Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party Read online

  She said, ‘Why not? You’re my lover and my father, my child and my mother, you’re the whole family – the only family I want,’ and she put her mouth on mine so that I couldn’t reply and she pressed me down on to the bed, so that her blood was smeared on my legs and my stomach, and thus it was we married for better or worse without the consent of Doctor Fischer or a priest if it comes to that. There was no legality in our kind of marriage and therefore there could be no divorce. We took each other for good and all.

  She went back to the classical white house by the lake and packed a suitcase (it’s amazing how much a woman can get into one case) and came away without a word to anyone. It was only when we had bought a wardrobe and some new things for the kitchen (I hadn’t even a frying pan) and a more comfortable mattress for the bed, and perhaps three days had passed, that I said, ‘He’ll wonder where you are.’ ‘He’ – not ‘your father’.

  She was getting her hair right in the Chinese style which I loved. ‘He may not have noticed,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you eat together?’

  ‘Oh, he’s often out.’

  ‘I’d better go and see him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He might set the police looking for you.’

  ‘They wouldn’t look very hard,’ she said. ‘I’m above the age of consent. We haven’t committed a crime.’ But all the same I wasn’t sure that I had not committed one – a man with only one hand, who was well past fifty, who wrote letters all day about chocolates and who had induced a girl who wasn’t yet twenty-one to live with him: not a legal crime of course, but a crime in the eyes of the father. ‘If you really want to go,’ she said, ‘go, but be careful. Please be careful.’

  ‘Is he so dangerous?’

  ‘He’s hell,’ she said.

  3

  I took a day off from work and drove down by the lake, but I very nearly turned back when I saw the extent of the grounds, the silver birches and the weeping willows and the great green cascade of the lawn in front of a pillared portico. A greyhound lay asleep like an heraldic emblem. I felt I should have gone to the tradesmen’s entrance.

  When I rang the bell a man in a white jacket opened the door. ‘Doctor Fischer?’ I asked.

  ‘What name?’ he asked abruptly. I could tell he was English.

  ‘Mr Jones.’

  He led me up some stairs into a sort of corridor-lounge with two sofas and several easy chairs and a big chandelier. An elderly woman with blue hair and a blue dress and lots of gold rings occupied one of the sofas. The man in the white jacket disappeared.

  We looked at each other, and then I looked at the room, and I thought of the origin of it all – Dentophil Bouquet. This lounge might have been the waiting-room of a very expensive dentist and the two of us sitting there patients. After a while the woman said in English with a faint American accent, ‘He’s such a busy man, isn’t he? He has to keep even his friends waiting. I’m Mrs Montgomery.’

  ‘My name is Jones,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of his parties.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course I sometimes miss one myself. One isn’t always around. One can’t be, can one? Not always.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Of course you know Richard Deane.’

  ‘I’ve never met him. But I’ve read about him in the newspapers.’

  She giggled. ‘You’re a wicked one, I can tell that. You know General Krueger?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you must know Mr Kips?’ she asked with what seemed like anxiety and incredulity.

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said. ‘He’s a tax consultant, isn’t he?’

  ‘No, no. That’s Monsieur Belmont. How strange that you don’t know Mr Kips.’

  I felt that some explanation was needed. I said, ‘I’m a friend of his daughter.’

  ‘But Mr Kips isn’t married.’

  ‘I meant Doctor Fischer’s daughter.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ve never met her. She’s very retiring. She doesn’t go to Doctor Fischer’s parties. Such a pity. We’d all like to know her better.’

  The man in the white jacket returned and said in what sounded to me a rather insolent tone, ‘Doctor Fischer has a bit of fever, ma’am, and he regrets that he can’t receive you.’

  ‘Ask him if there’s anything he needs – I’ll go and get it at once. Some nice Muscat grapes?’

  ‘Doctor Fischer has Muscat grapes.’

  ‘I only meant it as an example. Ask him if there is anything I can do for him, anything at all.’

