(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Now, before anticipating the questions that new members have in mind, I should like to say a few words about nudity in general,’ said Mr. Tapper. ‘Modesty is unnatural, and it takes on various forms throughout the world. If you came upon a naked Swedish or French or American woman by accident, she would first cover, with her hands, her pubic area. But, as one Langdon-Davies has remarked, if you came upon a naked Arab woman, she would first cover her face before all else, and a Laos woman would first cover her breasts, and a Celebes woman would try to hide her knees, and a Chinese woman her feet, and a Samoan woman would try to conceal her navel. As you see, this reduces modesty to the ridiculous, and shows you how unhealthy it can be. Under international nudism, the naked woman’s face, breasts, navel, pubic area, knees, feet, could all be revealed, and she would have to cover nothing, for there would be nothing to fear.’

  Mr. Tapper droned on in Swedish, and for a while Lilly was too busy recording in her notebook to interpret his remarks. Once Mr. Tapper paused to accept a drink of water, and then Lilly whispered to Craig, ‘Now he will give questions and answers to the new members.’

  Mr. Tapper scratched his abdomen, cleared his throat, and resumed, and Lilly interpreted his words as best she could.

  ‘Our new members may wish answers to certain questions. I will give them. What is our goal? To provide, through nudism, better health, more relaxation, cleaner minds and higher morals. Do we permit cohabitation and sexual activity in our outdoor park? No. Such misconduct means immediate dismissal. Can members wear shorts? No. Concealing garments of any kind only provoke and excite. The only exception made is that women may wear shorts during their periods of menstruation. Will members, primarily the male members, ever have to worry about becoming sexually aroused and embarrassed at our meetings? No. This has never once occurred in our history. The mind, from which sexual passion originates, is apparently not stimulated by large groups of nude people. I am reminded of the experience of Jan Gay, who wrote a book about her first visit to Zimmerman’s nudist park. The new members among you may find Miss Gay’s first reactions similar to your own. “To be sure,” wrote Miss Gay, “the first time one enters such a class, one is aware of other people’s bodies to a considerable degree; but when one mingles all day, day after day, with naked men and women, a penis comes to be not much more unique than an elbow or a knee and little more remarked; and the contours of one woman seem very much like those of another, save that some are more shapely.” New members will soon understand this reaction.

  ‘But let us resume our answers to questions. Will membership in a nudist society ever cause you trouble if it is publicized in the less tolerant outside world? No. In America, nudists know each other by their first names only, and membership lists are never made public. In Sweden, we do not have such a problem. As you know, our Stockholm newspapers, as well as the newspapers in Copenhagen and Oslo, annually publish photographs of our summer festival King and Queen, and these photographs are entirely nude, and the winners are much admired and respected.’

  Listening, and somewhat sobered, Craig realized how absorbed and diverted he had been. And the interesting part of it was that his absorption had not been in the shapes of the nude young girls all around, but in the director’s talk.

  Although he was a writer, in these last years his roots had not spread, had not found new areas of interest and experience, had almost withered and died. Tonight, he had been entertained by an absolutely new adventure on earth. The subject of nudism, as such, was nothing that personally attracted him. But the fact that there was here a whole new level of living and devotion, non-conformist and even bizarre, yet attracting so many fellow humans, and he had known nothing about it, was what interested him. His thirst for knowledge, for hearing facts, for observing people and incidents, was once more alive and a part of his being. In his absorption, he had been able to forget, for a time, the bitter encounter with Gottling and the hollowness of his Nobel victory. He had almost been able to forget his earlier sexual desire for Lilly, now unclothed beside him. He had not even given thought to Leah or Emily. He was once more, as he had not been for three long years, a writer-sponge, soaking in fresh sensation. It was strength to know the writer-sponge was not completely atrophied.

  Presently, Mr. Tapper was finished, and the formal part of the meeting was ended. Most of the members rose, some to return to their mats beneath the bank of sun-lamps, some to resume their volleyball game, and the rest to enter the locker room and dress for the outer world.

