The Prize (111 page)

‘I cannot say for certain, Carl. I might stay until the tenth.’

‘Well, tell me the second you know. If you stay on, I will have to tackle the manager of the Grand again. Oh, he will extend your accommodation, but I must know so that I can arrange it.’

‘I will let you know tomorrow, Carl.’

‘When are you seeing Stratman?’

‘In the next hour. As soon as I have checked in, I will call his room. I cabled. He is expecting me.’

‘And you know he will see you?’

Eckart rubbed his scar meditatively. ‘Why should he not see me, Carl? You forget. Max Stratman and his brother and I worked side by side at the Kaiser Wilhelm all through the war. We are friends, old friends. Today, we will have lunch. We will speak of many things.
Gemütlichkeit
will be the note. You make a reservation for us, the moment I register. The Riche, I think. That would be the best restaurant. . . . Yes, Carl, have no fear, Max Stratman will be waiting for this reunion.’

Andrew Craig and Leah Decker occupied the desirable corner suite 225 in the Grand Hotel. Directly above it, having the same dimensions and identical in furnishings, was suite 325, which, for the duration of Nobel week, was tenanted by Emily Stratman and Professor Max Stratman.

At 1.20 in the afternoon, Craig arrived at suite 325 and rapped on the door.

After a moment, the door opened, and although Emily was not visible, he heard her voice. ‘You can roll it right in the living—’ And then her head appeared around the door, and she saw Craig. ‘Oh, it’s you—forgive me—I’d ordered lunch from room service and—please come in.’

He followed her through the entry into the sitting-room. His eyes were on her semi-shingled dark hair, and when she turned to take his overcoat, he enjoyed again the black curls that curved forward on her cheeks, framing her face in piquant loveliness. She wore a loose forest-green tunic of jersey, that draped outward and straight down from her breasts, and the tight cotton-knit green slacks beneath, smooth and chic, adhered to her hips and thighs. He had never seen her dressed this informally, and there was an ease about her that pleased him.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

‘Famished.’

‘I can still catch them downstairs. Will you join me?’

‘Why do you think I’m here?’

She picked up the white room service telephone, and was instantly connected. ‘This is Miss Stratman in 325. If you’ve still got my order, I’d like to add another to it.’ She listened, said, ‘Please hold on,’ cupped the mouthpiece and told Craig, ‘In the nick of time. They’ll keep mine warm while they get yours ready. What are you having?’

‘Whatever you’re having.’

‘That’s Swedish roulette,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’m having. They brought the
middagen
menu—that’s what it said—and I pointed to
Kalvschnitzel med spaghetti
.’

‘That sank the Titanic. Okay by me. And any kind of Danish beer.’

She put through Craig’s order and sat several feet from him on the sofa.

‘I want to thank you again for last night, Andrew. It was lovely.’

‘For me, too.’

‘I can always tell when it’s good. I went to bed early, because I wanted to think about it and nothing else, and before I knew it, I was asleep. What did you do after?’

How could he tell her of his similar good intention, and how quickly it had paved the road to hell? How could he tell her of finding Leah naked in his bed—so fantastic now, in the daylight—and of their bitter quarrel? Even to hint at it would frighten Emily.

‘I read a Gideon Bible,’ he said.

‘Did you really?’

‘I wanted to see what those boys had. It needs a polish job. They’re on to a good idea, but the characters aren’t believable, and the sex is too explicit and there’s no book that can’t be helped with a little cutting. I think one rewrite would do it.’

‘Silly.’

‘I had a good night’s sleep, too, Emily, until the Uppsala boys’ chorus woke me at some ungodly hour.’

‘They serenaded you? I heard they did that.’

‘Warn your uncle. Tell him to wear earplugs every night. No, I’m kidding. It was very nice. It turned out I was supposed to lecture them this morning on Hemingway and the Icelandic sagas.’

‘Did you?’

‘I lectured, all right. I just came from there. They got an Icelandic saga, I’ll say—Miller’s Dam, Wisconsin, on a winter morning. The snow sometimes piles up five or six feet.’

‘Did you discuss writing?’

