her to the door to the time he had left her nude on the bathroom floor to dress and leave.
‘That is all?’ asked Stratman, when she had finished. ‘You are not leaving out anything?’
‘He didn’t touch me, I swear-’
‘No-no assault?’
‘Uncle Max, I’d
Stratman rose, agitated. ‘It is terrible, anyway. No one is safe. I will go to the Captain at once-’
‘Oh, no!’ She sat up and swung her legs off the bed. ‘I don’t want him in trouble-’
‘You care for him that much? Is that it?’
‘I don’t care for him at all,’ she said vehemently. ‘He means nothing to me. But I’m just not sure he’s all to blame.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Only-I had too much to drink-I invited him-he misunderstood. It is something that happens every day.’ She softened her tone. ‘Let’s not make a fuss, Uncle Max. I don’t want to go through that. It would embarrass me. It would be easier to forget it. We’re almost there. We’ll leave the boat soon and not think of it.’
‘You are sure it is that simple?’
‘Oh, yes. I was upset, naturally. But I’m all right, you can see. I don’t want an incident, that’s all.’
He looked at her. ‘Maybe I can get the ship’s doctor. To give you a shot, calm your nerves-’
‘Not, not even that. Just let me rest, and an hour before we get in, come and get me. I’ll be ready.’ She tried to change the subject. ‘Do you think there will be a reception when you get to Goteborg?’
‘I doubt it. Everything is in Stockholm.’
She feigned enthusiasm. ‘I can’t wait. It’s really been a marvellous trip.’
She dropped back on the pillow. He waited until she was comfortable. ‘I’ll be next door if you need me.’
‘What about dinner?’
‘I’m not hungry. I’ll have the steward bring a sandwich. I’ll come back soon. You rest.’
He went to his cabin, disturbed. In a way that he could not define, he felt that he had failed Walther. What had happened to Emily must never happen again. He had over estimated her. In Stockholm, he would not leave her alone. Pacing past his bed, he heard his heart. In all the years before, he had never heard it, had ignored it as he had his inhaling and exhaling. But now, too often, it demanded to be heard. There was a heaviness in the right side of his chest, not pain but pressure. He opened the overnight case located the bottle of pills that Dr. Ilman had given him, and took two with half a glass of water.
He rang for the room steward, ordered a cheese-and-ham sandwich. Presently, when it came, he gave the steward two envelopes, each with a fifteen-dollar tip in it, and requested that the second envelope be given to the stewardess. Stratman knew that the tips were generous for his budget, but he also knew that the serving people depended on these tips for their livelihood, especially on the run from New York to Goteborg. Too, since the Nobel Prize included a highly advertised sum of money, more would be expected of him, as one of the winners. He allowed the steward to remove his suitcases. After the man had gone, Stratman settled down and nibbled at his sandwich.
Presently, because his mind was on Emily, he returned to her cabin. She was still on the bed, as he had left her, eyes closed, dozing. He sat in the chair beside her, extracted a pocket-sized German edition of a biography of Immanuel Kant from his coat, and resumed reading. When he reached Heine’s description of Kant, he reread it: ‘The life of Immanual Kant is hard to describe; he has indeed neither life nor history in the proper sense of the words. He lived an abstract, mechanical, old-bachelor existence, in a quiet remote street in Konigsberg…’
Stratman considered this. There, he thought, but for the grace of Emily, go I. By her sharing of his life, she had infused her guardian’s ‘old-bachelor existence’ with an element of normality, yet, ironically, had been unable to retain an element of normality for herself. The terrible incident of the evening underlined for him, in a way he had found impossible to explain to Dr. Ilman, Emily’s dependence on him. Without his support, after he was gone, she would have been forced into the turmoil of the working world. Any notion that this necessity would have given her strength had been dissipated by the night’s events. As he had long ago guessed, she would not have survived. One cannot expect a person without arms to feed himself. How fortuitous had been the Nobel award. Once he had the cheque in hand, Emily would have her buffer against the future.
