The Prize (91 page)

In his personal shame, Garrett wanted to say something, anything, to regain respect. He would show compassion. Without further thought, he blurted to Stratman, ‘Was she put to death in the crematorium?’

Stratman winced, and looked quickly at Emily. Her eyes had filled with tears, and she was frantic at her own emotional display. ‘I—I want a drink,’ she gasped, and then pivoted and hastened away.

Stratman watched her briefly, as she headed for the waiter, and then he faced the others and Garrett. ‘Yes, she was put to death in the gas plant. She was Emily’s mother. Emily spent the war in Ravensbruck. She is now my charge.’

The conversation had reached its dead end. Saralee pulled John Garrett out of the group, and they drifted off, and then the group disintegrated, and individuals of it attached themselves to other guests throughout the salon.

With a fixed fascination, made more intense by his inebriety, Andrew Craig had been staring for several minutes at the slender brunette with the provocative features, in the nearest gathering. Of all the young women in the large salon, she was the only one who captured his interest. While pretending to attend to the conversation of Ingrid P
ه
hl, and a scholarly member of the Swedish Academy, and the Italian Minister, he was heedful only of the girl who stood so close beside Professor Stratman. He had known her before, he was positive, but where or when he could not remember. Yet, he told himself, had he known her before, he would not have forgotten. Suddenly, he was less positive that they had met.

Now he was startled to see her face writhe in agitation, and he watched her wheel away from the group, and remove herself from it. His eyes followed her as she went aimlessly about the room, and then he realized that she was heading for the liveried servant at a point midway between the girl and himself.

Acting on an impulse of the instant, moved by an unconscious necessity that he had no time to fathom, Craig unceremoniously excused himself from his gathering. Although his legs were not entirely obedient to his desire, and he weaved a little as he walked, he tried to reach the liveried servant at the same time that the girl reached him.

Emily Stratman had already confronted the tray, and taken the last champagne goblet from it, when Craig arrived.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well—I guess you beat me to it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hardly noticing him. ‘I’m sure there is more where this came from.’

Craig looked at the servant inquiringly. The man held up a finger, to tell him to wait a moment, and then hurried off.

Craig considered the girl, whose head was bent over her drink. ‘I’m sure I’ve met you somewhere,’ he said.

For the first time, she lifted her head to scrutinize him. ‘No, you haven’t,’ she said. Suddenly she wrinkled her nose, as if it bothered her. ‘It tickles,’ she said, and indicated her champagne. ‘Bubbles.’

‘You have to be French—or a skin diver—to avoid that.’

‘Mmm.’ She sipped the drink, avoiding his eyes.

‘Well, if we haven’t met—we might as well. I’m Andrew Craig. I’m—’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You were pointed out to me when you came in. Congratulations.’

‘Thank you. Are you Professor Stratman’s daughter?’

‘I’m his niece.’

‘I see. He’s a bachelor, isn’t he?’

‘Very.’

‘And you take care of him?’

‘Probably the other way around.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘My uncle is self-sufficient. ‘I’m not.’

He regarded her closely. She was taller than he had expected. The short black hair shone as it caught the lights. The curls along her cheeks enclosed her maiden’s face and gave it piquancy. The words ‘vestal virgin’ crossed his mind, yet the slanting eyes, Oriental emerald in colour, made ‘vestal virgin’ impossible. Her serenity enchanted him. Here was the picture of self-possession, yet she had just remarked that she was not self-sufficient.

‘I was watching you, a few minutes ago, in that group with your uncle,’ he said. ‘I was impressed by your poise—the gift of
sangfroid
, which the French so admire—until you suddenly seemed upset and broke away. Are you still upset?’

She considered him, for the first time, with wonder. ‘Yes, quite upset. Don’t let the façade deceive you. It took years to build, to have a place to hide.’ She paused, as if astonished with herself. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I must be drunk. This is my fourth champagne.’

‘I’m the one who must be drunk, to have even brought it up.’ He was compelled to go further. ‘I only asked about your being upset because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing to you. I can’t explain. It suddenly seemed important, that’s all.’

‘I don’t mind. It’s all right.’

‘You know my name. I don’t know yours.’

‘Emily Stratman. Birthplace Germany. Naturalized American citizen. Raised in New York City since fifteen—or was it sixteen? Now resident of Atlanta, Georgia. Have I left anything out?’

‘Yes. Marital status.’

‘Aggressively single.’

‘The result of a broken marriage?’

‘Is this how writers get their material? No marriage. Not past, present, or future.’

‘How can you know about the future?’

‘Because I know about the present. What did you do before you won the Nobel Prize—write advice to the lovelorn?’ Quickly, she repaired this. ‘I was just joking. I didn’t mean to be fresh.’

‘Please don’t apologize for being “fresh” to me. That word freezes me. One is fresh to elders. I’m not an elder. I remember the first time a pretty girl, introduced to me at the country club, said “sir” to me. That was the day I realized I was middle-aged.’

