(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘You’re a mighty complicated guy.’

  ‘Sure I am. Did Sue Wiley tell you that, too? Let’s have another drink.’

  Gottling shouted across the room at the bartender, and in seconds, fresh drinks appeared.

  ‘Why’d you see her?’ Craig asked.

  ‘Who? The dame with the ground glass down under?’

  ‘That’s right. Did you want publicity?’

  ‘You baiting me, Craig? I get enough publicity. This dame called up and said she heard I’d been nominated six times for the Nobel Prize and never got it, and she was writing a series about the whole machinery, and did I have anything to say. Well, my friend, that Nobel Prize is one of my favourite table topics. When I can let off steam on it, it gives me as much pleasure as an orgasm. So I told her to come right over. She filled two notebooks.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever get the prize, Gottling?’

  ‘Why didn’t Strindberg get it? Same difference. Consider my track record. I’ve been divorced twice, the first time for beating my wife’s head against the wall and the second time for laying my step-daughter. I’ve had a Danish mistress for five years—she wears glasses to bed, and that’s what gets me—and I let her give interviews for me. I’ve had four illegitimate children. I’ve been arrested and in jail six times, for drunken behaviour in public. And my literature isn’t exactly idealistic. And that book where the Lapp girl comes to Stockholm, and the city corrupts her and turns her into a whore, well, my fellow Swedes are touchy as hell. They didn’t like it a bit. Still, I didn’t put the blast on them, and I kind of waited, because I figured I’d get the prize sooner or later, like old Gide and old Hamsun. I mean, I’m the only Swede writer around who can write his name. And that Swedish Academy, those academic boys, they love to masturbate—honour themselves, their own—and sooner or later, I figured, they’d want to honour a Swede, and it would have to be me. I don’t give a damn about the honour. I wanted the dough. I can always use the dough. But I have my pipelines, and about two years ago, I found out it was no soap. So I said what the hell, you can’t have everything in life, and now I’ll have some fun with those bastards. So in six weeks of boozing and scribbling, I got me a novel about the eighteen immortals in our Academy—thinly disguised, thinly—what they’re really like after hours—and, man, what a yelp there was. I made the kronor, and they made the threats about hauling me into court, but they were afraid. The book’s never been published in your country. Too special. But I settled our Nobel Committee good, and that’s why you’re never going to see my name beside yours and old Thomas Mann and old Rudyard Kipling.’

  Craig downed his second double, and ordered a third, and so did Gunnar Gottling.

  ‘What did you mean about the judges liking to honour themselves, their own?’ Craig asked.

  ‘Nepotism, my young buck, good old-fashioned nepotism,’ said Gottling. ‘Four small Scandinavian countries—Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland—with about as much talent, per capita, as you could put in a thimble, but one big mutual admiration society. Take the first sixty years of the Nobel Prize. Those Scandinavian countries got thirty-one of the prizes. Can you believe it? Thirty prizes in the first fifty years. Sweden and Norway kept patting themselves on the back, and each other, and their Nordic neighbours. What crap.’

  ‘It’s not what Nobel wanted, is it?’

  ‘Who knows? I don’t suppose so. He said the prizes should be given without regard to nationality. But his heirs didn’t believe him. They put the screws on right from the beginning. You’ve heard of Bertha von Suttner? Nobel’s secretary? Well, when she didn’t get one of the first Peace Prizes, the Nobel family went to Oslo and said, in effect, look, Nobel set up the Peace Prize for old Bertha, so let’s get on the ball. Sure enough, in 1905, old Bertha got the prize. After that, the doors were wide open. Who in the devil ever heard of Nathan Söderblom outside Scandinavia? But look up 1930. He won the Nobel Prize for peace. Why? Why not? He read the services at Nobel’s funeral. And he was the Archbishop of Uppsala. And so it’s gone. How many people outside Scandinavia read von Heidenstam, Gjellerup, Jensen, Sillanpää, Pontoppidan? All Nordics. All laureates. Hell, in 1931, the Swedish Academy broke its most inflexible rule to give their prize to a dead man. They sure did. They loved their Secretary—nice guy—poet by the name of Erik Axel Karlfeldt, and his widow and daughters needed the dough, so they gave him the prize. Very touching. But what has all that got do do with honouring great writing, and what does that make of the prize itself?’

