THE PRIZE
By Irving Wallace
Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2011 by Amy Wallace & David Wallechinsky
Cover Design by David Dodd
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Dedicated to My Parents
Bessie and Alex Wallace
"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way:
The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts . . ."
-ALFRED BERNHARD NOBEL
November 27, 1895
"The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?"
-SAINT AUGUSTINE
c. 400 A.D.
I
The northern night had come early to Stockholm this day, and that meant that autumn was almost gone and the dark winter was near at hand.
For Count Bertil Jacobsson, as he walked slowly through the lamplit Humlegarden park, his lion-headed brown cane barely brushing the hardened turf, it was a happy time, his favorite time of the year. He knew the promise of this cold premature night: the winds would come, and the mists sweep in from Lake Malaren, and eventually, the snow and ice; and there would be no guilts about locking himself in his crowded, comfortable apartment, hibernating among his beloved mementos of a half century, and working on his encyclopedic Notes.
Emerging from the park, Count Bertil Jacobsson arrived at last on the sidewalk of Sturegatan. The evening's constitutional was over, and the final exciting business of the night—the culmination of ten months of intensive and abrasive activity—would soon take place. For a moment, almost wistfully, he turned to look back at the park. To any other man, what had recently been so lush and green might now seem stark and denuded, the trees stripped of foliage and outlined grotesquely in the artificial light like gnarled symbols of life's end in a surrealistic oil. But Jacobsson's peculiar vision transformed the scene by some special alchemy to a kind of initiation of life, a nativity when nature was reborn, and the old year at last delivered of first life. Again, he told himself, his favorite season had arrived, and tonight, this night, would be a memorable one.
Turning back to the street, automatically glancing to the right and then to the left, and reassured that the thoroughfare was empty of traffic, Count Bertil Jacobsson began to cross it almost briskly, swinging his cane in a wide arc. When he reached the opposite sidewalk, he stood directly before the narrow six-story building that was Sturegatan 14.
Tugging open one of the two towering metal doors—it had become more and more a feat of strength in recent years—he entered the Foundation building, and, as ever, felt warm and safe inside the dim hallway that led to his office, his home, his museum, his life. Moving forward, he heard his leather footsteps on the marble floor, then paused briefly, as was his habit, before the giant sculptured bust of Alfred Nobel. Studying the sensitive, craggy, bearded face, Jacobsson was again unsure. Was this the way the old man had really looked, the way he remembered his looking, when Nobel was very old and he was very young? At last, with a sigh, he turned left, moved past the sign on the wall reading NOBELSTIFTELSEN, and with effort climbed the marble staircase to what American visitors persistently misnamed the second floor.
Opening and closing one of the glass-paned doors, Jacobsson again found himself in the reception corridor, with its familiar green carpet and rows of tables and chairs. Proceeding along the corridor, he noticed the bookcases on either side, those on the one side packed with investment journals (to which he constantly objected, no matter how often he was told that the Board's primary job was one of finance), and those on the other side with expensively bound sets of Spanish, French, German and English works of the winners of decades past.
He could see Astrid Steen, his plump secretary, standing at an open file behind the counter of the reception office, her back to him. "Mrs. Steen—"
She turned quickly, dutifully, and he saw on her face the same sense of excitement that was mounting within him.
"Are the telegrams ready?" he inquired.
"Oh, yes, sir—on your desk."
"Where is everyone?"
"Up in the apartment. They are drinking your whiskey, I'm afraid."
He chuckled. Every year, the same.
"For them, the job is over," Mrs. Steen added.
"Not yet—not yet—"
"The Foreign Office called. An attaché is on his way."
"Good. I shall be in my office."
Count Bertil Jacobsson went into the Executive Director's room, regretting his superior's recent illness, but secretly pleased that as Assistant Director the task was wholly in his hands. He hastened through the small office, and entered his own even smaller office, in the adjacent room.
Removing his felt hat and wool overcoat, and carefully placing his cane in a corner, Jacobsson winked gaily at the portrait of his friend, old King Gustaf V, that hung on the facing wall. He saw the large manila folder on his desk, quickly took it, and then sat down heavily on the soft blue sofa.
With rising anticipation, he opened the manila folder. He was pleased that this year, at his suggestion—he could not remember that it had ever happened before—the Royal Academy of Science, the Caroline Institute, the Swedish Academy, and the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting had all agreed to make their choices known to the world simultaneously. It would provide for greater drama, Jacobsson had argued, and he knew that he would be proved right.
Studying the contents of the open folder in his hand, he suddenly frowned. Quickly, he shuffled the typewritten telegram sheets for the one that was missing, and, then, he remembered. The Norwegian Storting had, just as it had sixteen times in the past, informed the Nobel Foundation that it would' not give a peace prize this year. Recollecting the decision that had been transmitted yesterday, again he silently nodded his approval. This was a time for many things, but not for public accolades to peacemakers.
Gingerly, lovingly, he held up the first drafted telegram, and moved his lips as he read it to himself.
IN RECOGNITION OF. . . IN SUPPORT OF HUMANITARIAN IDEALS. . . THE NOBEL FOUNDATION OF STOCKHOLM ON BEHALF OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY IS PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE TODAY BEEN VOTED THIS YEARS NOBEL PRIZE . . . DETAILS FOLLOW STOP HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS STOP . . .
There was a rap on the door. Jacobsson looked up, as Mrs. Steen put her head in.
"The attaché is here, sir. He is ready for the telegrams.”
“Yes—yes—one moment—"
Hastily, Count Bertil Jacobsson counted the telegrams, read and reread them to see that all were in proper order, and at last he rose, and almost reluctantly handed them to Mrs. Steen.
"All right, they can go out now."
After the door had closed, Jacobsson, his fragility accented by the removal of his burden, walked slowly past his desk to the window. He stared down into Sturegatan, saw the chauffeured limousine waiting, and then lifted his gaze to the vacant park again.