He read more about his beloved Kant, drifted off into numerous speculations, even nodded off several times, hardly aware of the passage of time or of the fact that the ship had ceased pitching and was now rolling less.
The rapping on the door brought him up sharply, and awakened Emily, too.
The steward put his head in. ‘I’ll need the rest of the luggage, sir. We’re just outside Goteborg. It’ll be less than an hour now.’
No sooner had the steward gone with the suitcases, than a young boy in white uniform, wearing the telegraph-office arm band, appeared. There were four long-distance calls from Stockholm. Stratman asked if he might take them here in Emily’s room. The boy went to the telephone and contacted the officer’s room. In a few moments, he handed the receiver to Stratman, gratefully accepted his tip, and rushed off.
The first call, and the two after that, were from Swedish newspapers. There was static on the wire, and Stratman had difficulty in hearing. He answered the questions that he understood, briefly, precisely, and promised each correspondent that he would give lengthier interviews in Stockholm.
The fourth call was from Dr. Carl Adolf Krantz. Stratman recognized the name and was friendly. He thanked Krantz for his effusive congratulations and welcome. Yes, the voyage had been pleasant and restful. Yes, he and his niece would arrive at eight in the morning. Yes, they looked forward to meeting the reception committee and to participating in the programmes and ceremonies.
During all these calls, Emily, having washed and applied light make-up, stood at the porthole, half listening, staring out into the rain-crossed night. Spotlights on the water had picked out the pilot boat, and the launch that followed shortly after. The ship was progressing slowly, among what seemed to be dozens of islands, and growing larger in sight was the framework of lights that must be the wharves and the city of Goteborg.
At 10.20, Emily was brought away from the porthole, to join her uncle, by the noise at the door. At once, it seemed, they were surrounded by visitors. The purser was on hand to introduce a First Secretary of the Swedish Foreign Office, who had driven down from Stockholm and would ease their way through customs to the train. Four or five city officials, representing Goteborg, were introduced, and after mumbling their formal greetings, gazed upon Stratman with the awe they had once accorded Wilhelm Roentgen.
For Emily, never leaving her uncle’s side, what followed was a continuous flow of movement. Led to the music-room, where two Swedish men and two women were stamping passports and checking money declarations, Emily and her uncle were met with silent respect and quickly passed through. From the rail of the open top deck-the downpour had slowed to a drizzle-she watched the ship ease alongside the huge wharf, seeing clusters of Swedes waiting with flowers and from somewhere hearing the strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.
Following the First Secretary and her uncle downstairs, trailed by the Goteborg officials, she wondered if she would see Mark Claborn again. She hoped not, and she was relieved when they arrived at the head of the gangway, and he was nowhere in sight. With the others, she descended the gangway, pushing through the customs shed jammed with visitors, porters, officials, and arrived at the counter under a huge ‘S’ that held their five suitcases. The customs examiner was smiling. He had already sealed the cases without opening them. A Nobel winner, his smile seemed to say, could not be suspected of smuggling.
‘We had better hurry now,’ the First Secretary was insisting to Stratman. Two porters carried their cases, and followed them down the stairs to the street. It was raining harder again. The First Secretary’s Mercedes, guarded by two policemen, was a few yards away. Emily and Stratman gave their thanks to the city officials, hurried through the increasing rain, and fell into the back seat of the vehicle.
The First Secretary took the wheel, and they were moving. In the rain, Emily could form no impression of Goteborg. The port at the mouth of the Gota River had a population of 400,000. This seemed incredible. The wet, cold streets were deserted. This was the street known as Sodra Hamngatan, and that was Milles’s Poseidon Fountain in the Gotaplatsen, and over there the Rohsska Museum of Applied Arts. While her uncle voiced his appreciation, Emily could make out nothing except two parks that seemed attractive but abandoned in the rain, and the rows of lights about the business district.
They reached the first of the two Stockholm boat trains seven minutes before its departure.
The First Secretary was all efficiency. He guided them to their adjoining compartments. He counted their
