The Prize (89 page)

‘I had got out months before,’ said Hammarlund. ‘I left Kreuger with his matchstick empire and made a connection in munitions. Much less breakable, and much more in demand. As to Kreuger’s holdings, only his home firm, the Swedish Match Company, survived the scandal. It still owns, I believe, over one hundred factories in three dozen countries. However, I have little interest in matches—though several of my researchers have laboured several years trying to produce a permanent match, one that will last its owner’s lifetime.’

‘I did not know you were interested in research,’ said Denise, and because she was too impatient to be polite, she added, ‘I thought men like yourself were only interested in money.’

‘But we are,’ agreed Hammarlund, without humour. ‘Men such as I also have foresight. In the end, research means money. I own nine industrial laboratories in Sweden alone. I even have two in your native France. They do not carry my name, but they are supported by my endowments.’

‘This is not altruistic, I presume?’

‘Not one bit. We work towards a practical end. Most of the alchemy is hopeless and wasted, but one day, one of my laboratories will produce a perfume that stays on the skin indefinitely or a textile that never wears out or an automobile tyre that lasts forever—and my enormous investment in improbability will pay off. Right now, I am interested in synthetic foods. I still have an old paper, in my files, that you and your husband published. It concerns experiments you made with a certain strain of algae, as a possible food substitute.’

‘Yes, that was shortly after our marriage.’

‘Why did you abandon the work?’

‘We saw no future in it, and we were young and filled with a thousand hopes. We worked at a dozen projects until we found the one we could fully embrace.’

‘I cannot say you were wrong. After all, here you are for the Nobel Prize.’

‘Yes.’

‘But from a selfish point of view, I wish you had gone on in synthetics. I believe it is the most promising field of the immediate tomorrow, and there are too few genuises in the field. Although, I must say, I do have one excellent analytical chemist working directly under me, in my private laboratory behind my villa. His name is Dr. Oscar Lindblom, an unknown young man who will one day have a reputation. This very morning, we were preparing a homogenate together. Food synthetics are rather a hobby of mine. Would you care to know why I became so interested in the problem?’

Denise did not care to know. She searched off for Claude, seething at him, and then remembered her companion’s question. ‘Why you became interested? Money, I suppose.’

‘This time, in all honesty, no, at least, not at first. You see, Dr. Marceau, I am anticreophagous—anti-flesh eating—a lifelong practising vegetarian.’

Somehow, aware of his bizarre appearance again, she was not at all surprised. ‘Is that sensible?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I enjoy good company. Plutarch was a vegetarian, and so were Voltaire and Schopenhauer and Tolstoy and our own Swedenborg. I have never gone as far as Shelley, who would not eat crumpets because they were likely to be buttered—but I simply will not eat anything that I can pet. Curiously, this attitude made me speculate on synthetic foods—including algae, which I classify with the synthetics, and then, gradually, I saw that the commercial importance of such products was more important than the aesthetic benefits. One day, soon, no one on earth will go hungry or be ill-nourished, thanks to cheap synthetic foods.’

‘Which you will manufacture?’

‘It is my dream. At any rate, I hold almost a hero worship for superior chemists, and since it was announced that you were coming to Stockholm, I have looked forward to meeting you.’

‘You are kind, Mr. Hammarlund.’

‘Not kind, never kind.’ He dabbed his face with his silk handkerchief. ‘If you have read your programme, you know, perhaps, that I am having a dinner this week for the visiting laureates—’

‘Of course. I had forgotten.’

‘We would be honoured—’

‘You say “we”. You are married?’

‘I am quite alone, by choice. I hold with our Ibsen, “A strong man is strongest alone.”’

‘And a strong woman?’

He stared at her, the flat mirror eyes catching a vision of her dissatisfaction and bitterness. ‘I am not so certain about a woman—a woman is different.’ He waited for her comment, but she was contained again. ‘By “we”,’ he went on, ‘I mean my friends and I will be honoured to receive you. Dr. Lindblom will be at the dinner, of course—I think he will interest you—and Miss M
ن
rta Norberg will graciously act as my hostess.’

‘M
ن
rta Norberg—the actress?’

‘None other.’

‘I am not a
dévote
of the stage or cinema, but when I have attended, it has most often been to see her. I have not seen her for several years. Is she in retirement?’

‘An actress is never in retirement. She is always awaiting the proper role. It is like asking an actress about her comeback. Inevitably, she will say, “Comeback? But I have never been away.” You and your husband will be my guests?’

‘I never speak for my husband,’ said Denise. ‘You must invite him yourself. As for me, yes, I will be delighted—on two conditions—that you do not insist that I visit your laboratory, and that you do not serve me a meal either synthetic or vegetarian.’

Hammarlund patted his glistening albino face with the handkerchief, almost merrily, and then replied, ‘I promise you—no laboratory—that would be rather a busman’s holiday, would it not?—and the meal, strictly food you can pet.’ He studied her a moment. ‘If your husband is otherwise occupied, and you come alone, I assure you, you will not be sorry. Our Swedish young men are most gallant and attentive—and appreciative of the best France has to offer.’

Her face grew suddenly grim. ‘Mr. Hammarlund, I may have my problems, but a need for gigolos is certainly not one of them.’

