The Prize (14 page)

‘Thank you, Jake.’

Leah had held back. As the reporter stepped aside, she came forward. She went up on her toes and brush-kissed Craig on the cheek.

‘I’m happy for you,’ she said.

‘Thanks, Lee.’

‘Here’s confirmation.’ She handed him the telegram and teletype message.

Craig’s hand shook as he accepted the sheets, and groped for and found the nearest kitchen chair. He lowered himself carefully into it.

‘You smell like a brewery,’ she said to Craig. ‘That’s not right—in your position. I want you to drink black coffee, lots of it—’

He was reading the telegram. ‘Not now,’ he said absently.

‘And that getup,’ she went on. ‘A Nobel Prize winner in a T-shirt, cords, and dirty moccasins—they’ll be taking your picture—’

Lucius Mack, still in the kitchen entrance, interrupted. ‘I told him it was all right, Leah. It’s what they expect of an author.’

‘They expect dignity.’ She turned to Craig and her tone softened. ‘Please, Andrew—’

‘Lee, I couldn’t climb those stairs again. And if I could, I’d never come down.’ He dropped the telegram and teletype message on the table. ‘I guess it’s official. But I don’t know about Stockholm.’ He looked up at his sister-in-law pleadingly. ‘Lee, I can’t get through this evening without some kind of pick-me-up. There’s a bottle in the cupboard.’

Leah refused to move. ‘Black coffee,’ she said.

‘Awright, dammit, make it coffee then—anything.’

As Leah went to the stove, the wall telephone rang. She had the percolator in her hand, and nodded to Jake Binninger, who jumped to answer the telephone.

It was a long-distance call from Craig’s publisher in New York, and this was their first contact in a year. The publisher’s congratulations were hearty. He had good news for Craig. Tomorrow, work would begin on a de-luxe omnibus containing three of Craig’s four novels—‘we’ll use the old plates, thinner paper, and this time, illustrations’—and it would be called ‘the Nobel edition’ and be expedited to catch the spring list.

The publisher, who had long before written off Craig, the advance on the next novel, and the next novel itself, was now eager to know if Craig had resumed writing. ‘If you mean, have I stopped drinking, the answer is no,’ Craig said harshly. The publisher treated his reply as a joke. He reiterated his faith in Craig. Tangible proof of this would be a cheque going into the post within a week, an advance against the omnibus and an additional advance on the new novel. He was proud that his house was associated with a Nobel Prize winner. He hoped to see Craig before the Stockholm trip. Craig remained noncommittal and, as soon as possible, hung up. ‘Bastard,’ he muttered. Leah admonished Craig. The publisher had every reason to have behaved as he had, before and now. How would Craig have felt, in the publisher’s shoes, towards a writer who took money and did not write? Craig’s good humour returned briefly. ‘I revise my comment,’ he said. ‘Poor bastard.’

Before he could leave the telephone, it rang again. This long-distance call was from Connecticut, and it was Craig’s literary agent, with whom he had been out of personal touch for months, but to whom Leah constantly wrote. Morosely, Craig listened to the faraway effusions and good wishes. The agent also had news. There had been three calls from motion picture story departments in New York, tentative feelers on Hollywood jobs after Craig came back from Sweden. Apparently, all of them wanted Craig, but also, they all wanted to know about his health. Craig was more amused than irritated. ‘Tell them,’ he said, ‘I’ll work for them for five thousand dollars and five cases of Ballantine’s a week.’ The laughter in Connecticut was uncertain.