November fifteenth, he thought. Indeed, a memorable day. His watch told him that it was 9:10 in the evening. So late for a memorable day to begin, but then, he knew that while it was late in Stockholm, it was earlier, much earlier, in Paris and Rome and Atlanta and Pasadena and that place called Miller's Dam in the state of Wisconsin.
Down below, he saw the chauffeur jump out of the limousine, circle it, and open a rear door. By craning his neck, Jacobsson could see the tall figure of the attaché, carrying a briefcase, approach, bend into the car, and disappear from sight.
In a moment, the limousine engine roared, and the telegrams were on their way to the Swedish Foreign Office on Gustaf Adolfs Torg. Within the hour, they would be delivered to Swedish Embassies in three nations, and then be relayed to the winners themselves.
The winners themselves, Jacobsson thought. He knew their names well now, because he had heard them repeated regularly in the long months after their nominations, through the investigations, debates, haggling, and voting. But who were they really, these men and women he would be meeting in less than four weeks? How would they feel and be affected? What were they doing now, these pregnant hours before the telegrams arrived and before their greatness became public glory and riches?
His mind went back to his Notes, to what others in past years had been doing at the moment of notification: Eugene O'Neill had been sleeping, and been pulled out of bed to hear the news; Jane Addams had been preparing to go under ether for major surgery; Dr. Harold Urey had been lunching with university professors at his faculty club; Albert Einstein had got the word on board a ship from Japan. And the new ones? Where and how would the prize find them? Jacobsson wished that he could go with the telegrams, with each and every one, and see what happened when they reached their destinations.
Ah, the fancies of an old man, he thought at last. Nog med detta. Enough of this. He must join his colleagues in the upstairs apartment for a drink to a good job done. Still, it would be something, something indeed, to go along with those telegrams .. .
It was 8:22 in the evening when the telegram from Stockholm reached the Swedish Embassy in Paris. The Ambassador's pink and concave male secretary, still busy typing the notes on the African mediation question, opened the wire routinely. But as he scanned the contents, his eyes widened with awe.
The first portion of the telegram was addressed to the Ambassador: PLEASE DELIVER THE FOLLOWING BY HAND TO THE PARTIES ADDRESSED STOP OFFER PERSONAL CONGRATULATIONS ON THE BEHALF GOVERNMENT STOP
The message trembled in the secretary's grasp as he continued to read. Desperately, he tried to remember where the Ambassador had said that he was going. Not home. Not the Opera. Not the Palais de Justice. Cocktails—that was it, yes, at the residence of some diplomat, but he had not said which one. And then later he was to be at Laperouse in the Quai des Grands-Augustins to dine. The secretary recalled making the reservation himself for ten o'clock.
His eyes sought the wall clock. Still an hour and a half before he could inform the Ambassador of the momentous news. For that period, the news, the secret, so important, so desired, was his alone. There was pleasure in this.
He settled back in his chair, like a little boy who had seen St. Nicholas, and began to reread the message that the Ambassador had been charged to convey:
FOR YOUR RESEARCHES IN SPERM STRUCTURE AND YOUR DISCOVERY OF VITRIFICATION OF THE SPERMATOZOON FOR SELECTIVE BREEDING THE NOBEL FOUNDATION OF STOCKHOLM ON BEHALF OF THE ROYAL SWEDISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCE IS PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE TODAY BEEN VOTED THIS YEARS NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY STOP THE PRIZE WILL BE A GOLD MEDALLION AND A CHEQUE FOR TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NEW FRANCS STOP THE AWARD CEREMONY WILL TAKE PLACE IN STOCKHOLM ON DECEMBER TENTH STOP DETAILS FOLLOW STOP HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS STOP
The message was addressed to DOCTOR CLAUDE MARCEAU AND DOCTOR DENISE MARCEAU SIXTY TWO QUAI DORSAY PARIS FRANCE. . . .
It was only 8: 30, and, except for the proprietors and the waiters, they had the restaurant to themselves.
In fact, Dr. Claude Marceau and Gisèle Jordan had already finished their dessert, gateau de riz, or rather Claude had finished, and now watched Gisèle daintily spoon the last of her rice caramel with vanilla sauce. It had been a delicious meal: soupe de poissons, followed by the specialite of the evening, Le Jesu de la Marquise, which consisted of saucisson chaud, pistache, truffe, salade de pommes a l'huile d'olive et romarin, but the pommes sparingly for both.
Claude was distressed at eating this early. It was barbaric. Gisèle and he had never discussed it, but the necessity was understood by both. Neither could afford to be discovered. At this hour, there was less chance of being seen. Even the restaurant, Le Petit Navire, found during a stroll early in their courtship, had been made their place, because it was in that obscure, dark side street, the rue des Fosses-St.-Bernard. While it was occasionally patronized by some of the finest gourmets and restaurant collectors in Paris, its main clientele consisted of the management and better-paid laborers of the Halle aux Vins across the street. None of these customers, Claude and Gisèle were confident, would be likely to recognize a distinguished chemist of the Institut Pasteur or a Balenciaga mannequin.
Gisèle had finished her dessert. Her napkin was at her mouth. "Cafe?" Claude asked.
She shook her head. "No. But I will have a cigarette."
He found the thin silver case in his pocket, extracted two English cigarettes, lit one, then lit the second off the first and passed the first to her. She brought it to her lips and inhaled deeply.
"Perfect," she said.
"Because I kissed it first," he said.
She smiled, and impulsively reached her long, tapering hand across the table to touch his. He turned his hand, palm up, and encompassed her own.
"I love you, Gisèle."
"I love you," she replied softly, but her face wore its professional public mask of beauty, emotionless, seemingly detached, and it always made him momentarily unsure.
Eager to be reassured, to consume the steps of ritual that would bring him to the exact moment of reassurance, he asked, "Shall we walk?"
"After the cigarette."
"Very well."
They sat in silence, Gisèle toying with the matchbox, looking down at it, inscrutable, and he unable to take his eyes off her public face. It was an incredibly lovely face, he decided again, and now it belonged to him. He studied it in an indulgence of self-congratulation. Her hair was ash-blond and bouffant, the eyebrows penciled dark and high, and the eyes an icy pale blue, set wide apart. Her nose was straight, as in those Grecian statues in the Louvre, and the lips generous, full, soft, and the deepest hue of red. Her cheekbones were high, leaving shadowed hollows beneath them. The large diamond earrings she always wore made her face seem even narrower.
