(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  Jacobsson gazed at his open green ledger, and then he resumed speaking. ‘There is an expression that has gained currency in our day that refers to “the little man”. There are variations on this expression like “the common man” or “a member of the masses”. This is supposed to mean, I presume, the average man on earth who is not distinguished by wealth or fame or authority. From cradle to the grave, he eats and sleeps, does drone’s labour, propagates the species, makes no policies or headlines or scandals, and when he dies, is mourned by none but relatives and a handful of friends, and disappears from the planet as casually and unmissed as the ant one inadvertently steps on every day. Such a man, for forty-two years, was Carl von Ossietzky, a German national who wrote mediocre articles for his bread, and whose one foible—we all of us have one foible—was that he hated militarism after having served four years in the Imperial German Army during the First World War. What lifted Ossietzky from the obscurity of the ranks of “the little man” was his growing obsession that all soldiers were, in his words, “murderers”, and that there was “nothing heroic” about war. Most men know this and think it and hate any memory of killing, and most men live on, doing nothing about it. Ossietzky was the one who decided to do something about it, to eliminate the evil, to practise and preach what he believed.’

  Jacobsson looked up from the ledger at Craig, and then at Sue Wiley.

  ‘His history is brief,’ said Jacobsson, ‘and his accomplishments few. He was a reporter on the Berliner Volkszeitung. He was an editor of Weltbuhne. He was a secretary of the German Peace Society. He was one of the founders of the international No More War Society. He was an advocate of a new holiday to be called Anti-War Day. So far, admirable, yes, and obsessive, but not particularly meaningful. Then, one day in 1929, with more courage than commonsense, he published an article in German exposing disarmed Germany’s secret war budget, and telling the world that his Fatherland was breaking its treaty pledges by secretly building an army and an air force. For this, Ossietzky was charged with treason in 1931 and thrown into prison for almost two years. The confinement was shattering, not only because he had weak lungs and suffered from the early ravages of tuberculosis, but because he knew what evil was afoot and wanted freedom to shout a warning to the duped world.

  ‘When he came out of prison, there was a new name and power on the land, and the name and power was that of Adolf Hitler. Ossietzky blindly resumed his pacifistic campaign. Friends reminded him of the consequences and begged him to flee across the border. To them Ossietzky replied, “A man who speaks from across a border has a hollow voice.” He stayed in Germany. He hooted Hitler when others cheered him. He told his countrymen that “German war spirit contains nothing but the desire for conquest.” He was a tiny thorn to Hitler, but a thorn, and he must be plucked.

  ‘On the night of February 27, 1933—it is here in my Notes—the German Reichstag building in Berlin went up in flames, and out of the ashes rose the Third Reich. On that night the thorn was plucked, for on that night Carl von Ossietzky, among others, was arrested once more and imprisoned as an enemy of the state. For the first time, there were those who realized that a voice of sanity had been stilled. As Ossietzky suffered torture in the Sonnenburg concentration camp, the German League for the Rights of Man sent his name to Oslo as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. But he was “the little man”, and my colleagues ignored him. The following year, news of Ossietzky’s suffering and martyrdom circled the globe, and suddenly the Nobel Peace Committee found itself inundated with official nominations of his name. Romain Rolland nominated him. Albert Einstein nominated him. Thomas Mann nominated him. Jane Addams nominated him. The National Assembly of Switzerland nominated him. The Labour Party of Norway nominated him. I could go on for hours with the nominations that poured into Oslo. No longer could “the little man” be ignored.

  ‘Now, Miss Wiley, you will see the difficulties that confront a Nobel Prize committee. On the one hand, the intellects of the world were urging the Norwegians to honour and reward a man who had defied the leader of the nation that was Norway’s greatest threat to existence. On the other hand, the Nobel judges were being reminded of the possible outcome of such an award. Inside Norway itself, Knut Hamsun, who had become a Fascist, was writing against Ossietzky, and Vidkun Quisling was calling “the little man” a traitor, in print. The League of Patriots in Norway were demanding that Hitler or Mussolini, not the detestable Ossietzky, receive the 1935 Peace Prize. And outside Norway, the pressure was as strong, stronger. Goebbels was cursing Ossietzky as Jew and Communist, although he was neither a Jew nor a Communist. Hitler’s Schwarzes Korps was warning the Nobel judges that a vote for Ossietzky “would be a slap in the face of the German people.” Göring who knew the Nobel family through his first wife—the Swedish Baroness Karin Fock, who died of tuberculosis in 1932—put himself in touch with the Nobel heirs, and they allegedly advised the Nobel Peace Committee to turn down the Ossietzky nomination.