‘I said authors want to write, have to write, and all the rest don’t want to write, they only want to be authors. I said that was the essential difference, the one that separates the men from the boys. They got the message. Most of them will wind up manufacturing matches, but they were a nice bunch. I have to do a repeat performance for a group from two other universities at three-thirty.’ He paused. ‘What have you been up to this morning?’

‘Uncle Max wanted to rest. He has an old friend coming in from Berlin, and he has to see him for lunch. He’s dressing right now. We just stayed in and lazed. It’s too cold out, anyway. I studied all morning—’

She picked up a book, one she had purchased the day before at Fritze’s, from the coffee table.

‘—Swedish into English, English into Swedish. I’m determined.’

‘Anything I should know?’

‘Indispensable,’ said Emily. She opened the language book and leafed through it. ‘Here is the Swedish phrase, and here it is in English. “Who will pull me across the lake?” Now, how could you get along without that? Here is another. “Please get me a clean knife.” That one haunts me, like the ending of Dickens’s
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
. And here we have “The wine is too warm, fetch some ice.” And the pessimism. Here is a little exchange one is expected to learn in Swedish. Question: “
Hur g
ه
r aff
ه
rerna?
How is business?” Answer: “
Stilla.
Dull.” Question: “
Hur m
ه
r Eder man?
How is your husband?” Answer: “
Han
ن
r mycket sjuk
. He is very ill.” Cheerful, isn’t it?’

Craig laughed, and took the book from her. ‘Have you learned anything yet?’

‘Several words.’

‘Let’s find out.’ He read aloud. ‘
Spottning fِrbjuden.
’

‘Heaven help me. What does that mean?’

‘No spitting . . . what every young lady should know . . .
Glِgg
. What’s
glِgg
?’

‘I know that! Brandy—burnt brandy.’

‘Very good, Miss Emily.’ Craig consulted the book again. ‘
Helgeflundra.
’

‘Halibut,’ said Emily promptly.

‘My God, you’re right. And
m
ن
ssling?
’

‘
M
ن
ssling—m
ن
ssling
—sounds like something you chew or an Oriental form of wrestling.’

‘You are quarantined. It means measles. Here is one you can’t do without—
ormskinn
.’

‘I surrender.’

‘Snakeskin. Had enough?’

‘Well, one more.’

‘All right,’ said Craig. ‘What does
renstek
do to you?’

‘It gives me indigestion.’

‘Right. It’s reindeer steak. Oh, wait, just one more. What if a stranger said to you—
avkl
ن
da?
’

‘I’d say you’re welcome.’

‘It means undress.’

‘Mr. Craig!’ But she smiled when she said that, and Craig knew everything was fine between them.

He threw the book down. ‘My only advice to you, young lady, is don’t go out with a Swede.’

‘If I do, I’ll stick to “Please get me a clean knife.” ’

‘I see you don’t need me.’

‘But I do,’ said Emily.

There was a knock on the hall door, and Emily called out, ‘It’s open!’

The waiter, in a white jacket, towel over one arm, came in pulling a portable table filled with covered plates, the coffeepot, and a bottle of beer.

As the waiter reached the sitting-room, Professor Max Stratman, wearing a hat and short overcoat, emerged from his bedroom.

He did not seem surprised to see Craig. ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Craig. Are you going to keep Emily company?’

‘Until three, I hope.’

‘Very good.’ Stratman kissed Emily’s cheek. ‘Do not let him charge any more to our bill. Let him spend his prize, and we will spend ours.’

‘I’ll watch him, Uncle Max. Where will you be? Downstairs?’

‘No. We are having lunch at an elegant restaurant around the corner. At least, that was the way Eckart put it. He was always the one for fancy places. I remember during the war. He was the only one of us who could talk his way into Horcher’s.’ And then to Craig, ‘That was where G
ن
ring ate, so it was good. Take care of my girl.’

He went slowly, thoughtfully, out the door.

The waiter had almost finished arranging the luncheon, when Emily suddenly rose. ‘Excuse me a second.’ She hurried into her uncle’s room.

Craig had signed the bill, and the waiter had left, before she returned. She was reading a telegram, and her face was troubled.

‘What’s the matter, Emily?’

She looked up absently. ‘What? Oh, I always check his room after he goes. He’s so forgetful. Sometimes he leaves his pipe lighted on the table, and the hot ashes fall out. We had two small fires last year.’ She sat down next to Craig. ‘The pipe was all right—but I found this wire.’

