‘The Toads you mean?’
‘Toads? ‘
‘That was your daughter’s name for your friends.’
‘I have no friends,’ he said in the words of his servant, Albert. He added, ‘These people are acquaintances. One can’t avoid acquaintances. You mustn’t think I dislike such people. I don’t dislike them. One dislikes one’s equals. I despise them.’.
‘Like I despise you?’
‘Oh, but you don’t, Jones, you don’t. You are not speaking accurately. You don’t despise me. You hate me or think you do.’
‘I know I do.’
He gave at that assurance the little smile which Anna-Luise had told me was dangerous. It was a smile of infinite indifference. It was the kind of smile which I could imagine a sculptor temerariously and heretically carving on the inexpressive armour-plated face of Buddha. ‘So Jones hates me,’ he said, ‘that is an honour indeed. You and I expect Steiner. And in a way for the same reason. My wife in one case, my daughter in the other.’
‘You never forgive, do you, even the dead?’
‘Oh, forgiveness, Jones. That’s a Christian term. Are you a Christian, Jones?’
‘I don’t know. I only know I’ve never despised anyone as I despise you.’
‘Again you are using the wrong term. Semantics are important, Jones. I tell you, you hate, you don’t despise. To despise comes out of a great disappointment. Most people are not capable of a great disappointment, and I doubt if you are. Their expectations are too low for that. When one despises, Jones, it’s like a deep and incurable wound, the beginning of death. And one must revenge one’s wound while there’s still time. When the one who inflicted it is dead, one has to strike back at others. Perhaps, if I believed in God, I would want to take my revenge on him for having made me capable of disappointment. I wonder by the way - it’s a philosophical question - how one would revenge oneself on God. I suppose Christians would say by hurting his son.’
‘Perhaps you are right, Fischer. Perhaps I shouldn’t even hate you. I think you are mad.’
‘Oh no, no, not mad,’ he said with that small unbearable smile of ineffable superiority. ‘You are not a man of great intelligence, Jones, or you wouldn’t at your age be translating letters about chocolates for a living. But sometimes I have a desire to talk a little way above my companion’s head. It comes on me suddenly even when I’m with one of my - what did my daughter call them? - Toads. It’s amusing to watch how they react. None of them would dare to call me mad as you have done. They might lose an invitation to my next party. ‘
‘And lose a plate of porridge?’
‘No, lose a present, Jones. They can’t bear to lose a present. Mrs Montgomery pretends to understand me. “Oh, how I agree, Doctor Fischer,” she says. Deane gets angry - he can’t bear anything which is beyond him.. He says that even King Lear is a pack of nonsense because he knows that he is incapable of playing him, even on the screen. Belmont listens attentively and then changes the subject. Income taxes have taught him to be evasive. The Divisionnaire… I have only broken out once with him when I couldn’t bear the old man’s stupidity any more. All he did was give a gruff laugh and say, “March to the sound of the guns.” Of course he has never heard a gun fired, only rifles on practice ranges. Kips is the best listener… I think he always hopes there may be a grain of sense in what I say which be useful to him. Ah, Kips… he brings me back to the point of why I have brought you here. The Trust.’
‘What about the Trust?’
‘You know - or perhaps you don’t - that my wife left the income of her little capital to her daughter, but for life only. Afterwards the capital goes to any child she may have had, but as she died childless it reverts to me. “To show her forgiveness” the will impertinently states. As if I could care a cent for her forgiveness - forgiveness of what? If I were to accept the money it would really be as though I had accepted her forgiveness - the forgiveness of a woman who betrayed me with a clerk of Mr Kips.’
‘Are you sure that she slept with him?’
‘Slept with him? She may have dozed beside him over some caterwauling record. If you mean did she copulate with him, no, I am not sure of that. It’s possible, but I’m not sure. It wouldn’t have mattered to me very much if she had. An animal impulse. I could have put it out of mind, but she preferred his company to mine. A clerk of Mr Kips earning a minimum wage.’
‘It’s all a question of money, is it, Doctor Fischer? He wasn’t rich enough to cuckold you.’
‘Money makes a difference certainly. Some people will even die for money, Jones. They don’t die for love except in novels.’
