Prizes (44 page)

She took a deep breath and began to sound the open strings. The violin instantly came to life.

Isabel then launched into the Bach Third Partita. She
was so enraptured by the voice of the instrument that she played the entire Preludio. At the end, the faces of Carbone and the young man were transported, and both clapped enthusiastically.

“That was magnificent, signorina,” Carbone almost sang. “You played that instrument like someone making love.”

“Well,” Isabel smiled, “you’ve lived up to your promise, and so will I. Here’s a banker’s check for thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“What?” he responded with disappointment.

“What’s the matter?” Isabel asked.

“You haven’t bargained with me,” Carbone lamented. “Thirty-five was my starting figure. I assumed we would end up with somewhere in the high twenties.”

“I’m sorry,” said the confused sixteen-year-old. “But I told you I had no experience in this sort of thing. What can I do? The check’s already made out.”

“I tell you what, sweet, naive lady,” he announced paternally. “For that price, I will add the splendid bow you have been using. Then you will have a real bargain. If you like, I can bring it around to your hotel tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t know.” Isabel hesitated. “We’re leaving so early. Could you call me a cab so I can take it back with me to the banquet?”

Then she suddenly remembered.

“My God,
the banquet.
I’m really late now—”

“That’s okay, Isabel,” her father interposed as he entered the shop.

“Dad! How did you find me?”

Ignoring her question, he went straight to the point.

“You really should’ve told me about this, darling,” he chastised her. “I’m genuinely hurt. But we can talk about it tomorrow. For the moment, Gino’s waiting at the corner and we can just make it back in time for the dinner.”

As they careened through the streets of Rome—Gino
taking all the shortcuts he knew through the complicated maze of thoroughfares between the Campo dei Fiori and the Piazza Colonna, then on toward the Hotel Excelsior—Raymond continued to berate her gently.

“After all, thirty-five grand is a big hunk of our winnings. You should have asked me so I could have had the chance to say yes. I would’ve felt a lot better.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Isabel said quietly.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Because I bought it for Mom.”

46
 

The Coopersmiths’ grand tour began auspiciously enough. They charmed the distinguished medical scientists (and doubtless Nobel nominators) from San Francisco to San Diego. During the week they spent in La Jolla, it seemed as if they had a meal with everyone at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies—not least its director, the legendary Jonas, conqueror of polio, and his wife Françoise.

Salk, though into his ninth decade, had the lively mind of a zealous schoolboy and was fascinated to hear firsthand of Adam’s discoveries.

He himself, it turned out, was far from resting on his many laurels and was deeply involved in finding weapons against the newest immunological scourge—AIDS.

Anya had been nervous about this dinner.

“I just couldn’t get out of my mind that Françoise had once been married to Picasso. And I’m ashamed to
say that I actually asked her what he was like to live with,”

“What did she say?”

“ ‘Interesting.’ ”

“Well, I suppose that’s an honest answer,” he replied.

“Actually, one thing puzzles me,” she continued. “Jonas Salk is one of the towering scientific minds of this century. He cured a disease that killed and crippled millions. Why didn’t he get a Nobel Prize?”

Adam took a chilled bottle of Chardonnay and two glasses onto their balcony, which commanded a breathtaking view of the Pacific expanding into infinity.

“Well, Annoushka, I can only give you my own off-the-wall theory.”

“Yes?” She smiled, lifting a glass to her lips.

“I think the boys in Stockholm sent their secret agents out to check on Jonas. They took one look at his institute and the paradise it’s built in and thought that was enough for one human being.”

Anya fixed him with her large brown eyes and asked, “If you had the choice, which prize would you prefer?”

“You,” he answered without a moment’s hesitation.

Hawaii was intended to be a vacation, but Adam’s medical colleagues all pressured him for lectures—or at the very least, a state visit. He ended up working harder than ever.

Two days before their departure to the South Sea isles, the wire services ignited with the controversial and—to many—grotesque story that a sixty-two-year-old Italian woman had just given birth to a child.

Naturally, the sexagenarian mother in question was postmenopausal. But the doctors had fertilized a younger donor’s egg with the older husband’s sperm in vitro and transplanted it into Signora X’s uterus. There, with the aid of copious hormonal support, she carried the pregnancy to term.

Adam was not impressed. As he told Anya, “I think
it’s just a stunt. Since the ovum belonged to a young girl, the signora wasn’t much more than an incubator. It would have been a
genuine
accomplishment if she could have provided her own eggs.”

“Absolutely,” Anya agreed. “And if you believe that passionately enough, we have a new project.”

“I do and we have. In fact my mind’s been racing all morning.”

He opened a desk drawer, withdrew some hotel stationery and scribbled some basic principles.

“As a woman reaches the end of the fifth decade, her mid-cycle peak gradually diminishes and then disappears. Now we’ve already got the knowledge and drugs to stimulate moderately older women to produce at least occasionally promising ovulations. But you can’t do this forever, and there are obvious hazards.”

He then tossed the ball to her.

“How would you handle it, Doctor?”

“Well, since we have the luxury of speaking only theoretically, why don’t we posit the ‘simplest’ scientific solution, namely defer the menopause altogether?”

“Good. A solution that women would welcome for other reasons as well, and it’s no longer science fiction. Naturally, we’d have to hook up with a geneticist. Anybody come to mind?”

“Avilov,” she quipped jokingly.

“I doubt if he’s smart enough,” Adam countered, his natural male rivalry aroused. “Actually, I was thinking along the lines of gerontologists like Raven, the
Time
magazine cover boy who’s into reversing the genetic clock.”

“I’m sure he would be flattered to work with you, darling,” Anya offered.

