The Prize (60 page)

She heard a voice. It was the
vendeuse
addressing her. ‘What does Madame think? Is it not enchanting?’

‘
Oui
,’ she was saying, ‘but it is not for me.
Merci
.’ She felt thick and graceless and old. She felt the unwanted orphan in the rear. She turned to her friend. ‘
Je ne veux rien acheter maintenant
. Let us go.’

Suddenly the painful memory was interrupted, and she realized that she was not in the salon of Balenciaga but in the cabin of a jet headed for Sweden.

The amplifier crackled. A hostess was speaking, first in French, then in accented English.

‘We are landing in five minutes. Please refrain from smoking. Please fasten your seat belts. Please fasten your seat belts. Thank you.’

Denise uncurled from her chair, and sat up, patting her suit where it had wrinkled. Outside the window there was no motion. Only a monotonous expanse of iron-greyness, like her mind. She found the belt straps, and after fumbling a moment, she hooked them around her waist.

She saw that Claude had closed his novel—damn him, able to read at a time like this—and was grinding out the butt of his cigarette. Now he, too, locked himself in his seat belt.

He looked at her. ‘Did you get any sleep?’

‘Like an innocent child,’ she said viciously.

He said no more, but stuffed his book into the Air France bag, zipped it, and pulled it between his feet.

Sitting erect, waiting, she again despised the whole idea of the trip, with its enforced togetherness. A year ago, the honour would have been the greatest event of their lives. Today, this afternoon, the honour was empty—no, not empty, but something that leered and mocked. There would be little more than a week in Stockholm. It would be tolerable, possible, only if they were endlessly occupied. This would keep her from being alone with Claude, and give her time to regain her poise and to think out the immediate future. In two weeks they would be home, and they would be three, and the decision that was her own would have to be made.

She felt the slight lurch of the jet in descent, and felt also momentary panic at what lay ahead. She tried to imagine what would be demanded of them. She wondered if she and Claude would have to undertake all the rituals together. She dreaded the ordeal of their single celebrated face, the required oneness of happy marriage and happy collaboration that the world expected to see. Marie and Pierre Curie were what everyone wanted. The irony was not amusing to her. Marie and Pierre and Gisèle Jordan.

There was a crunching, grating noise, as the jet touched down and began the noisy process of braking to a halt on the 11,000-foot cement runway. Outside the window she saw a streak of forest, of parked aeroplanes and trucks, of modern buildings, and a hangar with futuristic upswept roofs, of people in dark clusters. It was the people that frightened her the most. They had invented a certain celebrated chemist named Dr. Denise Marceau, cool, detached, dedicated, profound, when really she was entering their lives as a cheated middle-aged wife named Madame Claude Marceau, befuddled, unsettled, angry, broken. Which of them would dream that Nobel could have been erased by Balenciaga? The test would be her reservoir of strength. Could she survive this week of exposure without precipitating a scandal?

‘Come on,’ Claude was saying, ‘we have arrived.’

When they came down the temporary stairs to the runway, they were engulfed at once in a mob of howling people. Claude had her arm, holding her against the crush, and somehow she found a bouquet of flowers in her hand. Indistinctly, she heard the names of the reception committee, Count Something Jacobsson, Ingrid Something, and Something Krantz.

The Count Something Jacobsson was between Claude and herself, saying, ‘We announced the press conference for tomorrow. We wanted it orderly. But somehow they find out—try to catch you here anyway. You do not have to answer the questions—not now.’ He was pushing them through the crowd, as cameras, lifted high, captured them, and reporters shouted at them in four tongues.

Hurried along, pressed and guided by the committee, with the pack close behind, she found herself stumbling through the gate towards a limousine. Count Something Jacobsson was speaking in her ear. ‘Accommodations—Grand Hotel—rest until tomorrow—then—’

Breathless, she reached the open door of the limousine. As she stooped to enter it, she heard one reporter’s voice, more raucous than the others. ‘Dr. Marceau!’ he cried out to her. ‘Do you recommend all married couples have work in common—more in common—more—?’

The voice trailed off as she buried herself in the interior of the car, fighting the urge to weep and scream. Claude was beside her, and Somebody Something beside him, and two Somebody Somethings in the jump seats. The automobile was moving, only to Denise Marceau it did not feel like an automobile but like a ferryboat, the one driven by Charon, across the ‘Abhorred Styx’. . . .

By the time the Nobel reception committee had deposited the Drs. Denise and Claude Marceau in their Grand Hotel suite—‘I am sure they were happy to see us go, they seemed so exhausted and nervous,’ said Ingrid P
ه
hl—and assigned a Foreign Office attaché to attend their wants, there was barely time to dine and return to Arlanda Airport to greet the seven o’clock Caravelle jet bringing Dr. Carlo Farelli and his wife Margherita from Rome.

The three committee members were finishing their dinner in the Cattelin Restaurant, behind the Royal Palace in the Old Town, but their conversation was not of Farelli.

‘What time does Professor Max Stratman’s ship arrive in Gِteborg tonight?’ Carl Adolf Krantz wanted to know.

‘I am not certain,’ Jacobsson now replied. ‘I know it will be late. In any event, we are to expect him at the Central Station by eight tomorrow morning.’