I thought I had tried to do just that, but I had failed, and was it for love I had tried or was it from the fear of an irremediable loneliness?
I had ceased to listen to him, and my attention only returned in time to catch the last of his words: ‘So the money is yours, Jones.’
‘What money?’
‘The Trust money of course.’
‘I don’t need it. We both of us managed on what I earned. On that alone.’
‘You surprise me. I thought you would at least have enjoyed while you could a little of her mother’s money.’
‘No, we kept that untouched. For the child we meant to have.’ I added, ‘When the skiing stopped,’ and through the window I saw the continuous straight falling of the snow as though the world had ceased revolving and lay becalmed at the centre of a blizzard.
Again I missed what he had been saying and caught only the final sentences. ‘It will be the last party I shall give. It will be the extreme test.’
‘You are giving another party?’
‘The last party and I want you to be there, Jones. I owe you something as I said. You humiliated them at the Porridge Party more than I ever succeeded in doing till now. You didn’t eat. You surrendered your present. You were an outsider and you showed them up. How they hated you. I enjoyed every moment of it.’
‘I saw them at Saint Maurice after the midnight Mass. They didn’t seem to feel any resentment. Belmont even gave me a Christmas card.’
‘Of course. If they had exhibited their feelings it would have been a further humiliation. They have to explain you away. Do you know what the Divisionnaire said to me a week later (it was probably Mrs Montgomery’s idea): “You were a bit hard on your son-in-law, not letting him have his present; poor fellow. It wasn’t his fault that he had a bad attack of collywobbles that night. It could have happened to any one of us. I was a bit queasy myself as it happens, but I didn’t want to spoil your joke.’”
‘You won’t get me to another party.’
‘This party is going to be a very serious party, Jones. No frivolity I promise. And it will be an excellent dinner, I promise that too.’
‘I’m not exactly in a gourmand mood.’
‘I tell you this party is the extreme test of their greed. You suggested to Mrs Montgomery that I should give them cheques, and cheques they will have.’
‘She told me they’d never accept cheques.’
‘We’ll see, Jones, we’ll see. They will be very, very substantial. I want you here as a witness of how far they’ll go.’
‘Go?’
‘For greed, Jones. The greed of the rich which you are never likely to know.’
‘You are rich yourself.’
‘Yes, but my greed - I told you before - is of a different order. I want…’ He raised the Christmas cracker rather as the priest at midnight Mass had raised the Host, as though he intended to make a statement of grave importance to a disciple - ‘This is my body.’ He repeated: ‘I want…’ and lowered the cracker again.
‘What do you want, Doctor Fischer?’
‘You aren’t intelligent enough to understand if I told you.’
That night for the second time I dreamed of Doctor Fischer. I thought I wouldn’t sleep, but perhaps the long cold drive from Geneva helped sleep to come and perhaps in attacking Fischer I had been able to forget for half an hour
how meaningless my life had become. I fell asleep as I had the day before, suddenly, in my chair, and I saw Doctor Fischer with his face painted like a clown’s and his moustache trained upwards like the Kaiser’s as he juggled with eggs, never breaking one. He drew fresh ones from his elbow, from his arse, from the air - he created eggs, and at the end there must have been hundreds in the air. His hands moved around them like birds and then he clapped his hands and they fell to the ground and exploded and I woke. Next morning the invitation lay in my letter-box: ‘Doctor Fischer invites you to the Final Party.’ It was to be held in a week’s time.
I went to the office. People were surprised to see me, but what else was there to do? My attempt to die had failed. No doctor in the state I was in would prescribe me anything stronger than a tranquillizer. If I had the courage I could go up to the top floor of the building and throw myself out of the window - if any window there opened which I doubted - but I hadn’t got the courage. An ‘accident’ with my car might involve others and anyway it was not certain to kill. I had no gun. I thought of all these things rather than of the letter I had to write to the Spanish confectioner who still obsessed by the Basque taste in liqueur chocolates. After work I didn’t kill myself but went to the first cinema on the way home and sat for an hour before a soft porn film. The movements of the naked bodies aroused no sexual feeling at all: they were like designs in a pre-historic cave - writings in the unknown script of people I knew nothing about. I thought when I left: One must, I suppose, eat, and I went to a cafe and had a cup of tea and a cake, and when I had finished I thought: Why did I eat? I needn’t have eaten. That’s a possible way to die, starvation, but I remembered the Mayor of Cork who had survived for more than fifty days, wasn’t it? I asked the waitress for a piece of paper and wrote on it: ‘Alfred Jones accepts Doctor Fischer’s invitation,’ and I put it in my pocket to guard against a change of mind. Next day I posted it almost without thinking.
