The Prize (95 page)

Now they rode in silence between the canal and the buildings, Leah, Stratman, and Emily in the rear seat, and Indent Flink, the publisher, in one jump seat and Craig in the other. Flink proved to be more probable than his name, a prosperous, corpulent man in his late forties, conservatively tailored in dark grey, a businessman who smelt of Danish beer and Baltic herring and was proud of his colloquial command of the American language.

‘I guess you’ve seen today’s papers,’ Flink said to Craig. ‘You got considerable space in all of them, and so did Professor Stratman. Rave notices. Count Jacobsson has clippings for Professor Stratman, and I have five for you.’ He pulled the newspaper accounts from his pocket and handed them to Craig. ‘See for yourself.’

Courteously, Craig leafed through the clippings, and found them as baffling as the inscriptions on the Kensington stone. ‘I’m sorry I can’t read Swedish,’ he said.

As he handed them back to Flink, Leah leaned forward and protested. ‘Andrew, keep them for souvenirs.’

‘Okay,’ said Craig, ‘but I’d like to know what’s in them. Don’t read them, for heaven’s sake—I don’t want to bore the Professor or Miss Stratman.’

‘I’m interested.’ It was Emily. Craig twisted to thank her, and was again fascinated, as he had been the evening before. Her brunette hair glistened in the dusty sun, and the loveliness of her green eyes and tilted nose was heightened by carmine lipstick, still moist and fresh, and the only make-up she wore.

Disinclined as he was, for he felt Leah’s scrutiny, he faced the publisher once more. ‘Just give me the gist of the stories,’ he said.

‘The gist,’ said Flink, ‘is this.’ He reviewed the leads of the stories in a monotone. Two newspapers played up the fact that, although Mr. Craig was the youngest literary laureate ever to win the prize, he approved of the award’s going to established authors, no matter how elderly. One newspaper featured Mr. Craig’s remark that Gunnar Gottling, the controversial Swedish novelist, was a ‘major talent’ who had been overlooked by the Swedish Academy. Another newspaper devoted its first paragraphs to the things Mr. Craig admired about Sweden and the things he did not like.’

‘What’s in that last clipping, Mr. Flink?’ Craig asked.

The publisher shrugged. ‘Nonsense. It speaks of an altercation between you and an American correspondent, Miss Wiley, which broke up the press conference.’

Craig scowled. ‘Does it say more?’

‘Well—’

Immediately, Craig realized that the article had sensationalized and gone into the argument about his alleged drinking habits. It was the last thing on earth he wanted brought up before Emily and Leah.

‘Never mind,’ he said curtly to Flink.

But Leah had pushed forward. ‘What’s this all about? What are they writing? What happened at the press conference, Andrew?’

Suavely, from the front seat, Jacobsson interceded on Craig’s behalf. ‘It was nothing at all, Miss Decker. We suffer at least one such incident annually.’

‘What incident?’ demanded Leah shrilly.

‘Miss Wiley writes for an American syndicate that lives by scandal,’ said Jacobsson, ‘and when there is no scandal, she must make it up for her bread and butter. She asked Mr. Craig some personal questions, and he felt—and correctly so—that his private life, his habits, his marriage, had no place in an interview. That was all. To prevent the woman from tormenting us, I called the interviews to a halt.’

‘The nerve of those reporters,’ said Leah, still confused.

‘And now, Professor Stratman, would you like to know about your clippings?’ asked Jacobsson.

‘A summary will do,’ said Stratman.

‘The emphasis,’ said Jacobsson, ‘was on the fact that the details of your discovery are being kept top-secret by the American government. Everyone quoted your predictions as to the future of solar energy. Two periodicals discussed your life in Germany and—’

Stratman, ever sensitive to Emily’s hatred of their homeland, held up his hand. ‘That is enough, Count Jacobsson. Who wants to relive the past when this day is so brilliant and Stockholm is before us?’ He called to Mr. Manker, ‘Where is your co-operative housing?’

‘Right ahead,’ said Mr. Manker.

The HSB co-operative housing village on Reimersholme consisted of nearly one thousand apartments that were occupied by three thousand middle-class Swedish citizens. The buildings were difficult to tell apart. All were clean and modern and seemed new, although they had been constructed in the latter years of World War II. All were set back from the canal, all were wood, concrete, and stucco, painted either white or beige, and all carried proud little balconies, most now filled with sun seekers.

Mr. Manker parked the limousine before one of the apartment buildings. For several minutes, he explained the nonprofit evolution of the communal housing unit beside them. When he finished, he inquired, ‘Would you like to visit inside?’

They all left the vehicle, and gathered on the pavement in the gentle sun.

Craig said to Mr. Manker, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll stay out here and have a smoke. I’ve seen your co-ops before.’

‘As you wish,’ said Mr. Manker.

‘I think I’ll keep Mr. Craig company,’ said Indent Flink.

Mr. Manker herded the others towards the apartment building entrance. Craig watched Emily Stratman as she proceeded on beside her uncle. She was taller than her uncle, and she wore a grey suede jacket and tight blue skirt, cut short, revealing her long legs and the perfect curves of her calves filmed over by sheer nylon. As she walked, her ample buttocks and generous hips moved freely, and Craig realized that she wore no girdle. He had earlier been so absorbed in her virgin face that it now surprised him that her figure could be more feminine and provocative than Lilly’s figure.

