Irving Wallace - The Prize

In the darkness of the bumping car, Craig looked at this outspoken, angry man. ‘I know what you’re against, Gottling. What are you for?’

‘Anarchy, pure and simple. I talked to those boys down in Barcelona once, several years back. They got it right, if they ever come out in the open. Anarchy, that’s right. Back to the tribes and freedom absolute. That’s my allegiance, to that and the Republic of Gottling. Three bona fide citizens in the Republic of Gottling -me, myself, and I. Title of my autobiography, if I ever get down to writing it.’

He drove in silence, and then took his eyes off the road a moment.

‘You said you read my books, Craig. Which?’

‘The two published in English. The one about the Lapland girl who comes to Stockholm, and what civilization does to her. And the other one, about the farmer who gets a job in-in Malmö, I think-and brings his family to the co-operative housing place.’

‘Did you like them?’ he asked brusquely.

‘I told you, they were damn good. A little long, a little rough, but first-rate.’

‘You’re damn right. I wish I could say the same for your books.’

Craig stiffened. ‘Say whatever you want. This isn’t the Boy Scouts of America on an outing.’

‘You’re a featherweight, Craig. You write scared. That’s what makes you a featherweight.’

There was a squeeze of resentment in Craig’s chest. Who the devil was Gottling anyway? The bully boy of unread literature. Craig was not letting him get away with anything tonight. ‘Who writes scared?’ he said. ‘I’ve tackled important themes, problems. That’s more than you’ve done.’

‘Don’t go thin-skinned on me,’ mocked Gottling. ‘I know your goddam important themes. But why sneak off and do your hollering a century or two ago? Now’s the place, in this world, among the bastards of this world, to do your sounding off. Belt them head on. The day you do that, you’ll be great, the champ. Right now, you’re only cute, a fancy Dan who gets it on points, but nobody knows if he’s got a punch. Know what I mean?’

Craig knew too well what he meant, and he knew what Harriet had once meant, but tonight he did not like it at all. He had come out with Gottling, he realized, to have his ego further inflated. And now, this. His ego had been too recently revitalized to stand up under punishment.

He sat sullen and wordless.

‘Here we are,’ said Gottling. He yanked the wheel, and they spun off the road, parking at the foot of a flight of stone stairs. These climbed to the entrance of a building that resembled an eighteenth-century English inn.

It was too cold to linger outside in the Volvo station-wagon. They hurried up the steps and into the warm reception room of Djurgårdsbrunns Wärdshus. As a waitress helped him off with his overcoat, Craig observed, to his left, the main dining-room, immaculate white tablecloths and several early couples, and to his right, the bar-room, which was more densely populated.

‘What’ll it be, Craig?’ Gottling wanted to know. ‘Food or spirits?’

‘I could stand a drink.’

Gottling grinned grotesquely from beneath the ferocious moustache. ‘I can see we’ll get along.’

They made their way into the noisy bar-room. There were about a dozen men in the room. Some were on stools at the bar, several watched a Swedish play on the television set, and the rest hunched about the wooden tables. Almost everyone, it seemed, knew Gottling, and they greeted him with affection, and he cussed at them with affection. He led Craig to a corner table, somewhat apart from the others, and they settled on chairs covered with a plaid material as thick as horse blankets. Gottling ordered a double gin on ice, and Craig ordered a double Scotch on ice, and they both waited, pretending to be absorbed in the activity of a young man throwing darts at a worn board beneath the television set.

When the drinks came, Craig downed half of his in a single gulp, enjoyed the familiar spread of heat through his veins, and then drank again. He became aware of Gottling’s gaze and half turned to meet it.

Gottling nodded in approval. ‘I’d heard you were a drinking man, Craig. I think that’s why I bothered to come out and meet you.’

‘Who said I’m a drinking man?’

‘That dame with ground glass in her genital canal-your Miss Wiley.’

‘That bitch.’

‘If she didn’t tell me, I’d know anyway. I can spot a pro when he bends his elbow. Amateurs sip and suck and nurse, and they make it a secondary occupation. But the pros, you and me, we pour it down like we know there’s a lot more where that came from and like it’s the most important thing, which it is, except for an occasional lay and sometimes writing.’

‘I don’t like drinking, Gottling. I take it the way Socrates took the hemlock cup-a necessity better than living.’

‘You’re a mighty complicated guy.’

‘Sure I am. Did Sue Wiley tell you that, too? Let’s have another drink.’

Gottling shouted across the room at the bartender, and in seconds, fresh drinks appeared.

‘Why’d you see her?’ Craig asked.

‘Who? The dame with the ground glass down under?’

‘That’s right. Did you want publicity?’

‘You baiting me, Craig? I get enough publicity. This dame called up and said she heard I’d been nominated six times for the Nobel Prize and never got it, and she was writing a series about the whole machinery, and did I have anything to say. Well, my friend, that Nobel Prize is one of my favourite table topics. When I can let off steam on it, it gives me as much pleasure as an orgasm. So I told her to come right over. She filled two notebooks.’

‘Why didn’t you ever get the prize, Gottling?’

‘Why didn’t Strindberg get it? Same difference. Consider my track record. I’ve been divorced twice, the first time for beating my wife’s head against the wall and the second time for laying my step-daughter. I’ve had a Danish mistress for five years-she wears glasses to bed, and that’s what gets me-and I let her give interviews for me. I’ve had four illegitimate children. I’ve been arrested and in jail six times, for drunken behaviour in public. And my literature isn’t exactly idealistic. And that book where the Lapp girl comes to Stockholm, and the city corrupts her and turns her into a whore, well, my fellow Swedes are touchy as hell. They didn’t like it a bit. Still, I didn’t put the blast on them, and I kind of waited, because I figured I’d get the prize sooner or later, like old Gide and old Hamsun. I mean, I’m the only Swede writer around who can write his name. And that Swedish Academy, those academic boys, they love to masturbate-honour themselves, their own-and sooner or later, I figured, they’d want to honour a Swede, and it would have to be me. I don’t give a damn about the honour. I wanted the dough. I can always use the dough. But I have my pipelines, and about two years ago, I found out it was no soap. So I said what the hell, you can’t have everything in life, and now I’ll have some fun with those bastards. So in six weeks of boozing and scribbling, I got me a novel about the eighteen immortals in our Academy-thinly disguised, thinly-what they’re really like after hours-and, man, what a yelp there was. I made the kronor, and they made the threats about hauling me into court, but they were afraid. The book’s never been published in your country. Too special. But I settled our Nobel Committee good, and that’s why you’re never going to see my name beside yours and old Thomas Mann and old Rudyard Kipling.’

Craig downed his second double, and ordered a third, and so did Gunnar Gottling.

‘What did you mean about the judges liking to honour themselves, their own?’ Craig asked.