The Prize (132 page)

‘Yes, that has been verified,’ said
ض
hman. ‘It must be admitted, on his behalf, that he has a long record as an anti-Fascist. Even as a student in medical school, Farelli opposed Mussolini’s adventure against Haile Selassie in Africa. When the Second World War came, Farelli, along with several other young doctors, signed an open letter published in
Il Popolo di Roma
opposing it. Late in 1941, the OVRA learned, through an informer, that Farelli had acted as a physician giving comfort to
Il Duce’s
underground enemies. At once, the
carabinieri
came and confined him to the Regina Coeli prison in Rome.’

‘What are you trying to do, make him out a hero?’ said Garrett bitterly. ‘We were the heroes, if you want it that way. You were at least neutral and gave help to refugees, and I was in the landing on Iwo Jima—but, whatever you say, Farelli was an Italian—’

ض
hman saw how troubled his friend was and forgave him his lack of objectivity. ‘I am only quoting our neutral report,’ said
ض
hman. ‘But, Dr. Garrett, I am leading up to something—of importance, as I promised you.’ He rattled the papers in his hand. ‘As I was saying, Farelli was confined to the Regina Coeli prison in Rome, and later, according to our records, he was shipped to another prison, near Parma, an old castle where political agitators were kept and sometimes shot. So far, all well and to the good for Farelli. But then our Academy investigator—the friend of whom I speak—found a mystifying, inexplicable piece of information.’

‘Yes?’

‘Uhhh—hear this,’ said
ض
hman. ‘The next we know of Farelli, he turns up as a doctor—no longer a prisoner, but a doctor—in Nazi Germany.’

The intake of Garrett’s breath hissed through the silent bedroom. ‘Nazi Germany,’ he repeated, as if it were a blessing. Then quickly, ‘How do you know? Is there proof?’

‘That is the point,’ said
ض
hman seriously. ‘By our standards, the evidence is flimsy, almost cryptic, but it
is
evidence. For a while, I was unsure, and was going to withhold it from you. It was so fragmentary. It could be misleading. On the other hand—’

‘Read it to me.’

‘—I felt, in view of Farelli’s behaviour towards you, in view of our—uhhh—friendship, I owed it to you, in all fairness, as something you could think about and measure.’ He lifted the typescript from his lap, but still did not consult it. ‘As you know, Dr. Garrett, the German medical profession, which we esteemed so highly in the years before Hitler, which we showered with Nobel honours—the German medical profession disgraced itself in the Second World War.’

Garrett remembered the stories from Nürnberg in 1947. ‘You mean the Nazi medical trial before our tribunal at Nürnberg?’

‘I mean what led to it. Throughout the war, almost two hundred German physicians comported themselves in such a manner as to make the Marquis de Sade appear sweet and gentle by comparison. These German doctors employed helpless human beings—Jewish men and women, Polish and Russian prisoners of war, their own nationals who opposed Hitler—instead of guinea pigs and rats, for their sadistic experiments. I am—uhhh—it is sickening to know the truth of their record. Do you recollect the record?’

‘It was so long ago,’ said Garrett. ‘And, anyway, I was in the Pacific.’

‘For their insane experiments, these long-worshipped doctors injected human prisoners with typhus, deadly typhus. They sterilized the sexual organs of Jews with X-rays, and murdered most of them. They tried out synthetic hormones on defenceless homosexuals and killed some. They injected yellow fever into persons, not animals. They tried out poison gas on persons, not animals. They made artificial abscesses on persons, not animals to study blood poisoning. They severed healthy limbs in order to experiment with transplants. The list is too nauseating—I will not go on.’

He stared down at the typescript. ‘Then, one day, with the approval of Himmler and the Reich Air Ministry, they undertook a long series of horrible experiments—in the name of aviation medicine, and presumably designed to learn valuable information for their
Luftwaffe
pilots—with a decompression chamber, to study heart action at abnormally high altitudes. These tests were the ultimate in—uhhh—savagery. According to my notes, Dr. Sigmund Rascher had proposed the tests to Himmler, and Himmler had approved. The decompression chamber was moved into the Dachau concentration camp, and, one by one, these prisoners were led into the torture chamber—and the air was let out of the box—so that the prisoner, without oxygen or any equipment—the guinea pig—would reflect the human condition of a flyer in rapid ascent to an altitude of thirteen or fourteen miles. It was terrible, Dr. Garrett. I have heard the case histories. In the first minutes, perspiration and lack of control; in five minutes, spasms; in eight minutes, the dropping of respiration; in twelve minutes, boiling of the blood and rupturing of the lungs, with the human victim tearing out his hair in bunches and gouging out the flesh of his face to relieve his suffering, and attempt to find oxygen when there was no oxygen—and all this while, the—uhhh—doctors were studying the victim through an observation window, and checking their cardiographs, and later, making their calm autopsies on the corpses.’

ض
hman paused. He saw that Garrett had grown pale. Both men were silent. Only the ticking of Garrett’s travelling clock, on the bedstand, could be heard.

ض
hman sighed. ‘The names of all the doctors participating in these high altitude experiments are known. One of them was Dr. Carlo Farelli.’

‘Farelli—’ Even Garrett, who considered his enemy capable of any enormity, did not consider him capable of this. Garrett sat stunned. At last, he found words. ‘You have proof?’

