Irving Wallace - The Prize

Lilly Hedqvist, curled beneath the blanket, slept a few feet from him on the double bed. She slept with the easy innocence of a child girl, strands of her tangled hair across her cheeks, hiding all but the beauty mark above her mouth. The blanket was drawn to her shoulders, so that only the flimsy white straps of her nightgown were visible.

Studying her in this unguarded moment of inanimateness, Craig was touched. He had invaded her privacy, a stranger, a foreigner, a drunk, and she had taken him in with unreserved kindness and open trust, and offered him her care and her bed. Craig owed her much, he knew, and what he owed her first was to leave her undisturbed and to remove himself from her presence.

Reluctantly, he eased himself off the bed, wishing he had been given this meeting before the time of his disintegration. But then, he told himself, this meeting would not have occurred, for it had been born of pity-hers for him, and his for himself.

He padded after the bathroom, opening a cupboard by mistake, and then finding the bathroom. With the fluorescent light on, and the inevitable mirror before him, he tried to see in the reflection what Emily Stratman had seen before midnight and Lilly Hedqvist had seen since midnight. He saw a gaunt and angular face ravaged by weakness, and it sickened him. Turning on the tap, he doused his face in cold water and then washed. He rinsed his mouth. Briefly, he felt revived. He was sober and, incredibly, without a hangover. He took a silent vow: a new leaf, no more drink, no more self-destruction, no more anti-life.

Tiptoeing into the living-room, he picked his shirt and trousers off the chair beside the bed, and then, suddenly, as he stood there, he was too fatigued to dress. He wanted only the bed again, that and an infinity of warmth and peace, and a later awakening to a world where something mattered. Weary and dispirited, he lowered himself to the edge of the bed. He sat hunched, inert, knowing it was almost nine of a dark winter’s morning, knowing Leah waited and the Nobel committees waited and the programme waited, and he was not ready for celebrations.

‘Where are you going, Mr. Craig?’

Lilly’s voice startled him, and he spun around. She was on her back, beneath the cover, head turned towards him, one hand brushing the hair from her eyes and the other holding the blanket to her throat.

‘To the hotel,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get away without awakening you.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want to compromise you.’ He considered this. ‘No, that’s not it at all. I was ashamed to face you.’

‘There is no reason for shame.’

‘The way you saw me-’

‘I saw a man who drank too much and was tired. I did not care. I had thought of you-the funny time we had on the Malmö ferry-and I was glad you thought of me and came to me.’

‘Yes, I did think of you.’

She pushed herself upright, against the pillow, still holding the blanket before her. With her free hand, she patted the bed. ‘Come here, Mr. Craig.’

He dropped his clothes, and went around the bed, and sat beside her.

‘Why did you think of me last night?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know exactly, Lilly.’

‘You do know.’

‘I wanted to be alone at first, and I was beaten, and then I didn’t want to be alone-I wanted companionship-and you came to mind-I had enjoyed you-and somehow I came here.’

‘But you have not had companionship, as you say. You have slept, and now you go, but you are still alone.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is this the way you want it-to still be alone?’

‘Lilly, for God’s sakes-’

‘No, you must be truthful with me and yourself. You must learn that. Why did you really come to me?’

‘All right, you asked-because I wanted you, dammit-’

‘You wanted me,’ she repeated, flatly, levelly, without the inflection of a question. ‘Yes, that is true. Then why are you afraid of it? Why do you make such complexity of loving and being loved? Why do you come alone and go alone?’

‘It takes two-’

‘We are two.’ She threw the blanket off her body and held out her arms. Immediately, he was beside her, in her arms, embracing her, kissing the hollow of her throat and neck and cheek.

‘Wait,’ she said softly, ‘we are still apart.’ She settled his head on the pillow, and bent and disrobed him completely. Then she took the hem of her white nightgown, and, gathering the nylon folds, she lifted it and pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor. ‘There, now we are the same, both nudists.’

She was on her knees, posing for him, smiling. He studied her sensuous young body with pleasure. From the pink expanse of her chest her bust developed gradually, in a classical protruding curve, to the great circles of red nipples with their hardening points, and then the breasts rounded back into the full flesh of the body. The breasts were young and bursting, suspended straight outward, yet were not appendages but part of a symmetry of the whole, all faultlessly circular, like her rounding belly, the navel almost hidden, and the hips and thighs.

She came off her knees and stretched out full length, pulling his head down between her breasts. ‘You are tired, I can see, but now you will not rest alone.’

For a long time, he lay against her bosom, luxuriating in the pervading heat and knowing peace within himself, until slowly, slowly, tranquillity was kindled into desire. He began to kiss her, and could hear her heart as he heard his own. And now she had his head in her hands, and kissed his forehead and eyes, and at last, his lips.

‘Lie back,’ she whispered. ‘Yes-’

He felt his shoulder blades on the bed, but still held her waist, as she came over above him, encompassing him, burning her flesh into his until her flesh was fused to his trunk, and their corporeality was consummated.

All reason left him, and as he gave himself to sensation, he gasped, ‘Thank you, Lilly-’

Her voice was far away, and reached him from a distance, riding the surge and swell of a breaker. ‘Never-thank me-never,’ she whispered. ‘Lovers do not thank-’

And the rest was her sigh lost and suffocated by the onrushing whitecap of passion.

‘Lilly-Lilly-’

Her breath was on his cheeks and her oscillating murmurs were in Swedish, and he opened his heavy eyes and saw her, almost unreal with her tumbling flaxen hair and swaying breasts and creased belly, like some transported Norse goddess.

He wanted to tell her that she had come from heaven, but then she curled forward, closer and closer, her presence flowing over him, so that it was not a breaker that engulfed him but lava, and he could not speak. Her open mouth touched his, and he thought she whispered, ‘Freya.’

And he remembered Freya, Swedish goddess of carnal love, and he was shorn of control, and all gentleness was out of reach. He took her arms, and pulled her down, rolling her over to her side, so that they were side by side. The waves again buffeted him, and consciousness flickered low, but she managed to hold him to her. And suddenly he was released from the eddy, freed of the vortex, and lay spent in her arms.

‘Do not move,’ she said, and seconds later, she gave a convulsive shudder, and fell back, hands covering her eyes.

After a while, she removed her hands, and opened her eyes.

‘ Du är inte ensam ,’ she said. ‘You are not alone.’

But he had not heard her. He slept.

IT was early afternoon when Andrew Craig returned to the Grand Hotel.

His mood had improved over the previous day. Physically, he felt cleansed of old poisons, and consequently rested and at ease. For the first time in several years, he had slept without drink or drug, and the sleep had been dreamless and relaxed.