The WillEileen Cham

“Sir… Are you sure about this?” Ehrenborg’s voice quivered. His hands were clenched and white. Strehlenert and Hwass were engaged in conversation near the fireplace, and from the little I gathered from the occasionally raised voices (advise, will, money, sane, advise), I could surmise what their response to this affair would be.

How absurd it was for the matter to arrive at such a state. To have to call for my old friends in the middle of the night to the club – I regret to have to be such a nuisance to these kind gentlemen. But the task of validating this will should not to be put off any longer; a decent paroxysm might finish me off as soon as tomorrow. I could have called for my lawyer, but he would never approve of my wishes.

I have composed this will on my own over the course of two months. Truthfully, writing this will has been an invigorating exercise. It reminded me that the dysfunctions of my body have not crept up to my head, that I was still capable of thought and control. By the third paragraph the tremors of my hand had miraculously stopped, and the haze before my eyes dissolved, my mind taking on a clarity – and I was transported back through years and decades with my imagination, and what was left of an old man’s memory – I was once again thirty in Stockholm, eleven in Saint Petersburg, eighteen in the States, forty in Paris…

All the people in my life, they came forth to me from behind that hazy veil as I wrote. They came to me, one after another, noiseless and fluid as ink, glistening on the surface of the smooth white parchment, and then… fixed into eternality. My nieces and nephews, my servants and secretaries and lab-assistants – they would each receive a piece of my wealth in, depending what they need, crowns, francs, florins, marcs, dollars. It was surprising how I ruled these calculations with so little difficulty, how readily the words came to my disposal. My hold of the pen, however, wavered when I had come to Bertha –

How close I was to proposing to her twenty years ago. I remember the graceful, loopy B of her script in her first correspondence with me, the scent of summer when I took her out to the Parisian streets on the wagon I had designed myself. I remember her sure, unhesitant gaze as she made her departure from my office to Caucasus, to meet von Suttner. That Saturday I waved goodbye to her at the door with one hand, and the other clasping the ring I had meant for her. I returned the ring to the jeweler only after a few weeks later, when she wrote to me as Bertha von Suttner. She kept the same script in her letters to me for the next twenty years; but how much she would change! The words I read would become wiser, the voice I imagine louder and more passionate and unwavering; and what was left for her in my heart could only grow stronger over the years.

In many of her letters she pleaded for my support for the Austrian Pacifist Organization. She wrote of her visions for a longlasting Peace, in Europe and beyond. She asked for advice, how she should deliver her speeches to convince the most cynical of men. Of course, the irony of her writing about such ambitions to the owner of the richest Dynamite empire in the world escaped her grudgeless soul. Sometimes she would write about von Suttner and their travels together, and an envy would rise in me; I had but no one to write about in return.

“My friend…” Ehronborg began, and I was brought back to the urgency of the present. Under Ehronborg’s heavy gaze I fumbled for my fountain pen in my breast pocket. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring nod. I have thought this over, months before, maybe years. There was a proverb that I’d heard from a teacher as a child, one that I’d lately taken to turning over in my head over and over again: Das letzte Hemd hat keine Taschen – “the last shirt has no pockets.”

I handed the will to Ehronborg. Strehlenert and Hwass ceased talking, and in the silence I hear the frantic unruliness my pulse. Ehronborg cleared his throat –

“The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who,

during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”

His voice reverberated in the study. I stayed still in my armchair, feeling the light touch of its last echoes. This new paragraph will set this will apart from its previous versions, and also set me apart from the dozens of other tycoons who, after their deaths, would fade away into the unforgiving depths of history. They would talk about me for years. The prizes would be an extension of my investments, and would survive long after my death. There would be one for Medicine, one for Physics, one for Chemistry, one for Literature, and one for Peace – this, a tribute to Bertha.

Strehnelert fidgeted, “My friend, are you really sure about this?”

I questioned my motivations daily. Like most men, I feared death; but I feared infamy more. They called me the Merchant of Death, for how I had earned my wealth – by bringing to this world an invention that would kill people faster than anything else in the world. Would this Will salvage what little was left of my name? I wanted to do something for Bertha, who has for so long occupied my thoughts; would this Will be enough?

For now there is only this – the piece of parchment solemnly reflecting, in the dull glow of the chandelier overhead, my hopes and resolve. The three gentlemen drew their breath as I positioned my pen below Paris, 27 November, 1895, and signed --

Alfred Bernhard Nobel