The Prize

remembrance of every other woman you have known since adolescence. I will explain, Craig. Only a handful of others, in the world, know what I am to tell you. The act of love is my other gift-the one I have brought along with my acting. Those are my two perfect skills. You have known experienced women, no doubt, active, intelligent amateurs, and prostitutes and call girls. Often such women have considerable knowledge of love, and are infinitely superior in their pleasure-giving to any housewife drab or dull-assed starlet. But the gifts of prostitutes are tarnished by their ready availability and the unspoken feeling of degradation. Nowhere can similar gifts be found untarnished, except in my bed. You will take my word when I say that I know more of love than any prostitute or courtesan or backstreet Bovary. Your face tells me nothing now, but you may be secretly doubting me. I am sure you are. I pride myself on being a psychologist of men and their minds. You may be saying to yourself-what more can this boastful woman know of love than any other? How many ways can a woman lie with a man-on her back, on her side, on her stomach, sitting, standing, upside down, whatever you guess or know. You may be saying to yourself-how many erotic movements are there, and words, and pressures, and erogenous zones? All is limited and repetitious, and nothing can be new. You may even assure yourself that the ways of love, beyond intercourse, are restricted to six or sixteen. And so you will doubt me. And to that I can only say, Craig, say this-try me-find out.’

She sipped her vodka.

Except for her profound, humourless sincerity, Craig would have been embarrassed. He did not know quite how to respond. ‘That’s quite a sales talk,’ he said at last.

She smiled. ‘I’m rarely called upon to make it.’

‘But you have made it. And now I’ll tell you something-I still don’t believe it.’

‘Are you daring me? Is that what?’

‘Nothing so childish. I simply will not accept your statement that you can please, entirely through physical skill, without one iota of emotion, passion, love given from the heart-’

‘Save that fairy tale for your damn books,’ she interrupted, ‘and for all the empty women who read them and want to be deluded. Craig, I know men. Once you have a man between your thighs, you have his unconditional surrender on your terms, in exchange for whatever pleasures you wish to serve him. In intercourse, of whatever duration, a man is senseless, an absolute lower animal. His enjoyment derives not from the knowledge that his mate adores him-that may pertain before and after the act-but during the act he wants the primitive gluttony, and the better that is, the more voluptuous, sensuous, maddening, the more ecstatic he becomes.’ She paused and seemed to draw herself up, and the bikini bra filled. ‘I am honest, Craig. I don’t barter my heart-only what is beneath it-and I have never had a complaint. On the contrary, my lovers have become beggars, debasing themselves with their pleas for more of me. Now, what do you think of that?’

‘I think you have accomplished exactly what you set out to do-make me helplessly curious.’

She tossed her hair. ‘Then we have a deal?’

‘No-not on your terms.’

‘I see you still don’t believe me.’ Her face had strangely darkened. ‘What will convince you? Do you want a preview tonight?’

‘Not if you would consider it an option on my services.’

‘Don’t be rude.’

‘I don’t mean to be rude, Marta. I’m simply not on your wavelength. We’re not communicating at all. You’re speaking to me about a parcel you label sex, and I’m saying if it has no other name, it’s a poor product. Haven’t you ever been in love? What would happen if you fell in love?’

‘I wouldn’t be where I am,’ she said stiffly. ‘Craig, I have never and will never let myself be used.’

‘But you will use someone else.’

‘How am I to take that? Are you being sarcastic, chastising me?’

‘I’m simply trying to believe you. I can’t believe you. I’m appalled.’

‘Quit simpering at me. Don’t be a sanctimonious child. And don’t start categorizing me with your cheap writer’s cliches-prefab characterization-Enter, the cold, calculating devourer of men, et cetera.’

‘I’m not judging you. I confine myself to observing, imagining, reporting. I’m trying to find out who you are. Do you know?’

