(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  Yet now this conscience of his did not seem good, but a weakness that would relegate him to eternal obscurity. But for this conscience, he would not have to live out the remainder of his days as pretender to the throne. Except for this conscience, he would have the throne.

  He studied Farelli’s smug profile against the frosted window with undisguised contempt. There would never be another opportunity like this one. If he was not man enough to speak now, there would not be another chance. By late tomorrow, after they had their cheques from the Foundation, Farelli would be off on a triumphal tour of the continent, gathering all the laurels from here to Rome, and he would go back to Pasadena with his limited success, and his grief that only Saralee and Dr. Keller and the group would know. If he attempted to expose his enemy next year, it would be too late, like pelting a Nobel idol with minute sour grapes. It would have to be now or not at all.

  How to begin? Casually, he decided, cautiously. No blunt accusation. Rather, the responsibility of power. Toy with the mouse, do not destroy it with one swipe of the paw, but let it destroy itself in its consternation and fear.

  To begin, then. ‘The King will be happy with the result,’ said Garrett.

  Farelli came around from the window, surprised to hear Garrett’s non-combative tone. ‘He will be extremely happy,’ said Farelli.

  ‘I heard you had breakfast with him yesterday.’

  ‘I was extremely pleased. I had taken the liberty to volunteer our—’

  ‘I know. I heard all about it.’ Garrett paused, wondering how the opening would come. ‘What did you find to talk about?’

  ‘He was gravely concerned about Count Ramstedt. I tried to reassure him by explaining details of the surgery. I told him of our experiences with—’

  ‘Your experiences,’ said Garrett. It was a small point. But Garrett wanted every point correct.

  ‘No, ours. I had read your papers and had some knowledge of your specific cases. He was gracious enough to inquire about our medical backgrounds. Here, I could only speak of myself.’

  This was the opening, and blindly, his voice wavering, Garrett struck. ‘You told him about your—your visit to Dachau concentration camp, I presume? I mean, as part of your medical history?’

  At once, Garrett saw that he had scored, and the thrill of impending mastery coursed through his veins.

  Farelli’s Latin face was fixed in an attitude of historic wonderment, the face of Julius Caesar in the Senate chamber beneath Pompey’s statue, astonished by Tillius who had ripped the toga from him, the face of Caesar who saw Casca with the dagger of truth. Garrett waited on his lofty perch, almost expecting the Italian below to shout the classic ‘Casca, you madman, what are you doing?’ Then, at last, he would show him the madman’s full design.

  But for all his wonderment, Farelli’s first voice was mild. ‘Did you say Dachau? How do you know about that?’

  ‘Oh, I just know it. Things get around.’

  ‘Something like that does not get around, as you say it. I have never spoken of that.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame you. In your boots, I wouldn’t speak of it either.’

  Farelli shrugged. ‘There are some moments of one’s life one prefers to forget.’

  At last, Garrett had his dominance. He addressed Farelli with the complacent censure of the superior to the weak. ‘What I want to know is this—how could you go through with it?’

  ‘How? Because I was forced to go through with it. I was a prisoner of the blackshirts in Regina Coeli, and I had no choice. It was a gamble to survive.’

  ‘But there are limits to what a man—’

  ‘One does not weigh or examine, under the choice of life or death. It is easy now, so far away in time, to be logical about what is unreal. But when the OVRA gave me the immediate choice of the firing squad or the experiment at Dachau—well, Dachau was an unknown quantity. I had heard, I had read—but I did not know. The muskets of the firing squad, I heard every morning at daybreak. I told myself—say no to the OVRA, Farelli, and you are surely dead—but say yes, and who knows what waits at Dachau. I was promised it would only be temporary, several days, no more. So I went through with it.’ He paused. ‘I do not think of it often any more. They brought five of us to Dachau—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Garrett with scorn.

  ‘You know? I still am puzzled how you know.’

  ‘Dr. Brand of Berlin, Dr. Gorecki of Warsaw, Dr. Brauer of Munich, Dr. Stirbey of Bucharest—and you.’