  The front door bell rang and the servant, disdaining a reply, went to answer it. He came back up the steps to the lounge followed by a thin old man in a dark suit bowed almost double. He projected his head forward and looked, I thought, rather like the numeral seven. He held his left arm bent at his side, so that he resembled the continental way of writing that number.

  ‘He has a cold,’ Mrs Montgomery said, ‘he won’t see us.’

  ‘Mr Kips has an appointment,’ the manservant said, and taking no more notice of us, he led Mr Kips up the marble staircase. I called after him, ‘Tell Doctor Fischer that I have a message from his daughter.’

  ‘A bit of fever!’ Mrs Montgomery exclaimed. ‘Don’t you believe it. That’s not the way to his bedroom. That’s the way to his study. But of course, you know the house.’

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve been here.’

  ‘Oh, I see. That explains it – you’re not one of us.’

  ‘I’m living with his daughter.’

  ‘Really,’ she said. ‘How interesting and how forthright. A pretty girl, I’ve been told. But I’ve never seen her. As I said, she doesn’t like parties.’ She put her hand up to her hair, jangling a gold bracelet. ‘I have all the responsibilities, you see,’ she said. ‘I have to act as hostess whenever Doctor Fischer gives a party. I am the only woman he invites nowadays. It’s a great honour, of course – but all the same . . . General Krueger generally chooses the wine . . . If there is wine,’ she added mysteriously. ‘The General’s a great connoisseur.’

  ‘Isn’t there always wine at his parties?’ I asked.

  She looked at me in silence as though my question was an impertinent one. Then she relented a little. ‘Doctor Fischer,’ she said, ‘has a great sense of humour. I wonder he hasn’t invited you to one of his parties, but perhaps under the circumstances it wouldn’t do. We are a very small group,’ she added. ‘We all know each other well, and we are all so fond, so very, very fond, of Doctor Fischer. But surely you at least know Monsieur Belmont – Monsieur Henri Belmont? He’ll solve any tax problem.’

  ‘I have no tax problems,’ I admitted.

  As I sat on the second sofa under the great crystal chandelier I realized it was almost as though I had told her that I dropped my h’s. Mrs Montgomery had looked away from me in obvious embarrassment.

  In spite of my father’s small title which had procured him a niche for a time in Who’s Who I felt myself an outcast in Mrs Montgomery’s company and now, to add to my shame, the manservant tripped down the stairs and without giving me a glance announced, ‘Doctor Fischer will see Mr Jones at five o’clock on Thursday,’ and moved away into the unknown regions of the great house which it seemed strange to think had been so recently Anna-Luise’s home.

  ‘Well, Mr Jones, was that the name? It has been pleasant meeting you. I shall stay on a while to hear from Mr Kips how our friend fares. We have to look after the dear man.’

  It was only later that I realized I had encountered the first two Toads.

  4

  ‘Give it up,’ Anna-Luise advised me. ‘You don’t owe him anything. You are not one of the Toads. He knows quite well where I am now.’

  ‘He knows you are with someone called Jones – that’s all.’

  ‘If he wants to he can find out your name, profession, place of business, everything. You are a resident foreigner. The police have your name on the files. H
e’s only got to ask.’

  ‘The files are secret.’

  ‘Don’t believe anything is secret as far as my father is concerned. There’s probably a Toad even among the police.’

  ‘You make him sound like Our Father in Heaven – his will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’

  ‘That about describes him,’ she said.

  ‘You make me curious.’

  ‘Oh, keep the appointment if you must,’ she said. ‘But be careful. Please be careful. And be more than ever careful if he smiles.’

  ‘A Dentophil smile,’ I mocked her, for indeed both of us used this toothpaste. It had been recommended by my dentist. Perhaps he was a Toad too.

  ‘Don’t ever mention Dentophil to him,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t like to be reminded of how his fortune was made.’

  ‘Doesn’t he use it himself?’

