The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘It’s not even the preface of it.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. What else?’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘You’re damn right.’

  ‘I’ll make it brief. I hate this. Leah Decker said you killed your wife.’

  He had feared this. What was there to say? ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘I’d had a few drinks, and we were driving, and I don’t know what happened. Technically, I did not kill Harriet. But by some moral standard-and Lee is Morality-I am responsible, I am, because I was drinking.’

  ‘And you’re a drunkard, she said.’

  ‘More or less, for three years, true. But since coming here-’

  ‘And you’ve given up writing and gone to hell, and your sister-in-law nurses you-’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. But I’m going to write again. I’m pulled together-if only you’ll-’

  Emily interrupted him. ‘And you were in bed with her naked.’

  Craig groaned. So this was how things were made to sound in a court of law, the half evidence, the half lies, the one-sided profile of truth? ‘Lee said that? Christ, the way it sounds!’

  ‘Either it’s true, or it’s not true.’

  ‘It’s true, but it’s a lie. A truth can be a lie. Were we in bed together without clothes? Yes, we were-’

  ‘Then-’

  ‘Wait! But it was she who was the aggressor. She was jealous of you, and she thought she could keep me this way, and when I went to bed, I found her there, but I didn’t-’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t care.’

  Emily’s controlled evenness, her lack of emotion, made Craig suspect the extent to which she was seething inside. He must attempt to reason with her. ‘Emily, can’t you see that all this is the product of two angry, selfish women? I’m not worth all that devotion to distortion of truth. But here it is-and look what it’s done to you. Without examining Lee’s motives, you are swallowing it whole.’

  ‘Am I?’ said Emily, with her first flare of temper. ‘Then maybe you’re going to deny that you’ve merely been having fun with me, drunkenly dangling my scalp wherever it can be shown? How could Leah Decker know that we were out on the Hammarlund terrace-kissing?’

  ‘She said that, too?’

  ‘Norberg told her. Norberg said you bragged about it.’

  Then, it came to him. ‘The bitch, the goddamn bitch. You know how Norberg knew that? In fact, she teased me with it. She knew that because that scum that walks like a man, Ragnar Hammarlund, has his whole house and outside bugged with hidden microphones-a business asset-and he’s in on everything. If you don’t believe me, ask Dr. Denise Marceau. I even warned her at lunch today.’

  ‘I’m not interested one way or the other,’ said Emily. ‘I don’t care about any of that, but only one thing.’ For the first time emotion began to pluck at her face, and she turned it away, and then went on in a low, almost inaudible voice. ‘I can’t stand that you made a public fool of me, that I behaved like a child. Maybe it could have happened to anyone, but I was the easiest to do this to because I’d never let my guard down before, never once, and now when I did, I did so entirely, and there was nothing to protect me, and now I’m so ashamed. It’s so hard for me to understand, still. You were nice-kind-thoughtful-beyond reproach-and interesting-and the first man since I can’t remember when-the first I wanted to hold me and to kiss-and it deceived me because I began to think-’

  Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Began to think what, Emily?’ he said quietly. ‘That I might love you? I do love you, Emily. I am in love with you.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to hear any more about that. I want only the truth about one thing. I know it’s wrong of me, but I can’t help it-because right now it’s the only thing that matters. All the rest-I don’t care-but this matters. While you were with me-all the time you were with me-were you sleeping-having an affair-with another woman?’

  Craig’s chest constricted. It was known, and here it was. What could be said?

  But Emily went on. ‘Märta Norberg told your sister-in-law you had boasted of it. I don’t remember your exact words now, but something about-you were doing all right for yourself in Sweden, making love to some girl-woman-every night-something like that. Leah misunderstood this. She thought I was that woman. I told her I wasn’t. She didn’t believe me. But I didn’t care about that. What I cared about-how can I put it? If you were having an affair with someone else-I don’t mean pickups or prostitutes-but if you were making love to someone else, while leading me to believe you were-were-interested in me, giving me reason to trust you and have faith in you and pride in myself-if you were doing that-I’d be too humiliated to forgive you. And I’ve let you stay now because, I suppose, I had to know the truth. Be honest with me. That at least I deserve. Is what you told Màrta Norberg the truth? Have you been making love to another woman while you’ve been seeing me?’ She stared at him apprehensively. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes, Emily, I have.’

