(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘His motive, for the most, but not my motive. He is a vegetarian, as you know, and he did not want to consume foods—meats especially—that came from the corpses of once-living animals. Yet he knew also that the proteins of meats were necessary to his survival. He posed the problem of synthetic proteins to me, some meat substitute with the same values that would be morally and aesthetically acceptable. I pointed out that with time and money, anything was conceivable in the area of synthetics. When soldiers suffered from malaria in the last war, the cure was quinine. But not enough quinine, from tree bark, was available. This vital necessity mothered the invention of synthetic quinine, known as Atabrine. I pointed out to him that when there is an important need, there is always a possible solution.’

  ‘And you felt your employer’s vegetarianism was an important need?’ remarked Denise acidly.

  ‘By no means. While his need was for a solution to squeamishness, and later, a chance to make added millions, my motives were entirely different. For one thing, as I worked in the laboratory, I saw that natural foods were not at all as efficient and wholesome as people imagined. Synthetic foods could be made free of nature’s defects, and promise more health to humanity. For another thing, once food came out of the laboratory and then could come off the assembly line, there would be food, always, for the entire world—no more undernourishment, no more famines. I saw the goal was worthy. I have devoted myself to it ever since.’

  ‘I admire your humanitarianism,’ said Denise, who had long since tired of the subject, ‘but in the end, you may be manufacturing only fool’s gold.’

  ‘No, no, Dr. Marceau, you must take my word that anything can be done in this field. Consider what Bergius has accomplished in converting sawdust and wood shavings into carbohydrates of the sugar type, and Fischer, synthesizing proteins that provide full nourishment. Most of us tend to forget that synthetic elements already exist in natural food. What is ice cream? Is it natural? Is it picked in the field? Does it grow? It is the result of combining natural products with chemicals. Or baking powder. Is that grown from trees? Synthetics are employed, chemicals like monocalcium phosphate. Or, for that matter, what shall we say of baked bread—?’

  He was going on and on, warming to his subject, but Denise was no longer listening. With her concentrated glare she tried to hold her husband, across the room, in check. He had ordered, and was now accepting, fresh drinks for Märta Norberg and himself. He was standing even closer to the bitch in heat, addressing her more confidentially, beguiling her with his heavy-handed wit, now touching her bare arm and laughing, obviously working at seducing her (had he not had recent practice in the technique?).

  Denise only half heard Lindblom’s hymn to synthetics, and the word caught in her mind, and she wished that chemistry could produce synthetic men, with synthetic faithfulness and a love that did not revolt against becoming middle-aged, and synthetic sex as well, that was geared to one mate and one mate only.

  ‘—and so I am trying to reproduce, in the laboratory, the taste of meat, the nutritional content of meat, the resemblance of meat,’ Lindblom was saying. ‘At the same time, I am exploring new areas, algae strains—’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Denise with firmness and finality.

  Lindblom knew that Her Majesty had dismissed him, but he was not dismayed. He was flattered to have held her attention at all. He was relieved that he could report some success to Hammarlund after the dinner.

  ‘Some day,’ Denise went on, ‘under more propitious circumstances, in a more appropriate place, you must explain your concrete accomplishments and the problems that have prevented your going further. Right now—’

  ‘I would be honoured,’ Lindblom hastily interrupted, ‘to have you visit my laboratory in the grounds, show you about, let you see my work.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you very much. Our time, as you know, is not our own. We are in the hands of the Nobel Foundation. Count Jacobsson appears to have filled every hour of our stay. But as I said, some day in the future—’

  ‘You and your husband will be always welcome.’

  ‘Yes, my husband,’ said Denise, glancing towards the bar. ‘I fear I have neglected him. A tribute to your elocutionary powers, Dr. Lindblom, and the drama of your work. Now I had better see my husband. Thank you so much.’

  Abruptly, she left Lindblom and strode across the living-room. Claude and Märta Norberg both had their glasses to their lips when she came between them.

  ‘I wondered where you were,’ she said to Claude viciously.

  Claude’s social smile froze. ‘Miss Norberg was interested in spermatozoa—’

  ‘Quelle surprise!’