‘Anything wrong with it?’

‘Not exactly, but—’ She folded the telegram. ‘It’s from this friend he used to work with in Berlin, the one he’s lunching with now. This man, Hans Eckart, says he has read my uncle is in Stockholm for the Nobel Prize and congratulates him. He says he, too, will be in Stockholm, and would like to have lunch with him today and will phone him. He says they have much to talk about, and he brings news of Walther.’

‘Walther?’

‘My father. Strange, after all these years.’

‘Not so strange,’ said Craig. ‘This man stayed on in Berlin, and may have heard more of what happened to your father, and it’s a natural thing to pass it on to his old friend.’

‘Yes, I suppose,’ said Emily slowly.

Craig studied her face. ‘You’re still not convinced. What’s bothering you?’

‘The origin of the telegram,’ she said. ‘It was sent yesterday from
East
Berlin. I tell myself—what good can come from East Berlin?’

Riche’s restaurant, located at Birger Jarlsgatan 4, several long blocks behind the Grand Hotel, was one of Stockholm’s most expensive and superior restaurants. Every international capital has its elegant dining-place where the
élite
—the wealthy, the titled, the powerful businessmen, the renowned artists—are recognized at once, and, as the ruling class of celebrity, they are seated promptly and kept apart from the ordinary customers. Riche was was one of these.

The glassed-in veranda facing the street—where the music was soft and the voices hushed, and one could look out and take pleasure in the tall, well-dressed Swedish men and tall, well-dressed Swedish women passing by in the prosperous thoroughfare—was the choice site for dining. And here, through Krantz’s intervention, Dr. Hans Eckart, of East Berlin, Germany, and Professor Max Stratman, of Atlanta, United States, had been seated half an hour before.

Now Eckart had ceased speaking. He waited as the empty
consommé
dishes were removed, and their waiter served rare beef cuts off a wagon, and the
sommelier
brought fresh beers and poured them.

From beneath his half-closed eyelids, arms folded on his vest, Stratman pretended to watch the elaborate service, but actually observed the man across the table from him. Their meeting in the lobby, their walk to the restaurant, their beginning at the table, had come off easily and without incident. To Stratman’s eyes, Eckart, except for the thinning and greying of his hair, and wrinkles at his neck, and an air more authoritative than before, had not changed since the war years. The monocle was still caught in place, and it reflected light whenever he moved his head. The scar was as livid and dramatic as before. The corded Prussian rigidity of the face was inhuman as it had ever been. All that had really changed, Stratman decided, was that Eckart had not been given to wasted words, but in the past half-hour he had been relatively garrulous, and pointless, in his conversation. Stratman made up his mind that Eckart was nervous. Since he, himself, was not, he felt comfortable, and remained calm.

In the half-hour, after profusely congratulating Stratman on becoming a Nobel laureate, Eckart had devoted himself to reminiscing about the lighter side of the past that they had shared in common. He had recalled anecdotes of their long days in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and joked about their colleagues, and provided information on those who had survived and what had become of them. Eckart had a clever way of making that gruesome period of enforced confinement, of toil for the devil, seem congenial and sport, as if they had all had membership in a jolly men’s club, and as if this was now their best memory of the past.

As the waiters tactfully disappeared, Stratman realized that he did not like this spurious talk, that his dinner companion had never really been his friend (but only someone who had come and gone from the laboratory for two years), and that he was too old to fritter away his time on inconsequential prattle.

Eckart lifted his beer stein. ‘
Bitte
—your health, Max.’

‘To yours,’ said Stratman, and he drank, and then set his thick glass down decisively. ‘You seem to have tremendous affection for the past, Hans. I have less. My only affection for the time we shared is a memory of my brother Walther. Your cable spoke of him. I cannot imagine why. Maybe you are ready to tell me.’

Eckart, who was no longer used to brusqueness, frowned, but tried to convert displeasure into nostalgic pain. He had wanted the conversation to go his way, to be its sole pilot, but now he remembered that Max Stratman had often been called headstrong and impatient. He pretended to give consideration to his reply to measure it, as he efficiently sliced his roast beef.

‘What do you know of Walther’s death?’ asked Eckart.

