The Prize

7

‘YOU say you are in trouble, Mr. Craig?’ repeated Count Bertil Jacobsson into the telephone. ‘I do not understand. What kind of trouble?’

From behind his desk, beside the second-storey window of the Nobel Foundation at Sturegatan 14, Jacobsson’s expression of regret reached out to his two early morning guests, Dr. Denise Marceau and Dr. Claude Marceau, and begged for their indulgence over the interruption.

Claude’s understanding shrug told Jacobsson that they did not mind, and, to reassure the old aristocrat, Claude opened his silver cigarette case and offered it to his wife. The Marceaus settled back on the blue sofa, smoking. Absently, Claude gazed at the portrait of King Gustaf on the wall, while Denise half listened to the Assistant Director’s pacifying of the unseen Nobel literary laureate.

‘Now, let me see if I understand you,’ Jacobsson was saying into the mouthpiece. ‘You tell me you were awakened ten minutes ago by a group of college students, out in the corridor, serenading you? Is that correct?… Yes, I see. And this young man, their spokesman, Mr. Wibeck, says they are the delegates from Uppsala University who have been assigned to escort you to a lecture?… Umm, true, true, it could be a mistake, Mr. Craig, but the printed programme of your appointments, the one I gave you on your arrival, that will tell you if it is actually on your schedule or not. What is that?… Oh, well, if Miss Decker has your copy, and she is out for the morning, then I will be glad to assist you. I believe I have a copy readily at hand. If you will-what was that? You cannot hear me because… I see, yes. Well, please, Mr. Craig, simply request Mr. Wibeck to have the Uppsala students halt their serenading until you are off the phone. He will not be offended. I am sure he is in perfect awe of you. While you speak to him, I will search for the programme.’

Count Jacobsson placed the receiver on the desk blotter, next to the telephone, cast one more apologetic glance at the Marceaus, and searched the middle drawer of his desk. At last, he had what he wanted, the duplicated programme, and picked up the receiver again.

‘Mr. Craig?… Good, good, I understand. I have no ear for music in the morning either. Now I have the programme before me. Today is December fifth. Ah, here it is. Are you listening?… Very well, I will read it to you. “Mr. Craig’s schedule for December fifth. Nine-thirty, morning. Address the creative writing class of Uppsala University on the subject, ‘Hemingway and the Style of the Icelandic Sagas.’ Three-thirty, afternoon. Address the literature and poetics classes of Stockholm University and Lund University combined on the subject ‘Literary Criticism in the America of the Fifties and Sixties.’ Eight o’clock, evening. Optional. Free time, or attend performance of La Bohème at the Swedish Royal Opera.” ’ Jacobsson paused. ‘There you have it, Mr. Craig, I am afraid you have promised the two lectures. You recall-your letter from Wisconsin? What?… I appreciate your problem. But even if you have not prepared, I am sure the students would be glad to hear you on any subjects about which you choose to improvise. They are not there to learn of Hemingway and the Icelandic sagas or American literary criticism. They are there to see you and hear you. They will be forever grateful… I am sorry about that, too, Mr. Craig. I would suggest two or three aspirin, or our Magnecyl which are less expensive… No, I wish it were possible, but we are all tied up this morning. Miss Påhl is taking Dr. Garrett to the Caroline Institute. Dr. Krantz must meet a colleague who is flying in from Berlin. I am this moment occupied in giving the Doctors Marceau a little tour of our institution, such as I gave you yesterday. I am positive that you will find young Mr. Wibeck most cordial and co-operative…’

As she listened to the predicament of a fellow laureate, and to the Count’s soothing but firm replies, Denise once more examined the latest development in her own predicament. Without hesitation, she would have traded predicaments with Craig. His were minor, and of easy solution. He need only fortify himself with aspirins, or something stronger, and mumble a few words before two meetings of students, throw the lecture open to questions, answer them briefly, and he was done with it. Her own dilemma was far more pressing, and there was no easy solution.

Before yesterday’s sightseeing tour, and after, in the fleeting moments that they had alone, Denise had finally made it clear to Claude that if he dared to see Gisèle Jordan for so much as an hour, tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, in Copenhagen, it would mean an immediate separation and divorce. And more than that, Denise had warned her husband, knowing his main vulnerability, his bourgeois fear of disgrace, she would make the separation a public matter through the press before the final Nobel Award Ceremony.

Her threat had been delivered so passionately that Claude did not doubt her or attempt to conciliate her, as he had been doing, with vague promises of working out their problem in the future. He had vowed, invoked the name of the Lord, that there would be no assignation with his mannequin in Copenhagen.

Yet, sitting here now-they had not had time on yesterday’s tour to visit the place where they had been voted their chemistry prize, and Jacobsson had informally invited them over for this morning-Denise felt no relief from or security in her husband’s fervent promise. She wanted a guarantee. She could conceive of none. He had proved before she had discovered the affair, and again following it, that the flesh was weak. The arrival of his young mistress tomorrow, in a location only an hour or two away, would be a temptation.

Denise remembered the visit to Balenciaga, remembered the lithe ash-blonde with the high cheekbones and pouting lips and sensuous walk, and remembering this, she knew that Copenhagen might just as well be a room adjacent to their suite in the Grand Hotel of Stockholm. What bothered her was a hypothesis, with no scientific evidence to support it, that if her husband copulated with his mistress on this trip, in glamorous surroundings, their relationship would become permanent and unbreakable, and all Denise’s hopes would be in vain. Claude had given his word that this would not occur. Denise wanted not his word but a bond.

She became aware that Jacobsson’s conversation with Craig was almost at an end. Apparently, Craig had come around and was ready to conform to his schedule. Jacobsson was reminding him of the place of his lectures.

‘Do you recall the situation of the Swedish Academy, Mr. Craig?’ Jacobsson was asking. ‘There was a large auditorium-the Stock Exchange Hall-right before we went into the voting-room. Well, that is where you will be taken for both addresses. I am positive you will not regret it. Many of those students are promising writers, and all are tremendously appreciative of advice from a great author. As to your remaining schedule, I shall send you another copy of the programme for yourself. There are other events you will have to remember to attend. We do not wish to overwhelm our honoured guests, but you can understand the demand for their presence… Yes, any time, Mr. Craig. I am here to serve you. And thank you very much.’

For want of anything better to do, Denise Marceau had listened attentively to the last of Count Jacobsson’s telephone conversation. During the last of it, something creative had begun to arouse itself inside her head, something useful, something hopeful. The exact moment that Jacobsson’s receiver had clicked into place, Denise had been struck by an idea. Quite by accident, Craig’s call to Jacobsson had given Denise Marceau what she had sought since yesterday-the guarantee that would keep her husband apart from Gisèle Jordan, at least for the critical present.

Jacobsson had set the telephone to one side of his desk, and now he swivelled his chair towards the Marceaus.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘and I am grateful for your patience. I can sympathize with Mr. Craig. There are days when our programme does seem heavy.’

‘I do not find it so,’ said Denise quickly. ‘I feel that when one is abroad little more than a week, one owes it to oneself and one’s hosts to put every moment to use.’

‘I wish everyone was as-’ Jacobsson began to say.

‘As a matter of fact, Count Jacobsson,’ Denise hurried on, ‘I do not think my husband and I have enough to do here. I am sure Claude agrees with me-’

Taken unawares, Claude was too perplexed with her opinion to make any comment.

‘-and that was why I wanted to request a favour of you this morning,’ continued Denise to Jacobsson. ‘I should have brought it up the first day. Perhaps you will think it presumptuous.’

‘Anything, anything,’ said Jacobsson.

‘I notice by the programme, we have two unoccupied evenings in the next three days. There is the Hammarlund dinner tomorrow, and then the two free evenings. Also, there is one open afternoon. Claude and I would like something scheduled for those times. Nothing frivolous. Rather, appointments that would bring closer ties between us and your scientists in Scandinavia.’

Jacobsson clucked his approval. ‘Most admirable of you, Dr. Marceau. I had turned aside many invitations tendered to you for fear that you might be exhausted.’

‘Not at all,’ said Denise firmly. ‘We are eager to meet as many Swedish chemists and Nobel personnel as possible. You cannot keep us too busy.’

Dimly at first, and now clearly at last, Claude perceived his wife’s strategy. Since he had had no intention of seeing Gisèle in Copenhagen-it had seemed unnecessarily risky when he had considered it in bed last night-there was no reason for Denise to build this cage of activity around him. It was wearisome and foolish. ‘Denise,’ he said quietly, ‘are you not being over-ambitious? I want to participate as much as you do. But I will not have you tax yourself to the limit.’

Denise flashed her husband a hypocritical smile, and returned to Jacobsson. ‘Is he not considerate, Count? He has always been thus. It has made our collaboration possible.’

Jacobsson had tried to understand the nuances of the exchange between the couple, but without further information, he could not have full understanding, and so he gave the lady the benefit of the doubt. ‘I shall contact the Royal Institute of Technology,’ he said, ‘and the Institute of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry at the University of Stockholm. They had been pressing for you to conduct a seminar. However’-he glanced at Claude Marceau’s weary face, and offered him a palliative-‘if you should have a change of heart, find the strain too much, I can always cancel the meetings I intend to arrange.’

‘We will not have a change of heart,’ said Denise firmly. ‘Inform us of our new schedule, and we will both comply.’ She opened her bag for a cigarette. ‘Enough of that. Before the telephone rang, you were speaking of the first chemistry award.’

‘Ah, yes, yes,’ said Jacobsson, relieved to be returned to a subject less controversial. ‘I was trying to brief you on the background of the chemistry award, before showing you the conference room where the Nobel Committee for Chemistry debated your candidacy this past year.’ He tilted back in his chair, his fingertips touching and hands making a pyramid on his chest. ‘As I was saying earlier, Alfred Nobel left one-fifth of the interest on his prize fund to the person or persons “who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement”. That was all the guidance that he gave us. In 1900, the Academy of Science sent letters to ten institutions and to three hundred well-known scientists in every corner of the world, inviting them to make nominations for the first Nobel Prize in chemistry. Out of this, only twenty nominations were made and of these, eleven suggested the name of one man-Jacobus Hendricus van’t Hoff, of the Netherlands, who had founded stereo-chemistry, as you know. He became the first chemistry laureate. Our choice was universally praised.’

Jacobsson was lost in thought a moment. ‘In those early years, we committed only one serious blunder in chemistry. We neglected the American, Professor Willard Gibbs of Yale University.’

‘Gibbs was an absolute genius,’ agreed Claude. ‘I read his monograph, “On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances”, with complete absorption. However, you can have no shame in overlooking him. I am told that his fellow countrymen did not appreciate him either. One American scientist who visited our laboratory in Paris told me that when Gibbs died-in 1903, I think-his American colleagues and students hardly noticed it. They considered him an eccentric old man. The majority of condolences came from scientists around the world, who had read him and understood his worth.’

Denise addressed Jacobsson. ‘Why did the Royal Academy of Science neglect him?’

‘He was too far ahead of his time, and no one here understood his abstractions,’ Jacobsson said simply. ‘As I told Mr. Craig yesterday, our judges are only too human. They make mistakes. Usually, though, they are right.’

‘Yes, usually they are right,’ said Denise. ‘Have any of your chemistry judges won the Nobel Prize?’

‘Professor The Svedberg was elected in 1926, most deservedly, and he has balloted on many awards. A remarkable man, Svedberg, a one-man faculty, library, student body, all condensed in a single brain. He spoke seven languages, read poetry in Latin, learned Spanish in two months before taking a trip to South America. We have had our share of geniuses. The annual balloting is in good hands.’

‘How do your judges determine if a certain candidate should be honoured in chemistry or physics?’ inquired Claude. ‘To my mind, there is often considerable overlapping.’

‘You have touched upon one of our major problems,’ agreed Jacobsson. ‘When such a decision has to be made, the chemistry and physics committees of the Academy of Science exchange their views and make an arbitrary judgment. I would guess that such a decision might have been made in 1944, when Dr. Otto Hahn was a candidate for discovering nuclear fission, which affected physicists everywhere and led to the atom bomb. But Hahn’s experiments were actually in chemistry, and so he received the chemistry award. I suspect that our chemistry judges are happiest when there is no overlapping, and they can vote for candidates whose findings are unquestionably in the chemical realm. Many such clear-cut decisions come to mind at once-Sir William Ramsay’s discovery of helium, Henri Moissan’s isolation of fluorine and adoption of the electric furnace and his production of artificial diamonds. Actually, in the case of Moissan, a majority of the Academy had favoured the Russian, Dmitri Mendeleev, for inventing the periodic system-but one minority judge impressed the others with Moissan’s versatility, and those artificial diamonds carried the day. Other clear-cut decisions? Richard Willstätter’s work, and later Hans Fischer’s, on chlorophyll, and, in 1960, Willard F. Libby’s atom time clock, which could tell the age of fossils fifty thousand years old, dating even the hair of an Egyptian mummy. Those are the chemistry awards our judges like the most.’

‘And you, Count Jacobsson,’ said Denise, ‘what do you like the most?’

Jacobsson was startled, and then he smiled. ‘I concur with the majority. I am only an innocent bystander.’ He considered this a moment, and recollected his Notes, and then he added, ‘As a matter of fact, the 1957 medical award-which was a case of overlapping and might very well have been the chemistry award, instead-that one gave me a good deal of satisfaction, because it was deserving, and, as one advanced in years, I had profited by it. I am sure you know of Dr. Daniel Bovet’s discoveries. He was a Swiss who became an Italian citizen. For a while, I believe, he worked at your Institute in Paris.’

Denise nodded. ‘Yes, shortly before our time.’

‘Bovet made three thousand experiments in four years. As a result, he produced the sulphurs, and the great anti-allergy drugs-anti-histamines, and synthetic curare to be used as a muscle relaxant in surgery, and so on. In your Paris, Bovet fell in love with the daughter of a former Premier of Italy-her name was Filomena Nitti-and he told the press, “I proposed immediately. It was a lightning chemical reaction.” After that, they worked together like the Curies, and Joliot-Curies, and yourselves. I think it is wonderful, a man and wife, to have so major a common interest.’

Claude squirmed, and Denise glared at him, and the last was not lost on Count Jacobsson. Claude fished for his silver cigarette case, and Jacobsson, while mystified, sensed the ferment in the room.

Instinctively, Jacobsson wanted this couple to be happier, to be drawn closer together. He wanted to inform them of how happy Marie Curie, the first woman to win the prize, had been to share it with her husband, and how sad she had been, when she arrived in Stockholm for her second prize, to come without him, for Pierre Curie had been killed in an accident in 1906. Jacobsson wanted to tell them how well another husband-wife team, Drs. Gerty and Carl Cori, who had won the medical prize for isolating enzymes, had got on together and were a family. But somehow, Jacobsson felt that this might not be the time for such examples. Yet there was his job and the dignity of the awards, and he must think of something to give the Marceaus subtle warning. Then he thought of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who had shared the $41,000 prize in 1935, and with them he thought that he might make his point.

‘Indeed, you are in a select circle,’ Jacobsson told the Marceaus. ‘You are only the fourth husband-and-wife pair in our history to win the prize. We are sentimental about such awards, and the winners, with one exception, have made us proud.’

‘One exception?’ said Denise carefully.

‘I am thinking of your countrymen, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who won the chemistry award for their discoveries in radioactive elements.’

‘What of them?’ asked Denise.

‘They earned the award for artificial radium, and they received it here in Stockholm, and we would give it to them again. But their subsequent history, after the prize, was-in some respects-unfortunate.’

‘They were a devoted couple,’ said Denise sharply, with an eye on her husband.

‘Oh, yes, yes, nothing like that,’ said Jacobsson hastily. ‘Indeed, they were heroes of the Second World War. Frédéric Joliot-Curie stole the world’s greatest supply of heavy water-then important in atomic research-from under the noses of the Nazis in Norway. He got it safely to England. And in France, despite the Gestapo, he organized eighteen underground laboratories to make incendiary bottles for the maquis. I have no doubt you know all that.’

‘Yes, we do,’ said Denise.

‘It was their activity after the war that most Swedes deplored,’ said Jacobsson. ‘Frédéric joined the French Communist Party. And Irène Joliot-Curie told an American visitor that the United States was uncivilized, and that the working-men should overthrow the government. I remember more that she said, for I have recorded all in my Notes. She told the American, “You are deliberately fomenting war. You are imperialists, and you want war. You will attack the U.S.S.R., but it will conquer you through the power of its idea.” I tell you, this caused much headshaking in the Swedish Academy of Science.’

‘Unfortunate,’ said Claude. ‘However, surely you judge by the scientific achievement of your laureates, not by their personal activities.’

‘True,’ said Jacobsson. And then, he added slowly, ‘Still, our laureates are so much looked up to, so widely respected, that when they commit scandals, we are unhappy-extremely unhappy.’

The shaft, motivated by instinct and not information, hit its targets, Jacobsson was certain. For Denise regarded her husband coldly, and Claude avoided her gaze and lifted his heavy-set frame from the sofa.

‘I am eager to see the room where the chemistry awards are voted,’ announced Claude.