  ‘It is over now,’ said Lilly. ‘We can put on our clothes and leave.’

  She stood up, while he still sat, and her naked body—from the full pink breasts thrust forward as she straightened, to the dipping lines of flesh curving down to her groin—loomed above him in female beauty. This was what he had imagined, in the earlier evening when he had hunted her. Yet now it moved him not at all. It was one more naked body, out of so many, without mystery or provocation. He sighed, and came to his feet. Perhaps this was not their night. Perhaps it would be best to drop her off at her apartment and go back to the hotel and sleep.

  They followed the others to the crowded locker room, a mass of men and women dressing amid a babble of Swedish talk. Her locker was across from his, and they separated briefly. Hurriedly, he pulled on his shorts and trousers, and got into his shirt, stuffing the tails carelessly inside the trousers, and then he took his socks and shoes and sat down on the bench to put them on. As he sat, he could see Lilly directly across the way. She was still naked, and had just finished talking to a plump young woman who was securing her dress.

  Tying his shoes, he watched Lilly arrange her clothes on the bench and automatically begin to dress. It fascinated him. It was like a filmed striptease run backwards. She held her brief nylon panties before her, and stepped into one leg opening and then the other, and pulled them up tightly so that the elastic band came to her navel. Then she sat on the bench, rolled her sheer nylons, inserting one foot, then the other, and unwinding the nylons up her slender calves and up her thighs, and fastening the stockings at her thighs with garter bands.

  Now, when she stood, her nudity partially clothed, her bare breasts seemed to expand and grow. A trick of the imagination, Craig knew, because the panties and stockings had focused attention on what was still revealed. She slipped into a white cotton blouse, and began to button it, and Craig remembered that she had disdain for brassières. The indigo jersey skirt was on, a single tug of her hands circled it into place, and she was pulling the zipper. Her sandals were on her feet, and her thick woollen sweater was over her arm.

  Craig was ready, and he met her between the benches, and they went into the corridor. Briefly, they were alone. She halted to put on her sweater. She poked one arm into the sweater, and tossed her golden ponytail, as he assisted her with the other arm. Coming around her, face to face once more, he could see that the upper button of her blouse was open, and he could see the cleavage between the breasts.

  He tried to picture the breasts and nipples now pressed behind the blouse, and he tried to picture the thighs beneath the skirt, and at once, all at once, in that instant, he was moved by a consuming passion for what could not be seen, and by a hungry desire to see it and possess it. For the first time since entering the gymnasium, he was physically aroused.

  It amused him, and he smiled.

  She saw his face, and took his hand. ‘What is it, Mr. Craig?’

  ‘Just a private thought,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of the most incredible thing on earth.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Man,’ he said.

  And then he squeezed her hand, and started with her down the corridor, wondering how long it would take her to undress.

  8

  * * *

  WHAT awakened Andrew Craig was the sound of voices from another room.

  When he opened his eyes, he instantly realized that he was lying on the folding bed of Lilly Hedqvist’s living-room. Hazily, the events of the night before
were recalled—Gottling, in the Wärdshus, drunkenly revealing how the Nobel Prize in literature had been inspired by politics, not art; the nudists in the gymnasium, unclad and bizarre, listening to a speech by their director; Lilly and himself, on this bed, performing their protracted lovemaking.

  Only the last memory made sense, and Craig tried to revive the details of it, but at last he gave up. He had been more inebriated than he believed. A few fuzzy amatory pictures remained. The rest was a void. The surviving evidence of pleasure, aside from the rumpled bed, was his languid body frame. His mind contained neither hangover nor remorse; his limbs were loose.

  He would have chosen to remain in bed all morning, but then he remembered the voices that had roused him. Undoubtedly, one voice was Lilly’s. He glanced at the clock. It was already after nine o’clock. Why was Lilly here? Why wasn’t she at work? And the other voice. Who had come into the apartment—friend? enemy?—and seen him this way, and was now in the kitchenette?

  The voices, indistinct, resumed their give-and-take, and Craig realized that one of the voices was male. Alarmed, Craig immediately sat up, and then lifted himself off the bed, gathered up his clothes and shoes, and hurried into the bathroom.