‘I hope he had a good crossing,’ Krantz mused into his beer.

‘Why all this fussing about Stratman?’ Ingrid P
ه
hl was addressing herself to Krantz. ‘I have not seen you this excited about a physicist since the year Heisenberg came here from Leipzig.’ She smiled with malicious innocence. ‘After all, Stratman is only an American.’

Krantz took the bait. ‘He is a German.’

‘He is a Jew,’ said Ingrid P
ه
hl, having a wonderful time.

‘He is a German,’ repeated Krantz doggedly.

‘Well, he certainly scurried off to America the first chance he had,’ said Ingrid P
ه
hl happily.

Krantz frowned. ‘I see. You are pulling my leg. Personally, I do not care where he is from—only what he is—and he is, today, the world’s foremost physicist. Do you have the least idea of what he has done?’

‘I read the papers,’ said Ingrid P
ه
hl. ‘He has discovered the sun has more uses than giving a suntan.’

‘You are hopeless.’ Krantz finished his beer, and devoted himself to Jacobsson. ‘I hate to think of Professor Stratman arriving in Gِteborg without any kind of special reception. After we have dispensed with Farelli, I think I should like to telephone Professor Stratman in Gِteborg. Do you have any objection?’

‘Whatever you wish,’ said Jacobsson.

‘Yes,’ said Krantz. ‘I will welcome him by telephone.’ He fingered his goatee. ‘I do hope he had an agreeable crossing.’

Later, and for a long time after, Emily Stratman would remember 6.18 of the evening of December 2 as a crucial moment of self-revelation in her mature years. Curiously, whenever she would think of it, she would also remember reading somewhere that most dummy clocks used for advertising by American jewellers were set, or painted in, at about 8.18 in the belief (incorrect) that this was the moment that Abraham Lincoln had died. The persistent association of these two ideas, she would finally decide, was because both had signified the end of life.

But the moment of self-revelation, while near, was not yet at hand. It was slightly past four o’clock of December 2, and the magnificent white vessel of the Swedish-American Line had, an hour ago, left behind the dim coast of Norway and was now cutting through the choppy sea towards the Swedish port of Gِteborg. Emily Stratman, a suede jacket over her chartreuse wool shirt, relaxed contentedly in a wicker chair beside the cane table on upper A Deck. Through the glass enclosure, silhouetted against the brooding horizon, she could see a lone fishing yawl with three sails. The sky above was murky and ominous. Despite the threatening weather, she was not yet ready for port. The nine days at sea had been her most glorious experience in years, and she wanted more days, to prove herself.

Inevitably, her mind had turned to Mark Claborn. She expected him. They had made no date, but she was sure that he would come. Still, she wished that they had made an appointment. She had even put off ordering a drink until he appeared.

When she heard footsteps directly behind, she twisted quickly, her face smiling to greet Mark. But her visitor was Uncle Max. Her reaction did not hide the disappointment.

‘You were expecting someone younger,
Liebchen?
’ asked Professor Max Stratman with a smile.

‘Younger, yes. Handsomer, no.’

‘
Ach
, you are learning the pretty words.’ He settled in the wicker chair across from her. ‘I have been speaking to the purser. We are almost there.’

‘What time do we dock?’

‘Ten tonight. The Stockholm train leaves at eleven. There will be plenty of time.’ He looked off. ‘Miserable weather. I hear it is raining in Gِteborg. Why do they have the Nobel Ceremony in December?’

‘The anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death,’ Emily answered.

‘I am glad somebody in this family reads history.’ He shivered. ‘Brr. Cold. Will you join me in a drink?’

‘We-ll—’ She considered, and then decided that she could have another if Mark came. ‘Yes Schnapps.’

‘Schnapps? I see you are really going the Swedish way. Do you know what it is made of?’

‘Yes, alcohol and alcohol—flavoured with caraway. Two schnapps and they bury you at sea.’

‘If my niece can have it, I can, too.’ He waved until he caught the eye of the deck steward, and then he called out his order.

When the drinks were served, Emily drank hers not in a gulp, but gradually, to nurse it. Stratman studied his own glass with a feeling of misconduct. He had seen Dr. Fred Ilman several times before the trip, and Dr. Ilman had been flatly against it. Too much commotion, he had warned, too many people, too much exertion and food and drink. Stratman had explained that a condition for receiving the Nobel money was that you picked it up in person. Dr. Ilman had pointed out that several persons, notably John Galsworthy and André Gide, had got their prize money without travelling to Stockholm, because they were ill. Nevertheless, Stratman had been insistent. For several reasons, he had not wished his heart condition thus made public. News of it would disturb Emily, in a way that might be dangerous. She had suffered enough insecurity without this. Furthermore, the Society for Basic Research might become alarmed, and severely curtail his allotments and assignments. He did not want to be restricted when there was so much to be done. And so, on his honour, he had promised Dr. Ilman that he would behave—no agitations, no galloping about, no drinks.

He lifted his glass. ‘
Sk
ه
l
,’ he said.

‘Half
sk
ه
l
,’ Emily replied indicating that her own glass was now only partially filled.