‘You’re damn well sure I know,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you who I am, and who I am not. I am an actress, a great actress, the greatest in this century. That means one thing to me-my art comes first, and everything else can go merrily to hell. In this world, there are two kinds of actress. One is the actress-woman. She is schizoid. She is one-half public performer and one-half private human being. She is the one who winds up emotionally bankrupt, soon forgotten except for a fund-raising benefit and a ghost-written memoir. The other is the actress-actress, who is not split in two halves, but is of a single indestructible piece, single, whole, self-sufficient, self-directed, devoted only to herself as celebrity and artist. Everything in her life, every judgment, decision, every choice and turning, must measure up to one standard-is it good for the actress that I am? This applies to homelife, leisure, children, finances-and above all, it applies to love.’

She swallowed her drink, then, instead of asking Craig for another, she brushed past him to the table and began pouring her own.

‘I was fortunate,’ she went on, ‘because I became an actress-actress early. The moment I was brought to America. I perceived how detestable and degrading the market-place was. American show business, I found, was exactly like American sports and commerce and politics-a game of naked bartering. In Hollywood, on Broadway, what they had to offer was a good role with good money. But beauty, personality, talent were not necessarily enough to win the role. There were dozens of beautiful and trained young girls for every part. Then, on what would the choice be based? What could win such a role? The added offer of easy sex? No, not even that was enough. These dozens of girls were all too eager to divest themselves of pants and maidenheads. In fact, so eager were they, so uniformly accessible, that even I, as a young Swedish girl, was shocked. But then, because I was clever, I saw what extra was needed to win the role. Beauty was good, but too cheap. Nonconforming beauty was better. Acting talent was good, but too widespread. Overlaid on it there must be personality. Sexual availability was good, but there was a monotony to it, like raw steaks displayed in the meat market. But to offer something different with sexual availability-to offer fornication with skill, real skill-and once it be made known, to make the experience gradually more difficult to possess-that, and those, were the extra factors I understood and put into use.’

She held her vodka before her, not drinking, and her earnestness was such that Craig felt she had forgotten his presence. But now she seemed to address him.

‘Have you ever slept with a starlet? Groomed hair, cameo face, cherry lips, and figure always either forty, twenty-four, thirty-five or thirty seven, twenty-four, thirty-five? If you’ve slept with one, you’ve slept with one hundred, one thousand. The same eagerness to oblige, the same tired endearments in accents of dramatic schools, the same practised wigglings, the same superficial gamut of love play-warm pliable receptacles of love by rote, as if waiting in the wings for the cue, only waiting horizontally-until they can get the waiting done and be on with their real roles, the payoff. That was wrong, and it was not for me. At once, I knew that I would not be another pound-pounds-of easy flesh, to evaporate from memory by daybreak, to be paid off by some minor casting man with a bit part. I would be no starlet. I would be more, and I would be an experience. And so I went at this as I went at my public career. I schooled myself in the art of satisfying in bed as well as on stage. No matter how I did it, or how long I took. But I did it, and a night with Marta Norberg became not a passing physical release for a producer or director or banker, but an adventure in a new dimension of sensuality, and an enslavement and commitment. Soon, as I made my way, I was able to resist the pastry cutter in other ways. I would not let them coiffure my head like all the others. Or shorten my nose. Or artificially inflate my breasts to the minimum expected size. Or learn the same carriage, and same, same diction. I stayed myself, and that made me unusual and different and remembered. And all the while, I remained a wonder in bed, and when this was known, and I was known, my roles grew larger, better, choicer, until they were the best, and exposure and publicity made me a household name. And when, at last, I was bigger than the spoiled men, the potbellied men, the sadistic men who had so often humiliated me-when they needed me, and I did not need them-I was able to becom e what I really was and am this day-remote, reserved, selective. My skills were less needed, but I had them when they were needed-a rivalry for the best play purchased, for the best director imported, for the great leading man, for a percentage of the gross. I kept my distance and gave sparingly, but when I gave, I gave well.’ She paused. ‘I still do, Craig.’