Ten minutes later, just as Craig had finished his cup of coffee and Leah was pouring him more, there was a third long-distance call, this one from Boston. Craig took the receiver from Jake Binninger, and found himself connected with the most renowned lecture manager in the business. Unlike the others, he was a brusque and forthright man. ‘This Nobel Prize,’ he told Craig, ‘makes you a saleable commodity, now. We can book you for a year solid—women’s clubs—the chicken-à-la-king circuit—at a gross of a hundred thousand dollars. Our commission is half of that. The rest is yours, clear. We pay all expenses, routing you, travel, hotels, food, publicity. It’s yours, if you want it, on one condition.’ Craig’s voice was edgy, as he asked the condition. ‘Women’s clubs are touchy,’ the lecture manager said. ‘Our deal is we deliver our literary people sober. I heard you’re on the booze. Is that true?’ Craig decided that he liked this man. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ he said frankly. The manager was matter-of-fact. ‘Well, if you stop, let me know. Anyway, congratulations. You’re way up there now.’

Back at the table, Craig felt as if his last energy had been suctioned out of him. He could not assemble his thoughts. He drank the second cup of hot coffee, as the others watched him.

‘How do you feel?’ Lucius Mack asked.

‘Lousy. Half drunk, half hung over. Do you think this is the way Ulysses S. Grant felt at Appomattox?’

The doorbell chimes sounded. There was someone outside.

Leah wrung her hands nervously, and started for the door. Lucius Mack blocked her way. ‘Wait a minute.’ He touched Craig’s shoulder. ‘What do you say, Andrew, if it’s the out-of-town reporters? Can you make it?’

‘No,’ said Craig.

‘Okay.’ He spoke to Leah. ‘If it’s the press people, stall them. Say he’s got fever, the flu, and maybe they can see him in the morning. Meanwhile, tell them I’ll be glad to take them out and give them a fill-in, colour, background, et cetera. Have you got it straight?’

‘If you’ve handled Andrew Craig for three years, you can handle anybody,’ she said briskly, and was gone.

Mack studied Craig for a moment. The author had one hand over his cup of coffee, and he swayed gently in his chair, eyes closed. Mack beckoned to Jake Binninger.

‘Jake,’ he said, ‘this is a big story for us and all the papers we’re stringing for. Now, you get yourself down to the library and dig up all the Nobel data you can find, and take it back to the office and bone up fast. Soon’s Andrew can talk, I’ll get what I need from him. Funny, how long you know a man, and you don’t know his vital statistics. I don’t even know where he was born.’

‘Cedar Rapids,’ said Craig from the table.

‘Well, see, I didn’t know,’ said Mack. He returned to his reporter. ‘Now, you go out the back there and get on it, and I’ll catch up with you later.’

As Binninger left by the rear door, Mack strained to hear the voice at the front door. He waited apprehensively, and then he heard the pad of footsteps on the carpet. Leah appeared, and she was followed by Alex Inglis, the Joliet College professor. Inglis, his Anglo-Saxon face ruddy from the cold, and his expression frozen into permanent awe, entered the kitchen as he might have entered Count Leo Tolstoy’s study at Yasnaya Polyana.

‘It wasn’t the press at all,’ Leah was saying to Craig. ‘It’s Alex Inglis, from the college—’

Craig opened his eyes and acknowledged his admirer with a blink. Hastily, awkwardly, in his heavy black overcoat and muffler, Inglis sat in the chair opposite his idol.

‘I can’t tell you how thrilled we all are,’ Inglis said with reverence. ‘The entire campus is agog. Imagine, a Nobel laureate under our very noses—’

‘Thank you,’ Craig murmured.

‘So few American authors have been honoured,’ Inglis continued. ‘Sinclair Lewis, Pearl Buck, Eugene O’Neill, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Stearns Eliot—if you would consider him an American—John Steinbeck, and now, Andrew Craig.’

Craig, showed no reaction, and Inglis looked up for Leah and Mack to endorse his enthusiasm, and then he continued pedantically, ‘Think of it. Mr. Craig is now in the Nobel company of Kipling, Rolland, Anatole France, Thomas Mann, Galsworthy, Churchill—’

‘An’ Gjellerup an’ Pontoppidan,’ muttered Craig. ‘Know that? Those Joes won it in nineteen—uh—seventeen. Call me Gjellerup an’ shake well before pronouncing.’