  Farelli’s bewilderment showed. ‘You are correct. That is correct. Poor Brand and Brauer, they had the worst of it. They were Jews, and I believe they were meant to be killed anyway. They died—terribly.’

  ‘How long after the experiment?’ asked Garrett. It was all coming out now, easier than he had expected, and Farelli was sealing his own doom.

  ‘After the experiment? No, they both died during it, each in their first time. I was made to watch them through the window of the Sky Ride Wagon—that was what the high-altitude box was called, the Sky Ride Wagon—Brauer, such a decent young man, his lungs rupturing, and Brand choking, until his heart failed.’ Farelli had become excited. ‘You can imagine how I felt when they forced me into the high-altitude chamber. I thought I was the next victim—’

  Garrett was positive that Farelli had made an error. He raised his voice, interrupting, voice cracking. ‘You—they—you say they put you in the experiment chamber—inside it?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Farelli. ‘What have you heard? I thought you knew the entire story.’

  ‘Some of it, but—’

  ‘The Nazi Fascists had been using Jews, Polish and Russian prisoners for their guinea pigs, and one day Himmler wrote that instead of common prisoners, it might be wise to obtain five qualified doctors, heart specialists, who were also Jews or political prisoners, and try the experiments on them. The idea was that we would undergo fifteen-mile-altitude tests, without equipment, and be brought to the point of death, but not quite. Then we would be revived, and be made to set down our reactions and judgments, as physicians who had endured this, in medical papers, for the benefit of the Luftwaffe and the Medical Service of the Waffen-SS. I was the fourth one that day. Brand and Brauer had died, and they dragged out Stirbey half-dead—he is in a sanatorium in Vienna still—and then, it was my turn—’

  Garrett reached blindly for a chair, and found himself in it. God Almighty, God Almighty, he thought, and felt like a man who had slipped to the brink of the Grand Canyon, and been snatched from the fall by an unseen hand, and still had not recovered from what might have been.

  He had missed some of what Farelli had been saying, and with effort he tried to hear the rest above the pounding in his ears.

  ‘—and they kept pumping the air out of the chamber, and there I was, strapped in the pilot’s seat with the electro-cardiograph equipment attached to me, and the altitude gauge rising and rising, and—but what is the use to remember it now? At thirteen miles altitude, I gave up breathing and blacked out, as the aviators say—there was blood all over my face—and those animals carried me out, and I lived because I am a dray horse and will not die like that.

  ‘I was in the Dachau infirmary three weeks, too ill to be of use to them, and when I recovered, I said I was still too weak to write their medical paper, but pledged to write it for Dr. Rascher and Himmler if they sent me back to my beloved prison in Rome. So they sent me back, but then everyone was busy with the landings, and I never wrote their paper. I also never recovered. I am still under medical care. Just as Dr. Stirbey and Dr. Gorecki are. I heard from old Gorecki the week before I came here, congratulating me, and recalling the horror of that day. He will write a book about it, he says. I hope he does. Someone should, to show the thin borderline that divides the doctors of Hippocrates from the sadist doctors of Satan. You know, I often think, it is not that men of our profession indulged in such bestialities that troubles me, but that not one man of our profession, in all of Germany, had the courage
to raise his voice against these human experiments. Ah, well, it is past.’

  For Garrett, at first his brain so long fastened to the obsession that Farelli had been the prosecutor of the evil and not its victim, the turnabout had been too dizzying to comprehend. But once comprehension came, there came with it the relief of self-preservation, that he had not leaked a falsehood, to be denied and disproved and to make of him an ostracized leper. Now that Farelli was through speaking, one last emotion gnawed through Garrett, and that emotion was shame.

  Because he had to live with himself, he now tried to tell himself that even if he had been so wrong about this, his conscience—his conscience and Öhman and Craig—had not permitted him to go ahead with the canard. Too, the other irritations still existed—Farelli’s use of his discovery, although his wrongness about Dachau made him doubt himself about this point—Farelli’s self-promotion, although even here . . . but now, Garrett saw that these rationalizations were of no use. Shame sat fat and mocking on his head and shoulders. He had been a victim of himself. What would Dr. Keller call it? Paranoia. He knelt to the truth.

