The Prize (41 page)

Had to suddenly go out to a business lunch. See you soon. Room service says your gown will be back at 3. Love, UNCLEMAX.

It surprised Emily that Uncle Max had gone out. When she had left to shop, he was still clumping about in his faded woollen robe and bedroom slippers. He intended, he had said, to spend the entire day resting and relaxing, so that he would have all his strength for carrying the medallion and diploma from the King. It was terrible, she decided now, the way the Swedes gave him no rest, a man of his years. But today was the last day of it, and then there would be fewer obligations.

Inevitably, her mind went out to Craig. Anxiety mounted. It was 12.29. He should be calling her any second.

And then the telephone on the end table rang.

She snatched up the receiver, but tried to keep her tone calm. ‘Hello?’

‘Miss Emily Stratman, please?’ It was not Craig’s low, mellifluous voice, but a thin high Swedish voice.

‘This is Miss Stratman—’

‘Miss Stratman? Do not be alarmed. I call for Professor Max Stratman. At lunch, he suffered from the effects of a mild heart attack.’

‘Heart attack? Oh, no—’

‘Do not worry, Miss Stratman. He is in the best hands. He is having medical attention this moment.’

‘What happened? How is he? Is it serious?’

‘A mild coronary, Miss Stratman. He has asked—’

‘Who is this? Where is he?’

‘I am one of the attending physicians—Dr.
ض
hman—and Professor Stratman is now resting easily. He has asked to see you. I think it would be wise if you—’

‘Where? Tell me where. I’ll be right over.’

‘If you will be so kind as to write this down—’

‘Wait—wait—’

Blindly, she sought for her pen in her coat, then remembered that it was in her handbag, and she found it and returned to the phone.

‘Go ahead—please hurry—’

‘Take a taxi to Sahlins Sjukhus. It is a small private clinic on the way to the Southern Hospital—two blocks before, on Ringv
ن
gen. Your driver will know exactly. I will be waiting for you.’

‘I’ll leave immediately.’

‘Miss Stratman—one point more. Professor Stratman reminds me it is imperative that you mention this emergency to no one. He is most desirous of avoiding publicity. I believe you understand.’

‘Tell him not to worry!’

She hung up, tore off the bottom of Uncle Max’s note, where she had written the name of the clinic, clasped her handbag tightly, and rushed to the door. As she reached it, the telephone began to ring again. She knew this was Craig, but could not wait to explain—and remembered that her uncle wanted no one to know—and she let the phone continue its monotonous peal, and kept going, half running, to the elevator.

When she emerged from the hotel lobby, almost falling on the slippery pavement, she started to call for a taxi, but at once a small Volvo with a meter drew up before her. She hurried inside it, as the uniformed doorman saluted her and closed the car door.

The driver, a gentle, elderly man wearing a chauffeur’s cap and rimless spectacles, turned inquiringly.

‘Sahlins Sjukhus—a clinic before you reach the Southern Hospital—do you know?’

‘Yes,
frِken
, I take you.’

‘Please hurry.’

He bobbed his head, shifting the gears, and the car jostled and they were off.

The city sped by, white on white, the dim sun in the grey sky and the snowfall spent and the air blue-clean, but Emily was hardly aware of it. All that she could think was that Uncle Max had suffered a heart attack in this remote, faraway land, this foreign place, and that she was frightened for him and alone. Once she wondered if his visits to Dr. Ilman had been about his heart—she had always thought it strong and immortal—but none of that mattered, for now it had happened. She wondered if the Swedish doctor had told her the truth. Was the coronary a mild one? Was Uncle Max even alive? Yet he had sent for her. He must be conscious.

And then, before she realized it, the taxi had drawn up to a kerb, and from the window she could see a narrow brick building, two pillars, two windows, a black door between. The elderly driver had come around to help her out, but she was through the snow and then on the pavement, before he reached her.

She fumbled for her change purse and gave him a five-kronor note. ‘Never mind,’ she said.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said, touching his cap visor. He pointed. ‘In that door, Miss Stratman.’

She had already started towards the door, but she stopped now. ‘How did you know my name?’

The driver bowed. ‘The doorman of the Grand Hotel has pointed you out to us.’

It did not seem odd, and Uncle Max was waiting. Hastily, she went into the clinic. She was not surprised to find a blond, brawny Swedish intern, with wrists of a mechanic, solicitude written on his features, waiting to meet her.

‘Miss Stratman?’

She acknowledged her identity.

‘I will take you to Professor Stratman.’

He led her, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet which were shod in white tennis shoes, to the end of the short hall, then opened a door. She was in a reception room. The intern held open a second door.

‘The doctor is waiting for you,’ he said.

She hurried into the office. The shutters had been drawn, and except for two lamps at the far end, the room was in shadows. She made out a chair before a glass-topped brown desk, and behind the desk, a tall swivel chair, and behind the swivel chair, his back to her, the doctor.