Hammarlund opened his hands towards her, at once self-reproachful and penitent. ‘Forgive me, Dr. Marceau—at times, I am so clumsy with the language—but I meant to imply no such thing. I apologize, believe me, if I exceeded good taste in a mere desire to be hospitable.’

Convinced of his sincerity, Denise softened. ‘No, the fault is mine. I am afraid I am overwrought. Blame it on the trip, the excitement, this whole royal formality—’ Beyond him, she saw Claude and Jacobsson walking towards her. ‘Here they come now. You will enjoy my husband. He is better-behaved at these social affairs.’

When Claude, holding a new drink almost colourless, arrived, with Jacobsson a step behind, Denise immediately spoke to him. ‘Mr. Hammarlund has been most engaging, but I have given him a difficult time.’

‘Quite the contrary,’ Hammarlund protested.

Denise continued to address her husband. ‘You will find Mr. Hammarlund a patron of chemistry, and you will be flattered to know that he is acquainted with our earliest work.’ She turned abruptly to Jacobsson. ‘I have exchanged hardly a word with the other winners. I think I should do so.’ She took Jacobsson’s arm. ‘Will you escort me, Count?’

The gathering, the largest in the White Sea Room, had been kneaded into a tight circle by the comings and goings at its periphery and by a common desire to keep the discussion informal. Included in the gathering, from the point where Denise Marceau had been admitted to it five minutes before, were—left to right—Saralee Garrett, John Garrett, an earnest and acne riddled young Swedish Prince in uniform, Margherita Farelli, Carlo Farelli, Konrad Evang, Emily Stratman, Max Stratman, Carl Adolf Krantz, and Count Bertil Jacobsson.

The young Prince, in a learned falsetto, was giving a biographical discourse on Alfred Nobel, in response to Margherita’s thickly accented question about the donor. John Garrett listened with impatient courtesy, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Garrett was interested in neither information nor entertainment, but in assassination. Like a hunter in hiding, he had no time for the appearance of the minor animals. He wanted only the king of beasts.

Since his fiasco at the press conference, Garrett had revaluated his own worth and decided that he was deserving of a defence to the death. Never again, he had vowed, would he let the Italian treat him as a satellite ally. Now, as the talk flowed, he waited for Farelli to speak up, so that he might interrupt or contradict him and thus reveal him as unworthy of invitation to this select circle. The wait was irritatingly protracted. Eager as Garrett was to pounce, there was no prey. The Farelli of the afternoon, vocal and vulnerable, was no longer in evidence. Tonight, he was subdued. Tonight, handsome in a black wool suit, English-tailored in Rome, he listened. It was as if he scented a lurking danger and preferred to hide behind anonymity. Garrett ground his teeth and marked time.

The young Prince was going on shrilly about Alfred Nobel. ‘—is another reason we so fervently admire him. He overcame all odds. His father was twice a bankrupt. Nobel, himself, had no formal education, never once graduated from a school. This will interest you especially, Professor Stratman. You were speaking of John Ericsson—the builder of the
Monitor
for Lincoln—and his early experiments in trying to accomplish what you accomplished, harness the sun’s rays. Did you know that Nobel met Ericsson in America?’

‘That is really true?’ asked Stratman.

‘It is in our histories,’ said the young Prince. ‘Nobel was only seventeen. Ericsson showed him the engine he hoped to run with solar energy, and this inspired the inventive streak in Nobel.’

‘And then Nobel invented nitroglycerine,’ said Garrett importantly.

‘I do not believe that is quite correct, Dr. Garrett.’ It was Farelli who had entered the conversation. ‘Nitroglycerine—blasting oil—was discovered by one of my countrymen, some time before Nobel—Professor Ascanio Sobrero, of Turin.’

‘True,’ the young Prince confirmed.

Garrett’s confidence sank beneath the new setback. He had been over eager. The prey had stalked the hunter. Farelli was again ahead. Garrett determined not to make the same mistake twice.

‘What Nobel accomplished was to invent the blasting cap,’ the young Prince was saying, ‘and later safety powder, made of nitro combined with German clay, which was what started the great dynamite business and made him a millionaire. But as I was remarking, for him it was always a battle against odds. In the pioneer stages, the explosive blew up his factory and killed his younger brother. He had to move his laboratory to a pontoon raft in the middle of a Swedish lake. By accident, this liquid exploded ships off Germany and Panama, a whole city block in San Francisco, a warehouse in Australia. Once, I am told, your American Senate’—he spoke to Garrett now—‘seriously debated a bill to make the shipping of Nobel’s liquid a crime to be punished by hanging.’

‘Yes,’ said Garrett, ‘my fellow Americans are often very suspicious of science. When I was doing my work in heart transplants, I received many threatening crank letters warning me not to try to compete with God.’

Farelli said nothing, and Garrett felt the warmth of a small victory.

‘Fortunately, Nobel learned to tame and control his dynamite,’ said the young Prince, ‘and in ten years, he had fifteen factories and was one of the richest men in the world—almost as rich for his day as our celebrated Mr. Hammarlund is in this day.’

Farelli moved to speak, and immediately Garrett was ready. ‘Most interesting,’ Farelli said. ‘But I am curious about another thing. Here we all are, the laureates from the ends of the earth, the benefactors of Nobel’s generosity. Yet I know next to nothing about my benefactor himself, his personal character, life. What was he really like?’