Doctor Fisher of Geneva

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. He’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 unrecognisable 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? ‘