The associate professor looked even more surprised. It was uncertain whether it was due to the unexpected praise or that the professor used the word “we,” as if he included the whole neighborhood as owner of the tree.
“I’m guessing that it’s the same age as the house,” the professor continued.
Now the associate professor was standing right inside the gate. His long, thin face expressed a touch of impatience, perhaps irritation, but he was trying to smile anyway, uncertain of what occasioned this unexpected charm offensive. But the smile mostly remained a twitch in his face.
“I’ve won the Nobel Prize.”
The cheeks rosy from sun and wind, the watery eyes, the narrow mustache, a barely visible streak over an open mouth, where a few fangs were visible, the narrow, sloping shoulders and the delicately built chest, all that was visible of the associate professor above the wooden gate, expressed an astonished distrust.
“The Nobel Prize,” he repeated awkwardly.
The professor nodded.
“In medicine?”
“Yes, what else?”
“For IDD?”
“I assume so,” said the professor.
IDD was the abbreviation they had used in the research group for the discovery that had been presented about twenty years ago and for which the professor had now been granted the honor.
“Assume?”
“I didn’t ask, I had to take a piss when Skarp called.”
Associate Professor Johansson shook his head and the professor saw doubt change to conviction, and he understood why: Never in public life had he used swear words or other strong expressions, never before had he uttered the words “take a piss,” not even in his youth or in family circles. At the most, “have to pee.”
He thinks I’ve lost my mind, thought Ohler, and at that moment it struck him that perhaps he had been the butt of a cruel joke. He was barely acquainted with Skarp, they had not had so much contact that the professor could say he would recognize the voice with certainty, in other words it could be anyone at all pretending to be the chairman of the Academy of Sciences. Someone sufficiently familiar with his background, his research, in the procedure around how the prize winner in medicine is named. Someone who wanted to play a trick on him, have a good laugh at his expense. That the person who called had addressed him as “brother” was a hint that something was amiss.
This sudden insight, that the whole thing perhaps was a deception, made the ground sway. He took hold of the gate, tried to suppress the dizziness by closing his eyes, lower himself somewhat with bent knees and arched back, the technique he always used. The fireflies behind his eyelids glistened in rapid bright streaks, there was singing in his head, and he had a slight taste of iron in his mouth.
When the attack was over and he opened his eyes, he discovered that the associate professor was glaring hatefully at his hand, as if it was a violation of his private life and property. But the professor did not dare release his hold on the gate.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I haven’t eaten properly today.”
The associate professor did not say anything.
“Could it be a joke? I mean the phone call.”
“Maybe so,” said the associate professor, and now the hint of a smile could be seen at the corner of his mouth.
“Do you think I’m mentally deranged?”
“Of course not, what makes you say that?”
“You think I’m bluffing, don’t you. But Skarp called!”
He was staring at the associate professor, whose Adam’s apple bobbed. I see, you’re swallowing your words, thought the professor bitterly. He stared at the wrinkled neck, which concealed esophagus, trachea, and the artery where the blood was pumped up to the brain. You don’t dare talk, afraid of saying too little, or too much. You haven’t changed.
He had decided to seek out the associate professor to show his willingness to share the honor. I go to an associate professor to spread luster over the entire research group, as if to say, “The credit is not all mine, we were a whole team. And then I am met with scorn.”
He shook the gate. Nothing remained of the associate professor’s smile other than a grimace.
He had done it without an ulterior motive, wasn’t that so? The thought had come quite spontaneously, what else would be possible, besides the presumptuousness of rehearsing his comments and actions in advance, to have them ready when the Nobel Prize committee called. Or was there, on an unconscious level, a degree of calculation? Because immediately in his mind he had formulated his first statement to the media: “I am overwhelmed and obviously very grateful”-something like that as introduction. And then the hook itself on which to hang his own excellence: “The first thing I did was go over to a neighbor, a dear friend and research colleague, Associate Professor Johansson, to share the joy with him, because the prize is not mine alone, it is shared with a whole staff of untiring, dedicated associates. Without them I would be nothing. Then I returned home and called my children.”
That was how the humility would be formulated. Not a dry eye. Perhaps he should mention the pasta salad?
The associate professor interrupted his train of thought.
“If it was even him.”
“I know him.”
No one was going to take the prize away from him now!
“Ferguson then?”
Allen Ferguson was an American researcher, active in Germany during the eighties, who had arrived at similar research results as the colleagues at Uppsala University Hospital. There were those who thought that his efforts were more pioneering and just a hair ahead in time besides.
“Ferguson based his results on our research, you know that very well.”
The associate professor was smiling again.
“I’m going to mention Ferguson,” the professor snapped.
“You’ll have to list a lot of names.”
“I thought you would be happy,” said the professor. “But clearly I was mistaken there. Of course I’m going to list a lot of names. Your name included.”
“Mine?”
“Why such surprise?”
The associate professor laughed, a laugh that resembled the hacking sound of an Angola hen. He made a grimace and twisted his mouth in a sneering smile.
Is this how it’s going to be? thought Ohler, but decided to make a new attempt. He was the one who could, and must, be generous.
“Your efforts were decisive, we both know that. So why put on a show? We are both old, I’ll turn eighty-five in December and you’ll soon be eighty, we can disappear from earthly life sooner than we know, so why this pretense, this playacting? We know how it works. There is never any absolute justice, above all not in our world. It could have been a Ferguson, it could have been a Johansson, now it turned out to be a von Ohler.”
“A von Oben.”
“What do you mean?”
At that moment a taxi turned onto the street. The old men saw it slowly approach, to finally stop outside Ohler’s driveway. In the backseat of the car a figure could be seen reaching out an arm, presumably to pay. The driver laughed, took the payment, and during the seconds that followed the duo by the gate breathlessly observed the scene. In order to see better the associate professor had leaned forward and supported himself against the gate, so that his hand almost touched the professor’s. Unaware of this nearness, almost intimacy, which perhaps was reminiscent of something twenty, thirty years ago, when they stood leaning over a flickering screen, a diagram, or a report, they watched the driver get out of the car, still laughing, and open the back door.
Bertram von Ohler’s cloudy eyes did not perceive what was happening, other than that a figure released itself from the inside of the taxi. But he heard how the associate professor took a deep breath, and realized that this identified the passenger.