Jacobsson rose. ‘I had better explain that the room you will see is not exactly where the balloting takes place. In this room, the Committee for Chemistry often holds the preliminary meetings that lead to the recommendation of the ultimate winner. The actual final balloting, ever since 1913, takes place in the session hall of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science building, located at Frescati just beyond central Stockholm.’

Now the three of them walked through the Executive Director’s office into the corridor, and then into what Jacobsson called the conference room of the Nobel Foundation.

‘Here,’ said Jacobsson, as they stood inside the door, ‘is where the Nobel committee-men determined upon the two of you as the favourites for the prize in chemistry, and where the physics branch weeded Professor Stratman and several others out as the foremost candidates for the prize in physics.’

The Marceaus surveyed the green room. It had none of the shine of a tourist showcase and none of the petrified appearance of archives. It conveyed the impression of a room in which living men did living work and did it frequently. Most of the conference room was filled by the table, its surface overlaid with leather, worn and beaten, and surrounded by ten chairs covered with oxhide. Directly across, overlooking the table, hung a large oilpainting of Alfred Nobel, seated, the work executed posthumously in 1915.

Jacobsson led the Marceaus around the room anti-clockwise. To the right, a long marble ledge ran along the wall, and on top of it were boxed red-bound albums. Jacobsson removed one album. ‘In each album, we keep photographs of our laureates, autographed whenever possible. The day after the final Ceremony, you will be asked to come here to receive your cheque and to sign your photographs.’ He opened the album. ‘Here you see signed photographs of two fellow chemistry winners. This is Professor Richard Kuhn, of the University of Heidelberg, who was voted the 1938 prize for his work in vitamins. And on this page is Professor Adolph Butenandt, of the University of Berlin, who shared the 1939 prize for his work on sex hormones. As you know, Hitler would not allow his subjects to accept the Nobel Prize. Both Kuhn and Butenandt were forced to refuse it. However, in 1948, after the war and Hitler’s death, these two wrote to thank us for the honour which they had wanted but not been permitted to accept. We gave them their gold medals and diplomas, but could no longer give them the prize money. By regulation, it had been held one year, and then returned to the main fund. Too bad, too bad.’

Jacobsson restored the album to its case, then indicated a lively portrait of a woman, hanging above the ledge.

‘Alfred Nobel’s mother painted by Anders Zorn,’ he said. ‘Nobel had tremendous affection for her. Even when he was travelling, he tried to come back to Stockholm annually for her birthday. She died six years before he did.’

They moved on to the far wall of the room. Jacobsson identified the paintings on either side of the oil of Nobel himself. ‘This is Bertha von Suttner, the most important woman in Nobel’s life besides his mother. She had been a titled governess in Austria, and was fired, when she read an advertisement in a Vienna newspaper-“Elderly, cultured gentleman, very wealthy, resident of Paris, seeks equally mature lady, linguist, as secretary and supervisor of household.” She answered the advertisement, and Nobel was the elderly, cultured gentleman, very wealthy. She became his secretary, and often his adviser. Later, she left him to marry a young baron and become one of the world’s foremost pacifists. It is possible that she influenced Nobel to create the Peace Prize. At any rate, we feel that she belongs beside him on this wall. The painting on the other side is of Ragnar Sohlman, an executive director of this Foundation, who died in 1948. He had been a personal friend of Nobel’s and one of the executors of the famous will.’

Jacobsson pointed out the three bronze busts in the room. ‘This one is of Nobel. We move it to Concert Hall on the tenth for the Ceremony, and then bring it back here. That one is Nobel’s father, and the other, one of his brothers. Now, perhaps, you are curious about what took place in the session hall the afternoon your names were presented?’

‘I am most curious,’ Denise admitted.

‘The four leading chemistry candidates were decided upon earlier in this room,’ said Jacobsson. ‘You yourselves were one. Two Americans, as another team. A Dane. And a candidate from Israel. Of the other candidates, one was considered for his pioneer work in the creation of life, of a living cell. But it was felt that his findings were not yet conclusive. Another had accomplished much in the dissolving of blood clots. Again, the work was considered in its primitive stage. The third, our American candidates, had made progress in new drugs for mental unbalance. In one case, I will admit, a certain prejudice was held against the candidate. He was wealthy and his work commercial, and certain judges were against him for no other reasons. You will understand the sensitivity of the judges when I explain that, although Nobel had once stated that he wanted to reward dreamers who found it hard to get on in life, in contradiction to this, the chemistry committee had given the 1931, award to Karl Bosch head of the I. G. Farben cartel, and to Friedrich Bergius, also of Farben, for making coal into oil. The committee was soundly criticized for its choice. At any rate, the current judges decided that both of you were dreamers, qualified in every way, and your discovery of sperm vitrification thoroughly proved. The debate lasted less than two hours. You were elected laureates by a vote of better than two to one.’

‘We are very humble,’ said Claude sincerely. ‘I thank you for the information.’

They had gone back into the hall as Jacobsson was talking, and now Jacobsson saw them to the exit at the end of the corridor. After shaking hands, Denise reminded him, ‘Count Jacobsson, you will not forget to fill our schedule. We want to be busy every minute.’

‘I shall be delighted to oblige,’ said Jacobsson.

As they went through the door, Jacobsson closed it and turned to find Mrs. Steen waiting directly behind him with some papers. Because he halted beside the door to consult with Mrs. Steen, he was able to hear what went on beyond the door.

He heard first Claude Marceau’s muffled voice and then Denise Marceau’s reply.

Claude had said, ‘Very clever with that schedule, but idiotic. Do you think that could keep me from Copenhagen if I wanted to go?’

Denise Marceau had said, ‘Go to hell.’

Embarrassed, Jacobsson stared down at the green carpeting, until the footsteps of the laureates had receded and were gone.

Jacobsson made no pretence of not having overheard the exchange. Lifting his head to meet Mrs. Steen’s phlegmatic gaze, he said, ‘What do you think, Mrs. Steen?’

Like her adding machine, Mrs. Steen was without deviousness. She replied, ‘If they should ever win a second prize, like the Curies, I am sure only one of them would return to Stockholm -the one who had murdered the other.’

‘Mmm. That is my thought, too, Mrs. Steen, And my prayer is-should homicide happen, let it not happen before the Ceremony.’

In the gloom of the cold winter morning, the three-cylinder Saab-93 sped over Solnavägen towards that area where the many buildings of the Caroline Medico-Chirurgical Institute were located.

At the wheel of the Saab was a young driver for the Institute. In the confined back seat, normally loose and removable because it covered the car trunk, the displacement was three-quarters Ingrid Påhl and one-quarter Dr. John Garrett. Wearing her enormous new hat banded with artificial roses and her heaviest woollen coat-she was sure the temperature was close to Celsius 0°, which would be Fahrenheit 32° and freezing-Ingrid Påhl had lost her earlier look of misgiving, and her puffy features were once more unburdened and even buoyant. When Krantz had pleaded emergency the night before, and backed out of taking Dr. Garrett to the Caroline Institute, and Jacobsson had telephoned her to replace Krantz, she had protested. She knew nothing of medicine. What would she have to say to Garrett? Nevertheless, as a duty, she had agreed to perform as hostess. But Garrett had proved to be a simple, friendly man, much engrossed in his own thoughts, and that had made her task easier.

For Garrett, pressed into the corner of the Saab, this was a crucial morning, and he was living inside himself. At his own request, the visit to Drottningholm Palace had been replaced by this appointment at the Caroline Institute. His protégé, Dr. Erik Öhman, was expecting him and waiting. Although Öhman could not know it, he was a vital weapon in the offensive Garrett was mounting against Carlo Farelli. This day, Garrett had determined, the counter-attack must begin.

There was nothing complex about Garrett’s battle plan. By his aggressiveness at the press conference, Farelli had claimed most of the space in the newspapers the following day. Garrett had been treated as an unwanted relative who had had to be introduced. He had been relegated to an occasional interjection or the spare room of last paragraphs or the graveyard of publicity that read, ‘Also present was-’. When Garrett, in his desperation, had attempted an impromptu guerrilla campaign against Farelli in the salon of the Royal Palace, he had been repulsed, and the defeat still rankled. Now he knew that his tactics must include, first, a carefully organized frontal assault on the battleground of the world’s front pages.

The meeting with Öhman would be Garrett’s first foray. He would learn of Öhman’s progress and future, all an extension of his own heart discovery. He would study Öhman’s three successful transplantations, and the three additional patients he now had under observation. This done, Garrett would then telephone Sue Wiley. He would offer himself, this very afternoon, for an interview more spectacular than the one he had given her on the airliner. He would reveal colourful details of his meeting with Öhman, human interest facts about Öhman’s patients, and in praising Öhman’s accomplishments, he would be praising himself. He would give Miss Wiley some concrete predictions about the future of his work. Farelli would be out of it entirely. It would be as if he, alone, were in Stockholm, as indeed he should have been. The story for Consolidated Newspapers would be carried throughout the world. That would be the beginning. He would hurl the monarch of darkness from the dais and have his rightful seat of honour at last.

It was all so satisfying. Garrett sighed with pleasure at the justice of his plan. Outside the window, the bleak morning appeared less forbidding. Beside him, Ingrid Påhl, screwing a cigarette into an ebony holder, appeared more attractive.

Garrett decided that he owed her the courtesy of conversation. ‘Are we almost there?’ was all that he could muster up to ask.

‘Any minute,’ said Ingrid Påhl. She held a lighter to her cigarette, and now exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘I have only seen the hospital twice myself. And my knowledge of medicine is limited to patented treatments of heartburn, upset stomach, and constipation. Lest you think it is odd that I-scientifically, the least qualified member of the reception committee-was assigned to escort you this morning, I had better explain.’

‘As a Nobel Prize winner yourself, I can think of no one more qualified,’ said Garrett with heavy gallantry.

‘You are a gentleman, Dr. Garrett, but it is no use flattering me.’ Her obese presence exuded cheer. ‘I am not a fit companion for you. I do not even know where the human kidney is located. And as to the heart, I never remember-is it on the right or the left?’

‘Left.’

‘There you are. The truth is, Dr. Krantz was to have been your escort this morning. You could have talked to him. I daresay he is a grouch, but a brilliant one. Unfortunately, for you, Dr. Krantz had to rush off to the Bromma Airport to receive an old friend and distinguished visitor from East Berlin.’

‘East Berlin? Are they allowed out?’

‘Of course, Dr. Garrett. Do not believe everything you read. Most Germans-while I do not have excessive affection for them-do not live and work there by choice. I have no idea about Dr. Krantz’s friend, but, at any rate, it was someone who had to be met personally. So the honour of taking you to the Caroline Institute fell upon me. I hope you are not too disappointed.’

‘Miss Påhl, I’ve told you-’

‘Actually, I suppose I do know a little about the Caroline Institute. Some years ago, an English periodical inquired if I would write a series of articles about Sweden. Journalism is not my cup of tea, but I needed the money, and I considered the offer. The first article was to be on the Caroline Institute, since it has some reputation as the source of the Nobel medical award. I did a week or two of preliminary research-took a tour of the hospitals, renewed acquaintance with their Nobel committee-men, asked questions, made notes-but when it came down to it, I could not write the article. Some writers are simply no good with facts, and I am one of them. Facts are like figures with me; they baffle me entirely. I never wrote the article, but I did not starve, either. A Swedish film company bought one of my old novels, and I was saved to write again, to the dismay of a majority of my critics. Anyway, all I have left of the experience are some unorganized facts about the Institute. You may have them as a gift, if you are interested.’

‘I certainly am interested,’ said Garrett, trying to hide his restlessness, for he wanted to be where he was going and get on with Öhman and begin the march against the enemy.

‘Fact one,’ said Ingrid Påhl. ‘The Caroline Institute was started in 1810, to supply military surgeons for the Swedish army, which was having one of its periodic wars with Denmark and Russia. Fact two. Alfred Nobel was fascinated by medicine. On different occasions, he had friends make blood transfusion and urine experiments under his guidance. It was natural that he would give a prize in medicine, and select the respected Caroline Institute to confer it. Fact three. The Caroline committee had to determine what Nobel had in mind when he wrote in his will that he wished “the most important discovery” in medicine or physiology honoured. Did he want to reward practical advances only? Or theoretical progress as well? The Caroline committee decided to reward both types of discovery. And they did not limit their prizes to doctors. Through the years, they also honoured biologists, chemists, zoologists, and once a biophysicist. Fact four. Nominations for the award that you won come from professors within the Caroline Institute, from members of the Swedish Academy of Science, from former Nobel medical winners, from faculties of all major universities in Scandinavia, and from faculties of outstanding universities in twenty foreign countries. There are about one thousand persons eligible to make nominations. Should I go on?’

‘Please,’ said Garrett, who involuntarily found himself absorbed.

Ingrid Påhl ejected her cigarette butt into the ash tray. ‘Fact five. There are three permanent members on the Nobel medical committee who advise and recommend. Usually, temporary members, experts in this or that, are added to the committee from the Caroline teaching body. The medical winners are elected each year in the session room on the ground floor of the Caroline Institute. It is a light airy room, with the longest modern table you have ever seen, and modern Swedish chairs for the judges. As I recall, there are sixteen or eighteen oil portraits of eminent Swedish physicians and Nobel personnel on the walls and two white marble statues between the windows. The final vote is made by forty-five physicians and instructors on the Caroline staff.’

The car slowed, and Ingrid Påhl gestured with her head. ‘And lo, there it is now-the Caroline Institute.’

The Saab turned off the main thoroughfare, and drove through a gate and across a private road that wound through a landscape of icy trim lawns, clipped hedges, and many clusters of aged trees. Again, the Saab slowed, and wheeled left through an opening between two rows of frozen foliage.

The car drew to a stop on a paved site. The young driver tumbled quickly out of the front, trotted around, and opened the rear door. With some difficulty, fighting gravity and density, he freed Ingrid Påhl from her place and helped her out of the sedan. Then he gave Garrett a hand.

Before them stretched a squat three-storey oblong building of red brick. Its rows of windows peered down at them like a montage of square eyes. Three cement stairs led to two heavy doors, and above the entrance were projected letters that read, MEDICINSKA NOBELINSTITUTET. Garrett glanced off to his right. A bench rested in the open, on the pavement, before a miniature park of withered plants and barren trees. Behind the bench, on a high stone pedestal, stood a weather-beaten black bronze bust of Alfred Nobel. There were touches of frost around Nobel’s eyes and his set mouth.

Garrett brought his overcoat collar around his neck.

‘You would not believe how lovely this is in the summer,’ said Ingrid Påhl. ‘Now it is impossible. Either we build a fire, or we go inside.’

The two of them hurried inside.

Dr. Erik Öhman, sitting with one knee propped up against his desk, a cigar between his teeth, was scanning a newspaper held wide open. The moment that Öhman saw them, he leaped to his feet, almost upending the chair, and pounded around the desk. Ignoring Ingrid Påhl’s formal introduction, he grabbed Garrett’s hand and pumped it with unrestrained enthusiasm.

‘Dr. Garrett,’ he said, ‘Dr. Garrett-what a pleasure this is for me. How I have looked forward to it-’

Somewhat taken aback, for he was not a demonstrative man, and (despite the prize) he had never valued himself highly in his secret heart, Dr. Garrett tried to return his host’s ardent and worshipful greeting. ‘Believe me, it’s good to meet you at last, Dr. Öhman.’

‘Sit down, both of you-please sit down,’ said Öhman, herding them to the chairs. ‘There will be hot coffee in a moment.’ He looked at Garrett with bright eyes of disbelief, as lowly subject to his sovereign. He tried to speak, but no sound came forth except a drawn-out rumble, which Garrett would learn was a speech impediment. ‘Uhhh,’ was the embryonic sound seeking the birth of vocabulary, ‘uhhh-Dr. Garrett, I am so privileged.’ He ran behind his desk, and brought forth the chair, so that he could sit directly opposite Garrett and Ingrid Påhl.

Garrett was surprised by the appearance of the man with whom he had so long corresponded. He was unable to define to himself what kind of person he had actually expected to find. Possibly someone more Swedish, more genteel, more dignified. Instead, Öhman, his reddish hair cropped short, resembled, for all his agility, a European middleweight prizefighter, who had fought several years too many. The face, the cauliflower ears, and gross features above a thick neck were not Garrett’s conception of a doctor’s head. And the hands, like blunt instruments, stubby fingers round as sausages, were not a heart surgeon’s hands. Yet Garrett saw at once the face’s kindness, the admiration it now reflected, and from Öhman’s letters he knew the man’s scientific soundness and learning.

‘Uhhh, Dr. Garrett-uhhh, tell me, you must tell me what you think of our Sweden. How thrilled I was when your prize was announced. You had my cable? Uhhh-you must tell me what you have seen here, and wish to see, and what I can do for you. Your wife is with you? You must dine with my wife and me. Uhhh-my patients, they are as much your patients as mine, and you must see them and tell me what you think. And questions, I have a hundred questions.’

