(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Oh, Christ, Lee, listen.’

  ‘—because that’s not the way I planned it. I only had the drinks to get up my nerve, and because I was worried I wouldn’t please you, because I’m not Harriet, and I’ve never slept with a man. But I’ll be good, you’ll see. Just have patience, and show me, and don’t hurt me—but even if you do—I don’t care.’ Her voice became smaller, and now it caught. ‘You can take me now, Andrew.’

  ‘Goddamit, Lee, no. Goddamit, I won’t take you, I can’t.’ He was furious with the predicament in which she had placed him. ‘I don’t want intercourse with you—or maybe I do, I don’t know—but even if I did, I wouldn’t.’

  Agitated, he swung off the bed, felt under the lamp, and turned on the light. He stood beside the bed, in his rumpled pyjama trousers, hitching them up, ashamed to have to see her here. Her head, her free hair matted, was on the pillow, and now averted from the light. Her hands knotted tightly on the blanket top, pulling it to her neck.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she groaned. ‘Turn off the light.’

  ‘I won’t. I don’t trust myself in the dark. I am a human being.’

  She kept her face averted. ‘Then why are you scared?’

  He knew that this rejection was terrible, and so he softened towards her, made the fault his own. ‘I don’t want your pity, Lee. This—it’s not good for us. Can’t you understand, Lee? It’s nothing for a man. It’s easy for a man. It would have been pleasurable for me. You’re an attractive woman. I mean that. I think you may even be a passionate woman. But what would be the point? You’re not on earth to accommodate me—to be my bondmaid. I’m not that selfish. That’s all it would be. I could never promise you more or offer you more. So it would be wrong for me to be the first, unless you needed it. That would be another matter. But you don’t. You say you don’t. And if you haven’t up to now, I think you should wait until it means something more, until you have someone. There’s that nice fellow in Chicago—Beazley—Harry Beazley—it would mean something with him. It would mean a whole life for you. But you know me. I can promise you nothing—not love—not even affection. And marriage—I can’t think of marriage. I just won’t have it with you this way. Now, let’s not think of it or speak of it again. Let’s just go on as we have.’

  For the first time, she turned her face to him. Her thin lips quivered. ‘Go into the other room,’ she said in a cold, expressionless voice, ‘until I’m decent.’

  He retreated awkwardly through the drapes, and then pulled them chastely across so that they covered every inch of the bedroom entrance. Moving to the coffee table, he found a packet of Leah’s cigarettes and took one and lit it. His hand shook, as he held the cigarette, and he could not remember when, since Harriet’s death, he had been more dismayed.

  He listened to the creaking of the bed, as she got up to dress, and he paced back and forth across the sitting-room.

  Presently, the drape was flung aside, and Leah appeared. She wore a flannel bathrobe over her nightgown, and slippers. Her hair was long, but combed. Her face was composed, but glacial.

  She advanced towards him without shame or timidity. He read her attitude at once. Her every movement spoke her thought. She was saying: I am blameless, the fault is your fault. She was saying: I offered, in all charity and kindness, to save you from yourself, and you rebuffed me. She was saying: the Lord will punish you, not me, for I am the handmaid whose name is Hagar.

  Against fanatic righteousness, Craig knew that he was helpless.

  ‘I’ve listened to your pack of lies,’ Leah began stridently, ‘and I just want you to know you’re not pulling the wool over my eyes.’

  ‘Now, what does that mean?’

  ‘It means I see through you, better than anyone on earth. All that holy talk about thinking of me, about saving me for someone else, about not wanting to hurt me. I know the truth. I suspected it, but now I know it.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll let me in on your secret.’

  ‘You didn’t need my love, which is clean and decent, because you’ve been getting too much these last couple of days from that little Nazi whore-bitch from Atlanta!’

  ‘Leah!’

  ‘I could see it from the first minute she set eyes on you. She put her hooks in you fast. She gave you what you needed fast. She’s got one Nobel winner in the family, but that’s not enough. Now, she wants two. She saw you were weak—any experienced woman could tell that—and she played on your weakness, and now she’s got you, and that’s what is wrong. Andrew, Andrew, you’re such a guileless fool!’

