‘Yes-yes-one moment-’
Hastily, Count Bertil Jacobsson counted the telegrams, read and reread them to see that all were in proper order, and at last he rose, and almost reluctantly handed them to Mrs. Steen.
‘All right, they can go out now.’
After the door had closed, Jacobsson, his fragility accentuated by the removal of his burden, walked slowly past his desk to the window. He stared down into Sturegatan, saw the chauffeured limousine waiting, and then lifted his gaze to the vacant park again.
November fifteenth, he thought. Indeed, a memorable day. His watch told him that it was 9.10 in the evening. So late for a memorable day to begin, but then, he knew that while it was late in Stockholm, it was earlier, much earlier, in Paris and Rome and Atlanta and Pasadena and that place called Miller’s Dam in the state of Wisconsin.
Down below, he saw the chauffeur jump out of the limousine, circle it, and open a rear door. By craning his neck, Jacobsson could see the tall figure of the attaché, carrying a briefcase, approach, bend into the car, and disappear from sight.
In a moment, the limousine engine roared, and the telegrams were on their way to the Swedish Foreign Office on Gustaf Adolfs Torg. Within the hour, they would be delivered to Swedish Embassies in three nations, and then be relayed to the winners themselves.
The winners themselves, Jacobsson thought. He knew their names well now, because he had heard them repeated regularly in the long months after their nominations, through the investigations, debates, haggling, and voting. But who were they really, these men and women he would be meeting in less than four weeks? How would they feel and be affected? What were they doing now, these pregnant hours before the telegrams arrived and before their greatness became public glory and riches?
His mind went back to his Notes, to what others in past years had been doing at the moment of notification: Eugene O’Neill had been sleeping, and been pulled out of bed to hear the news; Jane Addams had been preparing to go under ether for major surgery; Dr. Harold Urey had been lunching with university professors at his faculty club; Albert Einstein had got the word on board a ship from Japan. And the new ones? Where and how would the prize find them? Jacobsson wished that he could go with the telegrams, with each and every one, and see what happened when they reached their destinations.
Ah, the fancies of an old man, he thought at last. Nog med detta. Enough of this. He must join his colleagues in the upstairs apartment for a drink to a good job done. Still, it would be something, something indeed, to go along with those telegrams…
It was 8.22 in the evening when the telegram from Stockholm reached the Swedish Embassy in Paris. The Ambassador’s pink and concave male secretary, still busy typing the notes on the African mediation question, opened the wire routinely. But as he scanned the contents, his eyes widened with awe.
The first portion of the telegram was addressed to the Ambassador: PLEASE DELIVER THE FOLLOWING BY HAND TO THE PARTIES ADDRESSED STOP OFFER PERSONAL CONGRATULATIONS ON THE BEHALF GOVERNMENT STOP
The message trembled in the secretary’s grasp as he continued to read. Desperately, he tried to remember where the Ambassador had said that he was going. Not home. Not the Opéra. Not the Palais de Justice. Cocktails-that was it, yes, at the residence of some diplomat, but he had not said which one. And then later he was to be at Lapérouse in the Quai des Grands-Augustins to dine. The secretary recalled making the reservation himself for ten o’clock.
His eyes sought the wall clock. Still an hour and a half before he could inform the Ambassador of the momentous news. For that period, the news, the secret, so important, so desired, was his alone. There was pleasure in this.
He settled back in his chair, like a little boy who had seen St. Nicholas, and began to reread the message that the Ambassador had been charged to convey:
FOR YOUR RESEARCHES IN SPERM STRUCTURE AND YOUR DISCOVERY OF VITRIFICATION OF THE SPERMATOZOON FOR SELECTIVE BREEDING THE NOBEL FOUNDATION OF STOCKHOLM ON BEHALF OF THE ROYAL SWEDISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCE IS PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE TODAY BEEN VOTED THIS YEARS NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY STOP THE PRIZE WILL BE A GOLD MEDALLION AND A CHEQUE FOR TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NEW FRANCS STOP THE AWARD CEREMONY WILL TAKE PLACE IN STOCKHOLM ON DECEMBER TENTH STOP DETAILS FOLLOW STOP HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS STOP
The message was addressed to DOCTOR CLAUDE MARCEAU AND DOCTOR DENISE MARCEAU SIXTY TWO QUAI DORSAY PARIS FRANCE…
It was only 8.30, and, except for the proprietors and the waiters, they had the restaurant to themselves.
