Irving Wallace - The Prize

‘I liked it last time, but I was young-it was my honeymoon. This time, I haven’t cared.’

‘You will like it.’ They were silent a moment, and then she touched his arm. ‘Mr. Craig, we must leave the car. We are almost there.’

He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and strained them through the wind-shield. Looming before them were the lights of Malmö.

‘All right,’ he said. He started to open the door, when something came to his mind. ‘Lilly-one more favour.’

‘Your sister-in-law again?’

‘That’s right. I’d never get this bottle past her guard without a scene. Can you take it?’

She took it from him.

‘I’ll show you my carriage when we go past. I have room seventeen. Will you remember?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Soon as we leave Malmö, once we’re under way, bring it to me. Can you do that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do I sound terribly drunk?’

‘Not very much.’

‘Good. Thank you for the company.’

They left the Volvo, and bucked the knifing wind, which fell away when they reached the haven between the train and the cabins. Passengers were filling their path, and they were slow in reaching Craig’s carriage.

He pointed up. ‘It’s this one. Seventeen.’

She bobbed her head. ‘ Tack för i kväll ,’ she said. ‘ Det var mycket trevligt .’

‘What’s that?’

‘Thank you. I enjoyed myself.’

Craig smiled. ‘How do you say, “I hope to see you again soon”?’

‘ Jag hoppas vi ses igen snart .’

‘Well, jag hoppas -’

But she had already disappeared into the crowd.

Craig greeted the conductor, went unsteadily up the steps, and entered the wagon-lit. Leah was awaiting him in his compartment, agitated, as he had expected.

‘For God’s sake, where have you been?’ she cried. ‘I thought you’d fallen overboard. I looked everywhere, high and low-’

‘I was hungry,’ he said placidly. ‘I was eating in the second-class café.’

‘I looked there. You weren’t there.’

‘Sure I was. I was disguised as a Dane. I’m fine, Leah. Never better. All ready for Mr. Nobel.’

She eyed him suspiciously, without the nerve to move closer and smell his breath. ‘You haven’t had a drink?’

‘On my honour.’

‘I’m only thinking of Harriet. I keep thinking of her. I want to treat you as she would.’ Her voice pleaded for understanding. ‘I’m thinking of you, too, Andrew. I want you to be respected, and proud of yourself.’

‘You’re very kind, Lee.’ A hollow wooden thud reverberated through the boat, and they struggled for balance.

‘What was that?’ asked Leah, frightened.

‘Malmö. We’ll be on shore in a few minutes, hitched up and on our way. I’m going to undress and get some sleep.’

She stood at the door. ‘Don’t think I want to nag you, Andrew. When you’ve needed drink, I’ve been the first to help you, God forgive me. You know that.’

He nodded dutifully.

‘But I feel you don’t need it now, and if you do, you should conquer your weakness. There’s too much at stake.’ She allowed this to sink in, and then went on. ‘I know what you are and can be, more than anyone on earth, and that is all that’s in my heart.’

‘I appreciate that, Lee.’ He wondered what would happen if Lilly should suddenly materialize with the bottle. He prayed that she would not be too soon.

‘When you stand on that stage in Stockholm, all straight and dignified,’ Leah continued, ‘when you accept the award, it’ll make up for everything that happened before.’

She buried the shaft deep, and he avoided her prosecutor’s eyes. It’ll make up for murder, she was telling him without telling him. I, Leah Decker, am my sister’s husband’s keeper, his probation officer until he has served penance and is again responsible, and I shall release him when his time is served, if ever that be, she was saying.

‘It’ll be a new day for us,’ she concluded.

‘Good night, Lee.’

‘Good night, Andrew.’

Grimly, he shut the door, removed his jacket and tie, and waited for the train to resume its passage and for Lilly Hedqvist to appear. He listened to the train being coupled to a locomotive, and soon they were under way. When the knock came at the door, it was not Lilly but the conductor. He was beaming.

‘I told the customs inspectors who you were,’ he said. ‘They were impressed. They did not want to disturb you.’

‘Thanks, my friend.’

‘I have read all the works of Jack London and Upton Sinclair, but I am sorry to say I have not read your books. Are they translated into Swedish?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘When I tell my wife, she will buy them.’

‘I wish I had some copies along, but I didn’t have room.’

‘No-no-my wife will buy them.’ He was reluctant to leave, but he saw Craig’s impatience. ‘If you need me in the night, you press the bell. I am at the end of the aisle, at my table. Do you wish to leave a morning call?’

‘Just wake me an hour before we get in.’

‘I won’t forget, Mr. Craig.’

After the conductor had gone, Craig remained at the open door. He bent and peered through the window. In the distance, behind the moat of darkness, a Swedish town, brightened by outdoor fluorescent lights, briefly filled the window and as rapidly disappeared from sight. Shortly, a second Swedish town, also illuminated by fluorescent lights, showed itself, and then withdrew. After the third town came and went, Craig closed his door.

Kneeling, he unsnapped his overnight case removed his pyjamas and the toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, and neatly placed them at the foot of his berth. He took off his shoes, sat on the bed, swaying with the train, and at last he lay down on his back. He was not sleepy, but neither was he wide awake. He was disoriented, not part of this time and place, but contentedly detached. He had consumed more of the bottle than he had realized. He wondered when Lilly would bring what was left of it, and how he would treat her. Was it proper or improper to invite her in to drink with him?… mycket trevligt -yes, he had enjoyed her, and it would be relaxing to drink with her as they had in the car at the prow of the ferry-boat. Still, he did not feel like talking. He wanted her female presence, and most of all he wanted to unbutton her white blouse.

The eroticism of his thoughts surprised him. He felt immature and ashamed and disloyal to Harriet. He tried to explain to her, and went back to find her, as so often he did, and at once he felt more comfortable in the past, which was all solved with its beginnings, middles, ends, than he ever could in the present, which offered him only beginnings and enigmas. It was good to go home again, where everything had happened and was done, and no burdens of proof existed, no demands, no mysteries, because it was done…

It was the winter after the end of World War II, and New York was bedded down in snow. Two days before, he had been honourably discharged from the Signal Corps at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and now he was in an old hotel on Forty-fourth Street, off Sixth Avenue, waiting for the holiday season to end-it was the week between Christmas and New Year-so that he could see the magazine editors and then leave the city that always made him feel unsure and dissatisfied.

On this day, luxuriating in his civilian status, drawing on his newly acquired pipe, he stared into the street below the hotel-even the snow was dirty here-and he could not understand the lyricists and singers of this city. What was there to recommend it? There was no sky, no earth with flowers and all things green, no private air to inhale, no aesthetic beauty, no neighbourliness, no place to daydream or meditate leisurely. But its professional spokesmen, with inverted snobbery, treated these lacks as its very virtues. It was a place alive and crackling, a place stimulating, civilization’s centre. The centre of what? He wondered. The plays were mediocre gabble, projected by over-publicized personalities rather than first-rate talents, in shameful, musty old barns. Concerts were no better, their small voices and small orchestral sounds slanted at pseudo specialists and reading aesthetes who would turn off the same sounds if heard in a private room. Businesses were the worst, because here competitors were piled on top of each other like gigantic club sandwiches, yet they were expected to disarm and treat each other civilly at lunch and dinner, which was anti-nature, and there could be no other reason for the statistics on martinis dry, ulcers bleeding, and analysts prospering.