  He tried to repress his anger, for he knew her hurt, but it was impossible. ‘You’re the fool, Lee, if that’s what you believe,’ he said quietly. ‘Emily Stratman is as much a virgin as you are.’

  ‘I see, you know that. You found out?’

  ‘Dammit, Lee, shut up. She’s attractive, of course, and I’m not a eunuch. You bet your life I tried to make time with her. I didn’t get to first base. I haven’t touched her. I haven’t even kissed her.’

  ‘You were with her all day.’

  ‘So I was with her. So what? I was sick of the tour, and I wanted to be on my own—I told you that this noon—and she had some shopping to do, and I wanted companionship, and we went walking. That’s all. Is that wrong?’

  Leah had listened, and her outrage was spent and her jealousy relieved and she saw a new hope. ‘If it’s true, it’s not wrong, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s true, and I swear it. And everything I told you in the bedroom is true, also.’

  ‘You said we wouldn’t discuss that.’

  ‘All right.’

  There was nothing more to argue about, but Leah was not ready to go. ‘I—I suppose you have to know other women besides me. Especially now that you’re famous. But what you see in a German foreigner—’

  ‘She’s an American, Lee.’

  ‘Whatever she is, I don’t care. What you can find in common with a perfect stranger—’

  ‘Harriet was a stranger before I met her. And so were you. And so is everyone to everyone, until they communicate. Miss Stratman and I simply walked and talked about nothing important—I showed her some of the places in Stockholm where Harriet and I had been—’

  ‘You did that?’ It was as if he had been an infidel who had violated Mecca. Again, Leah’s displeasure was evident. ‘You mentioned Harriet to her?’

  ‘Of course. Why not? I told her about Harriet and our life, certainly.’

  ‘How could you? It’s improper. You never talk to me about Harriet and you. How can you do that with someone you’ve only known for two days?’

  ‘Maybe because I only knew her two days. You’re Harriet’s sister. That makes it difficult.’

  Leah pursed her lips tightly. ‘I don’t know what’s going to become of you, I really don’t. You’re simply acting without restraint in every way. You’re getting worse all the time. I can see what’s ahead for us. Drinking and more drinking, and now, added to that, strange women, with all your pitiful confessions, embarrassing both of us by pouring all your troubles into everyone’s ears. You can’t do that, Andrew, not now—now that the entire world knows you—now that you’re a Nobel winner. What would people think if they knew you killed your wife? What if it got out? I suppose you got drunk and told that to the Stratman girl? Did you?’

  It was almost as if Craig had known from the beginning, from the moment of his rejection of Leah, that the blow would fall again, as it always had when he displeased her. It was the one blow that could bring him to his knees. Against it he had no shield. And now, inevitable as death, it had fallen, and he was once more defeated. He hated the past, that had provided her with the ultimate weapon and had left him disarmed.

  ‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said, suddenly tired. ‘I didn’t tell her about the accident.’

  ‘Thank God for that much restraint,’ she said. ‘The accident—as you call it—is in the family. That’s what worries me about your drinking. And seeing strange women
. If you need the company of women, and you—you have too much respect for me—I wouldn’t care if you went to a prostitute once in a while. At least, you wouldn’t talk too much to them. It’s the ordinary girls that I worry about, the ambitious ones who worm their way into your confidence. Keep that in mind the next time you see the Stratman girl. In the end, I trust your commonsense, Andrew. You have a new position to maintain now, and a new future, and if you think of Harriet once in a while, and remember that I’m your best friend in the world, you won’t ruin it or yourself. I think we understand each other, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes, Lee.’

  ‘I was upset by your behaviour in the bedroom,’ she said briskly, again self-assured and in full control. ‘I was going to move out of this suite, even go home, and just leave you. Now I see that would be wrong of me. You need me for a rudder. So you needn’t worry. I’ll stay. You can depend on me. Good night, Andrew.’

  ‘Good night, Lee.’

  She went into her bedroom, and he shuffled slowly into his. With distaste, he viewed the mauled bed, the heavy impressions on both pillows. He knelt beside the overnight case, unlocked it, and removed a bottle of Scotch. In the bathroom, he took one of the two empty glasses, then came back into the bedroom, filling the glass as he walked.