  ‘It’s still the most respected prize on earth,’ said Craig.

  ‘Of course it is. You know why? Because most of the democratic world has abolished titles and all that crap. But men are human. They yearn for titles, for an élite, for an upper class. The peasants have their equality, but there is the old nostalgia for royalty. So along comes the Nobel Prize, at the right time, at the turn of the century when everything is drab and dull. The masses were waiting for it. They made it the new knighthood. That’s why it’s respected and popular. Because people are masochistic, inferior fools.’ Gottling swallowed his third double gin. ‘If they only knew what crap goes on behind the scenes of the awards, not only nepotism, but all the narrow prejudices and politics.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a secret,’ said Craig. ‘Jacobsson took me up to the Academy yesterday, and he was damn honest about the literary voting. He said there was good and bad.’

  ‘Jacobsson,’ Gottling muttered, rolling his glass on the table. ‘Count Bertil Jacobsson? That old stuffed parrot, he should have been put in a time capsule years ago. He lives in the past. He has nothing to do with breathing people. Why do you think the Foundation supports him? Because he’s a front—he’s got blue blood, he knew Nobel, he makes with the erudition and history—and part of his gambit is to anticipate criticism. I wager you ten to one, he gave you the old routine—why Tolstoy and Ibsen and Hardy didn’t get it—but reminding you of all the big names that did. It’s all technique to disarm visitors and send them off beaming. Studied frankness to strip you of your objectivity. And another wager. I’ll bet you he wasn’t frank enough to confess how the Nobel committees have always sucked around the Germans—like that turd, Krantz—and looked down their noses at the Americans, at least until the Second World War, and how they got a permanent boycott going on the Russians.’

  The whisky had gone to Craig’s head, and the room reeled. ‘I like Jacobsson,’ he said.

  ‘You Americans love everybody,’ growled Gottling, ‘just to be sure somebody loves you. What crap. So you like Jacobsson. But did he tell you how his Nobel crew ass-licked the Germans and put the knife in the Russians?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. I better have another drink.’

  ‘Me, too. . . . Hey, Lars, refills!’ He turned his bloodshot eyes back to Craig. ‘You like this old Wärdshus?’

  ‘Greatest place on earth,’ said Craig thickly.

  ‘You’re damn right.’

  ‘What about the Hun?’ asked Craig.

  ‘Germans? Forty-nine prizes in sixty years. Russians? Seven prizes in sixty years, and lucky at that.’

  ‘I’d say that shows courage,’ said Craig, ‘thumbing your nose at Russia, when they’re looking down your throat.’

  ‘Courage, ha!’ exploded Gottling. ‘Every Swede is scared stiff of Russia, and when it counts, Sweden crawls. Why do you think we didn’t join NATO? Because we’re afraid of Russia, that’s why. I wish we had half the guts that Norway has. They defied the Nazis, when we didn’t, and now they defy the Communists, when we won’t. Like giving that 1961 award to old Dag Hammarskjöld, knowing the Bolshies hated him dead or alive. But us next door? We’re yellow, a yard wide, and we know it, and we don’t like it. So how do we salve our national conscience? We make believe we’re men by childish crap—by sticking our tongues out and keeping the Nobel Prize from Russia. So where does that put the holy Nobel Prize? It puts it in local politics. It makes the prize a political instrument that you dumbheads in Americ
a—except the Polacks—consider an honest honour. Christ, what crap.’

  The new drinks came, and Craig spilled part of his before he brought it to his mouth. ‘You said something about the prize being anti-American and pro-German—’

  ‘That’s what I said. Cold figures. I may be looped, but I got it all in my head. Take chemistry. Only one American, Richards of Harvard, won it in thirty-one years. Take physics. Only one American, Michelson of good old Chicago, took it in twenty-two years. Take literature. Only one American, Red Lewis, in thirty-five years. Take medicine. Only two Americans, Carrel and Landsteiner, in thirty-two years. But the Germans—oh, our Nobel boys worshipped them. Fifteen winners in the first ten years, not counting the peace prize, which isn’t worth spitting on. In Sweden, if you could show a degree from Frankfort on the Main or Heidelberg, you were practically nominated. For forty-some years, those krauts were the superior race over here, Nordics just like us. But when you kicked the hell out of them in the Second War, and when you came up with the atom bomb, there was a fast shuffle in all the Nobel committees—and now they pour prizes at you and Great Britain like it was confetti. Don’t ever talk to me about impartiality, when you talk to me about that lousy prize you won.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the prize I won?’ Craig peered at Gottling with owl eyes and spilt his drink again.