  Märta Norberg appeared not to have overheard her. She was searching off for someone in the room. ‘Well, I’ll leave you two together,’ she said formally. ‘Your charming husband, Dr. Marceau, made me entirely forget I was the hostess. I must circulate.’ And then to Claude she added, ‘It was divine. Now, remember, my dear, keep one frozen sperm for Norberg. I may need it one day, if I don’t find a man soon.’

  Gracefully, she inclined her head, and slouching, long-striding, she was gone.

  ‘ “Keep one frozen sperm for Norberg,” ’ Denise mimicked. ‘The shameless bitch. I will wager this is the only time she has been vertical all year.’

  Claude showed pain. ‘Denise, is this continuous vulgarity necessary? Miss Norberg is a decent, utterly captivating lady.’

  ‘Like someone else we know?’

  He affected not to have heard her. ‘How was your Dr. Lindblom?’

  ‘A hotheaded Don Juan,’ she said savagely. ‘I had to fight to keep from being raped. . . . Now get me a natural drink, you synthetic husband.’

  ‘What does that mean? Are you going to be difficult tonight?’

  ‘You may be sure of that, mon brave,’ said Denise Marceau.

  All through the cocktail hour, Andrew Craig had been trying to catch Emily’s eye. Now, with his second double Scotch in hand, he succeeded. She turned her head in his direction, knowing that he was staring at her, and he made a movement of his head to invite her to join him, but she replied with a quick, helpless shrug.

  He understood. Her circle had enlarged. Baron Stiernfeldt and his wife, Mrs. Lagersen, and Margherita Farelli were still there, although Dr. Carlo Farelli had disappeared. And to this group had been added, since the last time Craig had looked, the persons of Ragnar Hammarlund, Konrad Evang, and General Vasilkov and his wife. It was the largest circle in the room, and it irritated Craig that the men were being attentive to Emily. Inevitably, he thought. She was irresistible to the male. Wherever she shone, the moths would bat about the flame.

  At last, he conceded to himself that she could not escape from the others. He was on his own. He wheeled slowly to take in the remaining occupants in the room. Leah was still involved with Saralee Garrett and another woman, Miss Svensson, the opera singer. Craig saw that Leah kept glancing at him worriedly, and this posed a minor threat, for she might make up her mind that he was lonely. A second threat, too, was gradually drawing nearer. The actress, Märta Norberg, appeared to be approaching him. For a time, she had been with Claude Marceau, but twice he had caught her studying him. She had left both Marceaus at the other end of the bar, and by a circuitous route, first briefly engaged with Dr. Lindblom in conversation, then exchanging a few words with the butler, Motta, and now, after looking in on Leah and her ladies, she would undoubtedly be headed for him. He was next. There could be worse fates, he knew.

  As a younger man, watching Norberg’s unapproachable enlarged image on countless motion-picture screens, enchanted by her gifts behind the footlights, Craig had shared in common with millions of other males certain wish fantasies. The years had been kind to Norberg, he told himself now. She was ageless, and still a lithe symbol of all desired and unattainable. Yet through some perversity, now that he had an opportunity to converse with her on intimate terms, as an equal almost, he was reluctant to do so. He was in no mood for banter a
bout the entertainment world. He was in no mood to listen to her glories. His mind was on Emily Stratman, only Emily, with an occasional bewilderment about Lilly.

  He gulped down the last of the second drink, and suddenly felt stifled in the overheated room. He wondered where he might cool off, in isolation, free to sort out his thoughts. His gaze passed along the exits from the living-room, and held, finally, on the French doors near the indefatigable orchestra. One of the French doors was ajar. It was all the encouragement that Craig needed.

  Giving his empty glass to Motta, and rejecting a refill, he walked to one French door, and, hoping that he was not being observed, edged through it and closed it behind him.

  The cold night air, not so bitter as other evenings, braced him. For the eternity of a minute, he stood motionless on the flagstones, inhaling the night and peering up at the clear navy-blue sky with its infinity of miniature stars like erratic strands of gay Christmas-tree lights. After a while, he drew back into himself, and strolled around the veranda, romantically and dimly lighted by antique English coach lamps. He considered Emily, and then Leah, and then Lilly, in that order, and tried to relate them each separately to Miller’s Dam and Lucius Mack and Joliet College and Return to Ithaca.