Suddenly, she ground out the remnant of her cigarette, pushed back her chair, and rose. Taking her purse, she said, "I'll be right back. Don't go."
"Never."
His eyes followed her across the room. He saw that the three waiters were observing her, too. She moved like a mannequin, with fluid grace, tall, thin, hips slim, thighs and legs long, all elegant and aloof and slithering. As she walked, her legs, close together, provocative, stretched straight before her, the pointed pumps turned slightly outward, her smooth buttocks undulating in the manner of all practiced mannequins. At last, she pirouetted around a corner and was out of view. Straight out of Elle or L'Officiel, Claude Marceau thought, all haute couture, clothes, face, figure, all glacial and unruffled and not merely mortal. Perhaps it was this that had attracted him first, the challenge of what was or seemed emotionless and unattainable and too near perfection.
Yes, this had attracted him first, he knew definitely, and what had held him, finally, against all caution and scientist's reason, was not her public presence but her private behavior. From the very first time, she had become a different person. Two weeks ago—when it had stimulated him beyond anything he had ever felt before—she had undressed before him, boldly, almost tauntingly, first slowly, the shoes, the long sheer stockings, the dress, the half-slip, and then faster and faster, the bra and garter belt and pants. Wholly naked to him, she had become a different person. Once stripped of fashion and pretense, once basic white flesh, and breasts considerable in circumference but stylishly flat, these accentuated by her elongated, bony body, she had become pure animal. She shed with her apparel all vanity and studied sophistication. There remained no single artifice. In nudity, she withheld nothing, became the epitome of the French courtesan, displayed desire rawly, and enjoyed the sexual coupling completely without pretending a special gift in giving but revealing a passionate gratefulness in receiving.
Although Claude had possessed her a half-dozen times in the two weeks, the anticipation of it—the transformation—again aroused him more keenly than ever, and he longed for her to return and be off with him. As he called to the waiter for the check, his mind was still on the miracle of their union. He had a certain pride in the affair. It was not only her evident desirability and beauty, which, after all, he could not show the world, but the fact that she enjoyed him.
He was forty-six, and she twenty-seven, and he had been an intellectual and a man of science since his youth. He had been too long devoted to tubes and bottles and counters that smelled of acid, and too devoted to introspections, to regard himself as debonair or attractive, although now, in these last weeks, he had felt attractive. His hair was bushy and graying, his broad face not yet fleshy but regular except for the narrow eyes and beaked French nose, his body inclined to weight and called by one newspaper "heavy-set," but still strong and firm, so that he continued to play tennis once a week and play boule in the Bois twice a week. She could have younger men, gayer men, richer men, and certainly unmarried men. Yet she had him and wanted no more. Here was another mystery of chemistry that he and Denise must investigate. He realized, immediately, that he had subconsciously thought of the name of his wife. That was improper, and he erased her name. He would not think of her on this night. He was in no mood for brooding over his culpability.
Again, attempting to see himself through Gisèle's eyes, he tried to weigh his value. Assets: intelligence, sensibility, modest fame. Liabilities: age, a certain stodginess, married.
About to continue his reverie, he saw Gisèle approaching, the bouffant impeccable, the bowed lips wine, the long legs crossing in lazy strides against her tight purple skirt. He tried to rise as youthfully as possible, opening his wallet and counting out the necessary francs and despite service compris a generous tip to the serving people who would understand the bribe.
He took up her full-length natural brown mink coat, held it as gallantly as a cloak, and she spun gracefully into it, coolly enwrapped and beauty enhanced.
Outside, in the balmy Parisian night, they stood in the dark, narrow street, her hand in his, gazing at the great fenced Halle aux Vins.
"I should like to go in there some night and sample everything," he said.
"We do not need that," she said, squeezing his hand.
"Still want to walk a little?"
"Oh, yes. The Seine."
There were small dangers in this, he knew, but here was a night in November such as the one during which they had met, really met, in September. So he agreed.
She linked her arm in his, and they strolled leisurely across the rue des Chantiers to the Boulevard St.-Germain, glanced into the corner cafe to see if there were anyone they might recognize, then crossed and walked the block to the Quai de la Tournelle. They crossed again to the low stone wall above the Seine, passed several closed wooden bookstalls, and halted to survey the placid river. On the river, like a floating chandelier, one of the bateaux-mouches, its curious glass dome shining in the half-moon, approached. Beyond it, the lights of the city were spectacular, and to the left, they could see the towering bright mass of Notre-Dame.
He nodded at the sight-seeing boat. "I have never been on a bateaux-mouches. Have you?"
"Several times. It is wonderful fun."
"I had always supposed it was for tourists—"
"It is for us first, the way the Seine is."
"Yes. Some night, let us do it. I almost feel like a tourist anyway—everything new—"
They observed the boat again, and then, automatically, without the exchange of a word or pressure of their hands, they resumed walking toward Notre-Dame. The air seemed cooler now, and for Claude, this was evocative, conjuring up the first night that he had met Gisèle. Actually, he had seen her before he had met her. He had seen her in the late summer.
It was a time when his life had become directionless and monotonous, and he had been possessed of a nervous restlessness. The preceding six years had been different, for there had been a luminous goal, and a total dedication to its achievement. Going back the six years, he remembered that the goal had been established by a chance remark Denise had happened to make one noon.