  ‘Try to imagine, if you can, the state of mind of each of the five judges on the Nobel Peace Committee. One of the judges was Dr. Halvdan Koht, Foreign Minister of Norway. Another judge was Johan Ludwig Mowinckel, who had been Prime Minister of Norway and was the leader of the Left. Both were powerful men who favoured Ossietzky, but both were practical politicians who knew that if they made Ossietzky a laureate, they were insulting Hitler and inviting him to break off diplomatic relations with their country. In its voting session, the five committee-men debated themselves hoarse. At last, the decision was made. It could not be Ossietzky. The survival of Norway came first. There was talk of giving the prize to Toméš Masaryk, of Czechoslovakia, but even this seemed unsafe. At last, to squirm out of the trouble, the committee determined to give the prize to Prince Carl, of Sweden, for some Red Cross activities of his a decade and a half earlier. But before the vote, it was found that Prince Carl was ineligible, since his nomination had reached Oslo two days after the final deadline. And so the committee threw up its collective hands, and told the world there would be no Peace Prize in 1935—as there is none this year—because there was a war in Africa, and the time was “inappropriate”.’

  Throughout this recital, Sue Wiley and Craig had not moved from their places. Jacobsson stared at them meditatively.

  ‘You wonder about Ossietzky himself, perhaps?’ he went on. ‘Ossietzky was now in the Papenburg concentration camp. The Nazi tortures had ceased, but they did not matter. He was dying of tuberculosis. Had he died at once, the controversy would have been solved, and the world and ourselves the worse off for it. But he did not die yet. He was of indomitable spirit. He lived on, and so, quickly, it was the year 1936, and once more the Nobel Peace Committee was faced with his nomination. Again, it seemed that everyone outside Germany was presenting his name, and you will be happy to know that the names of United States citizens were among the foremost who nominated him. The Nobel Committee polled itself. Two were against Ossietzky, two were for him, and one judge was undecided. Then, overnight, the two who were against Ossietzky because of their political positions—Dr. Koht and Johan Mowinckel—resigned from the committee, and were replaced by substitute judges with no diplomatic entanglements. The day of November 23, 1936, as Germany shouted its threats, the final vote was taken. Yes, Miss Wiley, Carl von Ossietzky was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1935.

  ‘Our judges had shown their courage, and now the last act of courage was in the hands of the frail Ossietzky. What would he do? Because of his notoriety, Goebbels had moved him from the concentration camp to the West End Hospital in Berlin. There Göring called on him, stood over him, commanded him to turn down our prize. Ossietzky would not give Göring his answer, but he gave us and our colleagues in Oslo his answer. He smuggled out a cable thanking us and accepting the Nobel Peace award. Hitler’s newspapers ranted, but Ossietzky was defiant to the end. When foreign correspondents, in the presence of the Gestapo, questioned him, he told them that he was proud and reminded them that the armaments race was “ins
anity”. From his bed, he received a Nobel delegation which congratulated him. His prize of $39,303 he never saw. He signed a power of attorney to have a man in Oslo, who represented a lawyer in Berlin, accept his money for him. It was transferred to a Berlin bank. It was embezzled. It did not matter to Ossietzky. He had won the greater prize. Because of “the little man”, Hitler banned the Nobel awards from Germany and invented his own National State Prizes for the two leading Aryan scientists and a leading Aryan author. But still, Hitler was not satisfied. In 1940, when he marched into Norway and conquered that country, he arrested the entire Nobel committee. It did not matter, because by then the entire free world had been awakened and was fighting, and preparing to fight, for peace. By then, also, Ossietzky had been dead for two and a half years. But I like to think that he has never died.’

