The Prize (34 page)

‘Mr. Craig is beautiful, too,’ Lilly was saying, ‘in the same way. He is secretly shy. It is appealing. I do not know how you could send him away yesterday, when he loves you from the heart so much.’

‘What makes you think he loves me?’

‘My eyes and ears and woman’s sense.’

The waitress had arrived with coffee, silver, and napkins, which she dispensed from a tray. Neither paid attention to her, and when she left, Lilly resumed.

‘When Mr. Craig went away from you last night, he became very drunk, which is natural. Then he visited me and offered to marry me because that was like committing suicide.’ She had said the last with a twinkle, and then with tiny laughter. ‘He was not serious, and I knew he was not serious. I made him confess the truth, and he admitted how much he loved you, and he told me everything about that.’

‘I—I cannot believe he means it.’

‘Why, Miss Stratman? You cannot believe a man loves one woman from the heart, when he is also in another woman’s bed?’

The naked question seemed to carry with it some implication of a personal failure in Emily, and she was less appalled by its asking than by this implication. ‘I wish I knew the right answer. I only know my answer. I was—yes, it upset me.’

‘You are now an American woman,’ said Lilly, ‘and I am a Swedish woman, and we are different. I must explain to you how I behave as I behave. On the outside, the Swedish girl is like the Swedish man—she is stiff, formal, with traditional manners. But with sex, she is open and free, because she is raised up with no prudishness. Education is honest about sex. In the country, we swim naked in summer. In the magazines, there is no censorship. And because there are so many women for so few men, it is a necessity not to make sex so difficult and rare—if you hold back the sex love, the man will find it easy in the next woman he meets. But that is not the main thing.’

She paused and sipped her hot coffee, and Emily waited.

‘In America, the heart love comes first, and if that is good, then you go until you have the sex love, which is last and made most important, and which the American woman saves for the final precious gift. In Sweden, it is the opposite way around. In Sweden, the sex love comes first, and if that is good, you wait to see if it grows to heart love, which is forever and to us the most important. Do I explain myself, Miss Stratman?’

‘Yes, you explain yourself well,’ said Emily, envying her.

‘I could so easy give Mr. Craig my sex love,’ said Lilly earnestly, ‘because it is not the important thing, and I think less of it, like kissing. The important thing, for me, was to see if our sleeping in bed would become more to us, would become heart love, so it would be a part of a greater love that would last always. But it did not grow and become more for Mr. Craig or for me, because he did not love me. He loved you.’

For the first time, fully, Emily had grave doubts about her standards in relation to Craig.

‘I tell you the truth, Miss Stratman,’ said Lilly. ‘If I had known that Mr. Craig loved me above the sleeping together, and if I had known my own love for him was more than that, we would not be here having coffee together, because he would be my husband forever. But I have told you, it did not happen and could not happen, because his real love was for you. I am telling you of myself, and I am telling you of Mr. Craig and myself, and now I will tell you of Mr. Craig and
yourself
.’

Emily waited outside Lilly, as if waiting outside the Oracle of Venus at ancient Paphos.

‘Mr. Craig showed his heart love for you immediately, Miss Stratman. If you had welcomed this, and loved him back from the beginning, he would never have come to my bed to be warm with someone, because he would not have needed another woman. He would have had, for his heart and his manhood, all he wanted in the world. It is you who sent him to me. It is you who have had the power to send him or keep him.’

‘But I couldn’t,’ said Emily wretchedly.

‘You could not—what? Keep him with love?’

Emily was helpless. ‘That’s right, Lilly.’

‘Why not? Is it because you are a virgin, or afraid to give your heart and life to someone’s hands?’

‘Neither and both. It is something more.’

‘Then I do not understand you.’

Emily tried to smile gratefully. ‘How can you? I don’t understand myself.’

‘You must change, or there will be no hope for you.’

‘I cannot change,’ said Emily simply.

She had gone beyond Lilly’s depth, she knew, because she had guarded what was within her and had chosen to hide behind enigma, and now, watching the wholesome Swedish girl finish her coffee and prepare to return to work, she felt the blackness of despair. For the conversation, so one-sided, open on Lilly’s side, closed on her own, made it clear to her at last, the extent to which the fault was her own and not the fault of Andrew Craig. To have turned him away, when she had known that she loved him, and now, to keep him away, when she knew that he loved her, was the stark revelation of the illness within that had not been healed.

She had never believed that she would hear the final dooming toll of the death of the heart, but she heard it now. She listened. It was against her eardrums, heavy as the beat of her heart, and she surrendered to the knowledge that she was incurable, and she would not have Craig or any man, because the disease had eaten away her ability to love, and there was nothing more to give, because there was nothing left.

In Carl Adolf Krantz’s apartment, it was now a few minutes before eight o’clock in the evening.

Daranyi had pretended to be finished with Emily Stratman, and then he had reported a few bits of scattered gossip on this one and that one, and then suddenly, as he folded his sheaf of papers, ‘Oh, there
is
one more thing.’