‘Dr.
ض
hman—’

‘Miss Stratman.’ He spoke before turning from the parted blinds. Unhurriedly, he reset the blinds, and at last, he turned to welcome her. ‘I am not Dr.
ض
hman,’ he said. ‘I am Dr. Hans Eckart. Please do sit down.’

‘My uncle—’

‘Sit down.’

She clutched at the chair arm and lowered herself to the chair edge. Eckart had come to the desk, and now he sat across from her, smiling reassuringly. She was not reassured. She had come into the office expecting a Swedish doctor, but the appearance of this doctor, unknown to her specifically, was known to her generally, had inhabited in many shapes her remembrance of times past, for the haircut, the monocle, the Prussian severity were all German, and she was repelled.

‘Professor Stratman—my uncle—where is he?’ she managed to ask. ‘How is he?’

‘He is quite well, I should presume. For an old man with a cardiac irregularity, he appears wonderfully active,’ said Eckart. ‘As to where he is, I have no more idea than you. For the last hour, I have tried to locate him.’

‘But you called—you said he had a heart—’

‘Yes, when I learned that he had not returned to the hotel, but that you had, I directed someone to telephone you. I am sincerely regretful it was necessary to frighten you with a fabrication. But it was necessary to bring you here on some pretext, so that I might speak to you. I had already spoken to your uncle some days ago. And I would have preferred to speak to your uncle again today. Since he was unavailable, it became important to have you here in his stead. As his proxy, so to speak.’ Eckart’s fingers drummed the desk, and he seemed to consider her through the monocle. ‘Yes, I am sure you will do very well. In matters like this, I am sure you and your uncle can speak in one voice.’

‘In matters like what?’

Unaccountably, Emily dreaded to hear his reply. She sat straight in her chair. No facial muscle, no body or limb muscle, moved. Only the invisible antenna of her intuition now felt malignity and malevolence.

Eckart did not answer her question directly. It was as if he savoured one more circumlocution. ‘If your uncle is ill at all,’ Eckart was saying suavely, ‘it is a moral illness that he suffers. You are here because I want you to assist us in curing him of this infirmity. I want you to assist us in making Professor Stratman recover his sense and his moral health.’

She wanted to give him no satisfaction of weakness. She knew Germans. But, despite herself, her voice quavered. ‘You are not a doctor?’

‘If you mean—medical doctor—you are correct, I am not. My doctorate is in physics. My acquaintance with Professor Stratman goes back to our early years in Berlin.’

In the deepest pit of her stomach, she was terrified. ‘What do you—what do you want of me?’

‘Little enough,’ said Eckart, as hospitable as if this were a light-hearted tête-à-tête. ‘We are not interested in you at all. We are interested in Professor Stratman. Your value to us is only as a means to an end.’

‘You still haven’t said—’

‘What we are after?’ Eckart pressed his monocle into the ridges below his brow and above his cheekbone. ‘You are correct to be so businesslike. You want to have this—this unusual drama done—so that you may return to your author friend. Yes.’ He took a chained gold watch from his vest and studied it. ‘There is not much time from now to the Ceremony, so I will be as businesslike as you.’ He leaned back in the swivel chair, and the spring protested twice. ‘Your uncle is a German who turned his back on his Fatherland in its hour of most dire need, to lend his support to exploiters and capitalists, the warmonger clique, who are the masters of so called democratic America. His genius, in a wrong cause, distresses us in East Berlin deeply. We have one object, and I have one assignment—to make Professor Stratman cease his dangerous tinkering—so harmful to world peace—for an irresponsible society, and to make him come to his senses and return to his beloved Fatherland. He is a German, and—’

‘He is
not
a German!’ Emily shouted.

Eckart scowled. ‘You think you can change your blood with a paper of naturalization? I did not take you for a foolish child. Your uncle himself, Professor Stratman—in the latter days of the war, when we were at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute together—used to tell a story. I have not forgotten it. His story makes my point. One day, a wealthy American businessman was strolling with Professor Charles Steinmetz, the famous engineer who was deformed, past a synagogue in New York. “You know, Steinmetz,” said the businessman, “I used to be a Jew.” And Steinmetz said to him, “Yes, and you know, I used to be a humpback.” There is the story. Your uncle is a German, and before the eyes of the world, he shall be again—when he defects from the decadent West.’

Emily heard this out with smouldering anger. ‘Nothing—nothing on earth—would make him go back to you.’

‘I hope you are wrong, Miss Stratman. And I hope I am
not
wrong in judging that your good sense coincides with your uncle’s good sense.’

‘About what? I still don’t know what you’re trying to say.’

‘I’m only trying to say in my diplomat’s way—forgive the verbosity—that there just may be something on earth that might help Max Stratman make the change.’