He went on and on, punctuating his excitement with his stammer and asking questions that he did not wait to have answered, but when his boyish exhilaration had finally run down, he was ready to listen. He begged Garrett to speak of this and that, and Garrett spoke. Ingrid Påhl was interested and receptive, and Öhman worshipful and memorizing every word for the long winter ahead, and Garrett revelled in the attention. Before Dr. Keller and the therapy group, he had always felt inadequate to hold centre stage. What was the old psychiatrist joke-who listens? But group therapy had given Garrett experience in monologue, and this experience, combined with an attentive audience, now gave Garrett licence to discourse freely and at length.

Garrett had been relating, in some detail, his adventures in California after having been notified of the Nobel award. Now, encouraged by Öhman, he reminisced about the years during his transplantation research, and, rather effectively, he thought, he recreated the dramatic case history of Henry M. He was pleased to note that Ingrid Påhl was enthralled by the last, and Öhman as intrigued by this as he had been by all that had gone before.

At this point, Garrett had the feeling that he had monopolized the meeting long enough. Three-quarters of an hour of autobiography was more than sufficient. The time had arrived for self-effacement. If his battle plan was to work, it was necessary that Öhman be encouraged to reveal more of himself and his career.

‘At any rate, to sum it up, here I am, an actual laureate,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to believe.’ During his monologue, he had taken notice of Öhman’s office, which, except for the padded chairs, seemed furnished entirely in efficient grey metal. But now he realized that two walls of the room were entirely covered by framed photographs and snapshots, some autographed, and Garrett recognized several as former Nobel laureates.

‘You’ve never told me, in your letters, Dr. Öhman, if you have any connection with the Nobel medical awards. Have you?’

‘In a way,’ said Öhman.

Before he could continue, there was a knocking at the door. A trim girl, wearing tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on a scrubbed face, backed in pulling a trolley, carrying hot coffee and sweet rolls, after her. Öhman introduced her as his secretary, and she apologized for being late.

After she had poured coffee and gone, and they were all sipping, and nibbling rolls, Öhman cleared his throat. ‘Uhhh-Dr. Garrett-you had inquired about my position in the Nobel picture. Uhhh-a minor one, minor, I assure you, at the same time-uhhh-interesting. Do you know anything of the medical awards?’

‘Miss Påhl was kind enough to give me some background on the drive here.’

‘Very little, Dr. Öhman,’ said Ingrid Påhl. ‘For all I know, Dr. Arrowsmith got the prize.’

Öhman laughed. ‘Well, as a matter of fact he did, did he not? Martin Arrowsmith, Gottlieb, Sondelius-how alive they were to me. What was it Arrowsmith fought? Uhhh-yes-the bubonic plague in the West Indies, yes. Our committee has great respect for plague fighters, but it has always distressed me that some of the best have not been honoured.’

‘Are you referring to anyone in particular?’ asked Garrett.

‘I am,’ said Öhman. ‘Uhhh-it has always been my belief that Walter Reed and General Gorgas, as well as Noguchi, should have shared an award for their work against yellow fever. Gorgas was nominated many times, I am told, but since he had made no new discovery, he could not be elected. Reed died too early, I think. At any rate, that is neither here nor there-more coffee, Miss Påhl?’

He filled Ingrid Påhl’s cup again, and then Garrett’s and his own, and settled back in the chair.

‘Did Miss Påhl tell you of our nominating procedure?’ Öhman inquired of Garrett.

‘Yes,’ said Garrett.

‘Then you know of our special investigators?’

‘No, not that.’

‘I must tell you, then. For it is in that capacity that I have several times served the Nobel Committee. In fact, because of my knowledge of your discovery, I was one of the two so-called experts assigned to investigate your candidacy, Dr. Garrett.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Garrett. ‘I really owe you a debt of thanks.’

‘Not a bit,’ replied Öhman. ‘Any fool would have understood the-uhhh-magnitude of your discovery and verified its worth. The Caroline Nobel Committee uses its investigators-detectives, you might call them in America -more than the other prize-giving committees, because of the intricate nature of medical research. There are so many varied specialties. There is so much complexity. Consequently, when the candidates are narrowed down by the committee, one last step is necessary. Each candidate is turned over to a member of our faculty, who is an expert in the candidate’s field. The expert or investigator makes a thorough study of the candidate’s discovery. Is it complete? Is it proved? Is it new? Is it worth while? The investigator will read everything on the discovery, and seek opinions, and sometimes even travel to the homeland of the-of the-uhhh-candidate, to see for himself without giving away the-uhhh-reasons for his visit.

‘When Ivan Pavlov was nominated for the first award in 1901, for his experiments in the physiology of digestion, two of our investigators, the great Professor Johansson and Professor Tigerstedt, travelled to St. Petersburg, in Russia, to meet Pavlov and his dogs and verify, firsthand, his accomplishments. Pavlov was given special attention, too, because it was known that-uhhh-Alfred Nobel himself had been interested in the Russian’s work and had once contributed a large donation to Pavlov. So our investigators went to Pavlov’s laboratory and observed the results of his experiments in conditioned reflexes. Apparently the final report of the investigators was not fully satisfactory, for, as you know, Parlor did not win the first Nobel Prize that year. He had to wait three more years to win it.’

‘Who did win the first medical prize?’ asked Ingrid Påhl. ‘It is shameful of me, and do not repeat it to Dr. Krantz, but I simply cannot remember.’

‘It was a close contest that first year,’ said Öhman. ‘A small number of judges supported Pavlov. The committee’s recommendation was that the award be divided between Niels Finsen of Denmark and Ronald Ross of Great Britain. But there was also substantial backing for-uhhh-Emil von Behring of Germany. Eventually, the debate raged around von Behring. Some considered his discovery of the serum against diphtheria an old discovery and therefore disqualified. Others felt that it should be honoured, because it was long accepted by the public, and would be familiar and noncontroversial. Uhhh-well, von Behring won, he won because his serum was popular-serums always are with our medical judges-and the three losers, Ross, Finsen, Pavlov, won their prizes later, in the next three years.’

Garrett’s attention had strayed, again, to the framed photographs on the walls. ‘Those pictures, Dr. Öhman, are they all medical winners?’

Öhman surveyed the photographs with pride. ‘My little hobby,’ he said. ‘I was a mere lad-long ago-in the thirties-when my father invited me to attend with him a Nobel ceremony. My father was a journalist and had a press invitation, and then a colleague became ill and there was an extra invitation at the last moment and my father took me. It was a memorable occasion for a young boy. I watched Sir Charles Scott Sherrington receive the diploma for medicine, and my father told me all about Sherrington-how he had been nominated regularly for thirty years, and, for one reason or another, the investigators always recommended against him-and now, in his old age, they had relented. I was moved. That night, my destiny was set. I, too, would become a physician. Sherrington’s was the first photograph I hung on this wall, so long after. It’s there, behind my desk.’

Öhman leaped to his feet, and went around his desk, squinting at his photographs. ‘Eventually, I acquired photographs of all the winners, and the autographs of at least half of them. An inspiring hobby.’ He pointed to a fuzzy photograph. ‘Uhhh-the celebrated Dr. Paul Ehrlich, In the first eight years, he was nominated seventy times by professors in thirteen different nations. His work in immunology was recognized, at last, in 1908. There is a story-the Kaiser of Germany was like a peacock over Ehrlich’s conquest of the spirochete causing syphilis, and at a public banquet told him-ordered him-as if it were the easiest thing, “Now Ehrlich, get on with it, get rid of cancer”.’

Rapidly, Öhman bounced from picture to picture, tapping some and adding vocal captions. ‘Here-uhhh-Sir Alexander Fleming. University of London. He was looking into influenza when a blue-green mould spoiled on one of his culture plates. It was the shape of a pencil. He named it penicillin. That was 1928, yet he received no Nobel Prize for it until 1945, seventeen years later, because initially, he had no practical use for the discovery. Then, Sir Howard Florey and Dr. Ernst Boris Chain, of Oxford, began to wonder if it had a use. They injected mice with fatal doses of streptococci, and half of the mice with this penicillin, and the half with penicillin lived and the others died, and they had found a use, at last, for Dr. Fleming’s accidental find. They all got the prize.’

He had reached a larger frame bearing two portraits. ‘Uhhh, the first joint prize-this will interest you especially, Dr. Garrett. For five years the Swedish Academy resisted splitting a single prize. Finally, in 1906, they broke down and divided an award between Camillo Golgi, of Italy, and Ramón y Cajal, of Spain. Since then, the prize has been divided many times, as witness-Dr. Farelli and you.’

The blood seethed to Garrett’s cheeks, and he wanted to speak against the outrage of Farelli, but some restraint kept him from bringing up the matter before Ingrid Påhl. Instead, he said, ‘Do you think those joint prizes are fair?’

‘So many candidates are often in the same field, it is impossible to credit only one.’ Öhman had arrived at an elderly face on the wall. ‘My favourite since 1949. Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz, of Lisbon, Portugal.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Ingrid Påhl.

‘In 1936, he introduced the prefrontal lobotomy,’ said Öhman. ‘There was no cure for certain cases of severe mental distress, apprehension, depression. Drugs would not help. Psychiatric treatment would not help. Dr. Moniz found that these acute fears, verging on insanity, came from the frontal lobes of the brain, certain grey matter in the skull above the eyebrows. By incisions in the side of the head, the size of a shilling, and severing the nerve fibres of the front lobes with a long thin knife, Dr. Moniz learned that a patient’s anxiety could be dramatically reduced.’

‘It sounds horrible,’ said Ingrid Påhl.

‘It is to be preferred to suicide or insanity,’ said Öhman flatly. ‘It cuts away all apprehension and worry. It makes these patients happier. The only unfortunate aspect is that it frequently makes them into irresponsible dullards.’

‘But that’s like cutting away a man’s conscience, the soul that God gave him,’ said Ingrid Påhl.

‘In medicine, we are less concerned with a man’s soul than with his life,’ said Öhman objectively. ‘Uhhh-I am sure that Dr. Garrett will not disagree with me. The brain is the unexplored Mato Grosso of the human body. For that reason, I have always respected Dr. Moniz’s find above all others-until lately. Now, I have a new favourite.’

Öhman hurried back to his desk, opened, a drawer, and took out a photograph. He offered it to Garrett with a pen.

‘Will you sign your photograph, Dr. Garrett? It shall henceforth have the main place-above Dr. Moniz.’

Garrett accepted the picture and pen. ‘I hardly know what to say.’

‘You need say nothing. Your accomplishment speaks for you.’

Garrett signed the photograph: ‘To my favourite co-worker and friend. Dr. Erik Öhman, with best wishes, John Garrett.’ He returned the photograph and pen, and Öhman fondled the photograph with the reverence often given an early church relic.

‘Now,’ said Garrett, pointedly, ‘I’d like to talk a little shop.’

Ingrid Påhl could not miss the meaning of Garrett’s remark, and she did not. She pushed herself from her chair. ‘If it is going to be shop talk, this is no place for me. I have some friends here I want to see. When do you want me to pick you up, Dr. Garrett?’

‘Well-’

‘Not for an hour anyway,’ said Öhman. ‘Uhhh-there is much I want to show Dr. Garrett. I want to take him through my ward and discuss various problems.’

‘An hour, then,’ said Ingrid Påhl, and she waddled out of the room.

The moment that they were alone, Garrett began to adhere to his battle plan. ‘When do you perform your next transplantation?’ he asked Öhman.

‘We go into surgery at seven in the morning of the tenth. I am still making tests on the patient, and still trying to find the correct-sized young bovines or sheep, in order to acquire the best fresh hearts available. The case is an interesting one. Uhhh-I should say, in some respects, the most challenging and important one I have yet undertaken. The patient is a Count in his early seventies, a distant relative of His Royal Highness. Much public attention will be given to the result.’

Garrett’s heart leaped. This was what he had hoped for, this was the main chance.

‘Will there be any difficulties?’ Garrett inquired.

‘Uhhh-frankly, some aspects of the case worried me, but now, I am confident again-since yesterday, when Dr. Farelli was in to examine the patient.’

Garrett felt the blood siphon from his face, and he thought that he would faint. ‘Farelli?’ he gasped.

Öhman’s brow wrinkled with surprise at his guest’s emotional reaction. ‘Why, yes-Dr. Carlo Farelli. He appeared yesterday with a newspaperwoman who had been interviewing him-a Miss Wiley from America-and without protocol, he introduced himself and said that he wanted to see my ward, my patients-all most flattering-’

‘And you-you took them through-both of them?’

‘Why, certainly. And he was kind enough to study the patient’s history and charts and offer some advice. As I said, it was flattering and generous of him-’

‘You fool!’ shouted Garrett.

Öhman stood stunned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me. Generous of him? What a laugh. He’s an arrogant, vain publicity monger and a thief.’

Öhman looked as if he had been slapped. He swayed, speechless, the pupils of his eyes dilating. ‘Dr. Garrett, I-uhhh-uhhh-uhhh-are you referring to Dr. Farelli-?’

‘None other,’ said Garrett, rising, all restraint cast aside. ‘I suppose the reporter, Miss Wiley, I suppose she took notes? She did, didn’t she?’

‘Why, of course.’ He lifted the newspaper from his desk. ‘She filed the story last night. The Swedish papers picked it up today.’

‘And it’s all about that bastard Farelli?’

‘I-I-uhhh-yes, I mean-naturally, the new Nobel laureate comes to our hospital to pay his respects-offers to advise us on an important patient, a royal patient in critical condition-it is a story, naturally-uhhh, Dr. Garrett, I cannot understand-you are so upset-what is it? Is there something I should know?’

‘You’re damn right there’s something you should know.’ Garrett’s lips worked, and steadily he pounded a fist of one hand into the palm of the other. ‘You sit down,’ he commanded. ‘I’m going to give you an earful about that charlatan Farelli-trying to use you-making fools of both of us-and the Nobel Committee besides-now, sit down.’

Dazed, Dr. Öhman sat down, staring up at his deity, who had so suddenly been transformed into a vengeful Mars, and slowly, with relentless hatred, Mars began the case for the prosecution.

Carl Adolf Krantz, who, among other human frailties, was a hypochondriac, had fortified himself against the freezing weather with earmuffs beneath his hat, a swath of knitted muffler, a bearish overcoat, and it was with difficulty that he was able to manœuvre the Mercedes-Benz sedan into the parking area outside the vast glass-and-metal Bromma Air Terminal.

He knew that he was late, and the moment that he left the car, this disgraceful fact was confirmed by the Arrival and Departure Board. The Czechoslovakian Airlines four-engine plane-an early morning telegram had informed him that it was leaving two hours earlier than scheduled, and so would arrive two hours earlier-had taken off from the Schönfeld Airport in East Berlin at 9.55 in the morning and was expected in Stockholm, en route to Helsinki, at 12.55. It was now 1.06. An immediate inquiry calmed Krantz’s nerves. The passengers from East Berlin were still going through customs.

Outside, near the rows of windowpanes and the Royal Waiting Hall, Krantz removed his earmuffs, fearing their absurdity, and tucked them inside his coat pocket. He wondered if Dr. Hans Eckart had looked for him, before going into customs. Had Krantz been able to hire a chauffeur for the morning, as he had wished, there would have been no tardiness. But he knew, understanding his visitor, that Eckart would have severely disapproved. He and Eckart had private matters to discuss, and Eckart was, above all things, cautious, and a third party in the car would have been inhibiting. It was too bad, because a chauffeur would have readily fixed the flat tyre of the Mercedes that Krantz had so lavishly hired on Klarabergsgatan at twenty kronor for the day (minus ten per cent discount for the winter season) plus twenty-five öre for every kilometre to be driven. Without the chauffeur, Krantz had wasted precious time hunting for a garage and, beyond that, he had probably driven the rim through the deflated tyre, which would force a costly penalty upon him. Still, these expenses were minor, and the irritations minor too, when he considered the importance of his meeting with Eckart.

As he thought of their reunion, Krantz’s spirits lifted. The assignment that Eckart had so mildly suggested in East Berlin, more than a year ago, one that had seemed so impossible at the time, had now culminated in complete success. Krantz had done his job magnificently, and Eckart must deliver what he had promised. In that sense, the German physicist’s arrival in Stockholm was today not only a congratulation but a guarantee of payment. Severe as the day was, Krantz shivered with warm anticipation at the guttural assurances that would soon give him the prestige and security that had become his full-time obsession, ever since the vacant chair of physics at the University of Uppsala, rightfully his by accomplishment and seniority, had gone to another.

Waiting in the icy air of early afternoon, Krantz felt like any child on Christmas Eve. He knew, at once, that the simile was incorrect. He had never been ‘any child’ on Christmas Eve. This he could not forget. His gruff father had always been off to Frankfurt on holidays, and his mother had consequently been fretful and angry, so there had never once been a celebration. It irked him to remember the pointless past in this his maturity, when he had made his own cause for celebration.

As he smoothed his moustache and goatee with his gloved fingers, his earlier and happier mood revived. But that he was nervous there was no doubt. Automatically, his gloved fingers scratched for the metal puzzle in his coat pocket. He took the puzzle out, clumsily but absently twisting and turning it, and suddenly he heard his name.