  He had reached the low stone balustrade that partitioned the veranda from the gardens, and absently he looked below, at the bush clumps and intersecting paths, and the hothouses in the distance. That moment, he realized with surprise he was not alone. Two male figures, directly beneath him, were moving across the lawn from the veranda stairs to the nearest garden path.

  By straining his eyes, he made them out at last. The bulkier one, progressing with fluid ease, was Carlo Farelli. The other, progressing in fits and starts, nervously, jumpily, was John Garrett.

  Briefly, Craig speculated on what the two winners in physiology and medicine, who were comparative strangers, would have to say to one another. His writer’s mind wrote. Would they exchange shop-talk, medical talk? But why out here in the cold night? Why not inside the warm house? Or was it something else? Something private?

  ‘Because it’s something private, that’s what,’ said John Garrett belligerently, in reply to Farelli’s question, as they reached the gravel garden path.

  Farelli good-naturedly protested once more. ‘But in this frozen weather? I am a Latin, do not forget. My blood is thin.’

  ‘I know, I know about your blood,’ said Garrett with a rasp. Whenever he drank excessively, and tonight he had, his voice grew hoarse. Now it was not only hoarse but strained with hatred long repressed.

  ‘If what you must tell me is so private, we can ask Hammarlund for his library. We can enjoy the civilized amenities as we converse. Shall we?’

  Farelli halted and looked hopefully at Garrett’s unremarkable face, now flushed. Garrett halted, too, and swayed.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘What I have to say—there should be no one around.’

  ‘You are certainly enigmatical, Dr. Garrett.’

  Garrett pulled himself together, trying to attain his full height, trying to match his enemy in strength and power of physique. It had been after the meeting with Dr. Erik Öhman, on his return from the failure at the Royal Caroline Medico-Chirurgical Institute, that he had come to this decision, the decision to have a showdown with Farelli. He could no longer postpone the inevitable. Farelli’s promoter tactics were steam-rolling him. Farelli’s trick at the Caroline Institute, taking advantage of Öhman and him, using Sue Wiley, crowing to all the world that he alone was the medical savant, that Garrett did not exist. Well, at least in one intrigue, Farelli had tripped. Now Dr. Öhman knew that Farelli was a charlatan, and a disgrace to the profession and the Nobel honour roll. Now Dr. Öhman knew that Farelli had used him badly.

  Garrett’s intensity, overlaid on Öhman’s debt to Garrett and worship of Garrett, had converted the Swede into a dependable ally, if one were needed. But now, Garrett did not need an ally. He had looked forward to this night’s truth session with Farelli. Once Farelli realized that Garrett had his number, once Farelli understood that Garrett was on to his manipulations, the Italian would cease and desist. He would not dare to continue as he had. Then, and only then, would Garrett be free, at last, to receive the full credit for discovery that was rightfully his own.

  He realized that he had been lost in thought, and that Farelli was staring at him strangely. ‘Is anything wrong with you, Dr. Garrett?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You seem—somewhere else. I had been asking you what mysterious matter brought us out here in the night to get pneumonia.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what—I’ll tell you what—’ Garrett’s reserve had burst, and he was shivering. ‘I brought you here to say what I think of your getting half of my money!’

  At first Farelli’s leonine head shook with lack of comprehension. His tone of voice was incredulous. ‘Do I understand your English, Dr. Garrett? Do you say I am receiving half of your money?’

  ‘For the Nobel Prize, yes, yes, that’s what I’m saying. I should have got $50,300 instead of $25,150. You don’t deserve the other half. You never have, and you know it. I made the discovery first, by myself, but you took the credit, you took most of it, like Cook and Peary—you’re Cook—you’re a pretender.’

  Farelli’s jaw was agape. ‘Dr. Garrett, I do not believe my ears. You are joking with me, of course. It is a joke.’

  ‘It’s not a joke. Don’t give me any of that clever pretence. You can hoodwink the Nobel Committee, and the press, and Sue Wiley, and Öhman, and half the world. But some of us know the truth. We’re on to you.’

  ‘On to what? What are you on to? Your crazy words make my head swim.’