Briefly, he made his mental apologies to Lilly, remembering her uninhibited giving, yet the difference was clear. You associated Lilly with health and nature and spontaneous animal sex. You put her against the background of a forest, with the forest sounds and the sky patch above, and you took her at once, without sparring, for carnal pleasure alone, on the earth and grass. But Emily Stratman—you imagined her, and you thought of unblemished maidenhood, reserved and withheld, tensely waiting on one desired, and you thought of love and romance and the long hungry building. You put her in the softly lighted boudoir, with the caressing breeze coming through the open French windows, and the wan moon and the faraway music, and you carried her from the chaise to the canopied bed, and you embraced her and kissed her and touched her unviolated flesh, until at last a low fire burned, and then you took her slowly, ever so slowly, with art and soothing, until the low fire grew to blaze.

Craig shook himself. The incongruity of his fancy, here on a Stockholm pavement, before a co-operative housing structure, struck him fully, and as being ridiculous, and he banished the daydream. Emily and the rest had disappeared into the building. Craig found his brier pipe, packed it, and Indent Flink was waiting with the match.

‘What do you think of our co-operatives?’ asked Flink.

‘I admire them,’ said Craig, drawing on his pipe, ‘as I admire a nation with no slums. I think it’s advanced and a great gift for the majority. But I’m a writer, an individualist, and I suppose I’d rather live in a tent, simply to be alone and not belong and be levelled off, because I prefer ups and downs.’

‘It will interest you that our co-operatives have even got into the writing game,’ said Flink.

‘In what way?’

‘The co-ops publish a magazine, and they publish books at lower cost. They even sponsor a yearly lottery to raise money for maybe three dozen deserving writers.’

‘You mean there’s that much interest in authors here?’

‘Enormous interest,’ said Flink. ‘There are seven million people in Sweden. Sixty-five per cent of all adults are regular book readers.’

‘Remarkable,’ said Craig.

‘Our problem here is the critics. Everything succeeds or fails on the reviews. If they are good, a book becomes a best seller. If they are bad, we can dump our stock in the canals.
The Perfect State
got unanimous raves. What irked me was that the raves were not only for its literary merit, but, I suspect, because a story of Plato gave the critics a chance, in their articles, to display their own erudition.’

Craig laughed. ‘I suppose that does happen.’

‘I am sure,’ said Flink seriously. ‘It happened with each of your books. The critics used them all to show off themselves. I believe this sometimes influences even the Nobel Committee. Jacobsson was telling me about the contest for the second Nobel literary award in 1902. There were many nominees considered behind closed doors—Anton Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Henrik Ibsen—but who were the final contenders in the last ballot? Theodor Mommsen, eighty-five years old, with his five-volume
History of Rome
, and Herbert Spencer, eighty-two, with his ten-volume
A System of Synthetic Philosophy
. So there they were for the Nobel literary prize, a German historian and an English philosopher—and not Chekhov or Ibsen. Mommsen was elected and given the prize. Why? The Nobel Committee said for his artistry. Compared to Ibsen? For myself, I suspect a prize for Mommsen was an advertising for the Nobel judges, of their own erudition and scholarship. Possibly, this same egotism worked in your favour, too. I don’t know.’

Craig and Flink paced before the co-operative building, discussing publishing and books and public taste, discussing the cynical and morose outlook of Swedish writers (a rebellion against the idyllic welfare state), and the taste of Swedish writers for Faulkner and Kafka and Gottling and their distaste for the valentines of Ingrid P
ه
hl, until, presently, Mr. Manker emerged with his conducted tour.

Leah burst forth towards Craig, taking his arm and attention possessively, and bubbling on about soundproof rooms and stainless steel and garbage-disposal equipment. Feigning a show of interest, Craig covertly sought out Emily Stratman. A quarter of an hour before, he had wished she would turn around so that he might enjoy her fully. Now she was turned around, in his direction, across the lawn. She wore a high-necked pale blue sweater beneath the suede jacket and over the tight skirt. Her bosom, rising and falling slightly—had they climbed stairs or was it the day?—was spectacularly abundant, and Craig was unaccountably pleased as he enjoyed it, and her, in the sun.

They drove on now, with Mr. Manker at his voluble best, fluently reciting capsule histories of this museum and that gallery and endless chapels of worship. On lovely Helgeandsholmen—Holy Ghost Island—he idled the car, and they considered the unlovely, Germanic Riksdagshuset or Parliament Building, and learned that it had been established in 1865, and that the aristocracy had been oppressive (did Count Jacobsson squirm ever so little?) and allowed only ten per cent of the population to vote until after the fall of the Hohenzollerns and Romanovs, so recently, when universal suffrage and true democracy finally came to backward Sweden.

They drove farther through Stockholm—‘a community of twelve islands connected by forty-two bridges’, recited Mr. Manker—until they reached an immense underground garage, known as Katarinaberget, and they were told that this had been specifically constructed as a shelter to protect 20,000 persons against nuclear explosions. Now, for the first time, Craig was fascinated by a projection of the future.

‘We hope that people will take the lesson of your book,
Armageddon
,’ said Indent Flink to Craig, ‘but if they don’t, you can see, we are ready to survive.’

‘How many of these have you got?’ asked Craig.