Dr. Hans Eckart, a single light case in hand, was goose-stepping towards him. At least, his exact military stride gave the impression of a modified goose-step, and while it often made many heads turn, it no longer seemed surprising to Krantz, to whom it had been familiar since the war.

Depositing the puzzle in his pocket, tearing off the glove of his right hand, Krantz bolted forward to welcome Eckart with a hospitable handshake and relieve him of his case.

‘Gutten Tag, Hans!’ exclaimed Krantz exuberantly. ‘Wie geht es Ihnen?’

‘Es geht mir sehr gut, danke-und Ihnen?’ Eckart stepped back and surveyed Krantz. ‘You need not answer. I see you are fit. No older, you appear no older than the last time.’

‘How long has it been, Hans? A year-’

‘One year and twelve days,’ said Eckart exactly. ‘It is considerate of you to meet me, with all the duties you must perform in the Nobel Week.’

‘Receiving you is my happiest duty of the Nobel Week,’ said Krantz with sincerity.

‘Not quite, not quite,’ said Eckart with Wagnerian humour. ‘There was another I am sure you welcomed more.’

Krantz understood the dig, which was not meant unkindly but was their mutual pleasure, and he smiled. ‘Yes, Hans, it is true the other gave me pleasure, also… I am sorry for the weather. Come, I have a Mercedes waiting.’

‘A Mercedes, eh? We will have you for an honorary citizen yet.’

They walked in step, stride for stride, Krantz’s short legs pumping to match Eckart’s long ones, towards the parking area. Glancing sidelong at his liberator, and superior, Krantz was proud as ever to be seen with him. Dr. Hans Eckart was a gentleman of admirable bearing. Although in his late fifties, he carried himself like a young Prussian officer. When Krantz had first met Eckart, after the war, he had regarded his appearance as an affectation. Eckart wore a monocle, but the glass was not convex but flat, and one suspected that he did not need the eyepiece. On the side of his chin, like a battle ribbon, lay a jagged scar, to conjure up memories of Heidelberg, and Ludendorff and all the best of another Germany, but Krantz had heard-from jealous detractors-that Eckart had earned the scar in a pedestrian ice-skating fall. There was no Junker tradition in Eckart’s past, yet he had imposed such an inheritance upon himself, acquired from museum figures he had met in his youth and from history and from the cinemas of UFA. Eventually, a new generation had come to believe that Eckart was what he pretended to be, and to respect him, and eventually Krantz had come around, too, for this was the private vision that he held for himself.

During the war, Eckart, a minor researcher in physics who knew a considerable amount about heavy water, had been ostentatiously arrested by the Gestapo, briefly confined, and at last placed for the duration in that section of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute where non-Aryans were kept under protective custody to toil for the Fatherland. It was announced at the time that Eckart was one-fourth Jewish. But in the years after, various German scientists in Berlin whom Krantz had come to know had winked at him and hinted the truth. Eckart had not been Jewish at all, not one-fourth, not one-millionth. He had been as pure, as Nordic, as Krantz himself. It had all been a sham, a playlet, his arrest, his custody, to plant someone among the Jew scientists, who were untrustworthy and had to be watched. There was no proof behind this rumour, but Krantz liked to believe it and did believe it. And what corroborated Krantz’s belief was the rapid promotion of Eckart since the war. At first, Eckart, after choosing to remain in East Berlin, had returned to his old teaching post at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, now renamed the Humboldt University. Almost overnight, Eckart had risen in station. To teacher, he had added the title Chairman of the Physics Department. Now more administrator than teacher, he was soon on the university board. But his position went far beyond control of faculty and 9,000 students. He had been sent on several key government missions, and had become the unpublicized spokesman for East German science. Because one of the earth’s two powers-and the greater of the two powers, in Krantz’s opinion-backed him, his political influence was inestimable.

Now, observing Eckart clean the fog from his monocle with a handkerchief, Krantz felt the snug security of having such an omnipotent patron.

‘Here we are,’ said Krantz.

He hastened to open the front door for Eckart, and when his visitor was inside and comfortable, Krantz unlocked the boot of the Mercedes, lifted the bag inside, closed it, and then got behind the wheel.

They had driven a minute or two, but it was not until they had left the Bromma Air Terminal out of sight that Professor Hans Eckart spoke at last.

He was a man with no small talk, and he had no small talk now.

‘You are waiting for me to congratulate you, Carl-’

‘Well-’ said Krantz, unsure if he should be perplexed or modest.

‘-and I do congratulate you, on my own behalf, and on behalf of my colleagues.’

‘Thank you, Hans,’ said Krantz earnestly, with deep relief.

‘To be frank, we had expected this to be Max Stratman’s year all along. But we could take no chance. You Nobel people are too easily misled or diverted. It was because we could take no chance that we had you in Berlin, Carl.’

Deferential as he was, Krantz could not let this go by so easily. His own services had to be put in true perspective. ‘It is never anyone’s year for the Nobel award,’ he said mildly. ‘As a matter of fact, before last February, there was even some doubt that he would be nominated. His old accomplishments were dated and had long been superseded. And as to this new discovery, there was some question about his work in solar energy, not only in the Royal Swedish Academy, but in those eminent faculties throughout the world who nominate. There was a widespread feeling that it had not yet been proved, that it was too early. What reinforced that resistance was the cloak of secrecy the Americans threw about his find. Because of lack of information, there were many judges who said, “Perhaps it is overrated. Perhaps it is a hoax.” ’

‘It is no hoax, I promise you.’

Krantz looked at his German friend thoughtfully. ‘You are sure of that?’

‘We are sure,’ said Eckart.

‘That was my feeling, all along, of course,’ said Krantz. ‘In any event, no nomination of Stratman had come through by early January, and the whole possibility became more precarious. It meant that if no one had nominated him, I would have had to do so at the last minute. Had that happened, I freely admit I do not think I could have put him over. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, three strong nominations came in, one each from America, England, France -’

‘Naturally,’ said Eckart with a tinge of acidity. ‘They all share his find. They know.’

‘And so, then, to add weight, I submitted my own nomination of Stratman, too. That made four. That made him a more promising candidate, but by no means a favourite, by no means. At least three other candidates had an inside track, with cliques behind them. I never faced a more arduous task.’

Dr. Hans Eckart was as much a diplomat as a scientist, and he knew when to crowd and when to coddle. This was a moment for graciousness. ‘Do not misunderstand me, Carl. I was merely feeling you out, to learn what your position was when the contest began. Your letters were guarded, but I suspected your difficulties. We are all overjoyed by your incredible achievement. My congratulation was not an empty formality. It was given in sincerity.’

‘I hoped you would understand, Hans.’

‘We do. We appreciate your abilities. More than that, your comradeship, also. Would we have given you this assignment-where there could be no failure-unless we wholeheartedly believed in you?’

‘I thank you for your trust, Hans.’

‘Now my inquisitiveness has got the better of me,’ he said. He stared out of the moving car window, at the frost-nipped, barren Swedish countryside, and then he returned to his host. ‘I know a little about your precious prizes, of course, but I am curious about how you put Stratman over. You said there was resistance from the start. How could one man possibly overcome it? In short, how does one man win, singlehandedly, a Nobel award for another?’

Krantz was pleased. With one hand free of the wheel, he tugged at his goatee. Now he understood. At the outset, Eckart had minimized his part in the physics award, because he did not wish Krantz to get out of control or demand too much. It was their clever technique. Krantz knew them well. He was one of them. But underneath it all, they knew that he, Carl Adolf Krantz, a voting member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, had indeed swung the award to Stratman, the man they wanted to have the award this year. And now the jockeying was done, and Krantz’s achievement had been recognized, and he could speak with self-complacent honesty.

‘I will not make more of myself than I am,’ he told Eckart disarmingly. ‘Three or four times, in past years, in different categories, a single member, one judge, has been able to take a minority candidate and convert him into the first choice. It takes careful handling, believe me. Usually, especially in physics, there is a heavily favoured candidate, and he sweeps all before him, and nothing can be done about it. Such was the case when Wilhelm Roentgen won the first award for his discovery of the X-ray. It was the same when Enrico Fermi won, and again when Ernest Lawrence received the prize for the cyclotron. On the other hand, there was Albert Einstein, and he proved vulnerable. Outside influences kept us from honouring his general theory of relativity. You remember Philipp Lenard, your fine Nobel winner? It was said that Lenard became an anti-Semite after Germany lost World War I. Possibly because Einstein was a Jew, Lenard was opposed to him. Lenard made a great campaign against Einstein, telling our judges that the theory of relativity was not actually a discovery, had not been proved, and was valueless. This gave our judges pause. They avoided Einstein for seven years, and when they elected him physics laureate in 1921, it was for the lesser law of the photo-electric effect and not for relativity. I relate this only as evidence that our judges can be moved in one direction or another. Not usually, but on rare occasions. To have one man influence the judges, for or against a candidate, especially a minor candidate, this one man must know where the competition is vulnerable and have unlimited enthusiasm for the candidate he is promoting. Had you suggested any physicist other than Stratman, I might not have been able to summon up the necessary enthusiasm. But we talked about this at Humboldt-Stratman is a candidate I believed in from the start. His harnessing of solar energy will, I am convinced, change the face of the world-’

‘Yes, yes, we agree,’ interrupted Eckart.

‘-and so you gave me a name worthy of my devotion. Very well. That is first. You had asked me how one man, by himself, could win a Nobel Prize for another. And I have said that it has happened on several occasions. I will cite one, for your edification. It occurred during 1945, in the Swedish Academy, when they were preparing for the year’s literature award.’

‘Literature,’ said Eckart, removing his monocle. ‘Hogwash.’

‘You will have to take that up with Alfred Nobel,’ said Krantz flippantly, and then regretted his levity and retreated. ‘I am inclined to agree with you, of course. But there is an award, and eighteen judges, and how does one put over a minority candidate? Well-1945. The favourite candidates, that year, were a number who later won, André Gide, William Faulkner, Hermann Hesse, and others like Jules Romains, Carl Sandburg, Benedetto Croce. There was even talk of giving Thomas Mann a second award. During all of this discussion and byplay, one of the judges in the Academy, Hjalmar Gullberg, a poet, fell in love with the verse of an obscure teacher from Chile named Gabriela Mistral. Have you ever heard of her?’

‘No.’

‘But of the others?’

‘Of course, Carl. What do you take me for?’

Quickly, Krantz went on with his story. ‘Gabriela Mistral had been published in Mexico and Latin America, and almost nowhere else. As far as Sweden was concerned, she was unknown. Her chances for a Nobel award were less even than Max Stratman’s. Gullberg tried to sell Gabriela Mistral to his colleagues, but they curtly rebuffed him. Undeterred, Gullberg made up his mind to win single-handedly for his candidate the prize. An ambitious undertaking, I assure you.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Gullberg set himself to work translating her best poems into Swedish, a formidable task, and then he had the translations published. He promoted the published works. He sent copies to all members of the Swedish Academy. His translations were magnificent, and this, along with other politicking, I imagine, turned the tide. Gabriela Mistral, an unknown, an underdog, really an impossibility, Hans, won the Nobel Prize in literature for 1945. Now, there you see how it can be done.’

Eckart allowed this to sink in, and then he inquired, ‘Now tell me how you did it, Carl.’

‘Stratman?’

‘Yes, Stratman.’

‘We must go back to our meeting in Berlin,’ said Krantz. ‘You had summoned me to inquire if I would consider taking the chair of physics at Humboldt University, and I said it was the dream of my life. And you said that my application would be entered, there might be an opening soon, but you did not wish me to resign yet from my membership on the Nobel Physics Committee of the Academy of Sciences. You said that it was important to you, the university, to the East German government, that Max Stratman be awarded the physics prize and be brought to Stockholm. Since you knew my respect for Stratman, his work, you preferred to have me in Stockholm, doing my part, until Stratman won the prize. The understanding was-when I had delivered Stratman, you would favourably act on my application.’

Eckart flinched slightly. ‘I do not think we put it as bluntly as that, Carl.’

Krantz would not be turned aside. This was vital. ‘That was your implication, Hans.’

‘Implication, yes. No question. We respect and reward our friends.’

‘I did not ask you why you wanted Stratman in Stockholm. I felt that was not part of our-the implication of our deal.’

‘I think I have told you-we wanted him here, nearby, in a free and neutral climate, away from his captors and bodyguards, where we could talk to him-I could see him as an old friend, merely that, nothing more.’

‘The point I make is that I did not bother you with my ambitions,’ said Krantz. ‘You spoke to me of a position to which I have aspired all my life. Quite reasonably, you asked if, first, I could remain where I was, to throw my influence as a voting judge behind a candidate you desired to be elected. Your wish was my wish, as if a command. I tell you that in sincerity, Hans.’

‘We are proud of your friendship, Carl.’

Krantz nodded. ‘I promised you that I would do what I could do, but even then, I did not foresee the difficulties. Stratman was duly nominated, as I have told you, and that was a beginning. All through the spring and summer, I acquired Stratman’s published papers, and, like Gullberg, translated them with care, and sent them to my voting colleagues with personal notes. I tried, through faculty friends abroad, to learn what details I could of Stratman’s actual discovery, the specific solar conversion and storage method, but I ran into a stone wall. American security deprived me of precious details. What I did obtain were zealous endorsements of the discovery, from those who had been eyewitnesses to its results and values. All of this correspondence I translated, and passed around to the other judges. During the summer, I was instrumental in bringing two physicists, one English, the other Russian-’

‘Yes, we helped clear the way for the Russian to come here.’

‘Did you? Well, I thought it had been too easy. It was wise of you, Hans. He came, and the Englishman, and since they were specialists in solar work, they gave valuable lectures-I saw to it that my colleagues attended-and I saw to it that the speakers gave praise to Stratman, and in both cases, my encouragement was not necessary, for their praise would have been lavish anyway. By then, I think, my fellow judges were properly orientated, Stratman-conscious, and for the first time, he was a serious candidate.’

‘You are a wonder, Carl.’

‘You have only heard half of it, Hans. The most decisive half lay ahead of me in the autumn. My original work had been constructive. To build up Stratman. Now, I shifted my gears. My next work became, necessarily, destructive, to destroy the competition. Believe me, the competition was serious this year. We are in the age of physics, and there is an overabundance of eligible candidates. A series of informal lunches with my fellow judges produced the names of three favourites running ahead of Stratman. I will not bother you with full-length biographies. Suffice it to say, one was that damn Norwegian with his latest findings in the low gravitational field. Another was the Spaniard, the meterologist, the one with the new cloud chamber, who claims to have made the first inroads in weather control. The third was an Australian team that had made advances in high-frequency transport-I must confess, fascinating-an elaborate theory, and some evidence, of building underground cables beneath concrete highways and rails to propel vehicles electrically. There was competition, you can see, and demonstrated, whereas Stratman’s findings, though doubtless more important, were made to seem impractical by loathsome secrecy.’

‘What was your next step, Carl? How did you sabotage the competition?’

Krantz felt uncomfortable. He pretended to devote himself to his driving, eyes on the three-pointed silver star above the grille. ‘I do not think the exact details are pertinent.’

‘They are to me,’ said Eckart. ‘We know your resourcefulness in theory. We want to see it proved.’

‘The Norwegian was easiest to dispose of. I wrote a learned paper-I must show it to you-proving that antigravity, if controlled by Norway, could be harmful to Sweden. It would give our neighbour terrible ascendency in rocket propulsion and what-not. I knew that this would strike at our judges’ nationalistic pride. Moreover, to give them a graceful backing off, I indicated that many of the Norwegian’s experiments had dealt with the value of antigravity fields in medicine as well as physics-you know, relief of heart sufferers-and I indicated that his candidacy should be considered, next year, by the Nobel Medical Committee. I circulated my paper, and I am happy to say that the Norwegian received only two votes. As to the Spaniard, with his weather control, I was able to learn that he was a Falangist, and so I located several exiled Spanish scientists, of unimpeachable repute, and invited them to be my devil’s advocates. Their letters were “volunteered” to the leaders of our committee. Their disparagement of the Falangist’s discovery was most effective, I must say. The Australians were another matter. Their high-frequency invention was well regarded everywhere. Moreover, it was a safe prize, noncontroversial. There was no chance of my getting at them through their work.’

‘What could you do?’

‘I could get at them through themselves,’ said Krantz placidly. ‘I have a man here in Stockholm, a refugee of long standing, who is useful in these matters. He is a Hungarian. He had served one of the Axis powers, in World War II, as a minor espionage agent. He likes to think of himself as a free-lance spy, still, but he is actually a pathetic buffoon. Yet, on several occasions, I have employed him for research and found him valuable. He is literate and bookish. He has good connections among the international press. They feed him titbits in exchange for news trifles. He thinks of himself as another Wilhelm Stieber or Fräulein Doktor Schragmüller, but he is actually a librarian, a researcher. I hired him to investigate the Australians.’

‘How could you take such a risk with an irresponsible Hungarian buffoon?’ asked Eckart bitingly.