In fact, Dr. Claude Marceau and Gisèle Jordan had already finished their dessert, gâteau de riz, or rather Claude had finished, and now watched Gisèle daintily spoon the last of her rice caramel with vanilla sauce. It had been a delicious meaclass="underline" soupe de poissons, followed by the spécialité of the evening, Le Jésu de la Marquise , which consisted of saucisson chaud, pistaché, truffé, salade de pommes à l’huile d’olive et romarin, but the pommes sparingly for both.
Claude was distressed at eating this early. It was barbaric. Gisèle and he had never discussed it, but the necessity was understood by both. Neither could afford to be discovered. At this hour, there was less chance of being seen. Even the restaurant, Le Petit Navire, found during a stroll early in their courtship, had been made their place, because it was in that obscure, dark side street, the rue des Fossés-St.-Bernard. While it was occasionally patronized by some of the finest gourmets and restaurant collectors in Paris, its main clientele consisted of the management and better-paid labourers of the Halle aux Vins across the street. None of these customers, Claude and Gisèle were confident, would be likely to recognize a distinguished chemist of the Institut Pasteur or a Balenciaga mannequin.
Gisèle had finished her dessert. Her napkin was at her mouth.
‘Café?’ Claude asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. But I will have a cigarette.’
He found the thin silver case in his pocket, extracted two English cigarettes, lit one, then lit the second off the first and passed the first to her. She brought it to her lips and inhaled deeply.
‘Perfect,’ she said.
‘Because I kissed it first,’ he said.
She smiled, and impulsively reached her long, tapering hand across the table to touch his hand. He turned his hand, palm up, and encompassed her own.
‘I love you, Gisèle.’
‘I love you,’ she replied softly, but her face wore its professional public mask of beauty, emotionless, seemingly detached, and it always made him momentarily unsure.
Eager to be reassured, to consume the steps of ritual that would bring him to the exact moment of reassurance, he asked, ‘Shall we walk?’
‘After the cigarette.’
‘Very well.’
They sat in silence, Gisèle toying with the matchbox, looking down at it, inscrutable, and he unable to take his eyes off her public face. It was an incredibly lovely face, he decided again, and now it belonged to him. He studied it in an indulgence of self-congratulation. Her hair was ash-blonde and bouffant, the eyebrows pencilled dark and high, and the eyes an icy pale blue, set wide apart. Her nose was straight, as in those Grecian statues in the Louvre, and the lips generous, full, soft, and the deepest hue of red. Her cheekbones were high, leaving shadowed hollows beneath them. The large diamond earrings she always wore made her face seem even narrower.
Suddenly, she ground out the remnant of her cigarette, pushed back her chair, and rose. Taking her purse, she said, ‘I’ll be right back. Don’t go.’
‘Never.’
His eyes followed her across the room. He saw that the three waiters were observing her, too. She moved like a mannequin, with fluid grace, tall, thin, hips slim, thighs and legs long, all elegant and aloof and slithering. As she walked, her legs, close together, provocative, stretched straight before her, the pointed pumps turned slightly outward, her smooth buttocks undulating in the manner of all practised mannequins. At last, she pirouetted around a corner and was out of view. Straight out of Elle or L’Officiel, Claude Marceau thought, all haute couture, clothes, face, figure, all glacial and unruffled and not merely mortal. Perhaps it was this that had attracted him first, the challenge of what was or seemed emotionless and unattainable and too near perfection.