  The shower and drying, the dressing and grooming, took him twenty minutes. When he emerged, somewhat combative over the compromising position Lilly had put him in (alleviated quickly by the realization of the compromising position he had put her in, and by the further realization that she had no idea at all, or at least had not expressed an idea, of his importance and news value), he noted that the pull-down bed had apparently been made and raised back into the wall, and that the living-room was all neatness and chastity again.

  He went into the kitchenette, prepared for anything.

  At first he thought that Lilly, at the stove in the foreground, was now alone. The morning was dark, and there was but a single window and a weak lone electric bulb overhead. She was a delight to the eye, as usual, golden hair combed free and long, throat exposed and young, wearing a crisp cocoa dacron blouse and dark tan swing skirt. She had just finished pouring coffee, as he entered, and her spontaneous friendly smile showed him even white teeth and no regrets.

  ‘Good morning, Mr. Craig. Did you rest?’

  ‘I’m wonderful, Lilly. I thought I heard—’

  He stopped short, in mid-sentence. His gaze had gone past Lilly, to the shadowed end of the kitchenette, where, leaning casually against the service porch door, holding a saucer in one pudgy hand and a steaming cup in the other, stood a man.

  ‘I want you to meet my best and oldest friend in Stockholm, Mr. Craig,’ said Lilly. ‘This is Nicholas Daranyi. He does not like to be reminded of the Nicholas. Everyone must call him Daranyi.’

  ‘Like Garbo or Duse,’ said Daranyi. ‘Or, for that matter, Kitchener. It would be less to call him Horatio Kitchener. Immodest of me, perhaps. But we all have our little vanities.’ He had set down the cup and saucer, and now he came forward to accept Craig’s hand. ‘I am pleased to know you, Mr. Craig.’

  Under the electric bulb, Craig was able to appraise the intruder. Daranyi was in his fifties and below middle height. His head was large and fleshy, and was sparsely covered with hair that had been oiled, then parted well to one side and combed to cover a balding spot. His face was sleek, too closely shaved, and the jovial cheek fat made the eyes into slits. But the eyes were merry, and the long nose and mouth amused, and you thought of yuletide and were sure he wore a costume to surprise all children at Christmas. Preceding him was a considerable potbelly, and you wondered how the legs, so thin, held him upright. His grey suit, faintly checkered, was short at the sleeves and short at the trouser cuffs, but pressed and clean and fastidious, with signs of rubbed usage. His total appearance was unmistakably Middle European, and even in this foreign place, he looked foreign. He smelled of exotic soap and strong cologne.

  ‘I confess a certain embarrassment,’ said Craig frankly.

  ‘But why?’ asked Daranyi ingenuously. ‘Because you overslept?’

  Lilly turned from the tray she was preparing and clapped her hands with delight. ‘Oh, Daranyi, do you not understand? Mr. Craig is a nice American with Pilgrim morals. He is ashamed to be found in the bed of an unmarried woman.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Daranyi gravely. ‘But, Mr. Craig, you are in Sweden, not in your native Minnesota—’

  ‘Wisconsin,’ interjected Lilly.

  ‘—native Wisconsin. Moreover, I am like a father to Lilly.’ Then, he added quickly, slit eyes bright, ‘A tolerant and sophisticated father, that is.’

  ‘I don’t know how I would have lived without Daranyi,’ said Lilly, finishing the tray. ‘When I left Lund four years ago, I knew no one here except for three letters of introduction. One was from an aunt to Daranyi. He found me the job with Nordiska Kompaniet. He helped find me this apartment. He bought me my television. And on my two mornings off, and on Sundays, he drives me wherever I must go. Without him, I would be lost.’

  ‘Pay no attention to Lilly, Mr. Craig,’ said Daranyi. ‘She over-values me constantly, to my secret delight.’

  ‘And Daranyi knows,’ Lilly went on gaily to Craig, ‘that the Swedish girl has a trial, with more women than men in Sweden—’

  ‘Six women to every five men in Stockholm,’ said Daranyi precisely.