‘As I explained—inconclusive proof. I shall read it to you.’ He read from the typescript. ‘ “Report to German Experimental Institute for Aviation Medicine. Attention Dr. Siegfried Ruff. Lieutenant General Dr. Hippke. Subject: Experiment 203 of heart action at high altitudes. Place: Dachau altitude chamber. Test persons: Five criminals, volunteers. Test levels: 30,000 to 70,000 feet. (Results to be forwarded under separate cover.) Test effects: Two casualties. Physicians participating: Dr. A. Brand, Berlin; Dr. I. Gorecki, Warsaw; Dr. S. Brauer, Munich; Dr. J. Stirbey, Bucharest; Dr. C. Farelli, Rome. . . . Signed, Dr. S. Rascher, 3 April, 1944.” ’
ض
hman stopped, looked up, and laid the paper aside. ‘There it is.’

Garrett plucked at his blanket and stared at the opposite wall. ‘Dr. C. Farelli, Rome,’ he intoned, as if reading an epitaph. He shook his head in daze. ‘Incredible. Is there more?’

‘That is all. There is nothing else.’

‘There can’t be two C. Farellis in Rome, both heart specialists?’

‘There were not two. There was only one. Our investigator checked.’

Suddenly, Garrett turned on
ض
hman. ‘With that damning evidence, how could you let Farelli share the prize with me?’

‘This evidence was weighed by my colleague with all else that was ninety-nine per cent favourable. He felt that this mere mention of Farelli’s name was too little with which to disqualify him. He did not submit it to the Caroline staff of judges.’

‘Too little to disqualify him?’ said Garrett sarcastically.

‘Farelli’s political record was otherwise good. He had been a prisoner through most of the war. This one blot, my colleague felt—uhhh—he felt Farelli might not have had a part in conducting the tests that day, might have only been a foreign observer.’

‘Is that what you think, Dr.
ض
hman?’

‘To be honest with you, I do not know what to think. I can only guess that Farelli may have weakened under long confinement—possibly even punishment—and at last, to buy some freedom, some relief, abandoned his resistance and bent to Mussolini’s will. In short, in those days,
Il Duce
was doing what he could to hold up his end with Hitler. There is evidence he offered some physicians to co-operate in various endeavours with Hitler’s medical researchers. Farelli was a notable cardiac man, even that far back, and I suppose Mussolini offered him a parole if he would join with other Italian doctors in flying over to Germany and lending a hand in these—these—uhhh—experiments.’

‘It’s no excuse,’ said Garrett relentlessly.

‘I do not say it is. But it is the only explanation I can find for such hideous behaviour.’

‘He should have been hung at Nürnberg with all the rest,’ said Garrett. ‘Instead, your weakling friend suppressed that and gave him the Nobel Prize.’

For a moment,
ض
hman felt national pride and tried to defend his colleague. ‘He weighed this—this one indefinite mention—against Farelli’s career before, and in all the years since. He felt Farelli’s contribution to mankind was proved, but the one fragment of evidence of collaboration was unproved That was the decisive factor.’

Garrett’s emotions had gone through many convolutions. At first, he had been revolted by the information—a description of an act of brutality and cowardice so low and foreign to his pedestrian nature and normal academic background that he had recoiled from the monstrosity and thought that he wanted no part of it. But gradually, as he became used to the evidence, as he again suffered the ache of his chin and stomach, his hatred for the Italian returned. Farelli had humbled him and humiliated him without mercy, in public and in private, the typical behaviour of a man who would have assisted his German medical friends in butchery at Dachau. Here was evidence that the soft Swedes, ever fearful of trouble, had tried to suppress. And so gradually, Garrett’s mind substituted for petty revenge the soul-satisfying and loftier notion of moral indignation and retribution, in the name of all humanity. He had a duty to humanity, to God, to protect the world from this Roman Eichmann. In an hour’s time, from grovelling defeat, he had vaulted, using
ض
hman’s pole, to a height of power and superiority. With
ض
hman’s generous revelation, he could wipe Farelli from his life, from the lion’s share of honours, and, at the same time, know saintliness for helping all unsuspecting fellow men.

He heard his voice. ‘Dr.
ض
hman, whatever your committee member thinks, I’m not going to stand by—I have too much conscience—and let this war criminal strut around Stockholm like a Caesar. I’m not going to let him sit on the same platform with me at the Ceremony.’

ض
hman scratched his scalp nervously. ‘What are you proposing?’

For the first time this day, Garrett smiled. ‘I have my ideas.’

He threw off his blanket, and crawled off the bed, and stood up, a man rejuvenated, hitching and tightening his pyjamas.

ض
hman jumped to his feet. ‘I brought you this, because we are friends. I hoped you would take time to digest this, think about it, and then proceed with utmost care. I hoped, when you returned to America next week, you might bring this up—somehow—with—uhhh—friends in your Pentagon Building, and let them see if they could check further. In that way, you might learn every fact. If Farelli were then proved innocent, you could forget the matter. And if you truly found him guilty, it would become known—’

‘No!’

‘Dr. Garrett—’

‘I’m not letting a war criminal escape. I’m not letting condemning information like this die in channels. Now is the time—now, when the whole world is here in Stockholm. Now is the time to make Farelli go on trial, before he makes fools of you and me and all of us.’

‘But the Nobel Committee will not support—’

‘I don’t need them. I have a better outlet, a far better transmitting agent.’

‘Who?’

‘Sue Wiley of Consolidated Newspapers. I’m going to lay Farelli’s infamy in her lap tomorrow. You won’t have a part in it, and I won’t. I’ll just give her the tip, and let her run from there, and by tomorrow night—I guarantee you this—the whole world will know, and what I have promised will come true. At the Ceremony, I will sit on the stage by myself, and I alone, will receive the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine!’