‘Please—’ said Leah.

Inglis was confused. ‘Mr. Craig, aren’t you well?’

‘Professor Inglis, I’m drunk.’

‘Well, uh, I can’t blame you—no, indeed not—the award does call for celebration.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I came down here, primarily, to congratulate you—’

‘Pardon me,’ said Craig. ‘You’re a good fellow, Inglis.’

‘—but also to relay some additional good news. I was with the head of the Board of Regents when all of this happened. I have his permission to tell you this. We have received a sizeable endowment to enlarge—immensely enlarge—the Midwestern Historical Society, and it will operate quite independently of the college. This should be completed by summer. There will be an opening for a curator—rather like the position Archibald MacLeish filled in the Library of Congress—and it would be ideal for you, Mr. Craig. It would be ideal, because it would actually be an honorary position, one constituted to give the Society prestige and attract gift collections. The actual workaday tasks would be performed by a staff of librarians. Except for attending one meeting a month—oh, and perhaps making an occasional speech somewhere on our behalf—you would be independent and free to work on your own novels at home. The honorarium would be fifteen thousand per annum. Of course, I know with all that Nobel money—’

‘Won’t be any Nobel money by the time it’s January,’ said Craig, who had squeezed his eyes to bring Inglis into better focus. ‘That’s a good offer.’

‘I’m delighted you think so. The Board of Regents is highly favourable to your appointment. They are most impressed with the Nobel matter. Of course—’ He hesitated, and Craig, sobering for an instant, eyed his visitor keenly.

‘Of course—what?’

‘The Board is willing to make the appointment formally after the Nobel Ceremony—I mean, after you’ve received the honour and made your address.’

‘Why not now, Inglis? Are they afraid I might disgrace them—have another fiasco—like the time I was supposed to lecture up at the college? I bet those greybeards don’t think I’ll make the Nobel Ceremony or get on the Stockholm stage sober. They’re afraid of a scandal, aren’t they?’

Inglis seemed to retreat into his great overcoat, suffused with embarrassment. ‘It’s not that, Mr. Craig—’

‘What else can it be, dammit? I’m on probation. Go to Stockholm, Craig, stand up before the world, display academic dignity, show that you are purged, cleansed, reformed—and come back to us, not only with your laurels, but a new man. I’m on probation. That’s it, isn’t it, Inglis?’

‘Stop badgering him, Andrew,’ said Leah. ‘He’s doing his best. He’s on your side, like everyone else. They just expect more of you now, that’s all.’

‘Well, I’m me,’ he said belligerently. His eyes found Inglis again, and his mood mercurially changed. ‘It’s a good offer, and thank you, and thank them. Maybe I’ll earn it—but don’t put money on me, don’t do that.’

‘Mr. Craig, I know it will work out. You’re a great man. I read
The Perfect State
eight times. I know you won’t disappoint anyone in Stockholm.’

Craig had closed his eyes, and was rubbing his forehead. He was not listening.

Leah signalled Inglis, and he quietly rose and tiptoed out of the kitchen after her. Mack followed them.

Andrew Craig was alone.

He felt a thousand years tired, and his head felt stuffed and heavy, and his deadened, sodden nerves begged for unconsciousness. He circled his arms on the table, and laid his head in his arms, and tried not to think of the turn of events. But his fatigued brain did not sleep. He thought: I was only trying to die slowly, peacefully, unobtrusively, like a forgotten old plant in the shade. He thought: Why did those Swedes expose and humiliate me by forcing me to die in public? He thought: I’m an immortal now, in the record books, but I’m as sickeningly mortal as I was when I awakened this morning. He remembered George Bernard Shaw’s sardonic remark, when he received the Nobel Prize at sixty-nine: ‘The money is a life belt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore.’ He thought: Only in my case I’d rewrite it . . . a life belt thrown to a man after he’s drowned. He thought: Nothing.