  The breath she had held she now let go in a small sigh. She closed her eyes briefly. The timbre of her voice was that of a young woman turning from the open grave. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘all right.’ And then, ‘At least you’re honest. I suppose it’s the only virtue you have left.’

  ‘I have one more. I love you, Emily.’

  She moved suddenly into the yellow light, her glossy black hair reflecting the light and her green eyes flashing. ‘Stop saying that. I despise falsity. How can you say you love me, and how can I believe it? How can you pretend romance with one woman, and hours later-or before, for all I know-possess and make love to another? What kind of person are you anyway?’

  ‘Emily, try to understand.’

  ‘I don’t want to understand that kind of perfidy.’

  ‘Try to hear me out, Emily. I have a right to my side of it. You gave Lee hers, to my detriment, and now be generous enough to give me mine.’ He collected his thoughts, and then spoke with frank urgency. ‘On the way to Stockholm-no, it was first in Copenhagen on a tour, and then on the Malmö ferry-I met a pretty young Swedish girl, a good, decent girl, as good as you and more decent than I, but with standards somewhat different from our own. She never knew who I really was-doesn’t know to this day. I had merely met her, had drinks with her, and charming conversation, and that was all there was to it. Then, the evening of the banquet in the Royal Palace-remember?-when I became so drunk, and you had properly turned me away-well, after the banquet, there I was, plastered and floating in self-pity-Lee told you my condition in Miller’s Dam after Harriet died-so there I was, filled with guilts, loneliness, rejected-and I wanted someone to reassure me that I was a human being. Then, in my stupor, I thought of Lilly-not love or sex, because I was too far gone-I thought of a woman’s warmth-hadn’t thought of it for years, and I missed it-and then there was Lilly-that’s her name, Lilly Hedqvist-and impulsively I went to her, and without a word, a question, the slightest hesitation, she took me in, a stranger, foreigner, a nobody as far as she was concerned. She put me to bed, and I slept it off. When I woke up in the morning, I tried to sneak out and let her be, but she wouldn’t think of it. And so what happened-it just happened in a natural way.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear of your disgusting amorous conquests,’ said Emily with bitterness.

  ‘This was no conquest at all. I had a need to be wanted, and she had the gift of kindness. I don’t know what was in her mind, if anything. Maybe she sensed my emptiness, my defeatism-there I was, brought down by drink, and exhaustion, and too many years-and so she gave her love and restored my belief in life. If there is one other soul on earth who thinks you have some worth, then life is possible. When I left that morning, I had no planned thought of seeing her again. But then, soon, the need came-it was after another bad evening. I had been drinking heavily with a well-known Swedish writer, and he had some inside information about how I’d got the prize.’ He paused, considered, but then it did not matter. ‘He had evidence that I didn
’t get the prize on merit, but because I was needed as a political pawn-my most popular novel was anti-Communist-and because I had so little that had been propping me up, this information shattered me. I wanted to go to you. But I was afraid of your own fragile sensitivity. So I went to Lilly because I had been there before and had come to believe she would not fail me. And she didn’t. That’s all there is to this great affair that Norberg goaded me into revealing-and I could kill myself for being so immature as to take her dare-but it was necessary, too. I won’t say more or less about Lilly than I believe is true. I have affection for her, respect and affection-why shouldn’t I have?-but what I have for you, Emily, is love.’

  ‘Please don’t-’

  ‘A man knows these contradictions are possible. On the one hand, I could accept one young girl’s sympathetic tenderness and physical love-and on the other, at the very same time, give my heart to another woman who seemed unattainable.’ He stopped. Then he said, ‘There’s my explanation. I can add nothing more to it, if you have no understanding of it.’

