Nobel medical committee who advise and recommend. Usually, temporary members, experts in this or that, are added to the committee from the Caroline teaching body. The medical winners are elected each year in the session room on the ground floor of the Caroline Institute. It is a light airy room, with the longest modern table you have ever seen, and modern Swedish chairs for the judges. As I recall, there are sixteen or eighteen oil portraits of eminent Swedish physicians and Nobel personnel on the walls and two white marble statues between the windows. The final vote is made by forty-five physicians and instructors on the Caroline staff.’
The car slowed, and Ingrid Pahl gestured with her head. ‘And lo, there it is now-the Caroline Institute.’
The Saab turned off the main thoroughfare, and drove through a gate and across a private road that wound through a landscape of icy trim lawns, clipped hedges, and many clusters of aged trees. Again, the Saab slowed, and wheeled left through an opening between two rows of frozen foliage.
The car drew to a stop on a paved site. The young driver tumbled quickly out of the front, trotted around, and opened the rear door. With some difficulty, fighting gravity and density, he freed Ingrid Pahl from her place and helped her out of the sedan. Then he gave Garrett a hand.
Before them stretched a squat three-storey oblong building of red brick. Its rows of windows peered down at them like a montage of square eyes. Three cement stairs led to two heavy doors, and above the entrance were projected letters that read, MEDICINSKA NOBELINSTITUTET. Garrett glanced off to his right. A bench rested in the open, on the pavement, before a miniature park of withered plants and barren trees. Behind the bench, on a high stone pedestal, stood a weather-beaten black bronze bust of Alfred Nobel. There were touches of frost around Nobel’s eyes and his set mouth.
Garrett brought his overcoat collar around his neck.
‘You would not believe how lovely this is in the summer,’ said Ingrid Pahl. ‘Now it is impossible. Either we build a fire, or we go inside.’
The two of them hurried inside.
Dr. Erik Ohman, sitting with one knee propped up against his desk, a cigar between his teeth, was scanning a newspaper held wide open. The moment that Ohman saw them, he leaped to his feet, almost upending the chair, and pounded around the desk. Ignoring Ingrid Pahl’s formal introduction, he grabbed Garrett’s hand and pumped it with unrestrained enthusiasm.
‘Dr. Garrett,’ he said, ‘Dr. Garrett-what a pleasure this is for me. How I have looked forward to it-’
Somewhat taken aback, for he was not a demonstrative man, and (despite the prize) he had never valued himself highly in his secret heart, Dr. Garrett tried to return his host’s ardent and worshipful greeting. ‘Believe me, it’s good to meet you at last, Dr. Ohman.’
‘Sit down, both of you-please sit down,’ said Ohman, herding them to the chairs. ‘There will be hot coffee in a moment.’ He looked at Garrett with bright eyes of disbelief, as lowly subject to his sovereign. He tried to speak, but no sound came forth except a drawn-out rumble, which Garrett would learn was a speech impediment. ‘Uhhh,’ was the embryonic sound seeking the birth of vocabulary, ‘uhhh-Dr. Garrett, I am so privileged.’ He ran behind his desk, and brought forth the chair, so that he could sit directly opposite Garrett and Ingrid Pahl.
Garrett was surprised by the appearance of the man with whom he had so long corresponded. He was unable to define to himself what kind of person he had actually expected to find. Possibly someone more Swedish, more genteel, more dignified. Instead, Ohman, his reddish hair cropped short, resembled, for all his agility, a European middleweight prizefighter, who had fought several years too many. The face, the cauliflower ears, and gross features above a thick neck were not Garrett’s conception of a doctor’s head. And the hands, like blunt instruments, stubby fingers round as sausages, were not a heart surgeon’s hands. Yet Garrett saw at once the face’s kindness, the admiration it now reflected, and from Ohman’s letters he knew the man’s scientific soundness and learning.
‘Uhhh, Dr. Garrett-uhhh, tell me, you must tell me what you think of our Sweden. How thrilled I was when your prize was announced. You had my cable? Uhhh-you must tell me what you have seen here, and wish to see, and what I can do for you. Your wife is with you? You must dine with my wife and me. Uhhh-my patients, they are as much your patients as mine, and you must see them and tell me what you think. And questions, I have a hundred questions.’