Why had I accepted the invitation? I don’t know myself. Perhaps I would have accepted any engagement which would give me an hour or two’s escape from thought - thought which consisted mainly of wondering how I could die without too much pain for myself or too much unpleasantness for others. There was drowning: Lake Leman was only a short walk down the street - the ice-cold water would soon conquer any instinctive desire I might have to swim. But I hadn’t the courage - death by drowning had been a phobia of mine since childhood ever since I had been pushed into the deep end of a piscine by a young Secretary of Embassy. Besides, my body might pollute the perch. Gas came to mind, but my flat was all electric. There were the fumes of my car, of course - I’d kept that idea in reserve, for after all starvation might perhaps be the proper answer, a clean and discreet and private way out: I was older, and less robust probably, than the Mayor of Cork. I would fix a date for beginning - the day after Doctor Fischer’s feast.
16
Ironically I was delayed on the auto route by an accident: a private car had smashed itself against a lorry on a frozen patch of the road. The police were there and an ambulance, and something was being removed from the wreck of the car with the help of an acetylene burner which flamed so brightly in the dark that it made the night twice as black when I had passed. Albert was already standing by the open door when I arrived. His manner had certainly improved (perhaps I had been accepted as one of the Toads), for he came down the steps to greet me and opened the door of the car and for the first time he allowed himself to remember my name. ‘Good evening, Mr Jones, Doctor Fischer suggests that you keep on your coat. Dinner is being served on the lawn.’
‘On the lawn? ‘ I exclaimed. It was a clear night: the stars were as brilliant as chips of ice, and the temperature was below zero.
‘I think you will find it warm enough, sir.’
He led me through the lounge in which I had first met Mrs Montgomery and then through another room, where the walls were lined with books in expensive calf bindings - they had probably been bought in sets. (‘ The library, sir.’) It would have been much cheaper, I thought, to have used false backs, for the room had an unused air. French windows opened on to the great lawn which sloped down to the invisible lake and for a moment I could see nothing at all but a blaze of light. Four enormous bonfires crackled away across the snow, and lights were hanging from the branches of every tree.
‘Isn’t it wonderful and crazy and beautiful?’ Mrs Montgomery cried, as she advanced from the edge of the dark to meet me with the assured air of a hostess addressing an intimidated guest. ‘Why, it’s a real fairyland. I don’t believe you’ll even need your coat, Mr Jones. We are all of us so glad to see you back among us. We’ve quite missed you.’
‘We’ and ‘us’ - I could see them now undazzled by the bonfires; the Toads were all there, standing around a table prepared in the centre of the fires; it glittered with crystal glasses which reflected the to and fro of the flames. The atmosphere was very different from what I remembered of the Porridge Party.
‘Such a shame that this is the very last party,’ Mrs Montgomery said, ‘but you’ll see how he’s giving us a really great farewell. I helped him with the menu myself. No porridge!’
Albert was suddenly beside me, holding a tray of glasses, whisky, dry martinis and Alexanders. ‘I am an Alexander girl,’ Mrs Montgomery said. ‘This is my third. How absurd it is when people tell you that cocktails spoil the palate. What I always say is, it’s just not-feeling-hungry that spoils the palate.’
Richard Deane in his turn came out of the shadows carrying a gold-embossed menu. I could see he was already well plastered, and there beyond him, between two bonfires, was Mr Kips who actually seemed to be laughing: it was difficult to be quite sure because of his stoop which hid his mouth, but his shoulders were certainly shaking. ‘This is better than porridge,’ Deane said, ‘what a pity that it’s the last party. Do you think the old fellow’s running out of cash?’
