Ever since that afternoon seventeen days ago-when he had been lifted to the heights by the announcement that he had been honoured by the Caroline Institute of Stockholm for his achievement, and then dropped into the deepest pit of disappointment by the further knowledge that he had to share this achievement with an arch-enemy he did not know-Dr. John Garrett’s mental and pathological state had been one of simmering resentment.
The high regard of his colleagues in Pasadena, Los Angeles, the entire nation, the celebrations that followed, had not been enough to calm him completely. Everywhere, praise had been tempered by acknowledgement that his victory was a joint one. True enough, Life Magazine had published separate half-page photographs of Farelli and him, but Time and Newsweek, while giving him fifty per cent of the text of their stories, had run photographs of Farelli alone. Worse, by far, were the long accounts in Science News Letter, Scientific American, and Science. They had all assigned special correspondents to interview him at the Rosenthal Medical Centre in Pasadena. The correspondents had been courteous and patient. Garrett had been voluble and winning. He had felt positive that his visitors had been dazzled. Yet, when their stories appeared-so important to him in these, his popular trade papers-between seventy and eighty per cent of the stories were concentrated on the specific accomplishments of Dr. Carlo Farelli. In each account-although possibly he had been over sensitive-he had the definite impression that he had been permitted to tag along as the poor cousin.
Over and over again, he had asked himself-why? Objectivity about his own position was almost impossible, yet he had tried to analyze the results with an investigator’s dispassionate appraisal. First of all-an insight of candour injected, perhaps, by his analyst, Dr. L. D. Keller-he was physically less interesting than his rival. He was simply too conventional, too average, too close to the median in his appearance. His brown hair conspired with his rimless spectacles to create the illusion of Undramatic Man. On the other hand, as photographs gave ample evidence, Carlo Farelli appeared the representation of the eccentric genius. His pitch-black, curly, tangled hair hung down over his broad wise forehead. His piercing, fanatical eyes, classical Roman nose, carefree, white-toothed smile, Hapsburg jaw were all made more distinctive by the faintly pitted cheeks and olive complexion of his broad face.
In the second place, Garrett’s background had seemed too homegrown and too familiar. Born in Illinois, educated in Massachusetts, he had accomplished his researches in California. On the other hand, Farelli had been born in Milan, educated in Geneva, London, and Heidelberg, and had conducted the majority of his experiments in Rome. This background, Garrett had reasoned, was too cosmopolitan to resist. Finally, all of Garrett’s brilliant transplants had been made on unknown, middle-class patients. Almost half of Farelli’s twenty-one heart transplants had been successful on patients who were, in the vernacular of the day, ‘newsworthy’-one a cardinal of the Roman Church, one an Austrian statesman, one a French actress renowned at the turn of the century, one an elderly British playwright. If Garrett saw himself as William Harvey and Joseph Lister, or at least Ambroise Paré, he saw Farelli as only a pale carbon copy of himself made legible, even gaudy, by the methods of Phineas T. Barnum. The fact that the world, or the world’s press, at any rate, did not see this so clearly as he, made Garrett a study verging on the paranoiac.
Before his departure for Sweden, he had paid one more visit to his therapy group in Dr. Keller’s office on Wilshire Boulevard. What he sought, that day, was not illumination but corroboration of his own current beliefs. On this, his only visit after his Nobel Prize had been announced, his reception had been gratifying, to say the least. For once, Miss Dudzinski had left her mother in peace, and Mrs. Zane had confined her account of her gymnastics with Mr. Zane’s employer to ten heated minutes, and Adam Ring had been unnaturally mute and respectful (having decided, no doubt, that his one Academy Award nomination had finally been matched and surpassed by a member of the group).
Unusually agitated, Garrett had accused the Caroline Institute of Stockholm of bias in subtracting half of his honour and giving it to an Italian mountebank. He had railed on against Farelli’s self-serving publicity tactics, his unethical standards, his brazen egotism in agreeing to share a citation that was not rightly his to claim. Dr. Keller, so rarely vocal, had been superhuman in his effort to soothe Garrett with calm reason. The analyst had pointed out that if Farelli had drawn upon Garrett’s creative genius for his own discovery, he would one day be found out, and in the eyes of the world, Garrett would be properly credited. Meanwhile, he had gone on to say, the best experts of the Nobel Committee had made their studies and had determined Farelli’s worth. As a sensible man, it was Garrett’s duty to accept the verdict sensibly. This year, he had been honoured above all men of medicine on earth. Certainly, at this summit, there was room for another to stand beside him. The accomplishment was no less his, and he should be proud of a contribution to the betterment and longevity of the human race.
And Adam Ring, from deep in the easy chair, had capped it in his own terms: ‘When you take the Oscar, you don’t ask questions, Dr. Garrett. It’s the gold medal for life. For the rest of your days, you’re the Nobelman, like being knighted. Nobody’ll give a damn if there were two winners or ten. All they’ll know is you hit the jackpot. Better than an annuity. From now on, no waiting in line, no having your credit checked, no having to pay for it with hookers, no proving anything to anyone. You can’t go higher than up, and you’re up. Be happy. I’ll trade places with you, flat deal, no cash, no questions, right now.’
Garrett had departed from the session somewhat mollified.
By the time he and Saralee had entered the Scandinavian Airlines’ DC-8 jet at Los Angeles International Airport at 11.30 yesterday morning-despite the well-wishers from Pasadena who had come to see them off-Garrett’s temper had again settled into one of controlled resentment. The lulling monotony of the transpolar flight, as Saralee had hoped, had done much to pacify him. The thirteen hours over Canada, Labrador, Iceland, and Norway, broken by only one brief stop for refuelling, had been occupied with reading, conversation, lunch, dinner (roast lamb), supper, bourbon, and martinis.
They had slept fitfully, had enjoyed an early breakfast, and had made a roaring landing on the cement strip of the Kastrup Airport at 8.59 Copenhagen time. An undersecretary of the United States Embassy, a beaming, collegiate gentleman not yet middle-aged, had been on hand to welcome them. Since there remained a little over two hours before a Caravalle jet would take them the last lap to Stockholm, the Embassy had arranged an extremely brief tour of the city and environs for them. They had visited the Raadhuspladsen, and then, from the centre of the city, had driven through the crowded thoroughfare known as Strøget. They had seen the statue of Christian V in Kongens Nytorv, and later the Nyhavn canal, the Rigsdag, the Rosenborg Castle, and finally, at the end of the Langelinie promenade, rising from the water, the life-sized sculpture of Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘Little Mermaid’. The last treat, before returning to the airport, had been smørrebrød sandwiches in the festive terrace café of the d’Angleterre Hotel.
Garrett, a receptive sightseer, had been considerably soothed by his initial impression of bustling Copenhagen. For almost the first time, he seemed cognizant of the fact that he was on a journey and in a foreign place. When they had returned to the Kastrup Airport, ten minutes before takeoff, he had almost forgotten the existence of Carlo Farelli. But then, just as he was about to go through the door to the runway, passing a newsstand, Garrett’s eye was caught by the front page of the Danish morning newspaper, Politiken. The photograph, three columns wide, showed Farelli alighting from an airliner, his olive face wreathed in a smile, his right arm raised aloft in greeting.