  ‘You know what I mean. You want me to spell it out? I know a good deal about psychology, not just pathology but psychology, and I know what makes a pretender like you tick. History’s full of impostors and frauds. I’ve read about them all, and on every page I see you—I see you in Psalmanazar, and Tichborne, and the so-called Dr. Graham with his Temple of Health and celestial bed, and Colonel Ghadiali, and all the medical quacks. You used my findings, my years of labour, you used my papers, and you had spies in my laboratories—’

  Farelli’s dark face had hardened. ‘Che faccia tosta!’ he growled. ‘Dr. Garrett, if I did not believe you were either drunk or paranoiac, I would slap your face.’

  ‘Go ahead, try it, try it, try it,’ Garrett chanted, like an inciting boy roughneck who wanted to be struck so that he might have a cause. ‘I’ve watched you here, Farelli. Öhman and I have watched you, the greatest operator of all time. You’ve got the wool over their eyes, all right, you sure have. Taking over our press conference, trying to blot me out. And the Royal Banquet, trying to make me ridiculous in front of the others. And now—now—pretending you want to help Öhman—using him so you can get a lousy, cheap story from that Wiley girl.’

  Garrett reeled with the excitement of his temper and the alcohol high in his throat.

  ‘You couldn’t steal the whole prize, the whole credit,’ he went on in a shriek, ‘so you’re trying to do it now. But I know you’re a phony, and others are beginning to know, and you keep it up, and you’re asking for trouble. Yes, trouble! You’re a phony, goddamn you—’

  Farelli’s big face was livid. ‘Shut up, you stupid man. Si calmi. Make yourself sober, and maybe I will let you apologize someday.’

  He turned to leave, but Garrett was not letting him have the last word, not tonight, not this exulting night that was Garrett’s night and his hour of truth.

  Garrett reached out, almost falling, clutching Farelli’s arm, and pulling him around.

  ‘You’re a phony, a rotten Dago phony!’ he shouted.

  Farelli slammed at Garrett’s hand, knocking it free of his arm. ‘Do not touch me, you sick, crazy man! Go away—imbecille—pazzo!’

  It was this, nothing else but this, that goaded and incensed Garrett beyond all final restraint. Dr. Keller would have understood. The group t
herapy patients would have understood. Garrett departed from himself and his senses. With all frustration and fury unleashed, he swung his fist at Farelli. The blow landed high on the Italian’s shoulder and skated off. It was less the impact of the blow than the surprise of it that staggered Farelli, and sent him reeling backwards a few steps.

  ‘I’ll show you!’ Garrett was shouting, choking.

  Blindly, he charged at the Italian, swinging both arms clumsily, like all middle-aged, sedentary men who become violent. But Farelli had his balance now and control of his temper. Quick of foot, he stepped aside, and as one of Garrett’s fists missed him entirely and the other glanced off his ribs, Farelli rammed his beefy right hand wrist-deep into his attacker’s stomach. Aggression and oxygen went out of Garrett. He doubled in two, and then as he slowly folded like a jack-knife, Farelli catapulted a hooking left to the exposed jaw. The sound of knuckles on flesh was short and sharp, like a handclap, and Garrett, head jerking, fingers holding his belly, went over backwards as if axed.

  He sat on the gravel path, whimpering, spitting blood and alcohol and, like a sand sucker, chewed for air.

  He looked up, eyes crossed and maniacal, and suddenly, from some reservoir of strength, he lifted himself, groaning, to one knee, and then, throwing himself at Farelli’s legs, tried to pull the other down. Farelli kicked loose, with a curse in Italian, but when he attempted to retreat, Garrett was upright on his feet again, wobbling. Garrett threw himself upon the larger man, bear-hugging him, attempting to wrestle him to the turf, attempting to destroy all that stood between himself and self-respect. Farelli fought to tear Garrett’s clawing hands from his shoulders, and in this way, into the frosted loam of the garden, they grappled and cursed.

  It was then that Andrew Craig came on the run, having watched the altercation from the terrace. Craig pushed between them, and because he had will and no anger, his authority was felt, and Garrett released Farelli, and staggered backwards, panting, lips working, but speechless.