‘No, no,’ Mrs Montgomery said. ‘He always told us that one day there would be the last and the best and the most exciting party of all. Anyway I don’t think he has the heart to go on any longer. After what’s happened. His poor daughter…’
‘Has he a heart?’ I asked.
‘Ah, you don’t know him as all of us do. His generosity…’ With the automatic reflex of a Pavlov dog she touched the emerald hung around her throat.
‘Drink up and seat yourselves.’
It was Doctor Fischer’s voice which brought us to heel from a dark corner of the garden. I hadn’t seen until then where he was standing. He was stooped over a barrel some twenty yards away, and I could see his hands moving within it as though he were washing them.
‘Just look at the dear man,’ Mrs Montgomery said.
‘He takes such an interest in every small detai1.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s hiding the crackers in the bran tub.’
‘Why not have them on the table?’
‘He doesn’t want people crackling them all through the dinner to find out what’s inside. It was I who told him about the bran tub. Just fancy, he had never heard of such a thing before. I don’t think he can have had a very happy childhood, do you? But he took to the idea at once. You see, he’s put the presents in the crackers and the crackers in the bran rub and we’ll all have to draw them out at random with our eyes shut.’
‘Suppose you get a gold cigar-cutter?’
‘Impossible. These presents have been chosen to suit everyone equally.’
‘What is there in the world which can possibly suit everyone? ‘
‘Just wait and see. He’ll tell us. Trust him. At bottom, you know, he’s a very sensitive sort of person.’
We sat down at the table. I found myself seated this time between Mrs Montgomery and Richard Deane, and opposite me were Belmont and Mr Kips. The Divisionnaire was at the end of the table facing our host. The array of glasses was impressive and the menu informed me that there would be a 1971 Meursault, a 1969 Mouton Rothschild, and I can�
��t remember the date of the Cockburn port. At least, I thought, I can drink myself stupid without the help of aspirin. The bottle of Finnish vodka, served with the Caviare (this time the Caviare was handed to all of us), was enclosed in a solid block of ice in which the petals of hothouse flowers had been frozen. I took off my overcoat and hung it on the back of my chair to guard me from the heat of the bonfire behind. Two gardeners like sentries moved to and fro, their steps unheard on the deep white carpet of the snow, feeding the flames with logs of wood. It was a curiously unnatural scene - so much heat and so much snow, and the snow beneath our chairs was already beginning to melt from the warmth of the bonfires. Soon, I thought, we shall be sitting with our feet in slush.
The Caviare in a great bowl was served to us twice, and everyone but myself and Doctor Fischer took a second helping. ‘It’s so healthy,’ Mrs Montgomery explained. ‘Full of vitamin c.’
‘I can drink Finnish vodka with a good conscience,’ Belmont told us, accepting a third glass.
‘They fought a remarkable campaign in the winter of1939,’ the Divisionnaire said. ‘If the French had done as well in ‘40…’
Richard Deane asked me, ‘Did you by any chance see me in The Beaches of Dunkirk?’
‘No. I wasn’t at Dunkirk.’
‘It’s the film I meant.’
‘No. I’m afraid I never saw it. Why?’
‘I just wondered. I think it was quite the best film I ever made.’
With the Mouton Rothschild there was a roti de boeuf. It had been cooked in a very light pastry which preserved all the juice of the meat. A magnificent dish, of course, but for a moment the sight of the red blood sickened me - I was back at the foot of the ski-lift.
‘Albert,’ Doctor Fischer said, ‘you must cut up Mr Jones’s meat for him. He has a deformed hand.’
‘Poor Mr Jones, ‘ Mrs Montgomery said. ‘Let me do it. Do you like the pieces cut small?’
‘Pity, always pity,’ the Doctor said. ‘You ought to rewrite the Bible… Pity your neighbour as you pity yourself.” Women have such an exaggerated sense of pity. My daughter took after her mother in that. Perhaps she married you out of pity, Jones. I’m sure Mrs Montgomery would marry you if you asked her. But pity wears off quickly, when the pitied one is out of sight.’
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