cemetery. Now they stood out for him as the only allies he had.
He smiled to himself, spat toward the birches, leaned over, picked up a stone, big as a fist, moved into the shadow of a bush where four lots met, weighed the stone in his hand before with a powerful discus throw he sent it away in a wide arc toward and over Ohler’s house. He followed its track, a granite comet toward the dark sky, just as elated as when as a child one early May Day morning he pushed an abandoned baby buggy, filled to the brim with empty bottles he had picked up after the students’ Walpurgis festivities the night before, bottles that he intended to redeem at Uno Lantz’s junkyard in Strandbodkilen. The buggy rolled a little hesitantly to start with down the hill, before it took heart, picked up speed and became a projectile. In line with the statue depicting a student singer the buggy swerved, listed severely, and spewed out liquor bottles in a magnificent slow-motion movement.
The effect this time was not as noisy, but when the stone fell down on the roof on the front side of the house it produced a crashing sound anyway and then rolled clattering down the roof tiles. Then silence took over the block again.
He disappeared from publisher Lundquist’s garden after, in his opinion, a job well done.
Ten
The attack on the Ohler house was followed the next morning by another. If a thrown stone, in human history perhaps the most original form of attack, hits its mark, it can fell a giant.
An article in a German newspaper can hardly produce anything so drastic, but well formulated and buttressed with factual arguments in a clever sequence it can shake things up properly. The fact was that it struck like a bomb, and that it exploded besides during the All-German Medical Association’s annual meeting in D ü sseldorf did not lessen the effect.
The association, which was formed as early as 1768, was considered one of the most influential within its field in Western Europe. Its membership directory included such significant names as Waller, Haagendorf, and Sch ü tze.
Over three hundred medical doctors were gathered and Horst Bubb could tell his friend Gregor Johansson that Wolfgang Schimmel’s devastating criticism, published in Frankfurter Allgemeine , had great impact. The news the day before had dominated the informal discussions during the convention and Horst thought that the majority supported the article’s main thesis: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was compromised, not to say corrupt. Now, through the selection of the prize winner, it had used up the last remnants of its credibility.
The associate professor noted without difficulty with what excited delight his German colleague accounted for the atmosphere at the hotel’s conference facility. Bubb saw no complications in an “overwhelming majority” so quickly and resolutely managing to assess that the Nobel Prize would end up in the wrong hands and wallet.
“It is, however, slightly annoying that we are meeting in D ü sseldorf in particular,” was his only more worried comment, but he did not explain why. It was after all his home town, he ought to be proud of being the host, but Associate Professor Johansson sensed that the city presumably was not associated with the scientific brilliance and weight that the sometimes rather vain and arrogant Professor Bubb perhaps considered necessary for such a distinguished group of scientists.
For fifteen minutes they discussed the effect the article might conceivably have, or rather it was Bubb who babbled on, convinced that the Academy of Sciences would now be forced to realize its blunder, review its decision, and perhaps let Ohler share the prize with Ferguson. The associate professor considered such a retreat completely inconceivable but expressed it a bit more guardedly. Out of sheer friendliness he did not want to undercut the German’s enthusiasm, and for that reason not prolong the discussion either. He had not
He smiled to himself, spat toward the birches, leaned over, picked up a stone, big as a fist, moved into the shadow of a bush where four lots met, weighed the stone in his hand before with a powerful discus throw he sent it away in a wide arc toward and over Ohler’s house. He followed its track, a granite comet toward the dark sky, just as elated as when as a child one early May Day morning he pushed an abandoned baby buggy, filled to the brim with empty bottles he had picked up after the students’ Walpurgis festivities the night before, bottles that he intended to redeem at Uno Lantz’s junkyard in Strandbodkilen. The buggy rolled a little hesitantly to start with down the hill, before it took heart, picked up speed and became a projectile. In line with the statue depicting a student singer the buggy swerved, listed severely, and spewed out liquor bottles in a magnificent slow-motion movement.
The effect this time was not as noisy, but when the stone fell down on the roof on the front side of the house it produced a crashing sound anyway and then rolled clattering down the roof tiles. Then silence took over the block again.
He disappeared from publisher Lundquist’s garden after, in his opinion, a job well done.
Ten
The attack on the Ohler house was followed the next morning by another. If a thrown stone, in human history perhaps the most original form of attack, hits its mark, it can fell a giant.
An article in a German newspaper can hardly produce anything so drastic, but well formulated and buttressed with factual arguments in a clever sequence it can shake things up properly. The fact was that it struck like a bomb, and that it exploded besides during the All-German Medical Association’s annual meeting in D ü sseldorf did not lessen the effect.
The association, which was formed as early as 1768, was considered one of the most influential within its field in Western Europe. Its membership directory included such significant names as Waller, Haagendorf, and Sch ü tze.
Over three hundred medical doctors were gathered and Horst Bubb could tell his friend Gregor Johansson that Wolfgang Schimmel’s devastating criticism, published in Frankfurter Allgemeine , had great impact. The news the day before had dominated the informal discussions during the convention and Horst thought that the majority supported the article’s main thesis: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was compromised, not to say corrupt. Now, through the selection of the prize winner, it had used up the last remnants of its credibility.
The associate professor noted without difficulty with what excited delight his German colleague accounted for the atmosphere at the hotel’s conference facility. Bubb saw no complications in an “overwhelming majority” so quickly and resolutely managing to assess that the Nobel Prize would end up in the wrong hands and wallet.
“It is, however, slightly annoying that we are meeting in D ü sseldorf in particular,” was his only more worried comment, but he did not explain why. It was after all his home town, he ought to be proud of being the host, but Associate Professor Johansson sensed that the city presumably was not associated with the scientific brilliance and weight that the sometimes rather vain and arrogant Professor Bubb perhaps considered necessary for such a distinguished group of scientists.
For fifteen minutes they discussed the effect the article might conceivably have, or rather it was Bubb who babbled on, convinced that the Academy of Sciences would now be forced to realize its blunder, review its decision, and perhaps let Ohler share the prize with Ferguson. The associate professor considered such a retreat completely inconceivable but expressed it a bit more guardedly. Out of sheer friendliness he did not want to undercut the German’s enthusiasm, and for that reason not prolong the discussion either. He had not
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