He and Denise had become interested—possibly an unconscious reaction to their own personal inability to conceive offspring—in genetics, in the biological processes of perpetuating the race, and specifically in the effect of chemicals on chromosomes and genes. They had, as so many scientists before them, experimented with the Drosophila fly. They had attempted to induce artificially changes of the genes, as a means of predetermining or controlling the future sex of offspring. This work in mutations had not gone far, and had not been original, and Claude and Denise were discouraged on that fateful day when they joined several fellow workers lunching in the office next to the laboratory. During the repast, someone had mentioned a Russian paper devoted to advances made in transplanting a female ovum, and this had stimulated a heated discussion on heredity and sperms and fertilized eggs. Denise, in one of her infrequent fanciful moods (occurring whenever she was quietly desperate), had remarked playfully, "Suppose it were possible to preserve the living spermatozoon of a Charlemagne or an Erasmus, or the unfertilized egg of a Cleopatra, and implant them today, by modern means, centuries after their donors were dead?" The fancy had been electric. Claude and Denise had continued to speculate upon it, first romantically, and, at last, scientifically.
The first years had been drudge years of collecting facts. From this handful of facts had grown a tentative hypothesis, and then had followed crude experiments with lower animals. During these experiments, they had made a startling discovery, whose validity was soon verified by the statistics from mass experiments. After their joint paper had been read and published, and widely hailed, and popularized in the press, and Claude and Denise had been exposed to a brief burst of publicity, they had suddenly found themselves at a curious dead end of existence.
The six years of absolute concentration on one subject, without any life or social intercourse beyond that of the laboratory and each other and the spermatozoa, had left them mentally and physically debilitated, drained to the marrow, and without resources to interest themselves afresh in anything else. Weary of their work after victory, they had left its routine development to other eager minds around the world. For themselves, they had been brought to rest in a vacuum of accomplishment. After discussing, and quickly discarding, several new projects, they had by mutual con-sent agreed to relax, fulfill workaday demands in connection with their discovery, and wait mystically for another inspiration. For the first time in years, Denise had busied herself about the old apartment, sorting, repairing, replacing, and had caught up on correspondence and relatives and the few friends left. Claude found his own vacuum more difficult to fill: tennis and boule, of course, and lunches on the Right Bank, some speeches, investigation of investments, an effort to catch up on reading long neglected. But it was dull and not man's occupation.
It was at this time, by chance, that several English colleagues had come visiting from Oxford, and since it was late July, and the fifty Paris fashion houses were busy showing their new collections, the English wife of one colleague announced her desire to see such an event. With his recent position of eminence, Claude Marceau had no trouble obtaining the necessary invitations. The invitations were for a Balenciaga collection, to be displayed in the great couturier's rose stone building off the Champs-Elysées, and because he had nothing better to do, Claude had reluctantly accompanied Denise (who had never been to such an affair either) and the English couples to the showing.
Claude had released his invitations to the head vendeuse on the third floor, and then had passed, with his wife and guests, into the main salon. Two rows of gold painted wooden chairs were distributed around the showroom. Claude and his party took their places before the large mirror at the far end. The sudden barrage from the overly bright corner ceiling lights and the dozen lights in the recessed center of the ceiling had been the signal for customers to remove their coats, and Claude had gratefully imitated the others.
At once, the showing had begun. Claude had watched with mild interest as the animated mannequins, ten working in unceasing tandem, emerged from behind a curtain opposite, paraded across the floor toward him in their outlandish coats and jackets and dresses, carrying in their right hands cards with their costume numbers, spun before him, returned past the three windows toward their entry, and exited by a side opening.
For -Claude, at first it had been restless and tedious nonsense, and then, without being aware of it, he was erect on the edge of his gold chair. Suddenly, all of his senses were engaged. He found himself staring at a mannequin whose breathtaking beauty, chic, haughty manner dominated the functional modern room. This, he would later learn, was Gisèle Jordan.
She appeared and reappeared, with the nine others, and Claude was mesmerized. Once, perhaps on her twelfth presentation, striding disdainfully before his party, pirouetting before the women, sweeping her furs off her daring cocktail gown, her blue eyes had held on his. They offered no message, only a challenge. Or so he thought. Afterwards, riding home, he had dwelt on the moment, cherished it, and let it play out, but then his factual scientific sensibility had taken over. The moment had been illusion, invented by his need, and he decided with finality that he had been mistaken and foolish.
But two months later, still in the doldrums and taking the crisp air on the Champs-Elysees at dusk, he learned that he had not been foolish. Passing Fouquet's, he had casually glanced at the faces behind the tables, and one of them he recognized at once. What had emboldened him to confront her he would never know. But he had, indeed, halted, made his way to her table, and introduced himself. Her face had reflected immediate recognition—yes, she remembered him from that showing several months ago, and she knew his name through his reputation. She invited him to sit with her, and he did, and she spoke easily. He realized that Balenciaga was nearby, in the Avenue George-V, and that she often came to Fouquet's for a glass of champagne after work and before dinner. Most frequently she came alone, but sometimes she met her agent for fashion magazines, M. Favre, a slight and dandified latent homosexual who loved her possessively and was important to the advancement of her career.
They had talked and talked, and two hours later had dined at Le Taillevent in the rue Lamennais, off the Champs-Elysees, and later walked, starting and stopping often, the length of the Faubourg-St.-Honore to the Madeleine. It was near midnight when he had put her in a taxi. After that, he had walked the entire distance back to the apartment, his mind boyish and alive and in a turmoil. Denise was listening to the wireless, not at all alarmed by his late return, and he made an unrehearsed excuse quickly and deftly, and was gay and joking with his wife, and for the first time in a year, he had felt no tiredness or depression at all.
In the weeks following, first once a week, then twice, they had met discreetly, with the spontaneity of an accidental encounter, each unsure of the other, and each aware of Denise and M. Favre. But after six weeks, they knew simultaneously, instinctively, that the intimate conversation, the self-revelations, the hand holding, the kissing were not enough. And so she had, at last, given in to the inevitable climax without his urging, and had invited him to her small two-room apartment, exquisitely furnished (the living room pieces were from the best antique shops in the Flea Market), in the rue du Bac, not far from the Boulevard St.-Germain. And there, with little preliminary, she had revealed herself to him, all molten beneath the glacial surface, and that night, he had been stimulated, virile, and attractive again. That night, for the first time in six years, he had not once given a thought to spermatozoa, at least not clinically—or to Denise, his collaborator.