  ‘What’s wrong? Haven’t you been listening to me? You plastered or something? I told you about Russia—’

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Seven Russians in sixty years in five categories, and not one of them a clean-cut award. It’s not just anti-Communism. It’s plain anti-Russianism. We’ve been shaking in our boots since the time of the Czar. What happened in physiology and medicine in the first sixty awards? Old Pavlov should have carted off that first award hands down. But no, the Committee kept snubbing him for four years, until there was so much pressure they gave in. And they had to give half of Ehrlich’s prize to a Russian in 1908, because it was on the record he deserved half the credit for advances in immunity. Two stinking medicine awards to Russia in sixty years and none in half a century of that sixty years. Take a look at chemistry. One-half of the 1956 prize, and that’s it, brother, that’s all in sixty years. What about physics? One prize, divided among three Russians, in sixty years. There’s your science awards. I’m not a Russky lover. I told you before, they stink. But what’s that got to do with accomplishment? That’s a country where they’ve done the best work in longevity and genetics and stuck a Sputnik and a guy named Gagarin in the sky. That’s a country where they invented artificial penises for soldiers wounded in the war. That’s a country where Popov demonstrated radio transmission before Marconi, and where Tsiolkovsky had multi-stage rockets in 1911. But not according to our Swedish Academy of Science—no. According to our Nobel idiots, Russia is the land without scientists. And those idiots in Oslo are just as bad. Russia didn’t get a single Peace Prize in sixty years, but Germany—Germany!—got three and France eight and you Americans twelve. And now, my son, we’re home again—literature.’

  ‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ mumbled Craig.

  ‘Ivan Bunin and Boris Pasternak—two Russians in sixty years. Ever think who lived and wrote in Russia in those sixty years? We all know about Tolstoy being turned down nine times. But what about Chekhov and Andreyev and Artsybashev and Maxim Gorky—Gorky was around until 1936. Nothing.’

  ‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ repeated Craig.

  ‘Phony!’ bellowed Gottling, but no one in the Wärdshus bar so much as looked up. ‘Bunin was a White Russian refugee, an anti-Communist, who lived in Paris and translated Longfellow’s “Hiawatha”. He hadn’t been in Russia in fifteen years, when you Americans pitched for him and put him across in 1933. And old Boris Pasternak, the matinée idol with good guts, out there in his dacha—who gave a damn about him when he was writing solid poetry? Who honoured him then? Not the spineless Nobel judges, I guarantee you. But the minute he put out that novel that criticized communism, the minute he had the nerve to say what every Swede was afraid to say, they crowned him with the prize he couldn’t accept. Someday, I got to write advice to writers all over the world. I got to tell them, “Writers, arise! If you’re Russian, if you’re American, no matter what, grind out an anti-Russian potboiler and get it translated into Swedish, and you’re in. You get the Nobel Prize and the big boodle. Just like Andrew Craig.” ’

  Craig squinted at Gottling through bleary eyes. ‘What in the hell does that mean?’

  ‘The facts of life, kid,’ said Gottling, belching, and swallowing his gin, ‘the facts of life. Why do you think you got the Nobel Prize? Because you’re a hotshot author? Because you’re the best this year? Because you’re the leading idealistic literary creator on earth? That what you think? That what Jacobsson and that bag, Ingrid Påhl, told you? Because you’re somebody, in the league with Kipling and Undset and Galsworthy and O’Neill? Crap! You’re nothing, and the Nobel boys know it, and everyone in Scandinavia on the inside knows it. You’re here on a phony pass, because they wanted to use you, and that’s all. And, brother, that’s the truth. Have another drink?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Craig. His brain and mouth were fuzzy, but a distant alarm registered. ‘Is this some more of your sour grapes?’