  ‘No. He uses a thing called a water-pik. Keep off the subject of teeth altogether or he’ll think you are getting at him. He mocks others, but no one mocks him. He has a monopoly in mockery.’

  When I cried off work at four o’clock on Thursday I felt none of the courage which I had felt with Anna-Luise. I was just a man called Alfred Jones, earning three thousand francs a month, a man in his fifties, who worked for a chocolate firm. I had left my Fiat with Anna-Luise; I took the train to Geneva and walked from the station to a taxi rank. There was what the Swiss call a Pub Anglais not far from the rank, named, as you would expect, the Winston Churchill, with an unrecognizable sign and wooden panelling and stained-glass windows (for some reason the white and red roses of York and Lancaster) and an English bar with china beer handles, perhaps the only authentic antiques, for that adjective could hardly be applied to the carved wooden settees and the bogus barrels which served as tables and the pressurized Whitbread. The hours of opening I am glad to say were not authentically English and I planned to drink up a little courage before I took a taxi.

  As the draught beer was almost as expensive as whisky I ordered a whisky. I wanted to talk in order to keep my mind off things, so I stood at the bar and tried to engage the landlord in conversation.

  ‘Get many English customers?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Why? I would have thought . . .’

  ‘They have no money.’ He was a Swiss and not forthcoming.

  I drank a second whisky and went out. I asked the taxi-man, ‘Do you know Doctor Fischer’s house at Versoix?’ He was a French Swiss and more forthcoming than the barman.

  ‘Are you going to see the doctor?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had better be careful.’

  ‘Why? He isn’t dangerous, is he?’

  ‘Un peu farfelu,’ he said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You have not heard of his parties?’

  ‘Only rumours. Nobody’s ever given me any details.’

  ‘Ah, they are sworn to secrecy,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people he invites.’

  ‘Then how does anybody know about them?’

  ‘Nobody does know,’ he said.

  The same insolent manservant opened the door to me. ‘Have you an appointment?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What name?’

  ‘Jones.’

  ‘I don’t know that he can see you.’

  ‘I told you, I have an appointment.’

  ‘Oh, appointments,’ he said in a tone of disdain. ‘Everyone says he has an appointment.’

  ‘Run along and tell him I’m here.’

  He scowled at me and went, leaving me this time on the doorstep. He was quite a long time gone and I nearly walked away. I suspected him of lingering. When at last he returned he said, ‘He’ll see you,’ and led me through the lounge and up the marble stairs. On the stairs was a painting of a woman in flowing robes holding, with an expression of great tenderness, a skull: I am no expert, but it looked like a genuine seventeenth-century painting and not a copy.

  ‘Mr Jones,’ the man announced me.

  I looked across a table at Doctor Fischer and was surprised to see a man much like other men (there had been so many hints and warnings), a man more or less of my own age with a red moustache and hair that was beginning to lose its fire – perhaps he tinted the moustache. He had pouches under his eyes and very heavy lids. He looked like a man who didn’t sleep well at night. He was seated behind a big desk in the only comfortable chair.

  ‘Sit down, Jones,’ he said without rising or putting out a hand. It was more of a command than an invitation, yet it was not unfriendly – I might have been one of his employees who was accustomed to stand and to whom he was showing a small favour. I pulled up a chair and silence fell. At last he said, ‘You wanted to speak to me?’

  ‘I thought you probably wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘How could that be?’ he asked. He gave a little smile and I remembered Anna-Luise’s warning. ‘I didn’t know you existed until you called the other day. By the way, what does that glove conceal? A deformity?’

  ‘I have lost a hand.’

  ‘I imagine you have not come here to consult me about it. I am not that kind of doctor.’

  ‘I am living with your daughter. We are thinking of getting married.’

  ‘That is always a difficult decision,’ he said, ‘but it’s one you must take together. It’s no affair of mine. Is your deformity a hereditary one? I suppose you will have discussed that important point?’