‘Because he depends on me, Hans,’ said Krantz. ‘He is stateless, and I, and several like me, have intervened on his behalf with lesser government officials, to keep him here. Also, he needs the few kronor we dole out to him now and then. I used him to discover that the Spanish candidate was a Falangist. When it came to the Australians, I used him once more.’

Krantz’s lips curled in self-satisfaction as he negotiated the Mercedes around a curve. When the car was straight again, he continued to speak.

‘The two Australians were homosexuals. We gathered the proof, and when the final voting conference was held last month, I deferred to one of my conservative colleagues-I had shown him the facts and said I thought he might be interested, although I thought it was no issue-and at the critical moment, he burst forth and made it an issue. Professor Max Stratman was elected our Nobel laureate in forty-five minutes.’

Eckart shook his head. ‘Carl, Carl, what is there for me to say? You are a master. I would hate to be a candidate before you.’

‘You would have no problem, Hans. I would favour you.’

‘So that is how it was done?’ mused Eckart.

‘In this case, yes. I would not guarantee it again. The circumstances were exceptional. At any rate, you see the work that went into it.’

‘You will make a scintillating addition to our staff at Humboldt, Carl.’

Krantz took his eyes from the road and looked at his guest. ‘When?’ he asked.

‘Soon, soon,’ said Eckart. ‘Have no doubts. I will see Stratman. You will finish with your Nobel circus. I will return to East Berlin, consult with the board, and you will be confirmed.’

‘Must it wait that long?’

‘How long? It is nothing. Two weeks or three. The formalities and no more. I will phone you, and you will be on your way. Incidentally, you have seen Stratman?’

‘Certainly. I am on the official reception committee. I welcomed him at the train. I attended his press conference. I spent a considerable time with him at the Royal Banquet.’

‘How does he look?’

‘What do you mean? When did you last see him?’

‘The week our Führer died.’

‘He is not a young man any longer-that you know, Hans. Sometimes he appears quite sprightly, other times feeble.’

Eckart fiddled with his monocle. ‘Has he spoken of the past, of Germany?’

Krantz squirmed in his place behind the wheel. ‘Several times. The Americans have brainwashed him with their propaganda and money.’

‘They have? How so?’

‘At the press conference, he defended the secrecy of his discovery as necessary. He said that he was forced to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm to keep his relatives alive. He denied that the Americans kidnapped him. He said that he left Germany voluntarily, because he had worked for one totalitarian state, and he did not wish to remain and work for another.’

‘He said that?’

‘It was in many newspapers the following day.’

‘And in your other conversations, anything else?’

‘At the Royal Banquet, before dinner, there was a trifling exchange. There was conversation about money-what to do with the Nobel money-and Stratman made it clear that he was keeping his prize.’

‘Because he needed the money?’

‘That is my guess. Later, I had a disagreement with Count Jacobsson-you have met him-’

‘Yes.’

‘An officious ass,’ said Krantz. ‘We were arguing Sweden ’s neutrality. Jacobsson, as usual, said we were pro-Allies, and I had no stomach for that lie. I told the truth about public sentiment.’

‘How did Stratman react?’

‘He made no comment on that, but when I praised German genius, he disparaged it. Then, right after, the two medical laureates told what they did in the war, and one of them asked Stratman what had happened to him, and he said that he had been held a hostage-that was his word, hostage. Then, there was an incident. Stratman had said he was a hostage, he and his brother-’

‘Yes, Walther Stratman.’

‘-to keep his brother’s wife and daughter alive in a camp. Well, the brother’s daughter, Stratman’s niece, was right there in the room with him, and when someone asked what had happened to her mother, she broke up and ran off. It was needless and embarrassing. Stratman, I must say, remained unruffled.’

Eckart folded his hands in his lap and stared out the windshield. ‘Stockholm,’ he said.

‘We will be in the city in a few minutes.’

Eckart was silent a moment. ‘Then Stratman is here with his niece?’

‘They are always together.’

‘What is she like?’

‘A cold fish. But one never knows. If I were twenty years younger, I would be sorely tempted, even if she is a Jew.’

Eckart smiled. The picture of the crusty gnome beside him being tempted by fleshly desire was too improbable to formulate. ‘Keep your mind on your work, Carl.’

‘My work is done,’ said Krantz.

‘One never knows. I want you to keep in close touch with me.’

‘I expect to, Hans. I must remind you, I made your reservation at the Grand for only two days. It was not easy. The city is crowded. Do you intend to remain longer?’

‘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 går affårerna? How is business?” Answer: “Stilla. Dull.” Question: “Hur mår Eder man? How is your husband?” Answer: “Han är 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 förbjuden.’

‘Heaven help me. What does that mean?’

‘No spitting… what every young lady should know… Glögg. What’s glögg?’

‘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 mässling?’

‘Mässling-mässling-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-avkläda?’

‘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 Gäring 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?’

‘As you know, I hold many position of-of importance in East Berlin today. I have access to every record, all data. I made it a project to find out what happened to our old Kaiser Wilhelm Institute alumni. I thought I might bring them all together for peaceful nuclear researches.’

‘And you found Walther’s obituary?’

‘His entire history. And yes, his obituary, as you put it. You see, Max, for a long time, after we heard of the accident, the explosion at Dubna, near Moscow, and saw the list of dead and missing-many of our old colleagues were lost there-a few of us had unrealistic hopes that the missing had not been killed but had disappeared somewhere, possibly escaped, and we might one day see them alive. Unfortunately, it was not to be. As I say, it was unrealistic of us, this faint hope. For now I must tell you, among the papers I found were some recent untranslated ones-and one of these, several years old, declared Walther officially dead. So that is it.’

‘So that is your great find,’ said Stratman bitterly.

Eckart nodded solemnly, as if in reverence for one departed. ‘Yes, that and something more.’ He reached down beside his chair for his briefcase. Stratman had forgotten it. Briefcases were so much a part of German costume that one hardly ever paid attention. As he opened the briefcase, Eckart went on. ‘I understand Walther’s daughter is alive and with you in America.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Stratman quickly.

Eckart was all innocence. ‘I read the newspapers, Max. You are a celebrity, you forget. Well, now, I was able to locate-it was not easy-some of Walther’s personal effects. I had them returned to Berlin, because I am a sentimentalist like you. I had love for your brother.’

Stratman poked at the beef and was silent.

‘And when I learned his daughter had survived, the first thing I thought was that she might like these souvenirs.’

From the briefcase he had extracted a silver wristwatch, dented but recently polished, a worn Talmud, a yellow-brown portrait on stiff cardboard of Walther, Rebecca, and Emily at the age of two, and a chipped enamelled cigarette case initialled W.S., which Walther had received as a gift from his pre-war employers on the anniversary of his tenth year with them as an engineer.

Accepting the objects one by one-passing through his hands a dear and precious human being’s entire life-Stratman’s eyes brimmed with tears, and his heart felt near bursting. Slowly, he stuffed the wristwatch, small Talmud, cigarette case into his pockets, and the five-by-seven portrait he turned face down beside his plate.

‘I am sorry,’ said Eckart. ‘I was only trying to help.’

‘Thank you,’ said Stratman sincerely. ‘Let us eat.’

They ate without another word for five minutes, until Eckart saw that Stratman had recovered his composure.

‘As you have said, Max, you have no affection for the past. So let us forget the past. We are alive in the present, and we have too much to do.’

Stratman nodded, and chewed his meat, and made no comment.

‘I am now the senior member of the board of Humboldt University,’ said Eckart. ‘Did you know that, Max?’

‘No.’

‘The future is in the hands of science, and I am a scientist. I am seeing that the university had the broadest basic research programme in the world. We are making a home for the leading minds of every land. Would you like to hear of some of our plans?’

‘Not especially,’ said Stratman. ‘For me, this is a vacation, not a business trip.’

Eckart, fork poised in mid-air, sat nonplussed. Again, he was not used to such offhand treatment. It was with difficulty that he remembered that Stratman, as a Nobel Prize winner, might consider himself his equal.

Uncomfortably, Eckart tried a chuckle. ‘Well, now, you are right. But I still have my curiosity. My only interest is science. That is my business and my pleasure. What are your plans, Max?’

‘About what?’

‘The field you are in. You have perfected conversion and storage of solar energy. That is what I read. What next?’

‘I will remain a servant of the sun.’

‘For peaceful purposes, I hope?’ inquired Eckart.

‘Who says the energy we now use to make rocket fuel is not for peaceful purposes?’ Stratman shoved his bifocals higher on his nose and squinted at Eckart. ‘I think my discovery will keep the peace. And work I plan for the future will doubly assure it.’

‘I cannot tell you how happy that makes me, Max-to know we are both working to the same end. This makes it easier for me to reveal a thought that has come to my mind.’

‘Yes?’

‘Max, I want you to keep an open mind about this. Hear me out.’ He paused, and then he asked, ‘Have you ever considered returning to the Fatherland?’

Stratman looked up. ‘What does that mean? Hans, your circumlocutions make direct conversation impossible. What are you talking about?’

‘A high position-the highest-in Germany-for you. You would be the most brilliant scientist at Humboldt University, among your own kind. We would furnish you a home, any home, of your choosing. A private laboratory building. And three times the salary you now make. All this, to bring you back to the land of your birth. For the first time, you would work for yourself, for us, and the devil take both our enemies.’

Stratman laid down his fork and knife. ‘You mean I should defect from the West and join the Communists?’

‘Childish nonsense-communism, communism. They fill you up too much with that poppycock in America. Who cares about communism? Am I a Communist? I am not. I am a German citizen and a German scientist, and that is the best religion, and you belong to it, too.’

‘Do I? Recently, it was not thought so. Recently, my religion was Jew, not German.’

‘Max, we have washed our hands of those gangsters.’

‘There will be new gangsters. I know my Germany. On the outside, the beautiful peak-the peaceful Ku’damm, and cafés, and Fräuleins with braided hair and miniature cameras, and toy fairs-and underneath, down inside, the lava cooks and steams and waits to explode. I have no love for Germany, Hans. I have love for my youth. But not for Germany. That was an accident. My seed might have grown anywhere.’

Honest astonishment showed on Eckart’s face. ‘I cannot believe you.’

‘It is so. But suppose this is only grief at what has happened. Suppose I did wish to return to the old place. It would not be Germany but Soviet Germany.’

‘That is not so. That is propaganda.’

‘Who pays you your salary, Hans? Who would pay mine at Humboldt?’

‘The German government, of course.’

‘The East German government, you mean. East of the Brandenburg Gate is Russia and Marxism. That is your supreme authority. You have come to me at the wrong time, Hans. You see, I have been spoiled. Yes, little golden America with its milk and honey has spoiled me-because it is golden, and there is milk and honey. I think and speak as I wish, and read what I wish, and, within the law, do as I wish, and when you have known the beauty of freedom, you cannot go to a pimp and his whore.’

Eckart’s lips had compressed until they were blue. ‘This freedom of yours-do you take me for a provincial dolt, Max? I have seen pictures of your slums, and unemployment offices, and black people beaten on the streets. And despotism over science-Oppenheimer-the rest-this is your freedom? I swear to you, you will find no such savagery and primeval living in East Germany.’

Stratman pushed his plate aside. He was still calm, but he missed his meerschaum. ‘Freedom breeds its own canker sores,’ he said. ‘The coloured man was once slave, now he is only half slave, soon he will be free. Under Communism, Germans will never in our lifetime, or after, be free. We, in America, have hope. You have none.’

‘Max, I do not want to argue with an old friend. I want nothing of politics and neither do you. Max, I want you with us. It is simple as that. Not in Russia. Not in America. In Germany. And if, for personal reasons, it cannot be in Germany, I will compromise. I will let you do your work in a neutral climate- Sweden, Switzerland, as you wish-as long as the work you do is for us. Why? Because to work for America or Russia is not to work for peace. But to work for your Fatherland, which with strength will enforce peace, that is the only sense for all of us.’

Stratman sighed, and tried to maintain a pleasant demeanour. ‘Do not waste your energies on me any longer, Hans. I see you did not arrange this lunch to speak of Walther, but to proposition me. It is no use. If I took your money, I could not face myself or my niece Emily, or the ghosts of Walther and Rebecca. I am an American now, Hans, and so I shall remain to the last of my days.’

There had been many shifts of emotion on Eckart’s countenance, and the one that deliberately remained was of friendly resignation.

‘Well, Max, I respect your feelings. You cannot blame me for trying to hire the world’s foremost physicist, can you? It would have been a fine feather in my cap. But your work is so important, I pray you point it towards peace.’

‘Let me care for my own child, Hans.’

‘How long are you remaining in Stockholm?’

‘Until the day after the Ceremony-the eleventh, I think it is-just time enough to pick up my cheque. I may take Emily to Paris for a week. Every girl should see Paris once. After that, I sail for home. There is much I have to do. And you, Hans?’

‘I have some other business. I may stay a few days longer.’ He hesitated, then resumed. ‘Max, if ever you should need money, and wish to reconsider-’

‘At my age, I will not need more money. I have my salary. It is generous. And now, I have Nobel’s legacy.’

That moment, Eckart hated the Nobel Prize, which, ironically, had given Stratman the independence to reject his offer. But, at the same time, the prize had been necessary to bring Stratman here so that he might be tempted. Eckart’s own design, and Krantz’s execution of it, had been intelligent, correct. It had quite simply backfired.

‘People are known to change their minds,’ said Eckart hopefully. ‘Possibly, one day, I can make the inducement higher.’

‘Never high enough.’

‘I can hope. We shall see… Will you have a dessert, Max?’

Stratman shook his head. ‘No. I think I have had just about all I can stomach for one day.’

Except for the inadequate circles of artificial light thrown by the street lamps, the city of Stockholm was pitch-black at 5.40 in the afternoon, the time when Andrew Craig returned from the Stock Exchange Hall to his suite in the Grand Hotel.

The last lecture had been successful, but enervating. Despite his physical weariness, he felt at peace within himself. The reception accorded him by the university students, and their faculty, had shored up his writer’s pride, and it reinforced the tenuous structure Jacobsson had built for him at the Swedish Academy on the ruins of his old self. The frivolous lunch with Emily, in the Stratman suite, had also played a positive part in his well-being. Gradually, Emily was beginning to accept and trust him, and for the first time in three years, he was enjoying companionship with a young woman of his own choosing.

The terrible guilts of the night before, revived by Leah’s hysterical offering, he had managed to put aside. What remained in mind was the vivid sensation of Emily’s living presence, and the growing knowledge of his own rights and his own worth. This precarious resurrection of himself, as author and man, had made him vow, in the late afternoon, that he would not again drown himself in drink.

The fact that now, sprawled on the sofa of his sitting-room, he held a double Scotch with water in his hand was in no way a breaking of the vow. Craig knew his history as a drinking animal. There was the normal Craig, in the indistinct Harriet days, who, like most men, would have a relaxing double before dinner, and no more. And there was the suicidal Craig, of recent years, who would have a compulsive fifth or more, after the double, in the daily descent to oblivion.

Tonight-it was already 6.14-he was the normal Craig, with the relaxing double before dinner, and there would be no more.

He was appreciative of his solitary confinement in the suite. He would like to have had dinner with Emily, of course, but she had promised to accompany her uncle, and members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, to the opera. On the other hand, if the opera took away pleasures, it gave them, too. For, upon arriving in the entry hall, he had found a brief note from Leah that she was off to dinner with Mr. Manker, and then, like Emily, to the opera, also. He wanted none of Leah this night, and so he blessed the opera, and he drank his drink.

He enjoyed being alone to reflect. And he enjoyed his drink, because it would be his only one, and he could taste and savour it and not use it as a lethal potion. What would he do this evening? He would buy some American magazines at the news-stand in the lobby, dine by himself at an isolated table in the Winter Garden, and then come back to the suite. He would change into his pyjamas, crawl into bed, make some notes on Return to Ithaca-several ideas for scenes had occurred to him in the last day or two-and then read a new English biography of Kierkegaard that the students of Uppsala had given him. He would fall asleep early, and awaken early, refreshed, and take Emily out for breakfast and a long walk.

He finished his drink, went into the bathroom, rinsed the glass and left it beside his toothpaste, found his tie and knotted it for dinner. He had pulled on his dark grey suit jacket, when he thought that he heard someone at the door. He went to the curtain and listened. The knocking was repeated.

He hurried to the door and opened it.

A young lady stood beyond the door frame, in the corridor. ‘Hello, Mr. Craig,’ she said.

He did not recognize her. A Robin Hood hat was tilted above her auburn bangs. She had a nose like the beak of the common tern. Her lips, closed, seemed to give her no more than one lip. She was garmented in a thick coat of military cut, and under an arm, like a diplomatic pouch chained to a wrist, she carried an oversized black leather handbag.

As she prepared to introduce herself again, her eyes began to blink disconcertingly, and Craig immediately established her identity. ‘Don’t you remember?’ she asked. ‘I’m Sue Wiley of Consolidated Newspapers.’

He remembered, and he wanted to slam the door in her face, but he was too sober for rudeness. ‘What can I do for you?’ he said coldly. ‘Or are you here to see if I can walk a straight line?’