  ‘I’m the only guy in Sweden with guts enough to level with you, Craig. I got enough pity for that. I don’t want to see you making a horse’s ass of yourself. The Nobel Prize for literature to Andrew Craig? Ha! Crap. The Nobel Prize for anti-Russian propaganda, that’s what it should be. You won because the Swedes have been having a diplomatic squabble with the Russians over two islands in the Baltic Sea—you never read about that, did you?—and the Swedes are going to lose, and crawl, and eat crow. But they got to keep face—that’s our one Orientalism, keeping face—and so, knowing they got to lose, they unloaded a rabbit punch at the Commies by honouring your little anti-Communist fiction, The Perfect State. That’s to show we’re big boys, not afraid of anybody, even when we crawl.’

  ‘You’re making it up, Gottling. You’re bitter, and you’ve got to get your jollies some way. If the Swedish Academy wanted to blast Russia through an award, they could find novelists in a dozen countries who’d written stronger anti-Soviet books.’

  ‘Oh, no. You’re blind man, you don’t see at all. An award to a writer of a work overtly anti-Russian would be too dangerous—they don’t want Pasternak all over again. That was too much of a sweat—they don’t want to stand up and body-punch. Like I said, they just wanted to sneak in a quick rabbit punch, for face, for conscience. Your novel is anti-Russian, all right, but you got to cut away the sugar coating to know it. If Moscow gets sore, and they have—I read Ny Dag, that’s our Commie sheet here—the Swedish Academy can just look surprised—and they have, too—and shrug and say they were honouring a pure historical novel about Plato and ancient Syracuse. You see? But everybody knows different. Only the way it is, nobody can prove it. It’s a scared gesture, like whistling in the dark, just like yours is a scared book.’

  ‘To quote Gunnar Gottling—you’re full of crap.’

  ‘Am I? The hell I am. Listen, if I wasn’t loaded to the gills, I wouldn’t be telling you this. But I got two good friends in the Swedish Academy. They’re the ones who nominate me every year. And after every voting, I get a play-by-play. When your name came up, there were only three of the twelve, the Påhl witch and two other innocents, who thought you had more on the ball than A. A. Milne or Edgar Guest. You were dead, until somebody brought up Russia and those two Baltic islands. Then there was heated talk about Russia, and then someone said the only good thing about your book was that it showed the Russians up—that is, if you read between the lines—and in about an hour, the majority agreed that if you got the award, it would show those Russians, it would really show them. And so you got it. And we’ve shown them. Sorry, kid. You’ll write some real books one day, but that wasn’t the one, and we all know it—so go home with your money and your title and do
n’t knock luck.’

  Craig sat very still. The film of alcohol that covered him, like a placenta in the prenatal chamber, was not enough to protect his frail rebirth as a man. Until now, he had only listened to Gottling, only taken him half seriously. The ravaged Swede was a carper and a dissenter, who made himself larger by making other men smaller, and once you understood that, you understood him, and relaxed and enjoyed it. But this last had the sound of truth, and if it was truth, it was devastating. Craig wanted his rebirth here in Stockholm, one last rebirth of his ego and soul, whole and healthy. If this one miscarried, if this one was still born, only the death of sterility as an author lay ahead. He would not accept Gottling’s rotten exposé.

  ‘You’re trying to get me sore, Gottling. You can’t. I’ve got your number, you see. You’re a defeated, bitter wreck. You can’t get up with the rest of us, so you do the next best thing. You try to drag us down into your gutter. You get away with each ambush by flying the flags of candour and honesty, but your real banner is a deep sickness of the soul. If you weren’t paying for these drinks, I’d bash your nose in.’

  Gottling grunted, and he twisted to face Craig fully, his eyes twinkling. ‘Don’t try it. I eat laureates. I break them in small pieces and eat them.’

  ‘Not this one. I doubt if you could take this one. You are paying for the drinks?’

  Gottling was silent a moment. ‘Yeah, I’m paying.’

  ‘Okay, then.’

  ‘Craig, you can’t get me to fight you. Because I like you, I like you too much.’

  Craig’s eyes mirrored his surprise.

  ‘Sure,’ said Gottling. ‘I know you’re a zero, and I know you know it. Maybe someday, you won’t be. Someday, you’ll be a figure—if you live that long—but now you’re a zero. Still, I like you—you know why? I’m not ashamed. I’ll tell you why. Because you put it in the papers that I’m talented and should’ve won the prize. You put it in the papers that I’m talented. Nobody’s said that in a long, long time, and nobody with a title ever said it at all. I can live off that until I die.’