for you.”

  “I don’t understand,” she protested.

  “There’s no way Adam can face the press. We’ll have to convince them that he’s temporarily sidelined. I mean, you’ll have no problem fielding any questions, will you?”

  Her heart sank. “Must I?”

  “Listen, dear,” Mason urged, “this is for him. If you can keep saying that to yourself, it’ll help you get through it.”

  She shrugged. “But what about the ceremony? I hate to think how he’ll be by December.”

  “Be brave, Anya,” Prescott responded affectionately. “Let’s take this one day at a time.”

  She hung up and looked at Charlie.

  “I heard,” he said softly. “That guy’s voice is like a megaphone. Listen, Anya, I don’t know how the hell I can help, but I’ll get back here as soon as I make my rounds. You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

  “Thanks, Charlie,” she murmured sadly.

  “Yeah,” he answered. He then turned on his heels and left.

  Once outside, Charlie breathed a sigh of relief and thought, Where the hell does she find the strength?

  And felt glad that he was able to get away from all that ceaseless suffering.

  The moment she was alone, Anya immediately called Lisl Rudolph, for in a real sense, this was her prize too. The older woman cried.

  For Max.

  For Adam.

  For herself.

  “Lisl, I want you here with me when the reporters come. And I don’t mean to help me out. I want you to be a living reminder of how much this prize belongs to Max.”

  A few minutes later, Terry Walters arrived to begin his day of nursing. Anya had been so preoccupied that she hadn’t checked on Adam for nearly an hour.

  Moments later she was startled to hear Terry roar, “Holy shit!” This was followed by the heavy tread of his footsteps as he raced into the kitchen. “He’s gone—your husband’s gone!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he’s not in his bed. He’s not in the john. He’s not anywhere. What the hell could have happened?”

  Anya was frozen with fear. Earlier in his illness there had been occasions when Adam had left his bed like a sleepwalker and wandered around the backyard. Lately he had not seemed well enough to go AWOL. And she could see through the kitchen window that he was not in the garden.

  She and Terry thought as one. They opened the door to the garage and had their worst fears confirmed.

  One of the cars was missing.

  Alzheimer’s had slowly but relentlessly deprived Adam Coopersmith of all his faculties. Now and then he had revisited his old life with enough awareness to make him despondent. The only thing he had not dared tell Anya was that he had resolved not to surrender to the disease its ultimate prey—his dignity.

  There was no doubt a neurological explanation for the sudden—and inevitably transitory—return of his rational faculties. And yet, though no scientist has discovered the location of the human will, they all recognize its existence and respect its inscrutable power.

  Adam’s whole life had been one of increasing mastery of his environment. As a youngster this was epitomized in his skills as a diver. He had trained his body to obey his thoughts and perform actions of extreme beauty.

  His enormous inner strength prefigured the character of his scientific career, in which he strove to correct nature’s mistakes. The prize he had just received was ample testimony to his success.

  Moreover, the news from Stockholm had provided a neural stimulus, giving him a physical renewal he was unlikely to experience again.

  He knew this was the moment to act. He sat up in bed and, like an automaton, dressed himself and put on track shoes—an act he had not performed without assistance for several months. Car keys were strewn carelessly on the hall table. He picked up a set.

  The garag
e door had been left open, so the only sound he created was the soft purr of Anya’s Ford Tempo as he backed out into the street.

  As he drove toward the lab, Adam meticulously observed the rules of the road. He carefully stopped at red lights. He did not exceed the speed limit.

  He even parked in the correct space in the garage.

  He took the elevator to the eighth floor in hopes of making a final visit to his lab. But the moment he spied several night owls still at their benches, he turned and walked to the fire door.

  Then, with dignity and grace, he mounted the steps and walked out onto the roof.

  Adam knew where he was and why he had gone there.

  He was not frightened.

  He walked slowly to the edge and stood erect and proud as he surveyed the city bathed in the glow of the morning’s early light.