  He settled into the easy chair, and he drank deeply, and when the glass was empty, he immediately filled it a second time, and drank again.

  The almost perfect day had become one more day of disaster, and Leah, in her misguided, stupid desire to help him, had been the instigator of the calamity. Yet he was uncertain of one point. He asked himself a question: had Leah, with her rigid naked body, sincerely set out to help him? He asked another question: or had Leah, consciously or unconsciously set out to help herself, herself alone? Now, Hamlet, Horatio, whoever, that was the question—or, rather, the questions.

  Craig gulped down the liquid, which no longer stung, and relaxed in the chair as the saviour fluid coursed through his veins and numbered his tormented brain.

  The questions and now the answers. His writer’s mind wrote the story, the deductive story, on paperless air. The words floated . . .

  Under the influence of whisky, an author accidentally kills his wife. Unofficial manslaughter. The wife’s sister comes into the house to care for the widower. The sister has a fiancé, but her obligation to her adored relative’s memory makes her sacrifice her own life plan. Then, overnight, the author is catapulted into renown and invited to make a trip, and the sister accompanies him. To her dismay, her ward, the author, is exposed to the outer world and the charms of a beautiful, chaste girl of German descent. The sister sees her selfless good works threatened by another. She must protect her ailing author for the one he had sent to the grave. It is her sacred duty. She must accomplish this at any cost, in a single stroke, a stroke that will bind his guilts to her forgiveness forever. She offers her body—so naïvely, so rooted in the old belief that sexual intercourse must lead to marriage (for Harriet, for Harriet)—and she is sure this will carry the day, and she will possess him and hold him in thraldom (for Harriet, for Harriet). But he has come alive, and is alert, and retreats from the tendrils and palpi of the Madagascar man-eating plant and is saved from the past. The end.

  Was it the end? Or was it To Be Continued?

  Craig finished the drink, and as he poured one more, his writer’s mind knew that his story was incomplete. Too many loose ends and no denouement. There would have to be another instalment, and perhaps even a rewrite of the first instalment. After all, was his story accurate? Had that been Leah’s hope and her plan? Suppose his perception was correct, and it was her plan. What then? The loose ends: the author was not yet saved, for if he had repulsed the sister once, he was still the slave of their secret and the ugly guilt. The loose ends, add: the sister was still an unpredictable threat, for she was a woman scorned. Didn’t women scorned always do something? They surely did, for if they didn’t, half the libraries of the earth would be devoid of novels. And the denouement? Craig could not imagine it. His writer’s mind had fogged. The future was impenetrable.

  A sense of uneasiness pervaded Craig, overcoming even the settling effects of the alcohol.

  Perhaps he had Leah all wrong, and he was at fault. Maybe he did owe Harriet’s memory, and his debt to her, a final payment through her younger sister. She had wanted that payment in bed, in bed without end, and if he made it, he might be free inside. His thick logic dissolved into fantasy. What would the payment be like? He had felt the contact of those ample breasts, and observed the mound under the blanket, and he wondered. And then he knew, he was positive that he knew, and that he could write it as D. H. Lawrence might write it or Henry Miller or John Cleland. His writer’s mind tried and tried but couldn’t rise above the layer of intoxication. But Craig knew, nevertheless. If he came out of his chair now, and crossed the sitting-room, and rapped on her door, and went inside her bedroom, she would be waiting and as ready as before. He would kiss her lips, and she would respond, and she would yield to him fully. It would be onerous, and she would be lifeless as a marble statue, with no resilience, with no rhythm, with no giving, and yet it would be physically pleasurable for him and mentally pleasurable for her. And that would create the mould into which they would both be locked for life. Later, she would be more mechanically giving, and with security, more doughy in her flesh offering, and she would perform as dutifully on the mattress as over the stove, in return for his name on their mail and her name in the dedications of his books. They could live forever, thus, the three of them—he, and Leah, and Harriet. His body would be fettered, but his conscience would be clear. That was the dismal payment.

  Should he make it?

  He finished his drink, and this was the moment. He had but to rise and go to her, and the battles were done. With wavering aim, he poured whisky into the glass until it came to the top.

  Unexpectedly, his almost perfect day floated before him. Lilly. The Swedish Academy. Emily.