‘I’m sorry that upset you so, Mr. Craig. I was only doing my job. How am I supposed to get stories, if I can’t ask questions?’

‘There are jobs and jobs,’ said Craig. ‘Lizzie Borden had a job, too.’

‘She was acquitted,’ said Sue Wiley. ‘Look, Mr. Craig, I told you I’m sorry if-’

‘I’m not going to invite you in,’ said Craig, ‘and I’m not just going to stand here. Tell me what you want.’

‘I have someone downstairs who’d like to meet you-someone I think you’d want to know-’

‘Who?’

‘At your press conference you praised Gunnar Gottling as the most talented writer in Sweden. He’s in the lobby. I promised to introduce you.’

Immediately, Craig was interested. Still, he hesitated. ‘What’s Gottling got to do with you?’

‘I happened to meet him in the line of duty. I’ve been interviewing all prominent Swedes about the Nobel Prizes. I arranged to see Gottling this afternoon. We had some drinks. He’s a great talker and bursting with information. Anyway, your name came up, naturally, and he had a lot of things to say about you and the literary awards. I told him you were at the Grand and asked if he’d like to meet you, and he said he would. I suggested maybe the three of us could have dinner. So he drove me over-’

‘Miss Wiley, I’d like nothing better than to meet Gunnar Gottling. But not with you, no thanks.’

Sue Wiley’s brain digested, calculated, and computed rapidly, from long training. She fed the machine Gottling. She fed the machine Craig. She fed the machine herself. Apparently, the combination did not add up. One click, and she subtracted herself. Gottling and Craig added up. Another click. When flint struck flint, there would be a fire. If she could not have the story first-hand, she could have it second-hand. Reinforced by alcoholic fuel, Gottling would give her the result tomorrow. Click.

‘All right, Mr. Craig, no hard feelings,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want me around, it’s your privilege. I’ve got my story from Gottling already, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll limit myself to good Samaritan, and maybe you’ll give me one mark on the credit side of your judgment ledger. I’ll introduce the two of you and make myself scarce. How’s that?’

Craig remained suspicious. This was a young lady who did not wear altruism well. He watched her blinking eyes. ‘You’ll make yourself scarce? How scarce?’

‘Totally, completely. I’ll introduce you and vanish into thin air. I’ll even drop dead, if that’s your wish.’

Craig still did not like Sue Wiley, but he could no longer be suspicious. A meeting with Gottling, on an unplanned evening, was irresistible. He admired Gottling’s uninhibited, earthy, iconoclastic prose. Craig as author had breathed life again, and now he wanted to sustain this existence. Dinner with another writer, a foreign writer, one whom he admired, would be stimulating. ‘Okay,’ he said to Sue Wiley. ‘Let me get my overcoat.’

They went through the corridor together, and then down in the elevator, without exchanging a word.

As they emerged into the bustling lobby, Sue Wiley pointed across the way towards the news-stand.

‘There he is,’ she said.

Gunnar Gottling was stamping around a table at the far end, hands clasped behind him, ignoring the stares of whispering guests. What Craig saw first was a barrel figure of medium height, made to appear shorter by his bulk. He wore an eccentric fur cap and a mangy fur coat, open and billowing, as he paced. As they drew closer, Craig could make out the fierce Cossack face. The brow was narrow Cro-Magnon. The eyebrows were shaggy and unkempt, like strips of rug samplings. The sunken eyes were more red than brown, because they were bloodshot. The moustache was not a mere lip adornment but two wild bushes of hair that covered the mouth and portions of the cheeks. The chest was that of a bartender at the turn of the century, and the jacket over it was pocked with drink stains and cigarette holes.

‘Mr. Gottling,’ said Sue Wiley, ‘this is Mr. Craig.’

Gottling gargled and coughed, and enveloped Craig’s hand in his own, crunching it. ‘So-so-so,’ he growled.

‘I know you were both looking forward to this meeting,’ said Sue Wiley, trying to watch both men at the same time.

‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed two of your books, Mr. Gottling,’ said Craig.

‘You are a good reader,’ said Gottling. ‘About your writing-we will talk soon. First, we must drink.’ He looked about the lobby, sniffing with distaste. ‘This stinks. It’s for the fat ones. Are you a fat one, Craig?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Flesh and gut flabby with security and gadgets and showing the Joneses?’

‘Hardly,’ said Craig.

‘Don’t let that Nobel bribe get you that way. That’s Judas money. It sells you out to conformity, to pleasing, to commercialism. Never a damn honest word written by any prize winner, after he got the boodle. Christ, this place stinks. Where should we drink and eat?’

Sue Wiley caught Craig’s glance, and quickly said, ‘Count me out, Mr. Gottling. Work, work, you know-’

Gottling glowered at Sue Wiley. ‘What do you mean-work? For a female, that atrophies the ass. The best thing you can do, young lady, is go out and get yourself laid.’

Gottling’s voice acted like a sonic boom, and there were many in the lobby who turned, wide-eyed and horrified. Craig wanted to crawl under the table. But Sue Wiley was the product of countless city rooms and pressrooms, and she did not flinch. ‘Mr. Gottling, thank you for your advice, but I like my work. And thank you for the interview. It was swell. I hope you’ll see me again. And good-night, Mr. Craig.’

She took her leave with dignity.

‘Cerebral and sexless,’ grunted Gottling after her. ‘Your typical American dame.’

‘If she were typical, I’d give up my citizenship,’ said Craig. ‘I promise you, she’s not.’

‘Not? The hell she’s not. How many American women you with, Craig?’

‘I don’t, know. A dozen. Two dozen. I’ve never counted.’

‘I, Gunnar Gottling, have counted. I did not count after the first one hundred. All of them the same, the same, except the Polacks. All the same. Ouija boards have got more movement.’ He snorted. ‘I know where we’ll fill up. Ever been to Djurgårdsbrunns Wärdshus?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘If you been there, you’d be sure. Best tavern in Sweden. Fifteen minutes from here, out in the park. Come on.’

Gottling stalked out, with Craig towering over him, a stride behind. The frozen night air hit them with a blast, and they both staggered, then bolted for Gottling’s compact Volvo station-wagon.

A few minutes later, they were speeding to the outskirts of the city. Craig suspected that his host was myopic, but too vain to wear spectacles, for Gottling hung over the wheel, his eyes squinting through the close windshield, as he concentrated on the road ahead.

‘You like my English?’ boomed Gottling, as he wrenched the car around a turning.

‘It’s colloquial enough. One would think you’d lived in the United States.’

‘Where do you think I lived? Six years in your lousy country when I was a kid full of piss and vinegar. Got me off a Norwegian freighter and thumbed my way to Chicago. Worked in the stockyards and as a bouncer and then mixed drinks in a joint on the South Side. Used to spend my day off in Comiskey Park so I could get drunk with company and yell, and spend every night humping those coloured girls. Ever tried that for luck, Craig?’

‘Never. Only for lack of opportunity.’

‘You missed nothing. They smell good, and they got big tits, and they go through the motions, but they’re over-rated. The white boys imagine too much. Expect all kinds of African animal pleasures. Not so. Those coloured broads in Chicago are too neurotic and bound up and angry. How can you give out to someone you resent? So it comes out just like with the white broads-except the Polacks, they’re special. They got the tiger in them.’

‘Why did you go to the United States, Gottling?’

‘Like I said, I was a kid, piss and vinegar. And I’d done my share of reading. In those days, Sweden wasn’t for poor kids. That was before all this fancy welfare state crap. In those days, there was the muck-a-muck on top, and the serf on the ground. I wanted a place where I could flex my muscles and be what I wanted to be. It was either Russia or the United States. Well, I didn’t go for that Bolshevik crap, never did, and still don’t. No lousy commissar’s ever going to tell Gunnar Gottling what to do. So I took a flyer at the United States. That was crap, too. Blue laws and puritans and bloomers. Except for some cases used for advertising in your history books, the real story was-the poor stayed poor, and the rich got richer. Democracy. Ha!’

In the darkness of the bumping car, Craig looked at this outspoken, angry man. ‘I know what you’re against, Gottling. What are you for?’

‘Anarchy, pure and simple. I talked to those boys down in Barcelona once, several years back. They got it right, if they ever come out in the open. Anarchy, that’s right. Back to the tribes and freedom absolute. That’s my allegiance, to that and the Republic of Gottling. Three bona fide citizens in the Republic of Gottling -me, myself, and I. Title of my autobiography, if I ever get down to writing it.’

He drove in silence, and then took his eyes off the road a moment.

‘You said you read my books, Craig. Which?’

‘The two published in English. The one about the Lapland girl who comes to Stockholm, and what civilization does to her. And the other one, about the farmer who gets a job in-in Malmö, I think-and brings his family to the co-operative housing place.’

‘Did you like them?’ he asked brusquely.

‘I told you, they were damn good. A little long, a little rough, but first-rate.’

‘You’re damn right. I wish I could say the same for your books.’

Craig stiffened. ‘Say whatever you want. This isn’t the Boy Scouts of America on an outing.’

‘You’re a featherweight, Craig. You write scared. That’s what makes you a featherweight.’

There was a squeeze of resentment in Craig’s chest. Who the devil was Gottling anyway? The bully boy of unread literature. Craig was not letting him get away with anything tonight. ‘Who writes scared?’ he said. ‘I’ve tackled important themes, problems. That’s more than you’ve done.’

‘Don’t go thin-skinned on me,’ mocked Gottling. ‘I know your goddam important themes. But why sneak off and do your hollering a century or two ago? Now’s the place, in this world, among the bastards of this world, to do your sounding off. Belt them head on. The day you do that, you’ll be great, the champ. Right now, you’re only cute, a fancy Dan who gets it on points, but nobody knows if he’s got a punch. Know what I mean?’

Craig knew too well what he meant, and he knew what Harriet had once meant, but tonight he did not like it at all. He had come out with Gottling, he realized, to have his ego further inflated. And now, this. His ego had been too recently revitalized to stand up under punishment.

He sat sullen and wordless.

‘Here we are,’ said Gottling. He yanked the wheel, and they spun off the road, parking at the foot of a flight of stone stairs. These climbed to the entrance of a building that resembled an eighteenth-century English inn.

It was too cold to linger outside in the Volvo station-wagon. They hurried up the steps and into the warm reception room of Djurgårdsbrunns Wärdshus. As a waitress helped him off with his overcoat, Craig observed, to his left, the main dining-room, immaculate white tablecloths and several early couples, and to his right, the bar-room, which was more densely populated.

‘What’ll it be, Craig?’ Gottling wanted to know. ‘Food or spirits?’

‘I could stand a drink.’

Gottling grinned grotesquely from beneath the ferocious moustache. ‘I can see we’ll get along.’

They made their way into the noisy bar-room. There were about a dozen men in the room. Some were on stools at the bar, several watched a Swedish play on the television set, and the rest hunched about the wooden tables. Almost everyone, it seemed, knew Gottling, and they greeted him with affection, and he cussed at them with affection. He led Craig to a corner table, somewhat apart from the others, and they settled on chairs covered with a plaid material as thick as horse blankets. Gottling ordered a double gin on ice, and Craig ordered a double Scotch on ice, and they both waited, pretending to be absorbed in the activity of a young man throwing darts at a worn board beneath the television set.

When the drinks came, Craig downed half of his in a single gulp, enjoyed the familiar spread of heat through his veins, and then drank again. He became aware of Gottling’s gaze and half turned to meet it.

Gottling nodded in approval. ‘I’d heard you were a drinking man, Craig. I think that’s why I bothered to come out and meet you.’

‘Who said I’m a drinking man?’

‘That dame with ground glass in her genital canal-your Miss Wiley.’

‘That bitch.’

‘If she didn’t tell me, I’d know anyway. I can spot a pro when he bends his elbow. Amateurs sip and suck and nurse, and they make it a secondary occupation. But the pros, you and me, we pour it down like we know there’s a lot more where that came from and like it’s the most important thing, which it is, except for an occasional lay and sometimes writing.’

‘I don’t like drinking, Gottling. I take it the way Socrates took the hemlock cup-a necessity better than living.’

‘You’re a mighty complicated guy.’

‘Sure I am. Did Sue Wiley tell you that, too? Let’s have another drink.’

Gottling shouted across the room at the bartender, and in seconds, fresh drinks appeared.

‘Why’d you see her?’ Craig asked.

‘Who? The dame with the ground glass down under?’

‘That’s right. Did you want publicity?’

‘You baiting me, Craig? I get enough publicity. This dame called up and said she heard I’d been nominated six times for the Nobel Prize and never got it, and she was writing a series about the whole machinery, and did I have anything to say. Well, my friend, that Nobel Prize is one of my favourite table topics. When I can let off steam on it, it gives me as much pleasure as an orgasm. So I told her to come right over. She filled two notebooks.’

‘Why didn’t you ever get the prize, Gottling?’

‘Why didn’t Strindberg get it? Same difference. Consider my track record. I’ve been divorced twice, the first time for beating my wife’s head against the wall and the second time for laying my step-daughter. I’ve had a Danish mistress for five years-she wears glasses to bed, and that’s what gets me-and I let her give interviews for me. I’ve had four illegitimate children. I’ve been arrested and in jail six times, for drunken behaviour in public. And my literature isn’t exactly idealistic. And that book where the Lapp girl comes to Stockholm, and the city corrupts her and turns her into a whore, well, my fellow Swedes are touchy as hell. They didn’t like it a bit. Still, I didn’t put the blast on them, and I kind of waited, because I figured I’d get the prize sooner or later, like old Gide and old Hamsun. I mean, I’m the only Swede writer around who can write his name. And that Swedish Academy, those academic boys, they love to masturbate-honour themselves, their own-and sooner or later, I figured, they’d want to honour a Swede, and it would have to be me. I don’t give a damn about the honour. I wanted the dough. I can always use the dough. But I have my pipelines, and about two years ago, I found out it was no soap. So I said what the hell, you can’t have everything in life, and now I’ll have some fun with those bastards. So in six weeks of boozing and scribbling, I got me a novel about the eighteen immortals in our Academy-thinly disguised, thinly-what they’re really like after hours-and, man, what a yelp there was. I made the kronor, and they made the threats about hauling me into court, but they were afraid. The book’s never been published in your country. Too special. But I settled our Nobel Committee good, and that’s why you’re never going to see my name beside yours and old Thomas Mann and old Rudyard Kipling.’

Craig downed his second double, and ordered a third, and so did Gunnar Gottling.

‘What did you mean about the judges liking to honour themselves, their own?’ Craig asked.

‘Nepotism, my young buck, good old-fashioned nepotism,’ said Gottling. ‘Four small Scandinavian countries-Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland-with about as much talent, per capita, as you could put in a thimble, but one big mutual admiration society. Take the first sixty years of the Nobel Prize. Those Scandinavian countries got thirty-one of the prizes. Can you believe it? Thirty prizes in the first fifty years. Sweden and Norway kept patting themselves on the back, and each other, and their Nordic neighbours. What crap.’

‘It’s not what Nobel wanted, is it?’

‘Who knows? I don’t suppose so. He said the prizes should be given without regard to nationality. But his heirs didn’t believe him. They put the screws on right from the beginning. You’ve heard of Bertha von Suttner? Nobel’s secretary? Well, when she didn’t get one of the first Peace Prizes, the Nobel family went to Oslo and said, in effect, look, Nobel set up the Peace Prize for old Bertha, so let’s get on the ball. Sure enough, in 1905, old Bertha got the prize. After that, the doors were wide open. Who in the devil ever heard of Nathan Söderblom outside Scandinavia? But look up 1930. He won the Nobel Prize for peace. Why? Why not? He read the services at Nobel’s funeral. And he was the Archbishop of Uppsala. And so it’s gone. How many people outside Scandinavia read von Heidenstam, Gjellerup, Jensen, Sillanpää, Pontoppidan? All Nordics. All laureates. Hell, in 1931, the Swedish Academy broke its most inflexible rule to give their prize to a dead man. They sure did. They loved their Secretary-nice guy-poet by the name of Erik Axel Karlfeldt, and his widow and daughters needed the dough, so they gave him the prize. Very touching. But what has all that got do do with honouring great writing, and what does that make of the prize itself?’

‘It’s still the most respected prize on earth,’ said Craig.

‘Of course it is. You know why? Because most of the democratic world has abolished titles and all that crap. But men are human. They yearn for titles, for an élite, for an upper class. The peasants have their equality, but there is the old nostalgia for royalty. So along comes the Nobel Prize, at the right time, at the turn of the century when everything is drab and dull. The masses were waiting for it. They made it the new knighthood. That’s why it’s respected and popular. Because people are masochistic, inferior fools.’ Gottling swallowed his third double gin. ‘If they only knew what crap goes on behind the scenes of the awards, not only nepotism, but all the narrow prejudices and politics.’

‘I don’t think that’s a secret,’ said Craig. ‘Jacobsson took me up to the Academy yesterday, and he was damn honest about the literary voting. He said there was good and bad.’