  Raising his head, meaning to say something, anything, that might be placating to Farelli, he realized that Farelli had turned sideways from him and was staring at the door. He followed Farelli’s gaze, and then he, too, saw Dr. Erik Öhman in the door.

  He had never seen Öhman like this before. His picture of Öhman was of a reddish granite person of zeal and indestructibility, and now the picture was shattered. The reddish granite had been pulverized, and zeal had been crushed also, and what stood in the doorway was the representation of all anti-strength—in one person frailty, lassitude, bafflement, nullification, repudiation, and embodiment of every loss on earth.

  ‘He’s dying,’ Öhman croaked. He came unsteadily into the room, limply carrying his surgical mask. ‘Count Ramstedt is dying. The transplantation has failed.’

  He tripped slightly, and Farelli grabbed him, and helped lower him into a chair.

  Garrett scrambled to his feet, beside Farelli at once.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Farelli was demanding. ‘What do you mean by that? Speak some sense to us!’

  Öhman looked up blankly. ‘I cannot explain it. The immunity mechanism, the white cells and other agents, they are destroying the foreign tissue. There is activated rejection. All the signs—cyanosis—tachycardia—hypotension—’

  ‘But you can’t know so soon!’ Garrett found himself shouting, ‘There must be a mistake—it takes three weeks to know!’

  Öhman shook his head. ‘Dr. Garrett, you go in there—you can see—he will be dead by nightfall.’

  Garrett felt faint, and gripped Farelli’s arm to right himself. Farelli alone stood strong, but the news had drained his countenance.

  ‘Something must have been overlooked, something in administering the serum, or the surgery—’ Farelli began.

  Once more, Öhman shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If—uhhh—if I had performed this myself—uhhh—I would think so—my inexperience—but both of you were present—you witnessed every move—you supervised—you saw me—you assisted—’

  Garrett tried to think, reviewing each step of the transplantation in his mind, but nothing had been omitted or been different, every move had conformed to the grafts he had made in the past. He realized that Farelli was reviewing the surgery, too, and that Farelli’s conclusion coincided with his own. It had been perfect. The transplantation had been merely a routine extension of their own discovery and their own experiments and successes. Because they had proved its worth, they had won the Nobel Prize, and now suddenly, inexplicably, it had failed, and all that had come before or might be planned ahead was blackened by doubt. ‘Proved’ had been stamped over by the old Scotch verdict ‘Not Proven’—meaning neither guilty nor innocent but simply Unknown (with Some Doubt).

  ‘It can’t be,’ murmured Garrett. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘There is always the exception one fears,’ said Farelli, more to himself than to anyone.

  ‘We’ve got to do something!’ cried Garrett. ‘Why, if this gets out—’

  The same thought, and projection of it, seemed to strike Farelli at the same time, for he turned to Garrett, and their eyes met in a common bond of fear.

  ‘It has got to get out,’ said Öhman helplessly. ‘Half the members of the royal family are in the waiting-room. I must report to the King—’

  Garrett articulated the common fear first. ‘But the prize,’ he said. ‘It’ll discredit our prize.’

  ‘Uhhh—yes—yes, I have thought of that already. This will support the minority of the Nobel Medical Committee, who felt the vote for you was—uhhh—premature. The moment this is in the newspaper there will be controversy—a scandal, if you accept the prize this afternoon. You must—must turn it down—refuse the award before the Ceremony—send a joint note to the committee explaining more work will have to be done—but the prize is out of the question now.’

  ‘Are you crazy, Öhman? Che diavolo!’ Farelli was in a temper, unreasoningly furious with the suggestion. ‘What about Dr. Garrett’s years of experimentation and my own—our discovery—our proved successes?’