  Suddenly, he thought, to hell with conscience, and the consequences of a woman scorned. He could always cross the sitting-room to that other bed. He would have another day, another day or two, without commitment. He would take his chances. He would see what the second instalment brought.

  He was drunk, and the room was a ferris wheel. He lowered the glass to the floor, and slumped back into the chair.

  Jesus, what confusion.

  He let his drowning brain have a life of its own. Go ahead, brain. His brain offered him an Irish gravestone epitaph, somewhere read, somewhere seen. He accepted it with cynical joy. It would be Andrew Craig’s epitaph this night of reburial:

  Here lies the body of John Mound

  Lost at sea and never found.

  7

  * * *

  ‘YOU say you are in trouble, Mr. Craig?’ repeated Count Bertil Jacobsson into the telephone. ‘I do not understand. What kind of trouble?’

  From behind his desk, beside the second-storey window of the Nobel Foundation at Sturegatan 14, Jacobsson’s expression of regret reached out to his two early morning guests, Dr. Denise Marceau and Dr. Claude Marceau, and begged for their indulgence over the interruption.

  Claude’s understanding shrug told Jacobsson that they did not mind, and, to reassure the old aristocrat, Claude opened his silver cigarette case and offered it to his wife. The Marceaus settled back on the blue sofa, smoking. Absently, Claude gazed at the portrait of King Gustaf on the wall, while Denise half listened to the Assistant Director’s pacifying of the unseen Nobel literary laureate.

  ‘Now, let me see if I understand you,’ Jacobsson was saying into the mouthpiece. ‘You tell me you were awakened ten minutes ago by a group of college students, out in the corridor, serenading you? Is that correct? . . . Yes, I see. And this young man, their spokesman, Mr. Wibeck, says they are the delegates from Uppsala University who have been assigned to escort you to a lecture? . . . Umm, true, true, it could be a mistake, Mr. Craig, but the printed programme of y
our appointments, the one I gave you on your arrival, that will tell you if it is actually on your schedule or not. What is that? . . . Oh, well, if Miss Decker has your copy, and she is out for the morning, then I will be glad to assist you. I believe I have a copy readily at hand. If you will—what was that? You cannot hear me because . . . I see, yes. Well, please, Mr. Craig, simply request Mr. Wibeck to have the Uppsala students halt their serenading until you are off the phone. He will not be offended. I am sure he is in perfect awe of you. While you speak to him, I will search for the programme.’

  Count Jacobsson placed the receiver on the desk blotter, next to the telephone, cast one more apologetic glance at the Marceaus, and searched the middle drawer of his desk. At last, he had what he wanted, the duplicated programme, and picked up the receiver again.

  ‘Mr. Craig? . . . Good, good, I understand. I have no ear for music in the morning either. Now I have the programme before me. Today is December fifth. Ah, here it is. Are you listening? . . . Very well, I will read it to you. “Mr. Craig’s schedule for December fifth. Nine-thirty, morning. Address the creative writing class of Uppsala University on the subject, ‘Hemingway and the Style of the Icelandic Sagas.’ Three-thirty, afternoon. Address the literature and poetics classes of Stockholm University and Lund University combined on the subject ‘Literary Criticism in the America of the Fifties and Sixties.’ Eight o’clock, evening. Optional. Free time, or attend performance of La Bohème at the Swedish Royal Opera.” ’ Jacobsson paused. ‘There you have it, Mr. Craig, I am afraid you have promised the two lectures. You recall—your letter from Wisconsin? What? . . . I appreciate your problem. But even if you have not prepared, I am sure the students would be glad to hear you on any subjects about which you choose to improvise. They are not there to learn of Hemingway and the Icelandic sagas or American literary criticism. They are there to see you and hear you. They will be forever grateful. . . . I am sorry about that, too, Mr. Craig. I would suggest two or three aspirin, or our Magnecyl which are less expensive. . . . No, I wish it were possible, but we are all tied up this morning. Miss Påhl is taking Dr. Garrett to the Caroline Institute. Dr. Krantz must meet a colleague who is flying in from Berlin. I am this moment occupied in giving the Doctors Marceau a little tour of our institution, such as I gave you yesterday. I am positive that you will find young Mr. Wibeck most cordial and co-operative . . .’