The Prize (135 page)

‘Because I’ve decided to double the population of my One World. I’ve given you an entry visa. Behave, my good man, and you may become a naturalized citizen.’

Craig considered her with wonder. There was some quality of unreality about her person. He could not divine it. His life, once, had been frequented by the self-absorbed and the egotistical, but never had he encountered another human being narcissistic to the point of total disinterest in general right or wrong.

‘I would be flattered to be a citizen of Norberg,’ he said, to say something, ‘but I’m not exactly sure I know what you’re driving at.’

‘Time will tell,’ she said cryptically. She squinted at his empty glass. ‘Now, what will it be—whisky or water?’

‘Hard to decide. I could use another drink. Hammarlund has left a bad taste in my mouth. At the same time, I’d like to cleanse myself entirely. I’d say water.’

She pointed a limpid hand off. ‘Door behind the diving-board. Built-in
cabaٌa
. There are drawers full of swim trunks. Take your choice.’

‘What’ll you be doing?’

‘Keeping the water warm for you.’

He stood up and strode to the
cabaٌa
door, conscious of her wide, grey, amoral eyes upon his back, and then he went into the
cabaٌa
. He stripped down quickly, opened several wall drawers, tried various swimming shorts against his angular frame, and then pulled on a white jersey pair that appeared to have elasticity. They were cut high, and they were tight, and he still felt naked but did not care much. He wanted the water’s refreshment—and to discover what business M
ن
rta Norberg had been withholding from him.

When he went out into the
lanai
, he saw that she was already in the pool, wearing a lemon-coloured bathing cap and scant bikini, backstroking with the grace of a sea nymph across the pool. She bobbed up straight at the deep end, treading near the waterfall, and shouted deeply, ‘Come in, Craig, it’s delicious.’

He was inspired to do a dramatic jack-knife off the short board, but knew that he was out of shape and would certainly strain muscles or break his neck, so he elected conservatism and went off the side in a flat shallow, splashing dive. The water was tepid on his body, and as soothing as the lining of his old sheepskin coat left behind in Miller’s Dam. Stroking and kicking in a modified crawl, he traversed the pool to M
ن
rta Norberg’s side.

‘You look mighty smart in those trunks, young man,’ she said, her long Swedish face sparkling with beads of water. ‘Like a tall Jantzen ad. What was your sport in school? Basketball?’

‘Football. Left end.’

‘I never went to school—at least not much,’ she said. ‘My family was too poor. I had to drop out at the end of
realskola
—grammar school. I had my schooling later, when I could afford tutors. That’s when I took up sports. Ski-ing for winter. Tennis for summer. And this all the time.’ She was almost girlish, and Craig liked her more. ‘Want to race?’ she said.

‘One, two, three—go,’ he said.

They went off churning to the opposite end, then touching and rolling, kicked off to reverse their course. She came in three yards ahead of him.

‘You didn’t tell me you were Gertrude Ederle,’ he said, gulping for air.

‘Who she? Look, Craig, I’m not all
that
old.’

After that they swam leisurely, no games, the backstroke, the Australian crawl, the breast stroke, a good deal of floating, and no conversation at all. After twenty minutes of this they found themselves facing each other, breathless, holding the rim of the pool at the shallow end alongside the metal ladder.

‘You had enough, Craig?’

‘Just about.’

‘So much for pleasure. You want to talk business?’

‘I don’t know what business—but you said there was some.’

‘Important business, important for both of us.’

He held the rim of the pool, and splashed water on his chest. ‘Shoot.’

‘I won’t waste words,’ said M
ن
rta Norberg. ‘I called my agent in New York. He called yours. My agent then called a studio in Hollywood. And minutes before you came, he called me.’

‘Alexander Graham Bell is the man in your life.’

She ignored this. Her face was concentrated. All humour had fled, and even some femininity with it. ‘We have a deal to offer you, a firm deal, no ifs, no maybes. I want your new novel,
Return to Ithaca
, for a picture in which I’ll star. Since you’re still writing it, the studio has agreed I can offer you twenty thousand dollars down against two hundred thousand when the novel is finished. That’s fat, Craig, when your bank account is thin, and yours is, I know—I know from your sister-in-law and I know from your agent. I also know after you’ve paid up debts with your Nobel money, and lived it up a bit, you’ll be lean again, scratching. What do you say?’

Craig was too taken aback by this news, and her offer, to say anything at first. His head spun. ‘How can you spend so much on a book that’s hardly written and that you haven’t read?’

‘I know what it’s about. Miss Decker told me the whole story last night. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for—for years—and, as you know, from the studio angle anyway, the fact that you’ve won the Nobel Prize enhances the property.’

‘You mean, Leah told you the whole story?’ Inwardly, he cursed Leah and thanked her, simultaneously. Leah had typed and retyped those early pages, and outline notes, and knew the characters and plot as well as he. But she had no right to broadcast it, peddle it so naïvely, without his knowledge or approval. At the same time, it was a miracle that she had been so indiscreet. The timing was perfect. He could use the money. It was a windfall. He hardly bothered to consider if he was capable of finishing the book. Somehow, the freedom that the money would buy him made the creativity seem possible. That is, if he would not drink, if he would not flagellate himself with Harriet, if he could leave Stockholm an integrated man with a will for life.

