Irving Wallace - The Prize

‘Your horrible affair was bad enough,’ she was saying. ‘How I can even look at you again, I don’t know. But to lie to me after-deliberately lie-promise me, pat me on the head-a passing indiscretion, a mistake, no more-and then brazenly resume-’

‘Denise,’ he said with difficulty, glancing off to see if they were being overheard, ‘nothing more passed between us. I simply had to see her once more to-to tell her-’

‘You saw her more than once more, and you slept with her. You have lost all your pride and prudence. You do not give a damn about me, us, our reputations-you are going on headlong-like some schoolboy in the Place Pigalle, in love with a prostitute.’

She was uncontrolled, he saw, surprisingly wild and capable of anything. He did not wish a scene now or here, especially not here. ‘Denise, please,’ he pleaded. ‘Wait until we get to Stockholm and we are alone. I shall explain everything. This is a problem between us. We will work it out privately.’

‘No-now-’

‘I have tried to speak to you a dozen times in the last weeks,’ he said with exasperation, ‘but you were playing the great wounded-the sufferer. I could not get a word from you. Now you want to stage it here, in a crowded plane. Look, people are watching us right now. Where is your sense of respectability-decency? We still have a marriage-’

‘Have we?’ she demanded. ‘I love that. Look who speaks of decency-respectability-with a kept whore on the side.’

‘Denise, I beg of you. Everyone’s listening.’

This time, his plea reached her. She bit her lip, surreptitiously observed the passengers around them, and then sat back in sullen silence.

‘We will find a solution,’ he added lamel desperate to placate her. ‘Soon as this Nobel affair is over with-’

‘To hell with Nobel,’ she said, ‘and to hell with you.’ With a violent wrench of her body, she turned her back on him, curling in the seat, arms folded, pretending to sleep.

But Denise Marceau did not sleep. The play in her head was this, and the Chevalier von Sacher-Masoch had lent his name to it: act one, the discovery; act two, the confirmation and confrontation; act three, they lived unhappily ever after.

Act one. She let the players perform. She did not direct them. She was the leading lady. To avoid illusion, to highlight reality, her mind took her from the present and placed her on the stage of the past.

After the reading of their paper had secured their triumph, Claude’s restlessness began, and she had understood it for she felt as he did. The cluttered apartment was particularly empty after the busy, crowded years in the laboratory. Yet she adjusted quickly, occupied herself with women’s work, and was soon more satisfied.

Claude remained unsociable and moody, and when he took to protracted periods away from the apartment each day, she did not mind. People varied in their needs and ways to find their balance. She was correct in her tolerance, she believed, for soon Claude’s natural enthusiasm and vitality returned. Life became tolerable, even fun, again. Although his need for her body was less, she excused him. Six years of exhaustive labours had taken their toll. Moreover, he was affectionate and thoughtful, which was pleasing. One day, she surmised, he would be completely rested, and then be able to give her more. Sometimes, evaluating his returned good humour after evenings at restaurants or the club with other men, she decided that he was weighing a new project, a fresh undertaking, and this she hoped for more than anything else. While she could not articulate it to herself, her instinct told her that in scientific collaboration they succeeded in a union closer, more passionate, more successful, than those of other mortals who had only the lesser union of flesh.

She tried to pick up the slack strands of old friendships more and more, having some of the women whom she had so long neglected to the apartment for cakes and conversation, going shopping with others, and forcing herself to make luncheon dates. She was not surprised, therefore, when a friend, with whom she had long ago attended the Sorbonne and had recently revived old times, telephoned to invite her to tea the following afternoon at Rumpelmayer’s in the rue de Rivoli. She had tried to delay the engagement a few days, for she was absorbed in selecting new dining-room furniture, but her friend’s beseeching insistence forced her to capitulate.

The following afternoon at exactly four o’clock, Denise met her friend, Madame Cecilia Moret, before the sweets counter in the foyer of Rumpelmayer’s. Cecilia Moret, an energetic thin woman who wore sunglasses, filled in her pocked cheeks with powder, and carried an introverted miniature white poodle in the crook of one arm, led the way through the tables crowded with stylish French and English matrons, to a relatively isolated corner in the rear. They found an unoccupied table. Cecilia tied the leash of her poodle to a chair leg and fed him a sugar cube and baby talk. Divesting themselves of their coats, lighting cigarettes, they ordered tea and toast for Cecilia and coffee and small éclairs for Denise.

Cecilia carried the conversation, ecstatic about a Bombois oil that she had found in the rue de Seine and handbags she had found for the holidays in the rue La Boétie, and Denise listened dully, wondering why she had neglected her dining-room furniture for this. The moment they had been served, and the waitress was out of earshot, Cecilia’s tone changed from the frivolous to the conspiratorial.

‘What is Claude up to these days?’ she inquired, squeezing her lemon peel into the pale tea.

‘Nothing much. Trying to dream up a new project, I suspect.’

‘Are you doing anything together?’

‘Not really. I think this is a vacation for both of us, after six years’ collaboration. I am catching up with domesticity. He is out a good deal, seeing if he has any men friends left.’

‘Mmm,’ said Cecilia Moret, with subtle scepticism that made Denise, sensitive to semantic nuances, study her with sudden interest.

Cecilia touched her lips with a paper napkin, thoughtfully, and when she dropped the napkin, she removed her dark glasses as if to reveal a nakedly sincere and intimate face.

‘Denise, I have something to tell you. No one else will, I am sure. And I feel, in good conscience, I must. It is for your sake, it is you I am thinking about. If I cannot be honest with you, then who can, and what is friendship for anyway?’

Denise crinkled her eyes, puzzled.

Cecilia continued. ‘Have you any reason to suspect Claude of-of-oh, misbehaviour?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.’

‘I will be frank with you, because I am not ashamed of being frank about my own problems-well, to you, in this case. Eight years ago, my dependable Gaston, reaching your husband’s age, had a-a most shameful affair with a Lido girl. I learned about it in this room, this way, from an older woman who was a friend of mine, and I thank the Lord for her. You can be sure I put an end to the stupid affair immediately. It was not pleasant, I assure you, but today Gaston and I are more in love than ever, and it is as if the other never happened. I owe our present happiness to the fact that I was able to stop his aberration in time, before he went too far.’ She caught her breath, and then went on. ‘Now, in your case-’

Denise felt the heat high on her cheeks. ‘Cecilia, what are you saying?’

‘I think your Claude is playing it fast and loose. I have reason to believe this-’

‘What a terrible thing even to imagine!’

‘Hear me out, Denise. Last Friday night, I was burdened with showing some Americans-friends of friends-life on the Left Bank. We decided to walk a good deal, so that they could see more. I was on my way to show them St.-Germain-des-Près. We were in the rue du Bac, going slowly, chatting. A taxi pulled up across the street, beneath the lamp. I hardly paid attention, until I saw Claude step out of it. He was facing me. He did not see me, but I saw him. He was under the light, and there was no mistake. I almost called out to him-but just then someone else emerged from the taxi. A young lady. I could not see her well, except that she was tall, young, extremely smart in her grooming and clothes. Claude paid the taxi, and it left. He put his arm around the girl’s waist, and kissed her cheek, and they went into the apartment building. I even noted the address-53 rue du Bac. I cannot tell you how upset I was for the remainder of the evening. It was so difficult to believe-Claude, so conservative, and famous now-taking such risks. And then I thought of you, and what I had been through. I tell you, I had quite a weekend trying to reach a decision. Should I tell Denise? Shall I not? Now you know my decision, and you can act as I once acted.’