Irving Wallace - The Prize

When he had awakened, in a natural way, he had found the place beside him in bed empty. Of Lilly there had been left only a note pinned to the pillow:

DEAR MR. CRAIG, the coffee is on the stove, and you can heat it. I am off to work. I hope we will meet again. LILLY HEDQVIST.

After dressing and coffee, he had added a line in reply to her note. ‘I’ll see you soon’, he had written-and then he had gone down into the street. Outside the entrance, the elderly portvakt , the Swedish doorkeeper of the apartment, had been kneeling, adjusting the Christmas lights. Craig had almost bowled him over. But the old man had not been annoyed, had even been friendly, as if Craig were one of his tenants, and Craig guessed that Lilly had spoken to the portvakt of him.

Daylight had come to the city, and the air was windless and surprisingly mild, almost balmy. The sun hung high and bright in the cobalt sky, and Swedish pedestrians appeared gay and appreciative of the spring interlude.

Carrying his overcoat on his arm, Craig had made his way leisurely to the nearest square, noticing that the colours everywhere, and of everything-the women’s clothes, the pottery on a sill, the yellow furniture in a store window, the red-ribboned holiday packaging in a Tobak shop-were more vivid than before, either because of the sun or because of his own sobriety.

At the square, he had hailed a taxi and been driven back to the hotel that he had not seen in seventeen hours. Only when he was in the elevator, ascending, did he suddenly remember Leah and the new day’s official programme. He could not recall what the Nobel people had scheduled for this day, but he hoped, for their sake, it was not important, yet, for his sake, sufficiently interesting to have removed Leah from the premises. If Leah was in, he would have to have an excuse, and a plausible one-the more difficult to conceive, he told himself wryly, because he had not written fiction for so long-or suffer her chastisement. What he needed was a respite, time to think of a likely story, and he prayed fervently that Leah was out.

When he entered the suite, his agnosticism was confirmed. His prayer had not been answered. Leah’s handbag stood unyielding and stern, like a motorist’s warning sign, on the hall table.

Leah sat stiffly on the maroon chair in the living-room, holding the telephone in her lap, her bunched features as reproachful as those of a young widow.

‘Well,’ she snapped, ‘I see that you’re alive anyway. I’ve called everywhere but the morgue.’

Craig had crossed the room and dropped his coat on the sofa. ‘I’m sorry, Lee. I suppose I should have phoned.’

‘Should have phoned?’ she echoed shrilly. ‘How inconsiderate can any human being be of another? Here I am, a foreigner, an absolute stranger a million miles from nowhere, without a friend, with no one except you-what am I to think? It was bad enough leaving me flat at the palace last night-absolutely humiliating-but knowing you had gone out drunk as a lord, I stayed up half the night, until I fell asleep right in this chair, and since then, worrying-Did a car run you over? Did you fall in a canal?-God knows what I imagined.’

‘I couldn’t find you after the dinner,’ he said lamely. ‘I needed some air. Didn’t the Count give you my message?’

‘He didn’t say you’d disappear until the next afternoon.’

‘I didn’t mean to-’

‘You’re impossible,’ she scolded. ‘It’ll be so embarrassing now. What will they think? I called Count Jacobsson at the Foundation-Mr. Manker at the Foreign Office-I even talked to Professor Stratman.’

Craig flushed. ‘Stratman? What’s he got to do with me?’

Leah was less certain now, and immediately less aggressive. ‘I don’t know. I was frantic. I-after all-you had been with his niece last night. And then after I got the message that you’d gone, I saw Professor Stratman leave early with the girl, and I thought-well, maybe that you were meeting them-’

‘Or meeting her? Isn’t that what you mean?’ Craig was suddenly infuriated. ‘What if I had met them or her? Wouldn’t it be my business? Don’t I have any private life?’

‘Andrew, it’s not right to talk like that. I was worried about you, in your condition. Besides-besides, you’d brought me and-I don’t want to be a wet blanket, but-it’s etiquette, decent, to at least escort me back first.’

‘I just don’t like your notifying the whole place of every movement I make. You were worried about how I’d behave-a scandal. Well, if there is one, you’ll be the one who’s inviting it, with your hysterical calls.’

He was headed for the bedroom, when the telephone in Leah’s lap emitted a muffled ring. Leah started, almost dropping it, and Craig halted.

She was on the phone. ‘Oh, you’re very kind, Count Jacobsson. He walked in this minute… He’s fine, yes. He’d gone to visit some old friends, people he’d known when he was here before… What? Oh yes, yes, certainly, we’ll be ready. We’ll be in the lobby.’

She hung up, and looked at Craig unhappily. He wanted no victory such as this, and his anger evaporated. This was Sweden. When in Sweden, do as the Swedes do, invoke the Middle Way. Pacifism at any price.

‘Look, Lee, let’s not fight-’

‘I don’t want to fight. I just want you to be safe and well. I keep thinking of poor Harriet-I can’t help it.’

Inwardly, he winced. He had defences for all but this: his debts. Leah had again sent him the remainder of payment overdue and ever-mounting interest.

‘Lee, we were both wrong. You were wrong to churn up such a storm. I was wrong to have let you worry. I was terribly drunk, last night, and I did want to walk it off, so I went out and walked. It was cold and I wound up in a hotel bar for coffee, and then felt ill, and the barman saw that, and saw I was an American, and he packed me off on a cot in his back room to sleep it off. I suppose I needed that, because I slept through the night and morning.’

She wanted to believe it, and she wanted peace, but she could not help but be herself. ‘Your clothes aren’t rumpled,’ she said.

‘I didn’t wear them to sleep,’ he said patiently. ‘The barman got me out of them and hung them up.’

‘What if someone had discovered who you were-a Nobel laureate without his clothes-passed out on a cot in the back room of a bar? It would be terrible.’

He agreed with a penitent nod, and thought of the sharp young lady at yesterday’s press conference, Sue Wiley of Consolidated Newspapers, and how she would savour such a story. But he reminded himself that the story was not true, and so Miss Wiley was no threat. Then he remembered what was true, and revived the fresh memory of Lilly Hedqvist, Nordic girl goddess, and her uncomplicated and lusty abandon, and he wondered what Miss Wiley would think of that, and, indeed, what Leah would think, also.

The full import of his position-he was in the international lime light this week and the big microscope of journalism waited to magnify and enlarge every move he made-meant that he would have to be cautious of his every action, if he cared about his future. Until this morning he had not cared at all, but now there was some self-concern, mysteriously motivated, and he determined to be discreet about public drinking and private fornication.

‘You’re right, Lee,’ he said. ‘We don’t want any headlines until the Ceremony is over, and we have the fifty thousand.’

‘It’s not just that.’

‘I’m kidding. I said you’re right, Lee. Now I’m sober and properly regretful, and I have vowed reform. Add to that a meteorological fact: the sun is shining-an exceptional thing for winter in Sweden, I’m told-and the day lies ahead. Let’s go out for lunch.’