  Jacobsson paused, and gently closed his green ledger.

  ‘We have had more famous laureates who have won our Nobel Peace Prize,’ he said. ‘So many more famous names. Jean Henri Dunant. Elihu Root. Woodrow Wilson. Fridtjof Nansen. Aristide Briand. Cordell Hull. Ralph Bunche. Albert Schweitzer. General George Marshall. Philip Noel-Baker. Yes, famous names. But I suspect that of them all, Carl von Ossietzky was the greatest. And because of him, this one moment in our history, our Nobel committees and judges knew greatness, too.’

  Jacobsson smiled an indulgent, wrinkled smile.

  ‘Do spell his name correctly, Miss Wiley, please,’ he said.

  She sat moved, but unmoving, features suffused by an embarrassment she could not understand and pen frozen to her fingers. Behind her, Craig stood where he had been standing from the beginning, cold pipe in his hand, touched and shaken at his deepest core.

  Sue Wiley swallowed, and it could be heard, and then she emitted one word. ‘Whew,’ she said.

  ‘If there are any questions—’ Jacobsson began.

  But then came the knocking at the door, and Jacobsson freed himself from his chair and opened the door, and it was Mrs. Steen once more. She whispered to him, and he turned to his two guests.

  ‘I am wanted downstairs a moment,’ he apologized. ‘Always, before the final Ceremony, there are the invitation anglers. Please relax here as long as you—’

  ‘Thank you, Count,’ said Craig, ‘but I had better be on my way.’

  ‘Thank you, Count Jacobsson,’ said Sue Wiley.

  He was gone, and the two of them were alone in the high, quiet room. Craig walked to the coat-rack, and removed his hat and overcoat. He realized that Sue Wiley had not left her chair, but remained seated, watching him speculatively.

  When he turned to depart, she spoke. ‘I suppose you think that story makes me look rotten, don’t you?’

  ‘Does it matter to you what the devil I think?’

  This seemed important to her, and her eyelids palpitated nervously, ‘I have my job, Mr. Craig, can’t you see that? I have my job to do.’

  ‘No one’s stopping you from doing it.’

  ‘I don’t like the way you and Jacobsson and some of the others look at me—like I’m some kind of reptile or adder or something crawly. Well, I don’t like it, and neither would you. I’m a person the same as anybody. I know you’re sore at me because of that question I asked at the press conference. I got a lead on you, and I wanted to know if it was true or not. Maybe I should have asked you personally, instead of in front of all the others—’

  Craig stood beside the door. ‘I assure you, it doesn’t matter, Miss Wiley.’

  ‘But it matters to me. I work from information that is picked up all over, from Consolidated’s bureaux, just the way Associated Press and Time magazine and Newsweek magazine put together a story from leads they get from their bureaux. Before I saw Schweitzer, I didn’t just depend on questions I might think of, or ones based on what I’d read, or just depend on anything we might talk about. All of our bureaux and stringers pitched in. They went digging in Kayserberg, in the German Alsace, where he was born—in Günsbach, Strasbourg, Berlin, Paris, Aspen, Colorado—wherever Schweitzer had lived, studied, worked, and then they shot me all the dope, some good, some not so good, and then I was able to get up my questions and go to Lambaréné and get the true story.’

  ‘The true story, Miss Wiley?’

  ‘That’s right. It comes in from all over—interviews, gossip, tips, leads, solid research—and I sift it, and check it out, and there’s the true story. That’s exactly the way I went about getting information on all you Nobel laureates. Take you. How do you think I got the idea that maybe you take a nip at the bottle now and then? Do you think I made it up? Not on your life. We put your name on the wire, and pretty soon our bureaux were spading up every day of your life—on the newspaper in St. Louis, London and Marseilles and New Jersey in the war, Long Island with your wife, and your honeymoon in Europe, and finally the whole rural bit in Wisconsin.’

  Although he would not admit it to her, Craig was impressed at the breadth of research. It was discomforting to know how much they must know, but yes, it was impressive.