Reliving all of this now, as he strolled along the Seine, had briefly removed him from the present reality. Gisèle's voice, intruding upon him, was a surprise. "Claude," she was saying, "whatever are you brooding about?"
"Brooding? Heavens, no. I was thinking back—how we first met." She gripped his arm more possessively. "I never think of that. Only of now."
He nodded. "It is best."
Ahead, he could see a taxi disgorging well-dressed men and women into the world of pressed ducks—Tour d'Argent—and he knew that there was the populous danger zone, and that he could continue no farther without risk.
He stopped in his tracks. "Let us go, Gisèle. I want you."
She caught her breath. "Right now?"
"As soon as possible."
"Yes. I would like that."
They waited patiently at the curb, and he signaled the next free taxi leaving the Tour d'Argent, and once inside, they headed for the rue du Bac. She sat apart from him, in her genteel public way, and they held hands on the seat between them.
He stared absently out of the car's window, as the old narrow streets of the Left Bank blurred past, and he wondered what would finally happen to them. It was impossible to imagine a life without her, yet it was equally impossible to imagine divorcing Denise after twelve years. Yet he asked himself, why not?
Denise and he were childless, so that would pose no problem. There was adequate money since the discovery, so that was no problem, either. Denise was self-sufficient, too much so, he often thought. She had the capability to survive and adjust. She was not dangerously female—which he interpreted to mean that she was not an emotional hysteric, a leaner, an obsessive neurotic.
Still, why was he so fearful that she might learn of his affair? He examined the question. Was it that he was too sensitive to hurt an old companion? Or—was it because she was more than mere companion and wife? Was it because she was a partner in his work, and thus essential to him? Could Beaumont have been Beaumont without Fletcher? Or Gilbert have been Gilbert without Sullivan? Or Chang survived without Eng? Perhaps, in a dozen years, they had become the Siamese Twins, and to cut one off might mean death to both.
Possibly, divorce was wrong. Why not continue the status quo? Possibly, like Victor Hugo, he could spend his lifetime exactly like this, with a wife in one place and a Juliette Drouet somewhere else. How many years had Hugo openly managed his double life? Claude calculated: Hugo, at thirty-one, had met Juliette in 1833 when she was twenty-seven (Gisèle's very age!), and kept her for mistress all the rest of her life, which was long, for she did not die until 1883. He had kept his mistress for fifty years, and when she had died, he had remarked, "The dead are not absent, but invisible."
But was Gisèle a Juliette Drouet? And was Denise a Madame Adele Hugo? Or would it finally have to be a divorce, a scandal? Did the Curies ever think of divorce? Questions, questions. The devil with them. There was tonight, and Gisèle beside him, and tonight was all and the only reality. He focused his attention through the taxi window. They had turned into the rue du Bac...
The moment they were inside Gisèle's living room, Claude took her in his arms, holding her close and kissing her neck, and ear, and hair, and forehead, and lips. Shivering, feeling his imperative desire and her own, she pushed him off and, without a word, hurried into the bedroom.
Claude secured the door, then moved to the cognac decanter on the marble top of the aged wooden commode. He poured a drink, held the glass between his fingers, rolling it gently, warming the amber fluid with his palm. Leisurely, then, he sipped the cognac. Doing so, he surveyed the room. It possessed an air of casual elegance. Gisèle's good taste was evident in the antique sycamore writing table inlaid with porcelain plaques, in the Louis XV period lamp bases and ashtrays found in the Flea Market, in the matted illuminated manuscript pages framed on the walls.
He could not help but contrast the charm of this with his own tasteless living room, large, indefinite, disorderly, velvet sofas and chairs clashing with the wallpaper in imitation of the Directoire design, which Denise had furnished. In all fairness, Denise had possessed no more time than he had to devote to furnishings. Like him, she was a full-time scientist. Yet her poor taste extended to the matter of dress. He considered Gisèle's flawless suits and dresses, and could only remember Denise wearing a spotty linen chemist's smock, or at her best, ordinary blouses and loose skirts and flat-heeled shoes that were usually scuffed. Thinking of his wife's attire, he was reminded of Jonathan Swift's description of the woman who wore her clothes as if they had been thrown on her with a pitchfork.
The cognac inspired him to further comparison, odious as this was, and he judged his two women, mistress and wife, side by side in nudity. He tried to be fair. Technically, divested of all clothing, Gisèle was less than perfection. When she was unclad, her lines were too spare, bony, almost skeletal. It was the body required of all mannequins who earned 20,000 francs a week, he knew, for its dimensions were made to display the drape of garments. In full attire, Gisèle was incomparable; in nudity, there was something missing. What made up for her physical deficiencies when disrobed was Gisèle's impatient fever for love, and this Claude understood and appreciated. By comparison, Denise was shorter, fuller, rounder. Her shortcomings were her hair, shingled in a masculine bob, a nose too pugged, hips too wide, thighs too thick. In full dress, she was not soignee, and bulged and protruded too much to possess the mannequin chic. Stark naked, she was twice as attractive. And in all fairness, and this Claude admitted to himself even now, there was the advantage of her bosom. Denise had enormous pear-shaped breasts, and to this day, in her forty-second year, they hardly sagged at all. Still, he told himself, he had to admit a preference for Gisèle's flatter breasts, as well as her slat hips and buttocks. They were unpretentious, but more inciting, because Gisèle was more inciting.
Was it caddish to project the comparison into bed? He sipped the cognac. It was wrong, but his mind unreeled--the pictures. Sleeping with Denise, so fleshy, so tired, so inert, was like crawling into the womb. It was safe, easy, secure, never unexpected. It was nicely pleasurable. But Gisèle, taut, vibrating, aggressive, her magnificent flesh a wild and memorable offering, was—he considered a conservative description befitting a scientist—surfeiting? No. Enthralling? No. Captivating, yes, more, much more—captivating, satiating, and an indescribable ecstasy.
The memory of what would soon be repeated now aroused him. He finished his cognac, then quickly undressed, laying out suit and shorts on a chair, and stuffing his socks into his shoes on the floor. Naked, he went to the closet, found the maroon silk robe Gisèle had recently bought him, and pulled it on, loosely knotting the belt.