Deliberately, he returned the sheets to his right-hand jacket pocket, and as deliberately, he tugged two large photocopies and six smaller ones, folded and held together by a brass paper-clip, from his left-hand pocket.

He held the photocopies a moment, disliking this part of it and sorry for himself, and aware of Krantz’s wondering face behind the fern.

‘About Miss Stratman,’ said Daranyi. ‘I had almost forgotten. Your short biography of her interested me, the fact that she had been interned in Ravensbruck concentration camp during her adolescence. It occurred to me that it might be useful, on a long chance, to learn something of the people Miss Stratman had known in those years, and if any of her old associations had carried over, for her or Professor Stratman, to the present day. It occurred to me, also, that among the millions of old SS documents that had not been destroyed, that had been confiscated after the war, there might still exist one on Miss Stratman’s history. Since I had a friend who has the proper connections in West Berlin, I suggested that he do what he could. His success was remarkable. Photocopies of Miss Stratman’s SS file came to my hands late this afternoon. The dossier may have no real value to you, but still, one never knows, and I thought it might be of certain interest.’

‘Let me have a look,’ said Krantz.

Daranyi half rose and handed the two large photocopies and the six smaller ones across the top of the plant to his employer.

‘You will note,’ explained Daranyi, ‘that there are two sets of photocopies. The larger set is the copy of a summary of the report of Miss Stratman’s military psychoanalyst. You may find something useful in several unfamiliar names referred to—Frau Hencke, Dr. Voegler, Colonel Schneider. I am sorry I had no time to trace their histories. The smaller sheaf of photocopies represents a copy of an exchange of formal correspondence between departments of the Red Army and the American Army. Since the correspondence concerns Miss Stratman, it was also found in her file. Only one new name springs up in that correspondence—Dr. Kurt Lipski—not identified, but presumably a physician. I made a cursory check of my German library and found mention of three K. Lipskis of some importance in science today—one a naturalist, one a dermatologist, and one a bacteriologist. Nothing significant.’

Now Daranyi sat back, fingertips touching, eyes never leaving Krantz, as the other read the documents to himself. Krantz’s upper lip wriggled beneath his moustache, but his face betrayed no other reaction. At last, he looked up.

‘Where did you get these?’ he asked, and Daranyi detected that his tone was over casual.

‘You know, Dr. Krantz, I try to keep my sources—’

‘It does not matter. Merely personal curiosity as to how authentic—’

Yes, Daranyi decided, over casual, and therefore, it has value. ‘It is completely authentic,’ he said. ‘I will say this much. I have an English friend, a newspaperman now in Stockholm, who is down at the heels. He is underpaid and forever in debt. He, in turn, has a friend who works in British Intelligence in West Berlin—a Scotch girl—a filing clerk. My newspaper friend offered to telephone her, and I supported this. When he advised me what was available, I agreed to give him—he must give half to her—nine hundred kronor of the expense money you gave me. That is steep for something that may have no value, but I thought I would risk the investment. I hoped you would find it illuminating in some way.’

Krantz shrugged. ‘I cannot tell.’ And then—over casual, over casual—‘By the way, has anyone else seen this?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, no matter. It really gives us nothing, but I will retain it as a curiosity.’

‘As you wish.’

Krantz stood up, to indicate that the interview was terminated and the business of the evening was concluded. ‘For your part, Daranyi, you are to be congratulated, as ever, a thorough job well done. For our part, and I hate to say this, you have uncovered nothing of real value, nothing that can solve our little problem. Still, you have done what you could in a limited time, and for that, we on the committee concerned with this are grateful. I told you, the other day, your recompense would be generous. I believe you will be more than satisfied. I have discussed payment with my colleagues, and they have agreed with me that your services—considering the small amount of your time we have taken—are worth ten thousand kronor. I have the envelope—’

Daranyi had remained in the leather chair, and he remained seated still. ‘No,’ he said plainly.

Krantz had begun to move towards the mantelpiece, but now he halted and turned. ‘What was that?’

‘I said no—meaning ten thousand kronor is insufficient for what I have done.’

‘What do you expect?’

This was the long-awaited moment at last. ‘Fifty thousand kronor,’ said Daranyi.

Krantz looked stricken. ‘Are you mad, Daranyi? You are pulling my leg.’

‘Your wallet, perhaps, but not your leg.’

‘You seriously think we would give you fifty thousand for that batch of prattle and pap?’

‘I seriously think you will. I have a notion I have done well for you.’

‘You have done nothing. Fifty thousand kronor? Why, you will consider yourself fortunate if I can have your fee raised to fifteen thousand.’

Daranyi sat Buddhalike, as immovable, as superior, on the chair. ‘The price is fifty thousand for my work’—he paused, and concluded—‘ and my discretion.’

‘Discretion, is it? I have never dreamed you would stoop so low as blackmail. Do you understand the position you are in? I could have you thrown out of this country in two minutes.’