  Emily was gazing fixedly at the opposite wall once again. For some seconds she did not speak, and at last she spoke without looking at him.

  ‘I wish I had such understanding, but I don’t have it,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand such things about men in general or you in particular. Maybe by some neutral judgment, you are in the right, and I am in the wrong, but this is what I am, and I have to live with my emotions and expectations.’ She paused, and now spoke with rising intensity. ‘I can’t bear looking at you or being near you or being touched by you, when I know that for days I was being treated like a pitiable half-woman-which I may be-and being courted-if that is what you were doing-by the least part of you, and knowing that you only found even this possible because the most of you had to have and could enjoy a full woman in the night. I can’t find the right words-it’s all nerve ends-but it has to do, for me, with feeling inadequate and somehow cheapened.’

  She turned her head towards him. ‘You say you love me. I don’t know how it is possible, and I don’t know what the word love means to you, but I know what it means to me-and-and with me it is a different word altogether. But if you do have-let me say regard-if you do have regard for me, then the best thing you can do is to leave me alone.’ Her hurt green eyes had filled, and he had a sudden impulse to hold her-or shake her, or make love to her-but he could do nothing.

  ‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Go to your Swedish friend, and let her fill your wants-let her love you again and again-but just don’t come near me, not now and not ever.’

  She jerked her head away from him and buried her face in the pillow.

  Craig lifted himself off the corner of the bed and dragged his feet across the carpet to the doorway and through it. He retrieved his hat and coat, all too slowly, hoping beyond hope that she had the inconsistency of all women-as Harriet had once had-and that she would recall him, because she loved him, too.

  But no voice beckoned from the bedroom.

  Craig went to the entry, and then into the hotel corridor, closing the door softly behind him.

  He felt dislocated in time and purpose. He had no taste for dinner. His appetite was long gone. He had no interest in his room, where Leah might lie in wait, expecting his anger and relishing another opportunity to remind him of his debt. He had desire for nothing but oblivion.

  He made his way to the elevator and descended to the bar.

  He was lifted skyward in the triangular cage at Polhemsgatan 172C, and when it creaked to a halt at the sixth floor, he fumbled to open the cage and be out of it.

  Only once he stumbled, which was not bad, not bad at all, he congratulated himself, for one who had been drinking steadily, alone, for over three hours.

  He knocked on the door with the ‘C’ and squinted at the window and fire escape nearby and he waited. It was important that she be in tonight, the most important thing in their lives.

  And then came her voice through the panel. ‘Ja?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  The door flung open, and Lilly Hedqvist was his own, the cascade of golden hair, the welcome smile accentuating the beauty mark, the lavender robe.

  ‘Mr. Craig, I am so happy to see you.’

  He directed himself in a straight line to the mosaic on the wall, and then sat clumsily on the hard, straight sofa beneath the mosaic.

  ‘Lilly,’ he said, ‘I am loaded to the gills. Do you want to throw me out?’

  ‘To have you run over by a car or maybe faint? Never. You will stay right here, until I say you are all right.’

  ‘And also I’m hungry. Haven’t eaten since noon.’

  ‘I will cook for you,’ she said gaily.

  ‘Only eggs. Scramble ‘em. And black coffee black.’

  ‘You are so easy to please.’

  He had tried to find his pipe and tobacco, and did, and then dropped both. Quickly, Lilly picked them up.

  ‘I will fix it,’ she said. She dipped the pipe into the pouch, and packed it, and gave it to him. Then she lit it. ‘There. And do not burn my sofa.’

  ‘You’ll make some man a good wife,’ he said.

  She started for the kitchenette. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘But I won’t let you,’ he said. ‘Because I want you to make me a good wife-me-not some man.’

  She had slowed with this, and then stood still, her back to him, and now she came around, forehead knitted, and looked at him.

  ‘Are you making a joke, Mr. Craig?’

  ‘I’m perfectly serious. I’m proposing, young lady. I’m asking for your hand in marriage.’

  ‘You mean it,’ she said. It was not a question but a statement of fact.