‘Jacobsson,’ Gottling muttered, rolling his glass on the table. ‘Count Bertil Jacobsson? That old stuffed parrot, he should have been put in a time capsule years ago. He lives in the past. He has nothing to do with breathing people. Why do you think the Foundation supports him? Because he’s a front-he’s got blue blood, he knew Nobel, he makes with the erudition and history-and part of his gambit is to anticipate criticism. I wager you ten to one, he gave you the old routine-why Tolstoy and Ibsen and Hardy didn’t get it-but reminding you of all the big names that did. It’s all technique to disarm visitors and send them off beaming. Studied frankness to strip you of your objectivity. And another wager. I’ll bet you he wasn’t frank enough to confess how the Nobel committees have always sucked around the Germans-like that turd, Krantz-and looked down their noses at the Americans, at least until the Second World War, and how they got a permanent boycott going on the Russians.’

The whisky had gone to Craig’s head, and the room reeled. ‘I like Jacobsson,’ he said.

‘You Americans love everybody,’ growled Gottling, ‘just to be sure somebody loves you. What crap. So you like Jacobsson. But did he tell you how his Nobel crew ass-licked the Germans and put the knife in the Russians?’

‘No, he didn’t. I better have another drink.’

‘Me, too… Hey, Lars, refills!’ He turned his bloodshot eyes back to Craig. ‘You like this old Wärdshus?’

‘Greatest place on earth,’ said Craig thickly.

‘You’re damn right.’

‘What about the Hun?’ asked Craig.

‘Germans? Forty-nine prizes in sixty years. Russians? Seven prizes in sixty years, and lucky at that.’

‘I’d say that shows courage,’ said Craig, ‘thumbing your nose at Russia, when they’re looking down your throat.’

‘Courage, ha!’ exploded Gottling. ‘Every Swede is scared stiff of Russia, and when it counts, Sweden crawls. Why do you think we didn’t join NATO? Because we’re afraid of Russia, that’s why. I wish we had half the guts that Norway has. They defied the Nazis, when we didn’t, and now they defy the Communists, when we won’t. Like giving that 1961 award to old Dag Hammarskjöld, knowing the Bolshies hated him dead or alive. But us next door? We’re yellow, a yard wide, and we know it, and we don’t like it. So how do we salve our national conscience? We make believe we’re men by childish crap-by sticking our tongues out and keeping the Nobel Prize from Russia. So where does that put the holy Nobel Prize? It puts it in local politics. It makes the prize a political instrument that you dumbheads in America -except the Polacks-consider an honest honour. Christ, what crap.’

The new drinks came, and Craig spilled part of his before he brought it to his mouth. ‘You said something about the prize being anti-American and pro-German-’

‘That’s what I said. Cold figures. I may be looped, but I got it all in my head. Take chemistry. Only one American, Richards of Harvard, won it in thirty-one years. Take physics. Only one American, Michelson of good old Chicago, took it in twenty-two years. Take literature. Only one American, Red Lewis, in thirty-five years. Take medicine. Only two Americans, Carrel and Landsteiner, in thirty-two years. But the Germans-oh, our Nobel boys worshipped them. Fifteen winners in the first ten years, not counting the peace prize, which isn’t worth spitting on. In Sweden, if you could show a degree from Frankfort on the Main or Heidelberg, you were practically nominated. For forty-some years, those krauts were the superior race over here, Nordics just like us. But when you kicked the hell out of them in the Second War, and when you came up with the atom bomb, there was a fast shuffle in all the Nobel committees-and now they pour prizes at you and Great Britain like it was confetti. Don’t ever talk to me about impartiality, when you talk to me about that lousy prize you won.’

‘What’s wrong with the prize I won?’ Craig peered at Gottling with owl eyes and spilt his drink again.

‘What’s wrong? Haven’t you been listening to me? You plastered or something? I told you about Russia-’

‘I forgot.’

‘Seven Russians in sixty years in five categories, and not one of them a clean-cut award. It’s not just anti-Communism. It’s plain anti-Russianism. We’ve been shaking in our boots since the time of the Czar. What happened in physiology and medicine in the first sixty awards? Old Pavlov should have carted off that first award hands down. But no, the Committee kept snubbing him for four years, until there was so much pressure they gave in. And they had to give half of Ehrlich’s prize to a Russian in 1908, because it was on the record he deserved half the credit for advances in immunity. Two stinking medicine awards to Russia in sixty years and none in half a century of that sixty years. Take a look at chemistry. One-half of the 1956 prize, and that’s it, brother, that’s all in sixty years. What about physics? One prize, divided among three Russians, in sixty years. There’s your science awards. I’m not a Russky lover. I told you before, they stink. But what’s that got to do with accomplishment? That’s a country where they’ve done the best work in longevity and genetics and stuck a Sputnik and a guy named Gagarin in the sky. That’s a country where they invented artificial penises for soldiers wounded in the war. That’s a country where Popov demonstrated radio transmission before Marconi, and where Tsiolkovsky had multi-stage rockets in 1911. But not according to our Swedish Academy of Science-no. According to our Nobel idiots, Russia is the land without scientists. And those idiots in Oslo are just as bad. Russia didn’t get a single Peace Prize in sixty years, but Germany-Germany!-got three and France eight and you Americans twelve. And now, my son, we’re home again-literature.’

‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ mumbled Craig.

‘Ivan Bunin and Boris Pasternak-two Russians in sixty years. Ever think who lived and wrote in Russia in those sixty years? We all know about Tolstoy being turned down nine times. But what about Chekhov and Andreyev and Artsybashev and Maxim Gorky-Gorky was around until 1936. Nothing.’

‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ repeated Craig.

‘Phony!’ bellowed Gottling, but no one in the Wärdshus bar so much as looked up. ‘Bunin was a White Russian refugee, an anti-Communist, who lived in Paris and translated Longfellow’s “Hiawatha”. He hadn’t been in Russia in fifteen years, when you Americans pitched for him and put him across in 1933. And old Boris Pasternak, the matinée idol with good guts, out there in his dacha-who gave a damn about him when he was writing solid poetry? Who honoured him then? Not the spineless Nobel judges, I guarantee you. But the minute he put out that novel that criticized communism, the minute he had the nerve to say what every Swede was afraid to say, they crowned him with the prize he couldn’t accept. Someday, I got to write advice to writers all over the world. I got to tell them, “Writers, arise! If you’re Russian, if you’re American, no matter what, grind out an anti-Russian potboiler and get it translated into Swedish, and you’re in. You get the Nobel Prize and the big boodle. Just like Andrew Craig.” ’

Craig squinted at Gottling through bleary eyes. ‘What in the hell does that mean?’

‘The facts of life, kid,’ said Gottling, belching, and swallowing his gin, ‘the facts of life. Why do you think you got the Nobel Prize? Because you’re a hotshot author? Because you’re the best this year? Because you’re the leading idealistic literary creator on earth? That what you think? That what Jacobsson and that bag, Ingrid Påhl, told you? Because you’re somebody, in the league with Kipling and Undset and Galsworthy and O’Neill? Crap! You’re nothing, and the Nobel boys know it, and everyone in Scandinavia on the inside knows it. You’re here on a phony pass, because they wanted to use you, and that’s all. And, brother, that’s the truth. Have another drink?’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Craig. His brain and mouth were fuzzy, but a distant alarm registered. ‘Is this some more of your sour grapes?’

‘I’m the only guy in Sweden with guts enough to level with you, Craig. I got enough pity for that. I don’t want to see you making a horse’s ass of yourself. The Nobel Prize for literature to Andrew Craig? Ha! Crap. The Nobel Prize for anti-Russian propaganda, that’s what it should be. You won because the Swedes have been having a diplomatic squabble with the Russians over two islands in the Baltic Sea-you never read about that, did you?-and the Swedes are going to lose, and crawl, and eat crow. But they got to keep face-that’s our one Orientalism, keeping face-and so, knowing they got to lose, they unloaded a rabbit punch at the Commies by honouring your little anti-Communist fiction, The Perfect State. That’s to show we’re big boys, not afraid of anybody, even when we crawl.’

‘You’re making it up, Gottling. You’re bitter, and you’ve got to get your jollies some way. If the Swedish Academy wanted to blast Russia through an award, they could find novelists in a dozen countries who’d written stronger anti-Soviet books.’

‘Oh, no. You’re blind man, you don’t see at all. An award to a writer of a work overtly anti-Russian would be too dangerous-they don’t want Pasternak all over again. That was too much of a sweat-they don’t want to stand up and body-punch. Like I said, they just wanted to sneak in a quick rabbit punch, for face, for conscience. Your novel is anti-Russian, all right, but you got to cut away the sugar coating to know it. If Moscow gets sore, and they have-I read Ny Dag, that’s our Commie sheet here-the Swedish Academy can just look surprised-and they have, too-and shrug and say they were honouring a pure historical novel about Plato and ancient Syracuse. You see? But everybody knows different. Only the way it is, nobody can prove it. It’s a scared gesture, like whistling in the dark, just like yours is a scared book.’

‘To quote Gunnar Gottling-you’re full of crap.’

‘Am I? The hell I am. Listen, if I wasn’t loaded to the gills, I wouldn’t be telling you this. But I got two good friends in the Swedish Academy. They’re the ones who nominate me every year. And after every voting, I get a play-by-play. When your name came up, there were only three of the twelve, the Påhl witch and two other innocents, who thought you had more on the ball than A. A. Milne or Edgar Guest. You were dead, until somebody brought up Russia and those two Baltic islands. Then there was heated talk about Russia, and then someone said the only good thing about your book was that it showed the Russians up-that is, if you read between the lines-and in about an hour, the majority agreed that if you got the award, it would show those Russians, it would really show them. And so you got it. And we’ve shown them. Sorry, kid. You’ll write some real books one day, but that wasn’t the one, and we all know it-so go home with your money and your title and don’t knock luck.’

Craig sat very still. The film of alcohol that covered him, like a placenta in the prenatal chamber, was not enough to protect his frail rebirth as a man. Until now, he had only listened to Gottling, only taken him half seriously. The ravaged Swede was a carper and a dissenter, who made himself larger by making other men smaller, and once you understood that, you understood him, and relaxed and enjoyed it. But this last had the sound of truth, and if it was truth, it was devastating. Craig wanted his rebirth here in Stockholm, one last rebirth of his ego and soul, whole and healthy. If this one miscarried, if this one was still born, only the death of sterility as an author lay ahead. He would not accept Gottling’s rotten exposé.

‘You’re trying to get me sore, Gottling. You can’t. I’ve got your number, you see. You’re a defeated, bitter wreck. You can’t get up with the rest of us, so you do the next best thing. You try to drag us down into your gutter. You get away with each ambush by flying the flags of candour and honesty, but your real banner is a deep sickness of the soul. If you weren’t paying for these drinks, I’d bash your nose in.’

Gottling grunted, and he twisted to face Craig fully, his eyes twinkling. ‘Don’t try it. I eat laureates. I break them in small pieces and eat them.’

‘Not this one. I doubt if you could take this one. You are paying for the drinks?’

Gottling was silent a moment. ‘Yeah, I’m paying.’

‘Okay, then.’

‘Craig, you can’t get me to fight you. Because I like you, I like you too much.’

Craig’s eyes mirrored his surprise.

‘Sure,’ said Gottling. ‘I know you’re a zero, and I know you know it. Maybe someday, you won’t be. Someday, you’ll be a figure-if you live that long-but now you’re a zero. Still, I like you-you know why? I’m not ashamed. I’ll tell you why. Because you put it in the papers that I’m talented and should’ve won the prize. You put it in the papers that I’m talented. Nobody’s said that in a long, long time, and nobody with a title ever said it at all. I can live off that until I die.’

‘But if I’m a zero, and say you’re talented, what does that make you?’

‘Maybe you’re not a zero, and maybe even I’m not. I never was good at figures. Have another drink, Craig. It’s on me. I’m paying all the way.’

How Craig had arrived outside this large gymnasium, on Valhallavägen near the old Olympic Stadium, some time before 10.30 at night, was not clear to him.

He did not remember Gunnar Gottling dropping him off at the Grand Hotel, and driving away. Craig had stood swaying for some time before the entrance, wondering what he should do. The weather was freezing, and the area before the entrance was deserted-even the saluting doorman had taken cover inside-and the only signs of life were the two taxi drivers locked snugly in their vehicles and asleep.

At first, Craig had not minded the cold. Alcohol seemed to preserve him against it. He had stood there, rocking from leg to leg, and weighed his one problem and his three possible solutions.

His problem had been-emptiness. The brainchild, the child of hope, attended and nursed to life by Jacobsson at the Swedish Academy, by Emily, by the students in the morning and afternoon, had been delivered stillborn, after all. Gottling’s self-serving attack had shattered him. He was no more alive than he had been that late afternoon, in Miller’s Dam, that hour before the telegram, when Lucius Mack had put him to bed, and he had passed out. Yes-emptiness.

As he had stood there in the biting wind, the solutions were three. If the opera were over, there would be Emily, restorer of life, life giver. But to come to her this way, shorn of strength, weak of will, muddled and sottish, might repel her forever. And another thing, another thing, and this you felt at once in your head and your heart and between your thighs. You wanted the reviving clamp of woman love.

Craig desired this desperately, the potion of anti-emptiness, to prove his worth to himself and the earth’s worth to him. He wanted to put a needle in a doll, deeply, and incant the magic that would dissolve the big, bad Gottling. He wanted Emily, but she would be unprepared, unbriefed, without the knowledge necessary for understanding, and the force of his passion would start her running, and after that, he would never find her. No, it could not be Emily.

He had considered the second solution, which had a sanity and logic of its own this wintry night. Leah, the rigid Leah. His loss and drunken need would be familiar, understood, readily accepted. He thought of Leah, hair loosened to her shoulders, known Slavic features, sagging teats, and muscular thighs. There he would find easy admittance and comfort, and later he would sleep well, released of ambition and guilt, and the battle would be over, at last. For long moments, in the cold, the temptation of it, the simplicity of it, had almost drawn him inside. But then, in the clarity of the icy wind, the hotel became the house at Appomattox, and if he entered now, he would be Lee, when he really wanted to be Grant. No, this was not surrender day.

For, by then, he had pictured the third solution. Freya, Swedish goddess of carnal love. The solution was a night’s miracle, inviting no danger, demanding no surrender.

Immediately, Craig had gone to the nearest taxi, awakened the startled driver by rapping on the window, and asked to be taken to Polhemsgatan 172C.

When they had arrived at the apartment, the elderly portvakt had been in the entry hall, performing some repair. He had come to the door out of curiosity, and then recognized Craig from the other time. At once, he had hobbled outside, waving his hands, and making a long and negative speech to the taxi driver.

‘He is saying,’ the driver had told Craig, ‘your lady friend is not home tonight. Once a month, she goes to her club, and that is tonight.’ Craig had wanted to know when Lilly would be back. The portvakt could not say, although he thought it might be late, it was usually late. ‘Find out where she is,’ Craig had ordered the driver, ‘and then take me there.’ He had not thought it out. He had only considered his need, and her unselfish readiness to serve him. He had only known that he must rescue her from the banality of clubhood so that, in turn, she might save him.

And that was how, at this late hour, on this freezing night, he came to be standing unsteadily before the entrance of the square gymnasium on Valhallavägen.

He made his way, stumbling, across the walk to the green door, pulled it open with effort, and staggered inside. Despite the cement floor of the entry hall, the room was well heated by a pounding radiator. The room was barren of all furnishings, except for a table and a chair behind it, now filled by a masculine, middle-aged woman in a brown suit. She had a metal card file open before her, and was sorting cards and stacking them, and she looked up with a puzzled smile when Craig approached her.

‘I’m looking for Miss Lilly Hedqvist,’ said Craig, enunciating each word clearly. ‘I’m told she is a member here. I’m an American friend. I wonder if I could see her?’

‘Well-’ said the receptionist.

‘It’s very important that I see her.’

The woman rose. ‘If you will excuse me.’ She strode off vigorously, quickly opening and closing an inner door.

For Craig, the delay was tedious. There was no place to sit, so he tried to pace, but his gait was unsteady, and at last he resigned himself to immobility by leaning against the wall.

Suddenly, the inner door swung open, and the receptionist held it, while two people passed into the entry hall. One was a tall though stooped elderly gentleman with the face of a fox, wearing incongruous attire. He was clothed in a polka-dotted blue bathrobe and beach sandals. The other was Lilly Hedqvist, and she wore a white terry-cloth robe and was barefooted.

While the elderly gentleman hung behind at the table, with the receptionist, Lilly, her golden hair gathered up with a ribbon, her brow pinched with concern, padded quickly across the cement to Craig.

‘What is it, Mr. Craig?’ she asked in an undertone. ‘Are you well?’

He was fascinated by her terry-cloth robe and bare feet. ‘What kind of club is this, anyway?’

‘Our nudist society. I told you once, remember? In the winter, we meet once a month in this gymnasium, for sunbathing under lamps and for lectures. Tonight is a special meeting for the new membership. How did you know I was here?’