As he entered the bedroom, and halted beside the coiffeuse, she had just emerged from the bathroom. She was turning down the lights, all but the dim lamp behind the telephone on her bed stand. As she moved, he could see the smooth outlines of her straight hips and thighs through the sheer mauve peignoir. When she turned to him, and saw his face, she smiled and straightened deliberately, her nipples revealed through the transparent chiffon.
She sat on the bed, kicked off her mules, and fell back on the pillows, her arms outstretched toward him. "What are you waiting for, cheri?"
He went to the bed, and lowered himself beside her, and as always, could hear his heart, as she also heard it.
She reached across and pulled the cord of his robe. "Darling," she whispered, "my own—" And then, "Viens vite—"
Immediately, he slipped out of the robe and pressed against her. Eyes closed, sighing audibly, she parted her peignoir, and showed him herself. He placed his cheek against her breast, and she kissed his hair, and pulled him into her, and thus, in the familiar all-new way, they were joined.
From the bed stand, the telephone shrilly jangled.
They froze in their embrace, as stiff, immobile, marble as satyr and nymph on a Pompeiian wall fresco.
They listened. The telephone rang a second time, louder, and a third time, a thunderclap.
"Let it ring," he whispered.
"No," she said suddenly, "it might be M. Favre—"
She fumbled for the receiver, found it on the fourth ring, and brought it to her flushed face.
"Hello—"
"Mlle Jordan?" It was a woman's voice. "This is Mme Marceau. Let me speak to my husband."
Gisèle lay petrified, gazing with bewilderment at Claude's face above her. The telephone was waiting. She tried to find her voice again. "But—there is no one here—
"Put him on. This is important!" It was a command.
Gisèle was dumbfounded, helpless. Her poise was gone. She covered the mouthpiece fully, and looked imploringly at Claude. "Your wife—she knows—"
"No, I cannot. Say anything," he begged.
Gisèle would not return to the telephone. "She says it's important—"
The length of their exchange had given them away, and Claude knew it. Miserably, he disengaged his body from Gisèle's, took the prosecuting telephone, and sat up, cross-legged, on the bed.
"Denise? Listen to me—"
"You listen, you rotten pig—you pull your pants on and come home. The press is on its way—we've just won the Nobel Prize!"
~ * ~
It was 5:07 in the afternoon when the telegram from the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C. clattered through the electric machine of the telegraph office located on West Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia.
The mousy-haired girl, with thyroid eyes, on the machine at the time, pulled the message out with a rebel yell. "Lookit who won the Nobel Prize!" she shouted. The other two girls came out of their chairs running, and the jubilation even attracted the three delivery boys, who had been shooting dice in the rear.
Eventually, the exclamations and buzz of excitement brought Mr. Yancey, the manager, out of his cozy cubicle. He had been reading the Atlanta Constitution and drinking a coke, beside the heater, his favorite occupation on a dirty-gray, rainy afternoon such as this.
He appeared buttoning his trouser top and buckling his belt around his flabby middle, and calling out, "What's up? What's up? What's going on here?"
One of the girls passed the strip of tape to Mr. Yancey, and he lead it, and grinned broadly. "Say now, say now, this is a big day for the capital of the South." Although the victor had been born more than three thousand miles from Atlanta, and had only made his home here the last three years, the hero-starved half a million Atlantans considered the great man their own, by adoption. "Biggest thing since old J. S. Pemberton concocted Coca-Cola," said Mr. Yancey. "Biggest thing since Margaret Mitchell."
"Lemme deliver it," one of the young boys piped up.
"Not on your life, son, not on your life," said Mr. Yancey. "This is a solemn occasion. This is somethin' Mr. Yancey does personally."
"Bet you just want to have yourself another look at that Miss Emily," said the mousy-haired girl, daringly.
"Take care, sister," said Mr. Yancey. "This here message is too important. You get it ready now."
He waved the strip of tape. "Man, oh man," he said, and then, before releasing the message, he read it once more.
IN RECOGNITION OF YOUR DISCOVERY AND INVENTION OF A PHOTOCHEMICAL CONVERSION AND STORAGE SYSTEM FOR SOLAR ENERGY AND OF YOUR PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF SOLAR ENERGY TO PRODUCE SYNTHESIZED SOLID ROCKET PROPELLANTS THE NOBLE FOUNDATION OF STOCKHOLM ON BEHALF OF THE ROYAL SWEDISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCE IS PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE TODAY BEEN VOTED THIS YEARS NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS STOP THE PRIZE WILL BE A GOLD MEDALLION AND A CHEQUE FOR FIFTY THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS STOP THE AWARD CEREMONY WILL TAKE PLACE IN STOCKHOLM ON DECEMBER TENTH STOP DETAILS FOLLOW STOP HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS STOP
The message was addressed to DOCTOR MAX STRATMAN ONE THOUSAND FORTY FOUR PONCE DE LEON AV-ENUE ATLANTA GEORGIA.
For Max Stratman, at the age of sixty-two, it was always a pleasure, which few people would understand, to lie on the hard table in the darkened room beside the elaborate electrocardiograph equipment, while an efficient, antiseptic nurse dabbed the paste on his chest, arms, and legs, and then applied the electrodes with their five lead wires—one to his chest, two to his arms, and two to his legs. This experience, in which he engaged twice a year at the behest of the United States government, was soothing, relaxing, and always conducive to clear thinking. This afternoon, however, as Max Stratman stretched on the table, chest, arms, legs bared, half watching the tall bespectacled, comely nurse attach the cool electrodes to his skin, his pleasure, for the first time in memory, was shadowed faintly by apprehension. He reasoned that the apprehension had entered into the EKG test because today the test was especially important. In the three years past, since he had accepted the government's offer to join the high-level staff of the Society for Basic Research outside Atlanta, he had attended these checkups, one in January and one in July, as a matter of routine. But now it was only mid-November and the next checkup was not due for two more months, yet here he was supine on the table, teeming with electrodes and wires, not as a matter of routine but as a volunteer. Max Stratman was as pragmatic as the Teutonic forebears on his father's side of the family. He rarely rationalized any position, but met it head on. He knew exactly why he had telephoned Dr. Fred Ilman yesterday, at Lawson General Hospital, a mile from the Society building, and had requested an immediate appointment. In the first place, there was the surprising and exhilarating offer from Washington, D.C. The offer was critical to Stratman because, projected over the next two years, it might fully solve a personal problem, a certain responsibility, that had been weighing heavily upon him. Yet he had been made to realize that accepting the offer would mean changing his way of life, would put more strain on an old, ill-used, and often reluctant physique. Still, the change was something to be desired, a godsent gift, because it would alleviate his one major worry. The question he had asked himself, after the Defense Department call, was this: could he dare to undertake the change?