  Then, calling upon distant but distinct memories of his body’s flights through space, he sprang forward.

  And dove into the void.

  EPILOGUE

  Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend

  The wondrous Architecture of the world:

  And measure every wandering planet’s course,

  Still climbing after knowledge infinite,

  And always moving as the restless Spheres,

  Will us to wear ourselves and never rest,

  Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,

  That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

  The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

  Tamburlaine the Great

  Late on the afternoon of December tenth the nobilities of blood and mind packed the Grand Auditorium of the Concert Hall in Stockholm for the culmination of a week of celebrations: the climactic ceremony at which the Nobel Prizes were presented to the winners of the year.

  Unlike most theatrical productions, this event had spectators on both sides of the footlights. For seated in several semicircular rows on stage were some 150 members of the Swedish academies, in their white ties and evening dress, for all to see.

  The rows of black and white figures were only occasionally punctuated by colored gowns—a graphic illustration of how small a role women have played in Nobel history.

  At precisely four-thirty, on a raised platform behind them, Niklas Willen’s baton signaled the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra to begin the Royal Anthem. The audience rose as Their Majesties, King Carl XVI Gustav—young and regal, dressed in conservative black—and Queen Silvia, dazzling in a red dress, with a shining coronet on her auburn hair, entered from the right-hand side of the stage.

  Exactly one minute later—the Foundation’s schedule is Swisslike in its precision—to the strains of the Rákóczy March from, of all things, The Damnation of Faust, the new laureates entered in procession through a curtain of flowers, passing as they did a dramatically lit bust of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and presiding genius of this event.

  They took their seats in red velvet armchairs, across from the royal party.

  From a modest black podium bearing a large gilt copy of the Nobel medal, the chairman of the Foundation delivered a brief introduction.

  The awards were then bestowed in the order listed in the benefactor’s last will and testament.

  Physics was first.

  In presenting Isabel da Costa, Professor Gunnar Nilsson wasted few of the precious words accorded him. He placed her in a progression that began with Galileo, then reached—and surpassed—Einstein. He also gratified the audience by noting the phenomenon of her age:

  “She now displaces Sir William Bragg—who received his award at the tender age of twenty-five—as the youngest ever recipient of the prize.”

  The royal party led the entire auditorium in a standing ovation for her.

  Radiant in a dark blue satin gown, complemented by a single strand of pearls, Isabel had no airs of childhood precocity about her. For the little girl with the dark curls was now a handsome woman, whose dignity was ample demonstration that the circus aspect of her life was over.

  They expected her to speak in Swedish, and she did. But only a single prefatory sentence: Ers Majestät, Ärade ledamöter av akademien, Jag tackar Er för denna stora ära. “Your Majesty, members of the academy, I thank you for this great honor.”

  The rest of her strictly rationed words thanked “my father, Raymond da Costa, without whose devotion and sacrifice I would not be here today, and my fiancé Jerry Pracht, for his loving, moral, and emotional support.” He had made Isabel promise not to mention any scientific assistance she “thought” he might have given her.

  The two men singled out for her special recognition sat side by side in the audience—each in his own way profoundly moved. Although he had promised Isabel not to shed tears, Ray was on the verge of involuntarily breaking his vow when Jerry clasped him affectionately and whispered, “Congratulations, Dad.”

  The single obligation of all laureates is to deliver a lecture at a time of their own choosing. Isabel had deliberately scheduled her own for the day after the festivities, lest the nature of her remarks cause too much of a stir.

  For, counter to the cynics who argued that the moment she left the podium “she would turn her brain off like a lightbulb and just have babies,” she intended to use the occasion to call the “definitive” nature of her work into question.

  She was bent on proving that her own achievement was not the be-all and end-all of physics. If there was no one on a par to criticize her work, she would have to take on that responsibility herself. And so she proclaimed, “The theory for which you are honoring me could not be proven in the world as we know it.

