Irving Wallace - The Prize

Immediately, Craig was interested. Still, he hesitated. ‘What’s Gottling got to do with you?’

‘I happened to meet him in the line of duty. I’ve been interviewing all prominent Swedes about the Nobel Prizes. I arranged to see Gottling this afternoon. We had some drinks. He’s a great talker and bursting with information. Anyway, your name came up, naturally, and he had a lot of things to say about you and the literary awards. I told him you were at the Grand and asked if he’d like to meet you, and he said he would. I suggested maybe the three of us could have dinner. So he drove me over-’

‘Miss Wiley, I’d like nothing better than to meet Gunnar Gottling. But not with you, no thanks.’

Sue Wiley’s brain digested, calculated, and computed rapidly, from long training. She fed the machine Gottling. She fed the machine Craig. She fed the machine herself. Apparently, the combination did not add up. One click, and she subtracted herself. Gottling and Craig added up. Another click. When flint struck flint, there would be a fire. If she could not have the story first-hand, she could have it second-hand. Reinforced by alcoholic fuel, Gottling would give her the result tomorrow. Click.

‘All right, Mr. Craig, no hard feelings,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want me around, it’s your privilege. I’ve got my story from Gottling already, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll limit myself to good Samaritan, and maybe you’ll give me one mark on the credit side of your judgment ledger. I’ll introduce the two of you and make myself scarce. How’s that?’

Craig remained suspicious. This was a young lady who did not wear altruism well. He watched her blinking eyes. ‘You’ll make yourself scarce? How scarce?’

‘Totally, completely. I’ll introduce you and vanish into thin air. I’ll even drop dead, if that’s your wish.’

Craig still did not like Sue Wiley, but he could no longer be suspicious. A meeting with Gottling, on an unplanned evening, was irresistible. He admired Gottling’s uninhibited, earthy, iconoclastic prose. Craig as author had breathed life again, and now he wanted to sustain this existence. Dinner with another writer, a foreign writer, one whom he admired, would be stimulating. ‘Okay,’ he said to Sue Wiley. ‘Let me get my overcoat.’

They went through the corridor together, and then down in the elevator, without exchanging a word.

As they emerged into the bustling lobby, Sue Wiley pointed across the way towards the news-stand.

‘There he is,’ she said.

Gunnar Gottling was stamping around a table at the far end, hands clasped behind him, ignoring the stares of whispering guests. What Craig saw first was a barrel figure of medium height, made to appear shorter by his bulk. He wore an eccentric fur cap and a mangy fur coat, open and billowing, as he paced. As they drew closer, Craig could make out the fierce Cossack face. The brow was narrow Cro-Magnon. The eyebrows were shaggy and unkempt, like strips of rug samplings. The sunken eyes were more red than brown, because they were bloodshot. The moustache was not a mere lip adornment but two wild bushes of hair that covered the mouth and portions of the cheeks. The chest was that of a bartender at the turn of the century, and the jacket over it was pocked with drink stains and cigarette holes.

‘Mr. Gottling,’ said Sue Wiley, ‘this is Mr. Craig.’

Gottling gargled and coughed, and enveloped Craig’s hand in his own, crunching it. ‘So-so-so,’ he growled.

‘I know you were both looking forward to this meeting,’ said Sue Wiley, trying to watch both men at the same time.

‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed two of your books, Mr. Gottling,’ said Craig.

‘You are a good reader,’ said Gottling. ‘About your writing-we will talk soon. First, we must drink.’ He looked about the lobby, sniffing with distaste. ‘This stinks. It’s for the fat ones. Are you a fat one, Craig?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Flesh and gut flabby with security and gadgets and showing the Joneses?’

‘Hardly,’ said Craig.

‘Don’t let that Nobel bribe get you that way. That’s Judas money. It sells you out to conformity, to pleasing, to commercialism. Never a damn honest word written by any prize winner, after he got the boodle. Christ, this place stinks. Where should we drink and eat?’

Sue Wiley caught Craig’s glance, and quickly said, ‘Count me out, Mr. Gottling. Work, work, you know-’

Gottling glowered at Sue Wiley. ‘What do you mean-work? For a female, that atrophies the ass. The best thing you can do, young lady, is go out and get yourself laid.’

Gottling’s voice acted like a sonic boom, and there were many in the lobby who turned, wide-eyed and horrified. Craig wanted to crawl under the table. But Sue Wiley was the product of countless city rooms and pressrooms, and she did not flinch. ‘Mr. Gottling, thank you for your advice, but I like my work. And thank you for the interview. It was swell. I hope you’ll see me again. And good-night, Mr. Craig.’

She took her leave with dignity.

‘Cerebral and sexless,’ grunted Gottling after her. ‘Your typical American dame.’

‘If she were typical, I’d give up my citizenship,’ said Craig. ‘I promise you, she’s not.’

‘Not? The hell she’s not. How many American women you with, Craig?’

‘I don’t, know. A dozen. Two dozen. I’ve never counted.’

‘I, Gunnar Gottling, have counted. I did not count after the first one hundred. All of them the same, the same, except the Polacks. All the same. Ouija boards have got more movement.’ He snorted. ‘I know where we’ll fill up. Ever been to Djurgårdsbrunns Wärdshus?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘If you been there, you’d be sure. Best tavern in Sweden. Fifteen minutes from here, out in the park. Come on.’

Gottling stalked out, with Craig towering over him, a stride behind. The frozen night air hit them with a blast, and they both staggered, then bolted for Gottling’s compact Volvo station-wagon.

A few minutes later, they were speeding to the outskirts of the city. Craig suspected that his host was myopic, but too vain to wear spectacles, for Gottling hung over the wheel, his eyes squinting through the close windshield, as he concentrated on the road ahead.

‘You like my English?’ boomed Gottling, as he wrenched the car around a turning.

‘It’s colloquial enough. One would think you’d lived in the United States.’

‘Where do you think I lived? Six years in your lousy country when I was a kid full of piss and vinegar. Got me off a Norwegian freighter and thumbed my way to Chicago. Worked in the stockyards and as a bouncer and then mixed drinks in a joint on the South Side. Used to spend my day off in Comiskey Park so I could get drunk with company and yell, and spend every night humping those coloured girls. Ever tried that for luck, Craig?’

‘Never. Only for lack of opportunity.’

‘You missed nothing. They smell good, and they got big tits, and they go through the motions, but they’re over-rated. The white boys imagine too much. Expect all kinds of African animal pleasures. Not so. Those coloured broads in Chicago are too neurotic and bound up and angry. How can you give out to someone you resent? So it comes out just like with the white broads-except the Polacks, they’re special. They got the tiger in them.’

‘Why did you go to the United States, Gottling?’

‘Like I said, I was a kid, piss and vinegar. And I’d done my share of reading. In those days, Sweden wasn’t for poor kids. That was before all this fancy welfare state crap. In those days, there was the muck-a-muck on top, and the serf on the ground. I wanted a place where I could flex my muscles and be what I wanted to be. It was either Russia or the United States. Well, I didn’t go for that Bolshevik crap, never did, and still don’t. No lousy commissar’s ever going to tell Gunnar Gottling what to do. So I took a flyer at the United States. That was crap, too. Blue laws and puritans and bloomers. Except for some cases used for advertising in your history books, the real story was-the poor stayed poor, and the rich got richer. Democracy. Ha!’