There would have been no question at all, had he not recalled the results of his last cardiogram in the summer. At that time, Dr. Ilman had cheerfully informed him, displaying the strip of graph paper that bore the curve of his heartbeat, that a minor irregularity was in evidence. But it was minor, Dr. Ilman emphasized, of no importance, provided that Stratman did not drastically change his habits. If Stratman continued to live like a sloth, without peaks or valleys of excitement, without excessive activities or long hours or pressure, he might continue his doubtful way of life—his erratic diet, daily beer, meerschaum pipe, lack of exercise—and possibly live forever.
"After all, you're not a youngster any more, Max," Fred Ilman had said on that occasion. "If you were a much younger man, and you came up with this minor irregularity, I would suggest a special regime against the future—oh, you know, lighter diet and low fat, no drinking, cut down on smoking, moderate exercises. But you are sixty-two, and to suggest any drastic changes, to rock the boat, could be worse than letting you sail along, at moderate speed, as you are now doing. So go back to your drawing board and your quantum nonsense and your solar sleight-of-hand, and don't bother me until next January. Just stay as sweet as you are, and my regards to Emily."
But now, there was suddenly an urgent necessity to rock the boat, and Max Stratman was having a cardiograph test in November, not January, because the decision must be made by the weekend.
The nurse had finished applying the electrode to the first paste spot on his chest, and now she turned back to the EKG machine. "All right, Professor Stratman," she said, "we'll begin. It'll only be a few minutes."
The machine behind his head began to whir. The strip of graph paper, recording the superficial biography of his physical heart, began to emerge with its coded story. Head turned on the pillow, Stratman watched it a moment, unaccountably pleased that the nurse had referred to him as "Professor," in the old-fashioned European manner, rather than as "Doctor," in the less dignified American style. Herr Professor, it had always been, until 1945, when Walther had gotten him to the Americans, just before the Russian authorities came calling. Still, he had not minded the informality of the Americans, because they compensated for social failings by their genuine friendliness, their appreciation of his small genius, and, above all, because they brought him to a wondrous climate of freedom. Not once, it seemed, since he had been spirited out of Germany, had he glanced back over his shoulder to see who might be listening.
The nurse was manipulating the electrode on his chest, moving it from spot to spot like a chess piece, and Stratman observed her quietly. After a while, he tired of this and stared up at the white ceiling and the glass light fixture. His preoccupation had always been mental, above the shoulders, and hardly ever had he been concerned with his body. Now, he was conscious of his body, that his brain had remained forever young whereas his traitor body had grown old.
Fastening on the last idea, Stratman tried to recollect if he had ever thought of his body as young, that is, young as his brain, and he found it difficult to recollect one instance. Then, at once, he recollected several instances. He had been young that Christmas Day in Frankfurt, when he had skipped through the snow after his father and discovered the new pony shivering behind his father's distillery shed. And he had been young, later, when the family had the frame house in the outskirts of Berlin, and one magical afternoon they all drove in the buggy to a barn, with makeshift chairs inside, where jumpy images were thrown on a screen, and he heard everyone praise the new invention known as cinema. And he had been young that day on the Ku'damm, holding Walther's hand, peeking between the rows of people ahead, when he had caught a glimpse of the resplendent Kaiser astride a white horse, followed by the goose-stepping, steel-helmeted troops.
After that, it seemed, especially in the Gymnasium and at the University of Berlin, he had always been old, and he could never quite remember that he had ever appeared different than he appeared today, to himself, reclining on this table. He peered down his chest at the rest of his body and smiled privately: a beached porpoise, having an EKG. The numerous photographs of him that appeared in the American newspapers and magazines did not upset him, despite the way they made obvious his ugliness. In fact, it seemed, the Americans rather cherished him this way. He was their image of a German Herr Professor—or Doctor, if you will—of the old school. Max Stratman was five feet seven, but seemed shorter, more diminutive, because he was hunched. His head was massive, too large for his body, and his forehead seemed to recede to infinity because he was bald except for a bristling hedge of gray hair surrounding the extremities of his head. His face was round, red, wrinkled, and his nose perfectly bulbous. He wore thick, steel-rimmed bifocals at his desk, and squinted myopically when he did not wear them. His face was not formidable, but wise and sympathetic, and he was quick to smile, to see the humor of almost anything, himselfforemost. He was pudgy and rumpled—"his clothes look like they have been borrowed from a scarecrow three sizes larger," a news magazine had recently remarked. This was as he saw himself in the University days, and this was as he saw himself today. Apparently, nothing about him had grown older than old, through the decades, except maybe his heart. Maybe. Ach, we shall see, he thought. He heard the nurse's voice behind him. "That's it, Professor Stratman," she said, tearing the graph paper strip from the machine and placing the roll on a small desk. "Thank you," said Stratman politely. "It was an honor, Professor," she said, as she removed the electrodes from his chest, arms, legs, and wiped the paste from his body. He watched her curiously. She had said, so respectfully, that it was an honor. He had thought that he was old hat here. Squinting at her now, he realized that she had not been at Lawson General Hospital, or at least not with Dr. Ilman, when he had been here in the summer. She was new. He admired her tallness, short haircut, pert, intelligent face, trim white uniform. She was not Emily, of course, but still he admired the handsomeness of American young women, and especially the Southern ones. As she returned to the electrocardiograph machine, he nodded at the instrument. "An interesting and valuable toy, gnadige Fraulein," he said. "One day there will be better machines, deeper probing, more sure. But, for its limitations, it is good. It is a fact I knew quite well the man who invented the EKG."