  Sue Wiley was going on compulsively. ‘Don’t think our Chicago bureau didn’t yell about having to send a reporter up to a one-horse town like Miller’s Dam. You’d think we were sending someone to Tibet. But after you won the prize, there was this man of ours snooping around Miller’s Dam for material to feed me—he got there a few days before you took off for Stockholm, and he stayed on through most of this week—and he was all over the county, casually asking questions, looking in here and there, searching back issues of newspapers and all kinds of documents. Mr. Craig, what I could tell you about yourself would make you blush. At least three people hinted that you got pickled to the gills every day, morning till night. At least one person tipped us that you visited a house of prostitution once in a while. I know your sister-in-law’s shopping list at the grocery store, so I know what you eat, and I know who your friends are, and I have photocopies of the mortgage on your house, and I know the words chiselled on your wife’s tombstone. I even know how she got there—’

  Craig’s heart quickened, and he wished that he was out the door, so that he need not hear the sickening secret again, and from someone other than Leah. He waited.

  ‘—because I know every detail of the accident,’ Sue Wiley went on, ‘and we dug it out because—painful as it is for you to be reminded—it’s dramatic and will make good reading, and it is truth, and that’s my business. I can reconstruct that accident better than you can remember it—tell you how many inches of rain there was that night, tell you how much time you spent at the Lawson Country Club, tell you how the birthday cake looked and how many presents your wife gave you, tell you the exact time you left the party, and the exact time your car smashed into that oak tree, and even how that tie rod dropped off under your car and put you in that skid—though I am no mechanic—and then I can tell you—’

  Craig felt the chill from his knees and chest to his scalp. He could not have heard her right. It was a mistake. Automatically, he moved towards her, and the incredulous expression on his gaunt face made her words hang in the air.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, frightened. ‘Are you sore at me again or something?’

  ‘Miss Wiley, repeat what you were just saying.’

  ‘About what? Repeat what?’

  ‘The accident.’

  ‘Why, I was just saying I knew—’

  ‘The car,’ said Craig. ‘What did you say about the car—your not being a mechanic—the skid—’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Sue Wiley with relief. ‘I was just showing off how thorough we are, and how I don’t talk through my hat like maybe you think. You had lousy luck with the accident, that’s all. When you came around the curve, your tie rod—you know, that thing underneath, under the front, that controls the wheels—’

  ‘I know. I know—’

  ‘It must’ve been defective or something, because when you came around the curve it broke—that happens to other people, too—and zing—one front wheel kind of buckles
, goes out of control, you can’t steer it—and if you’re on a curve—well, I don’t have to tell you, you know what can happen.’

  ‘Where did you hear this?’ said Craig with agitation. ‘How do you know it’s true?’

  ‘How do I know? Well, don’t you know? After all, it was your accident. Our man from Chicago went to the county sheriff’s office, that’s all, to find out about the crash and how your wife was killed—and there it was, with everything else—including their routine police report on your car after you smashed it up. The phrase on the report, as I remember, was “accident due to mechanical failure”, and something about the tie rod snapping, and your inside wheel going flooey, and then the measurement of the skid marks on the wet road. I have the photocopies right in my hotel. Also, the coroner’s report waiving inquest, because there was no criminal liability, it was all open and shut, and they knew you anyway.’

  ‘Yes, we’re all neighbours. I never bothered learning the details. I was laid up in the hospital—at home—a long time. And there was no reason to go into it afterwards. I think my sister-in-law handled everything.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sue Wiley. ‘Somebody in the sheriff’s office told our man that they called Miss Decker down there, after the funeral, while you were still half-conscious in the hospital, and gave her a copy of their police report on the case for you, to close it up.’ Sue Wiley stared at him. ‘Didn’t you see it? What did you think caused the accident?’

  ‘What?’ he said vaguely. His mind was stumbling backwards, groping backwards through the months and the years, trying to remember every detail, and knowing with frigid certainty that Leah had hidden the truth from him, and in its place offered the guilt of his drunkenness and irresponsibility. The lie, half told him at first, then fully told him, then constantly told him, had been her hold on him and her insurance, and the enormity of her evil, and the depths of her unbalance and sickness, made the years a nightmare and made the memory of his self-hate a nightmare, and he knew his face was bloodless and the gorge was in his throat.