  “For the true unification of all forces can only be seen at temperatures so high they cannot be reached in any lab—nor found even in the fiery fury of a supernova.

  “They were united long ago at the birth of the world and may yet be unified again when the great gravitational forces cause the universe to collapse. Thus, the answer will lie forever beyond our experience and our understanding.”

  She was determined to leave the way open for more scientific exploration. And concluded with graceful eloquence, “Nature and Divinity still have enough secrets to make humility the most important watchword of any physicist.”

  Traditionally, the ceremonies themselves are rarely characterized by high drama. Any strong feelings aroused by the selections would have been vented back in October, when the announcements were first made.

  This year was an exception, at least as far as the award in Physiology or Medicine was concerned. At this moment an extraordinary tension gripped everyone in the Grand Auditorium.

  The spectators waited breathlessly and the reporters with pens poised.

  Two months earlier, when he had called her on the morning of the fateful decision, Professor Bergstrom had not felt it necessary to mention to Anya that the institute had voted that the year’s award be shared. To him, the important thing was that Adam was one of the recipients and there was a human urgency to convey that information.

  Sandy Raven, inexplicably abandoned by his most passionate supporter, Lars Fredricksen, had quickly fallen by the wayside. And although Adam was now a certain winner, thanks in great measure to the efforts of Helga Jansen, the doctors had been persuaded that whatever else they decided, they had to honor general advances in cellular transformation to combat disease—a rubric that would cover not only Adam’s achievement, but also that of Dmitri Avilov.

  When the announcement was made, the electors had not been aware that Dr. Coopersmith’s wife had once been married to the corecipient of the award.

  But it was not long before the press unearthed this piquant bit of information. Furthermore, their thorough investigations also revealed that the parting had been far from amicable. Indeed, during the intervening years, Dmitri and Anya had never exchanged a word or appeared in each other’s presence.

  When the hypersensitive organizing committee learned of this, they nervously cooperated in “desynch
ronizing” the two scientists’ schedules to minimize the strain on Anya. At the parties and receptions during the early part of the week, Anya, accompanied by the Rosenthals, Lisl, and Heather, managed to avoid any communication with Dmitri. She and Avilov were not even seated together on the stage.

  But there would be no evading him when they would be summoned by His Majesty, King Carl XVI Gustav.

  Their imminent appearance on the podium therefore took on a heightened dramatic dimension.

  At last Anya Coopersmith and Dmitri Avilov were both invited to come forward to receive their honors. All present were struck by the physical contrast between them. She seemed like a delicate sparrow, he like an unruly bear.

  The king bestowed the prizes, first to her as her late husband’s representative, and then to him. Each of them now had an instant to express their thanks.

  Even at so sublime a moment, Avilov was still petty enough to want to punish Anya for being there. And he had the secret means of doing so. For only she could comprehend the hidden significance of his seemingly innocuous expression of affection for his wife and family.

  “I owe many gratitudes, but I wish especially to thank my wonderful wife and beloved children. For it is for them, and their future, that we scientists do our work. And without them our life would have no meaning.”

  Anya had expected unpleasantness, yet she did not anticipate how much it would hurt. Not the remark itself, but the mere fact that he would be so hostile to her on this sublime occasion.

  Her own speech balanced gratitude with regret.

  “This is for me a time of great joy and profound grief. Your recognition of the achievement of my husband, and before him Max Rudolph, rewards not merely work of enormous scientific imagination, but of great human compassion.

  “That the progress of science is truly like the ancient Greek torch races is nowhere better demonstrated than in the lamp Max Rudolph passed to Adam Coopersmith and which I have the humble honor of holding before you today. It illuminates this podium as I accept this award in their names.”

  She caught a sudden glimpse of Lisl, gazing up at her with tear-filled eyes, moved beyond words. Instinctively, Heather put her arms around her godmother.