  ‘I lost it in the London blitz,’ I said. I added lamely, ‘We thought you should be told.’

  ‘Your hand hardly concerns me.’

  ‘I meant about our marriage.’

  ‘That information could have been conveyed, I would have thought, more easily in writing. It would have saved you a journey to Geneva.’ He made Geneva sound as distant socially from our home in Vevey as Moscow.

  ‘You don’t seem very concerned about your daughter.’

  ‘You probably know her better than I do, Jones, if you know her well enough to marry her, and you have relieved me of any responsibility I may once have had.’

  ‘Don’t you want to have her address?’

  ‘I imagine she lives with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose you are in the telephone book?’

  ‘Yes. Under Vevey.’

  ‘Then there’s no need for you to write the address down.’ He gave me another of his little dangerous smiles. ‘Well, Jones, it was polite of you to have called, even if it was not really necessary.’ It was obviously a dismissal.

  ‘Good-bye, Doctor Fischer,’ I said. I had nearly reached the door when he spoke again.

  ‘Jones,’ he said, ‘do you happen to know anything about porridge? Real porridge I mean. Not Quaker Oats. Perhaps being Welsh – you have a Welsh name –’

  ‘Porridge is a Scottish dish,’ I said, ‘not Welsh.’

  ‘Ah, I have been misinformed. Thank you, Jones, that is all, I think.’

  When I got home Anna-Luise greeted me with an anxious face. ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘I didn’t get on at all.’

  ‘He was a beast to you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that – he was totally uninterested in both of us.’

  ‘Did he smile?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He didn’t invite you to a party?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘Thank Doctor Fischer,’ I said, ‘or is it the same thing?’

  5

  A week or two later we got married at the Mairie with a witness whom I brought from the office. There had been no communication from Doctor Fischer, although we had sent him an announcement of the date. We felt very happy, all the more happy because we would be alone – except, of course, for the witness. We made love half an hour before we went to the Mairie. ‘No cake,’ Anna-Luise said, ‘no bridesmaids, no priest, no family – it’s perfect. This way it’s solemn – one fe
els really married. The other way is like a party.’

  ‘One of Doctor Fischer’s parties?’

  ‘Almost as bad.’

  There was someone standing at the back of the room in the Mairie whom I didn’t know. I had looked nervously over my shoulder, because I half expected the arrival of Doctor Fischer, and saw a very tall lean man with hollow cheeks and a twitch in his left eyelid which made me think for a moment that he was winking at me, but, as he gave me a blank glare when I winked back, I assumed he was an official, attached to the mayor. Two chairs had been placed for us in front of the table, and the witness, called Monsieur Excoffier, hovered nervously behind us. Anna-Luise whispered something I didn’t catch.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘He’s one of the Toads.’

  ‘Monsieur Excoffier!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘No, no, the man at the back.’ Then the ceremony began, and I felt nervous all through the affair, because of the man behind us. I remembered the place in the Anglican service where the clergyman asks if there is anyone who knows just cause or impediment why these two persons should not be joined in Holy Matrimony you are to declare it, and I couldn’t help wondering whether a Toad mightn’t have been sent for that very purpose by Doctor Fischer. However, the question was never asked, nothing happened, everything went smoothly, and the mayor – I suppose it was the mayor – shook our hands and wished us happiness and then disappeared quickly through a door behind the table. ‘Now for a drink,’ I said to Monsieur Excoffier – it was the least we could do in return for his mute services – ‘a bottle of champagne at the Trois Couronnes.’

  But the thin man still stood there winking at us from the back of the room. ‘Is there another way out?’ I asked the clerk of the court – if that is what he was – and I indicated the door behind the table, but no, he said no. It was quite impossible for us to go that way – that wasn’t for the public, so there was nothing we could do but face the Toad. When we reached the door the stranger stopped me. ‘Monsieur Jones, my name is Monsieur Belmont. I have brought something for you from Doctor Fischer.’ He held out an envelope.