The Prize (23 page)

‘Please don’t—’

‘A man knows these contradictions are possible. On the one hand, I could accept one young girl’s sympathetic tenderness and physical love—and on the other, at the very same time, give my heart to another woman who seemed unattainable.’ He stopped. Then he said, ‘There’s my explanation. I can add nothing more to it, if you have no understanding of it.’

Emily was gazing fixedly at the opposite wall once again. For some seconds she did not speak, and at last she spoke without looking at him.

‘I wish I had such understanding, but I don’t have it,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand such things about men in general or you in particular. Maybe by some neutral judgment, you are in the right, and I am in the wrong, but this is what I am, and I have to live with my emotions and expectations.’ She paused, and now spoke with rising intensity. ‘I can’t bear looking at you or being near you or being touched by you, when I know that for days I was being treated like a pitiable half-woman—which I may be—and being courted—if that is what you were doing—by the least part of you, and knowing that you only found even this possible because the most of you had to have and could enjoy a full woman in the night. I can’t find the right words—it’s all nerve ends—but it has to do, for me, with feeling inadequate and somehow cheapened.’

She turned her head towards him. ‘You say you love me. I don’t know how it is possible, and I don’t know what the word love means to you, but I know what it means to me—and—and with me it is a different word altogether. But if you do have—let me say regard—if you do have regard for me, then the best thing you can do is to leave me alone.’ Her hurt green eyes had filled, and he had a sudden impulse to hold her—or shake her, or make love to her—but he could do nothing.

‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Go to your Swedish friend, and let her fill your wants—let her love you again and again—but just don’t come near me, not now and not ever.’

She jerked her head away from him and buried her face in the pillow.

Craig lifted himself off the corner of the bed and dragged his feet across the carpet to the doorway and through it. He retrieved his hat and coat, all too slowly, hoping beyond hope that she had the inconsistency of all women—as Harriet had once had—and that she would recall him, because she loved him, too.

But no voice beckoned from the bedroom.

Craig went to the entry, and then into the hotel corridor, closing the door softly behind him.

He felt dislocated in time and purpose. He had no taste for dinner. His appetite was long gone. He had no interest in his room, where Leah might lie in wait, expecting his anger and relishing another opportunity to remind him of his debt. He had desire for nothing but oblivion.

He made his way to the elevator and descended to the bar.

He was lifted skyward in the triangular cage at Polhemsgatan 172C, and when it creaked to a halt at the sixth floor, he fumbled to open the cage and be out of it.

Only once he stumbled, which was not bad, not bad at all, he congratulated himself, for one who had been drinking steadily, alone, for over three hours.

He knocked on the door with the ‘C’ and squinted at the window and fire escape nearby and he waited. It was important that she be in tonight, the most important thing in their lives.

And then came her voice through the panel. ‘
Ja?
’

‘It’s me.’

The door flung open, and Lilly Hedqvist was his own, the cascade of golden hair, the welcome smile accentuating the beauty mark, the lavender robe.

‘Mr. Craig, I am so happy to see you.’

He directed himself in a straight line to the mosaic on the wall, and then sat clumsily on the hard, straight sofa beneath the mosaic.

‘Lilly,’ he said, ‘I am loaded to the gills. Do you want to throw me out?’

‘To have you run over by a car or maybe faint? Never. You will stay right here, until I say you are all right.’

‘And also I’m hungry. Haven’t eaten since noon.’

‘I will cook for you,’ she said gaily.

‘Only eggs. Scramble ‘em. And black coffee black.’

‘You are so easy to please.’

He had tried to find his pipe and tobacco, and did, and then dropped both. Quickly, Lilly picked them up.

‘I will fix it,’ she said. She dipped the pipe into the pouch, and packed it, and gave it to him. Then she lit it. ‘There. And do not burn my sofa.’

‘You’ll make some man a good wife,’ he said.

She started for the kitchenette. ‘I hope so.’

‘But I won’t let you,’ he said. ‘Because I want you to make me a good wife—me—not some man.’

She had slowed with this, and then stood still, her back to him, and now she came around, forehead knitted, and looked at him.

‘Are you making a joke, Mr. Craig?’

‘I’m perfectly serious. I’m proposing, young lady. I’m asking for your hand in marriage.’

‘You mean it,’ she said. It was not a question but a statement of fact.

‘Of course I mean it, Lilly. Never meant anything more. We can get married here, and then, you and your son, we can go back to the States, and—’

She moved towards him. ‘Mr. Craig, why do you ask to marry me?’

‘I don’t know why. You want to marry someone, and you ask them.’

