Me and Harry Mulisch

 The Dutch writer Harry Mulisch has died recently.  I haven't read his work, but I was involved with him in one of the odder incidents -- so unlikely as to be positively dreamlike -- of my writing life.

When my book The Translator was published in Italian, it was given a Premio Flaiano, a prize named for the writer, journalist, screenwriter (collaborator of Fellini's) Emilio Flaiano, and awarded for work in translation.  My Italian publisher brought me to Italy to take part in the finals of this prize, in which all the winners of the prize would be up for a Super-prixze.  (There was real money involved -- $5000 for the prize, and another $5000 for the winner of the Superprize.)  The ceremony was held in a rundown Adriatic resort where Flaiano had lived, up the coast from Fellini's home town, and still resembling an early Fellini film.  The whole show was televised, shot live in an outdoor arena, with joky TV co hosts.  Prizes were first given out for film and screenwriting and broadcasting.  Then -- well, as it turned out the Superprize was to be awarded on the basis of votes cast by many people throughout Italy to whom ballots had been sent -- critics, teachers, librarians, I don't remember who -- and I suddenly realized that the ballots would be counted live on screen.  All we writers were in the audience, in fact in the first rows, where the camera could pick out out anxious or yearning or indifferent faces.  I was seated next to Harry Mulisch, up for The Discovery of Heaven;  there were five or six other nominees,and my publisher had warned me that an Italian was among them, and would probably win.  The votes were counted by being drawn one by one from the ballot boxes by the judges, who would announce who it was for, and a tabulation board would record in a bar graph who was ahead.  The Italian took an early lead.  Now and then Mulisch and I would glance at one another (each of us in a summer white suit) and smile.  Then the voting turned:  the Italian woman, and a historical novelist, and a couple of others fell behind.  Harry Mulisch and I began getting the majority of the votes.  As each one came from the box the name would be called out:  Mulisch.  Crowley.  Crowley.  Mulisch.  Our faces loomed over the stage on the big screens. We were neck and neck, sometimes he ahead a few and then me catching up.  In the end I hit a streak and won.  He regarded me with distant interest -- who is this person? -- and I believe I offered a handshake, but anyway we parted without a word.  I had to go up on stage and speak -- about translation -- to the giddy gal host..  As I say, like a dream.