  ‘—and a girl so old as twenty-three, like myself, will be an old maid, and mean and nervous, if she does not have a man she admires in her bed at least every fortnight. So do not be embarrassed, Mr. Craig. I am sure Daranyi will tell you that when he came this morning, he was pleased to find you in my bed.’

  ‘It is true,’ said Daranyi with equanimity.

  ‘Now, into the living-room, gentlemen,’ said Lilly. ‘We will have breakfast.’

  Somewhat bewildered, but enjoying himself, Craig followed Daranyi into the living-room. Daranyi cleared the glass coffee table and drew up the two wicker chairs, and Lilly served fruit juice, ladled out the scrambled eggs from an earthenware dish, and put cups of coffee before them. Then they all sat and ate.

  ‘Lilly tells me you are a writer,’ said Daranyi to Craig.

  Craig, his mouth full, nodded.

  ‘Fiction or non-fiction?’ inquired Daranyi.

  ‘Fiction,’ said Craig.

  ‘Then it is unlikely I have read you. In my work, one has little time for novels. I must spend my book time with politics and biography, current and past, and most of my time for reading I give to newspapers and periodicals.’

  ‘What is your work, Mr. Daranyi?’ asked Craig.

  Daranyi had brought the fruit juice to his lips, but now he held it poised. ‘I am a spy, Mr. Craig,’ he said, and then, he slowly drank down the juice.

  Craig knew that his face was foolish with astonishment. He had made his inquiry casually in passing, not expecting anything of interest, expecting perhaps that Daranyi might be an insurance salesman or shoe clerk or civil servant. Instead, he had named the most improbable profession on earth. Craig decided that his ears had deceived him. ‘Did you say—spy?’

  ‘That is correct,’ said Daranyi, wolfing down his eggs. As he chewed them, he went on. ‘It is not the happiest profession any longer. Once, it was. But no more. If I had a son, I would not let him follow in my footsteps. I would rather let him be a dentist.’

  Craig remained nonplussed. Was the potbellied man having sport with him? He appeared serious enough, and Lilly, committed to her breakfast, was hardly listening and certainly no part of a joke. ‘But if you’re a spy,’ said Craig, ‘whom do you work for? And how can you even mention it?’

  ‘Among friends I can mention it,’ said Daranyi. ‘If I do not mention it, how will I find clients? Besides, most people do not take me seriously. It is an unlikely profession, is it not? Most people think I am having fun with them. There is no need for secrecy, except when I am actually at work. When I am at work, I am undercover and discreet. As to whom I will work for, the answer is—anyone who will pay well. I am the
last of a breed almost extinct—the free-lance spy.’

  ‘Exactly what does that mean?’

  ‘It means, Mr. Craig, that ideological amateurs have almost put the professional spy out of business. The operation of the Soviet Union is typical. Their intelligence need not shop for expensive agents abroad. They know there are enough idealistic Communist fanatics or fellow travellers who will do the job with dedication at cut-rate fees. The Dr. Allan Nunn Mays, and Dr. Fuchses, and Rosenbergs have made my lot a hard one. There were always national agents, of course, but there were free-lance spies, also. For example, Gertrud Zelle—you know her as Mata Hari or H. 21. Hundreds of men and women like her, who had no allegiance but to themselves and the nobility of their profession, worked for any nation, at any task, on a flat-fee basis. As a young man, in Budapest, I aspired to this profession, as one does to law or medicine. From my reading, it appeared that while there were risks, the inducements were worth while—constant travel, interesting people, excellent food, considerable income, and possible immortality in histories. In the Second World War, I worked for the Germans in Istanbul. I had cultivated some peculiar talents—one of them lip reading—and I would sit in the cafés and restaurants and read the moving lips, across the room, of American and French and English diplomats and pass on their conversations. After the war, I did some valuable work for the English in Jordan and Palestine. You see, I play no favourites. Emotionalism is synonymous with starvation for one like me. The German mark and the English pound buy the same food and clothing.’