‘But why—now—me?’

His mind dwelt on the incomprehensibility of all women, and he wanted a drink. ‘Because I care for you and need you, Lilly, and you can make me alive again.’ He was too sodden to concentrate in this serious vein. She liked fun. They had not often been serious. Fun. ‘I will buy you a Thunderbird and refrigerator and Bergdorf dress and nudist camp.’

She had circled the coffee table and was now on the sofa beside him, rubbing the back of her neck beneath her golden hair, face too solemn.

‘You do not want to marry me, Mr. Craig.’

‘Lilly, I know what I want. I’m asking you to be my wife.’

‘If you are asking so serious, it is bad then, because I must say no.’

He prickled and sobered slightly. ‘You said no?’

‘I do not wish to marry you.’

He was too drunk to be depressed, but he had recognized her reply as a phenomenon. He had made up his mind while drinking, and had imagined her pleasure, a famous and wealthy American Lancelot, Galahad, to rescue her from insecurity, work, unwed motherhood. Yet she had said no.

‘But I thought—’ he began. ‘What’s wrong with me? Am I too old?’

‘Oh, no. That is all right.’

‘Don’t you like me? I thought you liked me. We get along, and we have fun, and it would always be better.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or is it that you have been sorry for me—the sad, middle-aged old man who is drunk and lonely—’

‘Of course not—never!’

‘Why did you let me love you, then?’

‘Mr. Craig, you are making that too much, I have told you, and Daranyi has told you. Because a woman sleeps with a man in Sweden is not the same as America—is not to prove eternal love—is not a pledge for marriage. Maybe I was sorry for you, but not so much. And I would not give you body love for that reason. I offered my body love, because you are in many ways the kind of man I enjoy—you are serious and silly, and handsome and tall, and grown up—and, most of all, fun. I wanted to enjoy you, and you wanted me, and there was no more necessary. It is the most important thing, maybe, to have pleasure when you feel like it and not always look and wait for something that maybe does not come or comes too late. That is enough, what we have. Must I give you my heart too? Must there be a legal ceremony? Does that make us happpier or better?

‘We cannot marry together, because the fun is all right for a while—but a marriage is more practical and formal, and we do not have common things. You are too intelligent for my mind. You would tire of me. I am like a young girl who is always a young girl, who likes only the outdoors and to be frivolous, and you are not so, and I would tire of you.’

A moment before he had ceased listening to her, because something else had entered his head. ‘Lilly, I know what is wrong. You know nothing about me, except I am a writer. You think I’m just another American tourist—a bad prospect—but that is not so. I could give you a fabulous life. Do you know who I am?’

It was like handing her an expensive birthday present, and he could not wait to open it for her.

But she was speaking. ‘You are Andrew Craig, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature.’

His mouth fell open. ‘You knew?’

‘Not at first, but I have known. Daranyi told me.’

‘And you can still say no?’

‘I respect you, Mr. Craig, and am proud to have been loved by someone so famous. But what has that to do with marriage? I cannot be happy because I have married a prize.’

He felt maudlin and also depressed, at last. ‘Then it’s no?’

‘There is one more reason,’ she said at last, ‘and it is one more reason why you would not be happy with me forever.’

He waited.

‘You are in love with another girl, and you really want to marry her.’

Lilly’s knowledge was startling and eerie, and he kept staring at her. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Daranyi. He told me.’

‘How in the devil would he know?’

‘He knows everything, Mr. Craig. It is his business. He is making an investigation now for somebody connected with the Nobel Prize—Dr. Krantz—a bad man, Daranyi says, because he is always liking the Germans—and now he wants to know all about you and the other winners, and Daranyi helps and finds out everything—’

‘I don’t give a damn about Krantz,’ said Craig. ‘I want to know about this thing you heard about me.’

‘It is because Daranyi is like my father—always protecting me—and that is why he told me about you and about Emily Stratman.’

‘You even know her name.’

‘Emily Stratman. Her uncle is Professor Stratman. She is born in Germany. She is now American. She is beautiful and strange and not married. You met her at the Royal Palace. You took her on a tour of the city. You were with her at Mr. Hammarlund’s dinner. And Daranyi says maybe you love her like you did your wife.’

‘And that’s why you won’t marry me?’

‘No, Mr. Craig, I assure you. It is for all the reasons I give. You do love her, do you not?’

He hesitated. Her face was so open, her honesty and strength so plain, that he could not lie to her. ‘Yes, I do, Lilly. And do you hate me?’

‘Hate you? How foolish you are, Mr. Craig. Of course not. It is as always with us.’