“Actually, Raven’s the least likely guy to want to embark on any collaboration. He’s already been royally screwed out of one Nobel Prize. But maybe if we meet and he sees your honest face …”

He smiled at his wife and then suddenly remarked, “But isn’t this supposed to be a vacation?”

“Come on, Adam, you thrive on challenge. Why not indulge yourself?”

He laughed. She read him like a book. Lately, despite the lectures, which he disparagingly referred to as “ideas from the freezer, defrosted for the occasion,” he had begun to feel like a malingerer. Since the moment he met Max Rudolph long ago, he had never ceased to wrestle with apparently insoluble problems. Now he missed the excitement.

Adam borrowed his host’s secretary the next morning and dictated a long letter to Dr. Sandy Raven, sounding out his willingness to participate in a project that was, as he put it, “down both our scientific alleys.” Perhaps, Adam thought, despite Raven’s justifiably misanthropic reputation, the biogeneticist would agree to put his anger on hold.

They broke their journey to Australia in Fiji, where only a third of the three hundred tropical islands were inhabited. At Suva he took advantage of their modern technology and called Heather to touch base. Though Anya had tried to write at least a postcard every day, this was their first live contact. Then they changed to a small two-propeller shuttle that took them to an islet which had more coconuts than people.

They arrived exhausted, and spent their first day sleeping late, strolling on the beach, and sleeping some more.

It was to battle fatigue that Anya ascribed the first incident.

The setting sun gave the sand a roseate glow as they walked back toward their palm-thatched
bure,
letting the waves lick gently at their feet.

Adam suddenly glanced at his watch and said, “Jesus—what time’s my lecture?”

Anya laughed. “We’ll order one of those delicious
cocktails, and you can address me on any topic that suits your fancy.”

Counter to her expectation, Adam did not smile. “No, seriously, I’ve forgotten what time I’m speaking. I seem to recall your saying something about five-thirty—I’d better hurry and get my slides.”

There was something in his tone of voice that gave Anya a frisson. She sensed that he was not joking, that he was genuinely confused.

“Darling, I knew you shouldn’t have taken on so many commitments. I’m happy to say that you gave your last lecture two days ago in Maui.”

His answer chilled her. For he gazed at Anya with the look of a little boy lost and asked, “Isn’t this Maui?”

“No, my poor tired husband, this is Mana, one of the Fiji Islands, and the only obligation for this evening is rest and recreation.”

Adam looked about him with an initial expression of mistrust. There was the endless beach, the undulating palms that had convinced him they were in Hawaii.

Then he retrieved the reins of his mental processes and joked, “I was just checking you for jet lag, Annoushka. I’m happy to say you passed.”

Anya confidently dismissed her husband’s harmless lapse and they proceeded to consume enough rum and coconut juice to make their geographical location irrelevant.

Five days later, tanned and relaxed, they boarded a Qantas jet to begin what would be a triumphal tour of Australia.

It was hard to tell who enjoyed his lectures more—Adam or the medical faculties he addressed in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Beyond the sheer charisma of his physical presence, there was his ability to spellbind an audience by looking straight at them for several minutes at a time, rarely, if ever, glancing at one of his index cards.

They returned to Sydney for a few days of idleness and opera. Yet by this time they were beginning to realize the extra cost of fame.

For all its physical size—almost as large as the continental United States—Australia has a kind of small-town mentality. Not only were Adam’s lectures written up in every city where he appeared, but since the nature of his achievement was so emotive—every person could sympathize with the trials of a childless woman—in the mere fortnight they spent down under, he became a celebrity.

He was invited on television shows he had never heard of, and to parties by people he had never met.

“You know, Anya,” he confessed as they were returning in a taxi after a late-night fete, “I thought I was the most ambitious guy in the world. And now that Clarke-Albertson has taken care of our financial future, I would feast myself on adulation. But I’ve discovered I hate the publicity, like going into a store and being greeted with ‘Hi, Doc!’ and all that groveling I imagined would be so terrific.”

“Well, you’d better get used to it, darling. Think of how much more famous you’re going to be when you win the Nobel Prize.”

As the cab pulled up to the Regent Hotel, the doorman rushed to welcome them. A few seconds later, when Adam took out his wallet to pay the driver, the man insisted, “Not a bit of it, Doc. It’s been an honor to have you as my passenger. All I want’s your autograph to give my kids.”

As they walked arm in arm into the hushed luxury of the hotel lobby, Anya whispered lovingly, “Come on, Adam, tell the truth—you enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

He smiled broadly. “You didn’t even need to ask.”

Thus ended the last happy day of their lives.

They spent the next morning shopping, and lunched on the Australian answer to New England lobster, Mortin
Bay Bugs, in a restaurant looking east over Darling Harbor.

A good night’s sleep had restored Adam’s effervescent spirit. He enjoyed Anya’s breathless excitement at the prospect of seeing
Eugene Onegin
in Russian at the Opera House that evening.

“You know, I sometimes forget how hard it must be for you to have to live constantly in a foreign language.”

“You mean Australian?” she joked.

Later that afternoon, he put on his “U.S. Drinking Team” track suit—a farewell present from the lab staff—to go out jogging, while she descended to have her hair done by the hotel coiffeur.

Yet when she returned to the room two hours later, she was puzzled to find it empty—with no note from Adam. Surely he couldn’t still be running.

There was plenty of time, so Anya did not begin to worry—that is, until she was dressed and ready and there was still no sign of Adam.

At six o’clock she was concerned enough to want to call the police. At which moment they called her.

“Mrs. Coopersmith,” the constable explained, “we picked up your husband wandering a bit dazed around the opera lobby, in his running gear.”