Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party Read online

  ‘With his cheque?’

  ‘Of course. With his cheque.’ He peered through the dark at my companion. He said, ‘You’re not alone. Who is this man?’

  ‘His name is Steiner.’

  ‘Steiner?’ I had never before seen Doctor Fischer at a loss. It was as though he had left half his mind behind him at the table. He seemed to look towards me for help, but I gave him none.

  ‘Who’s Steiner? What’s he doing here? He had the air of searching a long time for something which he had mislaid, like a man turning over the objects in a cluttered drawer, seeking a cheque book or a passport.

  ‘I knew your wife,’ Mr Steiner said. ‘You made Mr Kips dismiss me. You ruined both our lives.’

  After he had spoken the three of us stood there, silent in the darkness and the snow. It was as though we were all waiting for something to happen, but not one of us knew what it would be: a jeer, a blow, a simple turning away. It was the moment for Mr Steiner to act, but he did nothing. Perhaps he knew his spit wouldn’t carry far enough.

  At last I said, ‘Your party was a great success.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You managed to humiliate us all. What are you going to do next?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Again I had the impression that he was looking to me for help. He said, ‘There was something you said just now . . .’ It was incredible, the great Doctor Fischer of Geneva, looking to Alfred Jones to help him remember – what?

  ‘How you must have laughed when I bought the last cracker, and you knew that all I would get was a little fart when I pulled it.’

  He said, ‘I didn’t mean to humiliate you.’

  ‘It was an extra dividend for you, wasn’t it?’

  He said, ‘I hadn’t planned it that way. You are not one of them,’ and he muttered their names: a sort of roll call of the Toads. ‘Kips, Deane, Mrs Montgomery, the Divisionnaire, Belmont, and there were those two who died.’

  Mr Steiner said, ‘You killed your wife.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘She died because she didn’t want to live. Without love.’

  ‘Love? I don’t read love stories, Steiner.’

  ‘But you love your money, don’t you?’

  ‘No. Jones will tell you tonight how I gave most of it away.’

  ‘What are you going to live for now, Fischer?’ I asked. ‘I don’t think any of your friends will come back.’

  Doctor Fischer said, ‘Are you so sure that I want to live? Do you want to live? You didn’t seem to when you took those crackers. Does what’s-his-name Steiner want to live? Yes, perhaps you both do. Perhaps when it comes to the point I have an inclination to live too. Or what am I doing standing here?’

  ‘You had your fun tonight anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. It was better than nothing. Nothing is a bit frightening, Jones.’

  ‘It was a strange revenge you took,’ I said.

  ‘What revenge?’

  ‘All because one woman despised you, you had to despise all the world.’

  ‘She didn’t despise me. Perhaps she hated me. No one will ever be able to despise me, Jones.’

  ‘Except yourself.’

  ‘Yes – I remember now that was what you said.’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

  He said, ‘It was a disease I caught when you came into my life, Steiner. I should have told Kips to double your salary and I could have presented Anna with all the Mozart records she wanted. I could have bought you and her, like I bought all the others – except you, Jones. It’s too late now to buy you. What is the time?’

  ‘Past midnight,’ I said.

  ‘Time to sleep.’

  He stood a moment in thought and then he set off, but not in the direction of the house. He continued walking slowly along the lawn by the lakeside, until he was out of sight and sound in the silence of the snow. Even the waters of the lake didn’t break the silence: there was no tide to lap on the shore below us.

  ‘Poor man,’ Steiner said.

  ‘You are very charitable, Mr Steiner. I’ve never hated a man more.’

  ‘You hate him and I suppose I hate him too. But hate – it isn’t important. Hate isn’t contagious. It doesn’t spread. One can hate one man and leave it there. But when you begin to despise like Doctor Fischer, you end by despising all the world.’

  ‘I wish you had done what you planned and spat in his face.’

  ‘I couldn’t. You see – when it came to the point – I pitied him.’

  How I wished Fischer had been there to hear how he was pitied by Mr Steiner.

  ‘It’s too cold standing around,’ I said, ‘we’ll catch our death . . .’ But wasn’t that, I thought, what I wanted to do? If I stayed long enough. A sharp sound tore the thought in two.

  ‘What was that?’ Steiner said. ‘A car back-firing?’

  ‘We are too far from the road for that.’

  We only had to walk a hundred yards before we came on Doctor Fischer’s body. The revolver which he must have carried in his pocket lay beside his head. The snow was already absorbing the blood. I put out my hand to take the gun – it might, I thought, serve my turn too – but Mr Steiner stopped me. ‘Leave that to the police,’ he said. I looked at the body and it had no more significance than a dead dog. This, I thought, was the bit of rubbish I had once compared in my mind with Jehovah and Satan.

  17

  The fact that I have written this narrative tells well enough that, unlike Doctor Fischer, I never found the courage necessary to kill myself; that night I hadn’t needed courage, for I had a sufficiency of despair, but since the inquest demonstrated that the revolver had contained only one charge, my despair would not have served me even if Mr Steiner had not taken possession of the weapon. Courage is sapped by day-to-day mind-dulling routine, and despair deepens so much every day one lives, that death seems in the end to lose its point. I had felt Anna-Luise close to me when I held the whisky in my hand and again when I pulled the cracker with my teeth, but now I had lost all hope of ever seeing her in any future. Only if I had believed in a God could I have dreamt that the two of us would ever have that jour le plus long. It was as though my small half-belief had somehow shrivelled with the sight of Doctor Fischer’s body. Evil was as dead as a dog and why should goodness have more immortality than evil? There was no longer any reason to follow Anna-Luise if it was only into nothingness. As long as I lived I could at least remember her. I had two snapshots of her and a note in her hand written to make an appointment before we lived together; there was the chair which she used to sit in, and the kitchen where she had jangled the plates before we bought the machine. All these were like the relics of bone they keep in Roman Catholic churches. Once as I boiled myself an egg for my supper, I heard myself repeating a line which I had heard spoken by a priest at the midnight Mass at Saint Maurice: ‘As often as you do these things you shall do them in memory of me.’ Death was no longer an answer – it was an irrelevance.

  Sometimes I have a cup of coffee with Mr Steiner – he isn’t a drinking man. He talks of Anna-Luise’s mother and I don’t interrupt him. I let him ramble on and I think of Anna-Luise. Our enemy is dead and our hate has died with him, and we are left with our two very different memories of love. The Toads still live in Geneva and I go to that city as seldom as I can. Once near the station I saw Belmont, but we didn’t speak. I have passed Mr Kips several times too, but he doesn’t see me with his gaze fixed on the pavement, and the only time I encountered Deane he was far too drunk to notice me. Only Mrs Montgomery once troubled me in Geneva, calling cheerfully from the doorway of a jeweller’s shop, ‘Why, if it isn’t Mr Smith,’ but I pretended not to hear and hurried on to meet an Argentinian client.

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