He went on and on, punctuating his excitement with his stammer and asking questions that he did not wait to have answered, but when his boyish exhilaration had finally run down, he was ready to listen. He begged Garrett to speak of this and that, and Garrett spoke. Ingrid Pahl was interested and receptive, and Ohman worshipful and memorizing every word for the long winter ahead, and Garrett revelled in the attention. Before Dr. Keller and the therapy group, he had always felt inadequate to hold centre stage. What was the old psychiatrist joke-who listens? But group therapy had given Garrett experience in monologue, and this experience, combined with an attentive audience, now gave Garrett licence to discourse freely and at length.
Garrett had been relating, in some detail, his adventures in California after having been notified of the Nobel award. Now, encouraged by Ohman, he reminisced about the years during his transplantation research, and, rather effectively, he thought, he recreated the dramatic case history of Henry M. He was pleased to note that Ingrid Pahl was enthralled by the last, and Ohman as intrigued by this as he had been by all that had gone before.
At this point, Garrett had the feeling that he had monopolized the meeting long enough. Three-quarters of an hour of autobiography was more than sufficient. The time had arrived for self-effacement. If his battle plan was to work, it was necessary that Ohman be encouraged to reveal more of himself and his career.
‘At any rate, to sum it up, here I am, an actual laureate,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to believe.’ During his monologue, he had taken notice of Ohman’s office, which, except for the padded chairs, seemed furnished entirely in efficient grey metal. But now he realized that two walls of the room were entirely covered by framed photographs and snapshots, some autographed, and Garrett recognized several as former Nobel laureates.
‘You’ve never told me, in your letters, Dr. Ohman, if you have any connection with the Nobel medical awards. Have you?’
‘In a way,’ said Ohman.
Before he could continue, there was a knocking at the door. A trim girl, wearing tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on a scrubbed face, backed in pulling a trolley, carrying hot coffee and sweet rolls, after her. Ohman introduced her as his secretary, and she apologized for being late.
After she had poured coffee and gone, and they were all sipping, and nibbling rolls, Ohman cleared his throat. ‘Uhhh-Dr. Garrett-you had inquired about my position in the Nobel picture. Uhhh-a minor one, minor, I assure you, at the same time-uhhh-interesting. Do you know anything of the medical awards?’
‘Miss Pahl was kind enough to give me some background on the drive here.’
‘Very little, Dr. Ohman,’ said Ingrid Pahl. ‘For all I know, Dr. Arrowsmith got the prize.’
Ohman laughed. ‘Well, as a matter of fact he did, did he not? Martin Arrowsmith, Gottlieb, Sondelius-how alive they were to me. What was it Arrowsmith fought? Uhhh-yes-the bubonic plague in the West Indies, yes. Our committee has great respect for plague fighters, but it has always distressed me that some of the best have not been honoured.’
‘Are you referring to anyone in particular?’ asked Garrett.
‘I am,’ said Ohman. ‘Uhhh-it has always been my belief that Walter Reed and General Gorgas, as well as Noguchi, should have shared an award for their work against yellow fever. Gorgas was nominated many times, I am told, but since he had made no new discovery, he could not be elected. Reed died too early, I think. At any rate, that is neither here nor there-more coffee, Miss Pahl?’
He filled Ingrid Pahl’s cup again, and then Garrett’s and his own, and settled back in the chair.
‘Did Miss Pahl tell you of our nominating procedure?’ Ohman inquired of Garrett.
‘Yes,’ said Garrett.
‘Then you know of our special investigators?’
‘No, not that.’
‘I must tell you, then. For it is in that capacity that I have several times served the Nobel Committee. In fact, because of my knowledge of your discovery, I was one of the two so-called experts assigned to investigate your candidacy, Dr. Garrett.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Garrett. ‘I really owe you a debt of thanks.’
‘Not a bit,’ replied Ohman. ‘Any fool would have understood the-uhhh-magnitude of your discovery and verified its worth. The Caroline Nobel Committee uses its investigators-detectives, you might call them in America -more