‘I don’t mind middle-aged men,’ she said. ‘In fact, I prefer them. They’re more comfortable to be with.’

‘Another barb. Are “non-romantic” and “non-threatening” synonyms for comfortable?’

‘I hadn’t thought, and I won’t try. No deep thinking for me tonight. No self-analysis. Only champagne and the King.’

‘In other words, you’re still upset?’

‘And you’re too damn perceptive. Don’t undress my poor psyche here.’ She spoke without anger or objection, in a flat, low, matter-of-fact voice. She held herself in reserve a few seconds, peering at her drink but not drinking, and then she met his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m still a little unstrung. I suppose you want to know why?’

He nodded. ‘I want to know.’

‘Here’s material for your next book, Mr. Craig. We were talking back there, and Dr. Garrett was baiting Dr. Farelli—with little success, I might add—and Dr. Garrett told what he did in the war, and then Dr. Farelli mentioned that he had been interned in an Italian jail, and he questioned my uncle, and my uncle spoke of being held as a hostage for my mother and me. We were in Ravensbruck through the entire war. Then my mother was separated from me and shipped, in a cattle train, to Poland, to Auschwitz. Anyway—anyway—Dr. Garrett asked if she had been—what was the fashionable word?—liquidated in a crematorium? And I don’t know—that just made me ache—as if it had just happened—as if I was just looking into a—someone’s coffin, someone close—and I guess I—lost my poise. It’s silly, because I hadn’t thought of my mother, in that way, for years. And then out of the blue, among strangers, in this formal place, it all welled up. Now, there you have your material, Mr. Craig.’

He was deeply moved. ‘I don’t want material from you, Miss Stratman.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘Someone to talk to like this.’

The liveried servant had returned with his plentiful tray, and Craig took a glass of champagne, and waited for the man to go. When he was gone, Craig at once resumed with Emily, as if fearing that he might lose her.

‘I’ll revise what I just said. What I want is not someone to talk to—but specifically you to talk to. No explanation. You see a girl, a young lady, and because her eyes are green, or her smile crooked, or she brushes her hair back from her eyes—’

‘Or she’s upset.’

‘—yes, most anything like that, you want to know her. Sometimes you know her, and it’s a mistake, and you know once again you were duped by an illusion, and sometimes—’ His voice drifted off, and he shrugged and drank.

‘Is the woman you came in with a member of your family?’ she asked.

‘My sister-in-law, yes. How did you know she wasn’t my wife?’

‘I read the newspapers, Mr. Craig. I read books, by the bushel, and I read about their authors. I knew you were a widower.’

‘Yes, I am. My sister-in-law has been wet-nursing me for three years, ever since.’ He considered evoking Harriet, but felt that he owed her nothing tonight, not in this reality, and so he did not speak of her.

‘Your sister-in-law is handsome.’

‘I guess so. I really don’t know.’

‘Did your wife look like that?’

‘My wife was more feminine, in a way.’ He was not exactly sure, right now, how feminine Harriet had been. It was a relative matter, anyway. In relation to Leah, Harriet had been more feminine. In relation to the girl before him, Emily Stratman, Harriet—the vagueness of her Slavic features and brisk efficiency—seemed less feminine. ‘Leah, my sister-in-law, planted a proprietary flag on me early, and that’s the way it’s been.’

‘How do you live?’ asked Emily. ‘I know you live somewhere in Wisconsin—but how?’

The unlovely film of the last years unreeled in memory, and he weighed the masochistic and repulsive truth, and then instinctively vetoed this truth. Like an adolescent, he wanted to impress a beautiful girl. ‘I own a sprawling farmhouse in southern Wisconsin, at the outskirts of a charming small town,’ he heard himself saying. ‘I walk or garden in the mornings, ride sometimes, see friends. After lunch, I lock myself in my study upstairs and write until evening. My nights are quiet, a few companions, or cards, or reading. Sometimes I take a few weeks in Chicago or New York, to get the hay out of my hair. I’m afraid it sounds a little dull.’

‘It sounds divine.’

Craig smiled wryly. If only Lucius Mack could have heard him. He would have said: well, old man, glad you’re turning out fiction again, and about time.

‘What do you do with yourself?’ he inquired.

‘I—I tend my uncle’s house, and work in a veterans’ hospital outside Atlanta, and, as I told you, I read a good deal.’ The statement was so devoid of life that she was ashamed, and made up her mind to embellish it. ‘And then, of course, all sorts of famous people are always down to see Uncle Max, and I’m his hostess. We have too many dinners, too many late nights. I—I go out the usual amount, like all unattached women—I don’t care for nightclubs, but you know, the theatre, drives, private homes. It’s enough to keep one busy.’ She was more ashamed than ever, and wanted desperately to change the subject. ‘I’m reading one of your books now. I bought it for the boat.’

He was pleased, and showed it. ‘Which one?’

‘I’d read them all, I thought, and then I found I’d missed
The Perfect State
. I’m almost through. I believe it’s my favourite. I liked
The Savage
the least, because it’s brutal—’