M
ن
rta Norberg had replied, ‘Yes, I know the story forwards and backwards,’ and then had remained silent, allowing him his introspection.

Now a curious dark doubt crossed his brain and bothered him. ‘If you know the story,’ he said slowly, ‘then you must know there is no real part in it for you. The whole book is the hero, a man, one man. All the women have nothing more than episodes. There are six women in the book. They come and go. They have little bits and pieces. What would you do?’

‘I would be Desmona, the bohemian girl he marries.’

‘But she’s only in three chapters, and then she’s killed. That’s all there is of her, except what she is in his mind. You see, after she’s killed—’

‘I wouldn’t let her be killed,’ said M
ن
rta Norberg simply. ‘I’d throw out the other five women—well, four anyway—and keep Desmona alive.’

Craig frowned. ‘Miss Norberg, I respect your genius as an actress—indeed, I worship it. But you are not an author. I am an author. This is my book, and in it Desmona dies early. Without that, there’s no point to the story line.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculously inflexible. You can change it around. There are a hundred possibilities, based on the little I have heard. Why, you haven’t even written her death scene yet. So all you have to do is not write it at all. You can make it an accident or something—she’s injured—in fact, I think that improves your story a great deal. And then, you can reshape the rest.’

Craig was appalled. He measured his words. ‘Let me get this straight. I want no semantic misunderstanding. Are you suggesting—actually suggesting—that you will buy my next novel if—only
if
—I change it to conform to your idea of what the heroine should be?’

M
ن
rta Norberg laughed, and lowered herself deeper in the water. ‘You make it sound like I’m threatening you. Don’t be an arty boy, Craig—one of those too young, ever young, foolish New England boys, forever out of the Ivy—making believe they are tender Prousts, untouched by human hands or other minds, putting down their precious, puny, gilded words as if the heavens had rent asunder to inspire them. What nonsense, and you know it, and I know it. Dickens, Balzac, Dumas, the whole lot of them, wrote by the page, manufactured to please their printers or their public, and nothing was spoiled, because they were good. Well, you’re good—and keeping one character alive to suit a customer and to keep your bank account in balance won’t make you a hack or sell you out. It’ll only teach you that you’ve grown up.’

‘What if I answer no, flatly no? Will you make the deal anyway?’

‘Of course not. As you say, there would be nothing in it for me.’

He hated to say the next, but he wanted the deal.

‘You could change it around in Hollywood. I wouldn’t give a damn about that.’

‘Impossible. The book itself will be widely read and known—serial, book clubs, trade edition, paper edition—and I want that heroine built up—talked about—loved—long before I give her life on the screen. Now, will you do it?’ She smiled at him sweetly. He was about to speak, evidently in anger, for she quickly put her wet forefinger to his lips, sealing them. ‘Wait, Craig. Before you speak, there’s another aspect of my offer that I’ve deliberately withheld from you. I was going to tell you about it later—under—under more favourable circumstances.’ She paused. ‘I see you’re so male upset, I had better tell you now.’

‘All right—what?’

‘The two hundred thousand was only a part of my offer. There is a richer part, and it’s worth infinitely more. Do you know what that part is?’

‘No.’

‘Me.’ She smiled at his bewildered reaction. ‘Me, M
ن
rta Norberg,’ she said simply. ‘I go with the deal.’

At first he was puzzled, because what this innuendo suggested was possible between them had been so remote in his head, and then he pretended to be more puzzled than he really was, because if he had misunderstood her, he would be made to look a dunce. He studied her wet, celebrated, and mocking countenance beneath the rubber bathing-cap, and held his silence.

‘Did I shock you?’ she asked.

‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘Bingo,’ she said cheerfully. ‘As the little girls with curls used to say, in silent pictures, I’m prepared for a fate worse than death. I don’t have the cutes, Craig, and I don’t have coyness. When I collaborate, it’s all the way.’

He was so dumbfounded, he wondered how he could offer any negative reaction without sounding less than adult, less than masculine. He decided to handle the offer as lightly as she had originally made it, and see what would come of their talk. ‘My dear, no man has ever been more flattered.’

‘Balls,’ she said.

The expletive was not coarse but business like, and he grimaced. ‘You mean it, then? How can you—?’

‘It’s easy,’ she said curtly. ‘I want what you have, and you want what I have. That’s all that matters. I will add this. What makes the trade more agreeable is that I find you attractive, and I’m sure you find me so. Even if you weren’t attractive, my offer would still stand.’ She read the lingering disbelief on his features, and solemnly took one hand from the ladder and patted his cheek. ‘Don’t make a federal case of a simple proposition. You creative people are all the same. You think too much. You introspect every pleasure to death. Obey your real impulse, Craig, and you will look back on this night as the beginning of the most memorable deal—relationship—in your life.’