Irving Wallace - The Prize

‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ mumbled Craig.

‘Ivan Bunin and Boris Pasternak-two Russians in sixty years. Ever think who lived and wrote in Russia in those sixty years? We all know about Tolstoy being turned down nine times. But what about Chekhov and Andreyev and Artsybashev and Maxim Gorky-Gorky was around until 1936. Nothing.’

‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ repeated Craig.

‘Phony!’ bellowed Gottling, but no one in the Wärdshus bar so much as looked up. ‘Bunin was a White Russian refugee, an anti-Communist, who lived in Paris and translated Longfellow’s “Hiawatha”. He hadn’t been in Russia in fifteen years, when you Americans pitched for him and put him across in 1933. And old Boris Pasternak, the matinée idol with good guts, out there in his dacha -who gave a damn about him when he was writing solid poetry? Who honoured him then? Not the spineless Nobel judges, I guarantee you. But the minute he put out that novel that criticized communism, the minute he had the nerve to say what every Swede was afraid to say, they crowned him with the prize he couldn’t accept. Someday, I got to write advice to writers all over the world. I got to tell them, “Writers, arise! If you’re Russian, if you’re American, no matter what, grind out an anti-Russian potboiler and get it translated into Swedish, and you’re in. You get the Nobel Prize and the big boodle. Just like Andrew Craig.” ’

Craig squinted at Gottling through bleary eyes. ‘What in the hell does that mean?’

‘The facts of life, kid,’ said Gottling, belching, and swallowing his gin, ‘the facts of life. Why do you think you got the Nobel Prize? Because you’re a hotshot author? Because you’re the best this year? Because you’re the leading idealistic literary creator on earth? That what you think? That what Jacobsson and that bag, Ingrid Påhl, told you? Because you’re somebody, in the league with Kipling and Undset and Galsworthy and O’Neill? Crap! You’re nothing, and the Nobel boys know it, and everyone in Scandinavia on the inside knows it. You’re here on a phony pass, because they wanted to use you, and that’s all. And, brother, that’s the truth. Have another drink?’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Craig. His brain and mouth were fuzzy, but a distant alarm registered. ‘Is this some more of your sour grapes?’

‘I’m the only guy in Sweden with guts enough to level with you, Craig. I got enough pity for that. I don’t want to see you making a horse’s ass of yourself. The Nobel Prize for literature to Andrew Craig? Ha! Crap. The Nobel Prize for anti-Russian propaganda, that’s what it should be. You won because the Swedes have been having a diplomatic squabble with the Russians over two islands in the Baltic Sea-you never read about that, did you?-and the Swedes are going to lose, and crawl, and eat crow. But they got to keep face-that’s our one Orientalism, keeping face-and so, knowing they got to lose, they unloaded a rabbit punch at the Commies by honouring your little anti-Communist fiction, The Perfect State . That’s to show we’re big boys, not afraid of anybody, even when we crawl.’

‘You’re making it up, Gottling. You’re bitter, and you’ve got to get your jollies some way. If the Swedish Academy wanted to blast Russia through an award, they could find novelists in a dozen countries who’d written stronger anti-Soviet books.’

‘Oh, no. You’re blind man, you don’t see at all. An award to a writer of a work overtly anti-Russian would be too dangerous-they don’t want Pasternak all over again. That was too much of a sweat-they don’t want to stand up and body-punch. Like I said, they just wanted to sneak in a quick rabbit punch, for face, for conscience. Your novel is anti-Russian, all right, but you got to cut away the sugar coating to know it. If Moscow gets sore, and they have-I read Ny Dag , that’s our Commie sheet here-the Swedish Academy can just look surprised-and they have, too-and shrug and say they were honouring a pure historical novel about Plato and ancient Syracuse. You see? But everybody knows different. Only the way it is, nobody can prove it. It’s a scared gesture, like whistling in the dark, just like yours is a scared book.’

‘To quote Gunnar Gottling-you’re full of crap.’

‘Am I? The hell I am. Listen, if I wasn’t loaded to the gills, I wouldn’t be telling you this. But I got two good friends in the Swedish Academy. They’re the ones who nominate me every year. And after every voting, I get a play-by-play. When your name came up, there were only three of the twelve, the Påhl witch and two other innocents, who thought you had more on the ball than A. A. Milne or Edgar Guest. You were dead, until somebody brought up Russia and those two Baltic islands. Then there was heated talk about Russia, and then someone said the only good thing about your book was that it showed the Russians up-that is, if you read between the lines-and in about an hour, the majority agreed that if you got the award, it would show those Russians, it would really show them. And so you got it. And we’ve shown them. Sorry, kid. You’ll write some real books one day, but that wasn’t the one, and we all know it-so go home with your money and your title and don’t knock luck.’

Craig sat very still. The film of alcohol that covered him, like a placenta in the prenatal chamber, was not enough to protect his frail rebirth as a man. Until now, he had only listened to Gottling, only taken him half seriously. The ravaged Swede was a carper and a dissenter, who made himself larger by making other men smaller, and once you understood that, you understood him, and relaxed and enjoyed it. But this last had the sound of truth, and if it was truth, it was devastating. Craig wanted his rebirth here in Stockholm, one last rebirth of his ego and soul, whole and healthy. If this one miscarried, if this one was still born, only the death of sterility as an author lay ahead. He would not accept Gottling’s rotten exposé.

‘You’re trying to get me sore, Gottling. You can’t. I’ve got your number, you see. You’re a defeated, bitter wreck. You can’t get up with the rest of us, so you do the next best thing. You try to drag us down into your gutter. You get away with each ambush by flying the flags of candour and honesty, but your real banner is a deep sickness of the soul. If you weren’t paying for these drinks, I’d bash your nose in.’

Gottling grunted, and he twisted to face Craig fully, his eyes twinkling. ‘Don’t try it. I eat laureates. I break them in small pieces and eat them.’

‘Not this one. I doubt if you could take this one. You are paying for the drinks?’

Gottling was silent a moment. ‘Yeah, I’m paying.’

‘Okay, then.’

‘Craig, you can’t get me to fight you. Because I like you, I like you too much.’

Craig’s eyes mirrored his surprise.

‘Sure,’ said Gottling. ‘I know you’re a zero, and I know you know it. Maybe someday, you won’t be. Someday, you’ll be a figure-if you live that long-but now you’re a zero. Still, I like you-you know why? I’m not ashamed. I’ll tell you why. Because you put it in the papers that I’m talented and should’ve won the prize. You put it in the papers that I’m talented. Nobody’s said that in a long, long time, and nobody with a title ever said it at all. I can live off that until I die.’

‘But if I’m a zero, and say you’re talented, what does that make you?’

‘Maybe you’re not a zero, and maybe even I’m not. I never was good at figures. Have another drink, Craig. It’s on me. I’m paying all the way.’

How Craig had arrived outside this large gymnasium, on Valhallavägen near the old Olympic Stadium, some time before 10.30 at night, was not clear to him.