He told her, but he was still fascinated by the terry-cloth robe. ‘Is that what everyone wears-robes and swimsuits?’

‘No. You do not understand. This is my nudist society. I have nothing on underneath the robe. We are all free and open, for good health. New members sometimes wear these transition robes for a few minutes, until shyness is gone, and then they take them off. I borrowed this from the cupboard to come out. I could not dream who was here.’

‘Lilly, can you get away now? I’ve got to see you.’

‘It is impossible, Mr. Craig. I am secretary this year. I must make notes on the meeting. Then, I want to hear the lecture for the new members.’

‘How long will it be?’

‘One more hour.’

‘An hour? I can’t wait alone that long. What’ll I do?’

She was troubled by his mood, and she wanted to help, and at once her face brightened. ‘I know what. You can come inside and sit with me. It will be a good lesson for you, anyway. Maybe you will learn health.’

‘Sure, if I can be with you.’

‘Let me see. I will ask our director.’

Craig remained leaning against the wall, and watched and listened, as Lilly went to the elderly gentleman, with the polka-dotted robe, and began addressing him in rapid-fire Swedish. The gentleman replied, and then Lilly spoke some more, and the gentleman kept glancing across at Craig, as if evaluating him. At last the gentleman nodded, and left the room.

Lilly returned triumphantly to Craig. ‘It is all right,’ she said. ‘He was worried at first, because they have not interviewed you, but I said you were an old friend of my relatives in Minnesota-’

‘You have relatives in Minnesota?’

‘Of course not. I convinced him when I told him you belonged to the American Sunbathing Association in New Jersey-I have read about it in our pamphlets-and I told him I had seen your card, and you were interested in our Swedish nudism and wanted to attend a meeting.’

‘Then it’s all right for me to be with you?’

‘It is all right.’

They started for the inner door. The receptionist, still standing, bowed her head in welcome, and then they went through the door. Craig followed Lilly, and wanted her more than ever, but restrained himself from touching her. They reached two more green doors.

Lilly pointed to the right-hand door. ‘That is to the gymnasium. When you are ready, come in. I will be waiting for you. Try to hurry. The lecture begins soon.’ She indicated the door to the left. ‘You go in there. That is the locker room for men and women. You will find an empty locker for your clothes.’

She started to leave, but Craig grabbed her shoulder.

‘What do you mean-locker for my clothes? What am I supposed to do?’

She seemed surprised. ‘Undress,’ she said simply. ‘This is the nudist society. I am nude. Everyone is.’

‘Lilly-for God’s sake-I’ve never done anything like that.’

‘I have seen you naked. You were not ashamed.’

‘Of course not. But this is in public-men and women-’

‘Mr. Craig, you will find it is easier than you think, and normal. There is nothing indecent about human anatomy. Clothes, even a little clothes, that is what makes people curious and lascivious. When everyone is unclad, there is nothing to it. It is so natural, you will see. You will not be curious and think evil thoughts, and you will feel different. Now, quickly undress, and come so we do not miss the lecture.’

Craig knew, as Lilly spoke to him, that some of her phrases had the quality of pamphlet phrases being recited. But her face was earnest, with a kind of religious fervour, and Craig did not dispute what she had to say.

Having finished her sermon, Lilly hastily opened the gymnasium door and was gone. Craig stood drunkenly by himself, trying to make sense of this comedy. Then he remembered that Lilly, in all solemnity, was waiting, and that he could not disappoint her. My God, he thought, do all drunks have these strange adventures, all drunks and rudderless people? And then he thought, what the hell, they’re here for kicks, so give them some and have a few yourself, and get it over with. With that resolve, he went into the locker room.

Inside the narrow locker room, that resembled all the locker rooms he had known in boyhood and in the army years, and that smelled of wet shower floors and slippery soap, he removed his overcoat and jacket. Seeking an empty grey locker, he opened three that held garments, two that were filled with men’s suits and one that held a woman’s skirt, blouse, and underthings, and for another moment he hesitated, wondering if he dared give in to Lilly’s caprice.

The fourth locker was vacant, and in it he hung his overcoat and jacket. As he sat on the bench to remove shoes and socks, he tried to articulate to himself what bothered him. Despite Gottling he was a man of importance, in a time of importance. What if Sue Wiley or some other member of the press, or even Jacobsson, should learn he had been here? It would prove the suspicion, held by some, that he was a hopeless alcoholic. He could see the headlines in the American papers: DRUNKEN NOBEL WINNER GOES NUDIST. No honour would counteract this damage. Decidedly, Alex Inglis and Joliet College would not have him on their staff.

Once he was barefooted and shirtless, he knew that his fear was not of scandal but of something else, and that, as ever, he had been rationalizing his hesitation. He unbuckled, and unbuttoned, and unzipped his trousers and stepped out of them. What remained was his blue shorts, and what remained was his real fear. Mentally, the evening had depressed him, but physically, drink and despair had stimulated him. He had wanted Lilly’s body, in nudity, and he had wanted it savagely, and he wanted it still. Now he would face her disrobed, and see her stark naked, and the emotional charge would be uncontrollable. And there would be other girls, perhaps as beautiful as Lilly, and he would see their private parts, and be a slave to wild imaginings, and would react sexually. Would it happen to him? Did this happen to men at nudist gatherings? If it did, God help him. What a spectacle he would present.

He took off his shorts, threw them into a locker, and now he was a nudist, the nudist laureate.

He strode into the corridor, looked off to see if the receptionist was watching for him, but no one was there. At the gymnasium door, he wavered a last time. He stood straight and unclad and wondered what you did with your hands. Where were modesty’s pockets? He would keep his arms dangling straight down at his sides. Well, the hell with it. He yanked at the door and went into the gymnasium.

The lights-not the overhead lights, but the banked sunlamps across the floor-blinded him, and he shaded his eyes. Before he could adjust himself to the vast hall, or to who or what was in it, he saw Lilly. She was advancing towards him, carrying a pad and pencil in one hand, and she was smiling. He had not seen her completely naked in the light before, and now there was nothing to conjure up in passion’s mind. It was all there before him, revealed, obvious, matter-of-fact, and natural. The two young-blown fleshy breasts bobbed as she walked, and the nipples were not points, as he had remembered them, but circular crimson stains, flat and soft and the texture of velvet. Below the navel fold, the body rose and fell and swelled in perfect lines of classical Hellenic female maturity.

Craig was moved that this was his, and yet, to his relief, he was not moved with desire. It was as if, with many others, he was sharing enjoyment of a wonder of nature. There was detached, objective pleasure, but there was no sexual involvement.

‘Now, do you not feel better?’ Lilly was asking.

‘I’m still a little drunk.’

‘I know. But it is good to have your clothes off and be like God made you and be healthy, is it not?’

‘I suppose so… You’re incredibly lovely, Lilly.’

‘We do not speak or think of such things here,’ she said, but enjoyed the compliment. ‘All nudists are lovely in one way or another.’

‘What’s going on here?’ he asked, looking off. His eyes had become accustomed to the glare, and now, for the first time, he could make out the nudists in the gymnasium.

There were bodies everywhere, and of every description, at least two hundred men and women, young and old, some lying on mats beneath the sun-lamps, some sitting on the rows of wooden benches communing with one another, some standing about in conversational groups, and a dozen or more playing volleyball. There were lanky men and chunky men and skinny men and fat men. There were middle-aged women and young women, and small immature breasts and mountainous breasts and some as perfect as Lilly’s own. There was no self-consciousness, no inquisitiveness, no atmosphere of sexuality. Almost no one looked at Craig, as he moved towards the front of the row of benches with Lilly, and soon he found that there was no need to study or stare at anyone else.

Lilly indicated the third bench, and they seated themselves, and she crossed her bare legs to support her pad.

‘Well, what do you think, Mr. Craig?’

‘I’d never have believed it possible,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘To see so many females in a state of undress and not be a bit aroused.’

‘I told you it would be so,’ she said. ‘It is clothing that arouses. If a woman wears a dress, there is always a man who thinks of what is beneath it. And little pieces of clothes are the worst, like the low-cut gown or bathing-suit or bikini, because they put your eyes and attention on certain places of the body. But if you are nude and see those places of the body revealed on everyone else, there is no mystery or stimulation, and you take it for granted, and you are healthy. Mr. Tapper-he is our director you saw in the entrance-he has said it is suggestion that makes all the trouble. He has said millions of dollars are made through suggestion of sex, because people are curious about the mystery. The burlesque in the night-club, the fadeout in the cinema, the asterisks in the book-they are to tease you about the anatomy. But if you are a nudist, you are not teased, and it is open and better.’

‘I never knew you were a student of morals, Lilly,’ said Craig with a smile. ‘But yes, Mr. Tapper is right, and you are right. All I’ve got against public nudism is that it would do away with sex.’

‘Oh, Mr. Craig, you are joking.’

‘Yes, I am joking,’ he said.

Mr. Tapper, divested of his polka-dotted bathrobe, proved to be all ribs and knobbly knees, and looked oddly incongruous behind a public address microphone. He was calling the meeting to order in Swedish. Men and women lifted their bodies from the mats, and the conversational groups broke up, and the volleyball game ceased. Everyone was being seated, row upon row of shoulder blades, spines, and buttocks against wood.

‘He will speak in Swedish,’ Lilly told Craig. ‘I will translate for you.’

In a dry monotone, Mr. Tapper began his address. While she was making her jottings, Lilly interpreted the address for Craig. Mr. Tapper was tracing the history of the nudist movement. It had begun, in theory, in Germany during 1903, with the publication of a book entitled Die Nacktheit by Richard Ungewitter, the son of a watchmaker. The author had advocated a nude society, to relieve men and women of constricting attire, to give them freedom of movement and enjoyment of air and sun, and to make all parts of their anatomies commonplace so that seduction and adultery and perversion would be reduced. Shortly afterwards, perhaps inspired by Ungewitter’s proposal, another young German, Paul Zimmerman-a schoolteacher turned farmer, who had raised his four daughters to disdain clothes-opened the world’s first nudist camp, called Freilichtpark, in Klingberg am See. To enter the park, one had to give up alcohol, tobacco, meat-eating-and all garments. The nudist park was a success, and within twenty years, there were 50,000 nudists in Germany alone. The idea spread quickly, to Switzerland, to Scandinavia, to England, and finally, by 1929, to the United States. The same year that nudism reached America, it had its mightiest triumph in Germany. For, that year, in Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre, a nudist troupe staged a vaudeville show. This show, composed of dances and acrobatics, was open to the public, although every performer was naked. Today, said Mr. Tapper, nudism had spread to nearly every nation on earth, and was universally accepted.

‘Now, before anticipating the questions that new members have in mind, I should like to say a few words about nudity in general,’ said Mr. Tapper. ‘Modesty is unnatural, and it takes on various forms throughout the world. If you came upon a naked Swedish or French or American woman by accident, she would first cover, with her hands, her pubic area. But, as one Langdon-Davies has remarked, if you came upon a naked Arab woman, she would first cover her face before all else, and a Laos woman would first cover her breasts, and a Celebes woman would try to hide her knees, and a Chinese woman her feet, and a Samoan woman would try to conceal her navel. As you see, this reduces modesty to the ridiculous, and shows you how unhealthy it can be. Under international nudism, the naked woman’s face, breasts, navel, pubic area, knees, feet, could all be revealed, and she would have to cover nothing, for there would be nothing to fear.’

Mr. Tapper droned on in Swedish, and for a while Lilly was too busy recording in her notebook to interpret his remarks. Once Mr. Tapper paused to accept a drink of water, and then Lilly whispered to Craig, ‘Now he will give questions and answers to the new members.’

Mr. Tapper scratched his abdomen, cleared his throat, and resumed, and Lilly interpreted his words as best she could.

‘Our new members may wish answers to certain questions. I will give them. What is our goal? To provide, through nudism, better health, more relaxation, cleaner minds and higher morals. Do we permit cohabitation and sexual activity in our outdoor park? No. Such misconduct means immediate dismissal. Can members wear shorts? No. Concealing garments of any kind only provoke and excite. The only exception made is that women may wear shorts during their periods of menstruation. Will members, primarily the male members, ever have to worry about becoming sexually aroused and embarrassed at our meetings? No. This has never once occurred in our history. The mind, from which sexual passion originates, is apparently not stimulated by large groups of nude people. I am reminded of the experience of Jan Gay, who wrote a book about her first visit to Zimmerman’s nudist park. The new members among you may find Miss Gay’s first reactions similar to your own. “To be sure,” wrote Miss Gay, “the first time one enters such a class, one is aware of other people’s bodies to a considerable degree; but when one mingles all day, day after day, with naked men and women, a penis comes to be not much more unique than an elbow or a knee and little more remarked; and the contours of one woman seem very much like those of another, save that some are more shapely.” New members will soon understand this reaction.

‘But let us resume our answers to questions. Will membership in a nudist society ever cause you trouble if it is publicized in the less tolerant outside world? No. In America, nudists know each other by their first names only, and membership lists are never made public. In Sweden, we do not have such a problem. As you know, our Stockholm newspapers, as well as the newspapers in Copenhagen and Oslo, annually publish photographs of our summer festival King and Queen, and these photographs are entirely nude, and the winners are much admired and respected.’

Listening, and somewhat sobered, Craig realized how absorbed and diverted he had been. And the interesting part of it was that his absorption had not been in the shapes of the nude young girls all around, but in the director’s talk.

Although he was a writer, in these last years his roots had not spread, had not found new areas of interest and experience, had almost withered and died. Tonight, he had been entertained by an absolutely new adventure on earth. The subject of nudism, as such, was nothing that personally attracted him. But the fact that there was here a whole new level of living and devotion, non-conformist and even bizarre, yet attracting so many fellow humans, and he had known nothing about it, was what interested him. His thirst for knowledge, for hearing facts, for observing people and incidents, was once more alive and a part of his being. In his absorption, he had been able to forget, for a time, the bitter encounter with Gottling and the hollowness of his Nobel victory. He had almost been able to forget his earlier sexual desire for Lilly, now unclothed beside him. He had not even given thought to Leah or Emily. He was once more, as he had not been for three long years, a writer-sponge, soaking in fresh sensation. It was strength to know the writer-sponge was not completely atrophied.

Presently, Mr. Tapper was finished, and the formal part of the meeting was ended. Most of the members rose, some to return to their mats beneath the bank of sun-lamps, some to resume their volleyball game, and the rest to enter the locker room and dress for the outer world.

‘It is over now,’ said Lilly. ‘We can put on our clothes and leave.’

She stood up, while he still sat, and her naked body-from the full pink breasts thrust forward as she straightened, to the dipping lines of flesh curving down to her groin-loomed above him in female beauty. This was what he had imagined, in the earlier evening when he had hunted her. Yet now it moved him not at all. It was one more naked body, out of so many, without mystery or provocation. He sighed, and came to his feet. Perhaps this was not their night. Perhaps it would be best to drop her off at her apartment and go back to the hotel and sleep.

They followed the others to the crowded locker room, a mass of men and women dressing amid a babble of Swedish talk. Her locker was across from his, and they separated briefly. Hurriedly, he pulled on his shorts and trousers, and got into his shirt, stuffing the tails carelessly inside the trousers, and then he took his socks and shoes and sat down on the bench to put them on. As he sat, he could see Lilly directly across the way. She was still naked, and had just finished talking to a plump young woman who was securing her dress.

Tying his shoes, he watched Lilly arrange her clothes on the bench and automatically begin to dress. It fascinated him. It was like a filmed striptease run backwards. She held her brief nylon panties before her, and stepped into one leg opening and then the other, and pulled them up tightly so that the elastic band came to her navel. Then she sat on the bench, rolled her sheer nylons, inserting one foot, then the other, and unwinding the nylons up her slender calves and up her thighs, and fastening the stockings at her thighs with garter bands.

Now, when she stood, her nudity partially clothed, her bare breasts seemed to expand and grow. A trick of the imagination, Craig knew, because the panties and stockings had focused attention on what was still revealed. She slipped into a white cotton blouse, and began to button it, and Craig remembered that she had disdain for brassières. The indigo jersey skirt was on, a single tug of her hands circled it into place, and she was pulling the zipper. Her sandals were on her feet, and her thick woollen sweater was over her arm.

Craig was ready, and he met her between the benches, and they went into the corridor. Briefly, they were alone. She halted to put on her sweater. She poked one arm into the sweater, and tossed her golden ponytail, as he assisted her with the other arm. Coming around her, face to face once more, he could see that the upper button of her blouse was open, and he could see the cleavage between the breasts.

He tried to picture the breasts and nipples now pressed behind the blouse, and he tried to picture the thighs beneath the skirt, and at once, all at once, in that instant, he was moved by a consuming passion for what could not be seen, and by a hungry desire to see it and possess it. For the first time since entering the gymnasium, he was physically aroused.

It amused him, and he smiled.

She saw his face, and took his hand. ‘What is it, Mr. Craig?’

‘Just a private thought,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of the most incredible thing on earth.’

‘What?’

‘Man,’ he said.

And then he squeezed her hand, and started with her down the corridor, wondering how long it would take her to undress.