‘What do I know? I know that when I was in England, before emigrating to America, the British advised me that he had been arrested by the OGPU immediately after my escape, for his role in it, and deported to a Siberian labour camp. There, a month or two later, he died or was put to death—I do not know which—even while I was still in the custody of the Americans in Germany. That is all I know.’

‘You have been misinformed,’ said Eckart.

‘Have I?’

‘Absolutely, my old friend. The British were propagandizing you. They wished an alliance with your hatred. Siberia? Labour camp? What a crazy story that is. No, believe me, I have the facts. Walther was not sent to Siberia but to a nuclear laboratory seventy miles from Moscow. When he was being screened, it was discovered—from a paper he had published—that he was an expert on the bubonic plague. At once, he was offered a better post. He was asked to join a team of other researchers, led by the renowned Dr. Viktor Glinko, engaged in experiments concerned with biological warfare—bacteria bombs—a magnificent attempt to simulate, for purposes of peace, the bubonic plague that killed five million people in France and England in 1348. In the initial experiments, there was an accident, many were killed, and Walther was among those declared missing, presumed dead. I give you my word, Max, and I believe it will relieve you to know this. Walther was never arrested or pressed into slave labour. He was intrigued by this new field. He volunteered to enter into it, and undertook a crash course that converted him from physicist to bacteriologist. He was given every consideration and comfort, until the end. And why not? You know how the Soviets respect scientists.’

‘So he volunteered to develop germ bombs?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am sorry, Hans. I do not believe you. I think I knew my older brother better than you. He would have been incapable of such a thing.’

‘Come now, Max, I understand your love for him, but that is all long ago, and you must be sensible. What was so wrong about that? He was an investigator, above petty politics. It was a challenge, and he was interested. Had he not always been interested? I have read a reprint of his scientific paper on the bubonic plague—’

‘Child’s play,’ interrupted Stratman. ‘He wrote that silly paper when he was in his twenties. Disasters of history were a hobby with him, and to have some fun, a small sensation—oh, possibly because he wanted attention, his vocation was so routine and dull—he applied the scientific attitude to the bubonic plague of 1348. Such child’s play is one thing. But to bottle black death for the Russians is quite another, and I will not accept it.’

‘His so-called child’s play was a bit more lethal,’ said Eckart insistently. ‘The Russians saw that, and so did I, when I read Walther’s paper. I do not refer to the history—all the detail about the bubonic plague killing off one-third of the population of France and England. I refer to Walther’s prophetic speculations on the possibilities of one day compounding biological agents to produce artificially the same epidemics as those once produced by the buboes-type plague and the pulmonary-type plague.’

‘I repeat—juvenile strutting. It was his only weakness. Walther was far too kind and good—’

‘Be that as it may. It is useless to labour the fact further. But you will not deny this, my friend—Walther did work on nuclear fission with us throughout the war.’

‘Of course, he worked on nuclear fission, as I did. We did it because we knew that the programme was so depleted of funds, so hamstrung by Hitler’s politics, that Germany could never have an atom bomb before the Reich was defeated. If there had been any other possible outcome, Walther and I would have died in Hitler’s ovens before co-operating. And Walther would have let his wife and daughter die, too.’ Stratman snorted with anger. ‘As it was, Walther’s wife died in Auschwitz anyway, and for nothing.’

Eckart quickly wore his mask of mourning. ‘That was a pity, a cruel mistake. I agree it was for nothing. I deplore that tiny Nazi gang as much as—’

‘What do you mean—tiny Nazi gang? The guilt was national, all Germany’s guilt, not the mere madness of a small political party.’

‘Come now, Max, you cannot believe that, no matter how bitter you may be. People are sheep. They go along. They have no idea what is happening around them. Each lives at his hearth, in his block, and no farther.’

‘It took thousands to shovel the bones out of those incinerators and millions to make up the
Wehrmacht
. To me, that is people. And the Russians are no better. So—now we have a lovely fairy tale to soothe the survivors. Walther was treated in a courtly way, and he died happily in the line of duty. Is that the news you have for me?’

‘I am sorry you will not believe it.’

‘I wish I could,’ said Stratman. He drank his beer, no longer having taste for the meal. ‘What is your source for the fairy tale?’