"You actually knew him?" She was as impressed as if he had said that he had known Pasteur.
"Yes—yes. Willem Einthoven, a Hollander. I spent several weeks with him once in Rotterdam. He won many prizes for that gadget—even the Nobel money."
"I bet you've known everyone, Professor. Dr. Ilman says you knew Einstein."
"It is true. Albert, I knew well. I met him first in Berlin—ach, what times, what times we had—and then I would see him, occasionally, in Princeton. A terrible loss, not only for science, but for humanity. You know, Fraulein, good men there are not many—most men are good, yes, but always, always, for reasons—but Albert, he was a good man, pure and simple, no reasons."
"When he talked, could you understand him?"
"Understand him?" Stratman sat up. "A grammar-school child could understand him, if she listened. I remember, once, somebody, an ordinary person, asked him to explain his theory of relativity, of time, of why all motions of the universe are relative and not absolute, and you know what Albert said? He said, 'My friend, when you sit with a nice girl for an hour, you think it is only a minute—but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it is an hour. Relativity!' "
Both the nurse and Stratman laughed, and then he requested his pipe and pouch. While the nurse found them in his un-pressed jacket, Stratman went on. "I will tell you one Albert Einstein joke for your friends. There was a Mr. Goldberg who wanted to know about the Einstein theory, and when it was explained to him, he nodded. 'I see,' he said, 'and from this he makes a living?' "
The nurse screamed with delight, and Stratman chuckled and was happy. At last, he stood up on his bare feet and began to fill his pipe. "Now, if you please, enough of Albert Einstein. We must devote ourselves to Max Stratman. I will dress."
"No, please, Professor—" She grabbed up the EKG graph paper. "Dr. Ilman must see the results first. He sometimes makes us do it again. Will you please wait, as you are, until I show him this? Excuse me—"
She was gone. Max Stratman shrugged, put a flaring match to his well-seasoned meerschaum, and felt the chill on his feet. Despite her injunction against dressing, he decided to sit down and pull on his socks and shoes. As he did so, slowly, seated on the chair beside the desk, he reviewed with precision the events of yesterday.
The call from Washington had been from the Secretary of Defense. The civilities had been brief. The Secretary had asked him, bluntly, if he would care to undertake a bigger, more vital job, at more than twice the money he was now being paid at the Society. Although Stratman was an international figure of renown, the salary that he received for thinking and speculating at the Society for Basic Research was comparatively modest. The new sum offered him was, by his terms, staggering, and immediately he saw that it would completely cancel his debt to Walther and solve his problem with Emily. He evinced his interest.
"I know you're deeply immersed in further researches on the possibilities of solar energy," the Secretary had said, "and it's all very promising—I'ye seen your reports—but it's all way off in the future.”
Stratman had found that he must come to the defense of basic research in general. "All research is a dream for the future, Mr. Secretary. Rockets were once way off in the future, and nuclear fission, too. And even my work in converting and storing the sun's heat for energy, that was once in the future. Yet, if I had been given no time to think about it a few years ago—"
The Secretary had not wanted to be thus engaged. "I know, Professor Stratman," he said, "we are in sympathy with the way you people work. However, the fact is you have harnessed solar energy. It's a reality. It's one of the big things we have to work with. And we want to move ahead. We want to exploit our gain before our enemies do—"
Stratman had sighed over expediencies, and then remembered the huge sum that he was being offered, and he had not interrupted again.
The Secretary had gone on crisply. There were competent physicists throughout the nation toiling night and day to develop further Stratman's recent discovery. The Defense Department had studied the program, and had felt that it was too scattered, too disjointed, and that lack of direction and cohesion might cause a fatal lag in the work. The facts had been laid before the President, and he, himself, had recommended that Max Stratman be appointed coordinator of the vast program and be well paid out of unassigned Defense Department funds.
Impressed, Stratman had inquired, "What would the job entail?”
“Constant travel around the country. You could headquarter in the Pentagon. But we'd want you in Palo Alto, Boston, Key West, Death Valley, Phoenix, El Paso, out in Libya at Azizia, wherever the solar people are working, to see that they're getting the most out of their time, to see that they're on the right track, to straighten them out when necessary, to show them shortcuts, to give them pep talks, when necessary. You know the kind of men they are, and you know that you are about the only person in the world they'd listen to. It could accelerate our program and be a real contribution to the government. You'd be responsible only to the President, and report to him at monthly intervals.”
“How long would you need me?”
“Two years." Stratman did not like the job. He saw through the subterfuge. It was really a glorified salesman's job, one that might be done as well by a politician or militarist or educator. What the government really wanted was his name, possibly to impress the young men on the project, possibly to extort more money from Congress. They wanted his name, and he wanted—nein, he needed—their money. It was a dilemma. It was a dilemma because the work at the Society, which they could not yet understand until it was reality and utilitarian, was far more important. He was on the verge of new breakthroughs in converting solar energy, but he could never give them a date, and so it would have no value to them. Also, capsuled in his office at the Society, he could live on in his old way, undisturbed, free to breathe and think. The new job might demand energy and strength that he did not possess. It was this last that made him remember his summer visit to Dr. Ilman, and at once he knew that his decision would develop not from his wishes but from the oracle that was Dr. Ilman's electrocardiograph machine. "I will need the remainder of the week to decide," he had finally told the Secretary of Defense. "We must know by Saturday," the Secretary had said. "You shall.”
“Please keep in mind that it was the President, himself, who suggested you for this job, Professor.”
“I am not unaware of it, Mr. Secretary." When he had hung up the receiver, he had known that he must accept the offer. It was then that he had lifted the receiver off the cradle again and had telephoned Dr. Fred Ilman for an immediate appointment.