  ‘Please—please—it is not in my hands,’ begged Öhman. ‘I am telling you what will happen. If your discovery had a hundred proved successes, and the hundred-and-first was a failure, by the same method, it would mean—in the eyes of the medical world—the public—your discovery is not infallible—not fully proved—is—uhhh—open to doubt. They will let you gracefully withdraw from accepting the prize—there will be talk about next year or the year after or someday—but if you refuse to withdraw, they will be forced to disgrace you by withholding the prize. They will do this, because they do not dare to have a repetition of the Dr. Koch fiasco.’

  Garrett leaned over Öhman. ‘Dr. Koch fiasco? What is that? What the devil are you talking about?’

  ‘Uhhh—Dr. Garrett, my friend—we are friends, believe me—I owe what I am to you—I am not the prize-giving committee or the public, so do not blame me.’ Öhman rubbed his forehead. ‘I owe you the truth, before the world falls on your head, on both of your heads. Were there many medical discoverers in history greater than Dr. Robert Koch, of the Berlin Institute for Infectious Diseases? Consider his work with infections, anthrax bacilli, the solidifying media for bacteria—his discoveries, in eight years, of the tubercle bacillus, cholera bacillus, tuberculin. As you know so well, Dr. Koch found the bacillus that causes tuberculosis, and then he found the miracle drug, tuberculin, that might cure it. The whole world was in a fever of excitement, and the Kaiser commanded the nomination of Dr. Koch for the Nobel Prize, even though Dr. Koch wanted more time to experiment. So—in 1905 we made him a laureate, gave him the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine “for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis”—which the world knew was for his discovery of tuberculin. Dr. Koch took his—uhhh—medal and diploma and money and went back in triumph to Berlin—and six months later his serum, hailed because it cured, suddenly began to kill. Hundreds of tuberculosis patients were killed by the serum, because tuberculin was not ready, except for cattle, and maybe Koch knew it. When he died, five years later, I am sure he died of—uhhh—of—uhhh—grief. And the Caroline Nobel committee was made to appear accomplices to murder, and scientific dunces, and since then, they have been conservative, always conservative. Now, this morning, the first time since 1905, what happened to Dr. Koch has happened again—a great discovery—my life is devoted to it—I believe in it—but now, there is an important patient in my surgery, expected to benefit from it, but now dying because of it—and soon, the truth of the failure will be everywhere.’

  Farelli had begun nodding during the last of this painful recital, and he was nodding still. ‘Yes, Dr. Öhman,’ he said, ‘you are trying to help us, you are a decent fellow. We will behave correctly, have no worry. If the patient is to die, we will die with him. We will know what to do. I am certain Dr. Garr
ett is as one with me.’

  ‘You are speaking for me,’ said Garrett quietly. ‘We’re in this together.’

  ‘I do not want to lose the Nobel Prize, when I am hours from winning it,’ said Farelli fervently to Öhman. ‘Is it only the prize money and honour I will lose? No, it is a life of work, and every hope I have. I know what I say. If we take the prize, and the Count dies, it is a scandal, and if we do not take the prize, and he dies, it is a sensation. Either way we lose, because the world loves to prick bubbles, tear down idols, discredit. It is history. It is true. I know what awaits Dr. Garrett and myself—infamy—as if we had foisted on the public a hoax, a lie. We know better, but we will not convince mankind in a lifetime. Only when we are dead, and others live because of us, will we be honoured again. No, I repeat, it is not the loss of the prize alone that troubles me. It is the loss of our standings, our grants, our co-operation, our future work. A generation will suffer for this one man’s death. Dr. Garrett and I do not go down alone. Progress in medicine goes down with us.’ He halted and stared from Öhman to Garrett. ‘I want to prevent that regression. I want to fight for that one man—because that way, we fight for all men.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ said Garrett.

  Farelli looked at him. ‘For the same reasons?’

  ‘For none other.’

  Öhman had been observing the exchange with awe. He felt Farelli’s hand on his arm.

  ‘Dr. Öhman,’ said the Italian, ‘go back to the surgery where you belong. Keep an eye on the patient. Do what you can. Dr. Garrett and I wish to consult on this privately. Make no announcements. Show no white flag. Stand by your post. In a while, Dr. Garrett and I will come to you—for better or for worse.’