  ‘Of course I mean it, Lilly. Never meant anything more. We can get married here, and then, you and your son, we can go back to the States, and-’

  She moved towards him. ‘Mr. Craig, why do you ask to marry me?’

  ‘I don’t know why. You want to marry someone, and you ask them.’

  ‘But why-now-me?’

  His mind dwelt on the incomprehensibility of all women, and he wanted a drink. ‘Because I care for you and need you, Lilly, and you can make me alive again.’ He was too sodden to concentrate in this serious vein. She liked fun. They had not often been serious. Fun. ‘I will buy you a Thunderbird and refrigerator and Bergdorf dress and nudist camp.’

  She had circled the coffee table and was now on the sofa beside him, rubbing the back of her neck beneath her golden hair, face too solemn.

  ‘You do not want to marry me, Mr. Craig.’

  ‘Lilly, I know what I want. I’m asking you to be my wife.’

  ‘If you are asking so serious, it is bad then, because I must say no.’

  He prickled and sobered slightly. ‘You said no?’

  ‘I do not wish to marry you.’

  He was too drunk to be depressed, but he had recognized her reply as a phenomenon. He had made up his mind while drinking, and had imagined her pleasure, a famous and wealthy American Lancelot, Galahad, to rescue her from insecurity, work, unwed motherhood. Yet she had said no.

  ‘But I thought-’ he began. ‘What’s wrong with me? Am I too old?’

  ‘Oh, no. That is all right.’

  ‘Don’t you like me? I thought you liked me. We get along, and we have fun, and it would always be better.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or is it that you have been sorry for me-the sad, middle-aged old man who is drunk and lonely-’

  ‘Of course not-never!’

  ‘Why did you let me love you, then?’

  ‘Mr. Craig, you are making that too much, I have told you, and Daranyi has told you. Because a woman sleeps with a man in Sweden is not the same as America-is not to prove eternal love-is not a pledge for marriage. Maybe I was sorry for you, but not so much. And I would not give you body love for that reason. I offered my body love, because you are in many ways the kind of man I enjoy-you are serious and silly, and handsome and tall, and grown up-and, most of all, fun. I wanted to enj
oy you, and you wanted me, and there was no more necessary. It is the most important thing, maybe, to have pleasure when you feel like it and not always look and wait for something that maybe does not come or comes too late. That is enough, what we have. Must I give you my heart too? Must there be a legal ceremony? Does that make us happpier or better?

  ‘We cannot marry together, because the fun is all right for a while-but a marriage is more practical and formal, and we do not have common things. You are too intelligent for my mind. You would tire of me. I am like a young girl who is always a young girl, who likes only the outdoors and to be frivolous, and you are not so, and I would tire of you.’

  A moment before he had ceased listening to her, because something else had entered his head. ‘Lilly, I know what is wrong. You know nothing about me, except I am a writer. You think I’m just another American tourist-a bad prospect-but that is not so. I could give you a fabulous life. Do you know who I am?’

  It was like handing her an expensive birthday present, and he could not wait to open it for her.

  But she was speaking. ‘You are Andrew Craig, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature.’

  His mouth fell open. ‘You knew?’

  ‘Not at first, but I have known. Daranyi told me.’

  ‘And you can still say no?’

  ‘I respect you, Mr. Craig, and am proud to have been loved by someone so famous. But what has that to do with marriage? I cannot be happy because I have married a prize.’

  He felt maudlin and also depressed, at last. ‘Then it’s no?’

  ‘There is one more reason,’ she said at last, ‘and it is one more reason why you would not be happy with me forever.’

  He waited.

  ‘You are in love with another girl, and you really want to marry her.’

  Lilly’s knowledge was startling and eerie, and he kept staring at her. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Daranyi. He told me.’

  ‘How in the devil would he know?’

  ‘He knows everything, Mr. Craig. It is his business. He is making an investigation now for somebody connected with the Nobel Prize-Dr. Krantz-a bad man, Daranyi says, because he is always liking the Germans-and now he wants to know all about you and the other winners, and Daranyi helps and finds out everything-’