The Englishman said, ‘I do apologize, old man. I never thought…’
‘For God’s sake go and piss off,’ I said.
The waiter was more surly than ever. He told me, ‘You reserved this table for lunch. I have had to turn away customers.’
‘There’s one customer you’ll never see again,’ I told him back, and I threw a fifty-centime piece on the table which fell on the floor. Then I waited by the door to see if he would pick it up. He did and I felt ashamed. But if it had been in my power I would have revenged myself for what had happened on all the world - like Doctor Fischer, I thought, just like Doctor Fischer. I heard the scream of the ambulance and I returned to the ski-lift.
They gave me a seat beside her stretcher in the ambulance and I left our car behind. I told myself that I would pick it up one day when she was better, and all the time I watched her face, waiting for her to come out of this coma and recognize me. We won’t go to that restaurant, I thought, when we return, we’ll go to the best hotel in the canton and have Caviare like Doctor Fischer. She won’t be well enough to ski, and by that time probably the snow will have gone. We shall sit in the sun and I’ll tell her how scared I was. I’ll tell her about that damned Englishman - I told him to piss off and he pissed off - and she’ll laugh. I looked again at her unchanging face. She might have been dead if her eyes had not been closed. Coma is like deep sleep. Don’t wake up, I urged her in my mind, until they’ve given you drugs so that you won’t feel pain.
The ambulance went crying down the hill to where the hospital lay and I saw the mortuary sign which I had seen dozens of times, but now I felt a dull anger about it and the stupidity of the authorities who had put it just there for someone like myself to read. It’s got nothing to do with Anna-Luise and me, I thought, nothing at all.
The mortuary sign is all that I can complain about now. Everyone, when the ambulance arrived, was very efficient. Two doctors were waiting at the entrance for our arrival. The Swiss are very efficient. Think of the complex watches and precision instruments they make. I had the impression that Anna-Luise would be repaired as skilfully as they would repair a watch - a watch of more than ordinary value, a quartz watch, because she was Doctor Fischer’s daughter. They learnt that when I said I must telephone to him.
‘To Doctor Fischer?’
‘Yes, my wife’s father.’
I could tell from their manner that this watch carried no ordinary guarantee. She was already being wheeled away accompanied by the older doctor. I could see only the white bandages on her head which had given me the impression of old age.
I asked what I should tell her father.
‘We shall know better after the X-ray.’
‘You think it may be serious?’
The young doctor said with caution, ‘We have to consider any injuries to the skull as potentially serious.’
‘Shall I wait to telephone till after the X-ray?’
‘I think as Doctor Fischer has to come from Geneva you should perhaps tell him at once.’
The implication of his advice didn’t strike home to me until I was dialling. I could not at first recognize the voice of Albert when he answered.
I said, ‘I want to talk to Doctor Fischer.’
‘Who shall I say is speaking, sir?’ This was his servile voice which I hadn’t heard him use before.
‘Tell him Mr Jones - his son-in-law.’
At once the voice became the familiar Albert voice.
‘Oh, Mr Jones, is it? The doctor’s busy.’
‘I don’t care if he is. Put me through.’
‘He told me that he was on no account to be disturbed. ‘
‘This is urgent. Do as I tell you.’
‘It might cost me my job.’
‘It will certainly cost you your job if you don’t put me through.’
There was a long silence and then the voice returned - the voice of the insolent Albert and not the servile one. ‘Doctor Fischer says he’s too busy to talk to you now. He can’t be interrupted. He’s preparing a party.’
‘I’ve got to speak to him.’
‘He says as how you are to put what you want in writing.’
Before I had time to reply he had broken the connection.
The young doctor had slipped away while I was on the telephone. Now he came back. He said, ‘I’m afraid, Mr Jones, there has to be an operation - an immediate one. There are a lot of out-patients in the waiting room, but there’s an empty room on the second floor where you could rest undisturbed. I’ll come and see you immediately the operation is over.’
When he opened the door of the empty room I recognized it, or I thought I did, as the room where Mr Steiner had lain, but hospital rooms all look the same, like sleeping tablets. The window was open and the clang and clatter of the auto route came in.
‘Shall I close the window? ‘ the young doctor asked. From his solicitude you would have thought I was the patient.
‘No, no, don’t bother. I’d rather have the air.’ But it was the noise I wanted. It is only when one is happy or undisturbed that one can bear silence.
‘If there is anything you want just ring,’ and he showed me the bell beside the bed. There was a thermos for iced water on the table and he checked to see whether it was full. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said. ‘Try not to worry. We have had many worse cases.’
There was an armchair for visitors and I sat in it and I wished that Mr Steiner lay in the bed for me to talk to. I would even have welcomed the old man who couldn’t speak or hear. Some words of Mr Steiner came back to my mind. He had said of Anna-Luise’s mother: ‘I used to look in other women’s faces for years after she died and then I gave it up.’ The awful thing in that statement was ‘for years ‘. Years, I thought, years… can one go on for years? Every few minutes I looked at my watch… two minutes gone, three minutes gone, once I was lucky and four and a half minutes passed. I thought: Shall I be doing this until I die?
There was a knock on the door and the young doctor entered. He looked shy and embarrassed and a wild hope came to me: they had made a gaffe and the injury wasn’t serious after all. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid…’ Then the words came out in a rush. ‘We hadn’t much hope. She didn’t suffer at all. She died under the anaesthetic.’
‘Died?’
‘Yes.’
All I could find to say was, ‘Oh.’
He asked, ‘Would you like to see her?’
‘No.’
‘Shall we get you a taxi? Perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming to the hospital tomorrow. To see the registrar. There are papers which have to be signed. Such a lot of paper work always.’
I said, ‘I’d rather finish with all that now. If it’s the same to you.’
14
I sent to Doctor Fischer the letter that he required. I wrote the dry facts of his daughter’s death and I told him when and where she was to be buried. It was not the hay fever season so that I could expect no tears, but I thought he might possibly turn up. He didn’t and there was no one to watch her being put into the ground, except the Anglican padre, our twice-weekly maid and myself. I had her buried in Saint Martin’s cemetery in Gibraltan ground (in Switzerland the Anglican Church belongs to the diocese of Gibraltar) because she had to be put somewhere. I had no idea what religious faith Doctor Fischer would have claimed to hold or her mother - or in what church Anna-Luise had been baptized - we had not had sufficient time together to learn such unimportant details about one another. As an Englishman it seemed the easiest thing to bury her according to English rites, since nobody so far as I know has established agnostic cemeteries. Most Swiss in the Canton of Geneva are Protestant, and her mother had probably been buried in a Protestant cemetery, but Swiss Protestants believe seriously in their religion - the Anglican Church, with all its contradictory beliefs, seemed closer to our agnostic views. In the cemetery I half expected Monsieur Belmont to appear discreetly in the background as he had appeared at our wedding and again at the midnight Mass, but to my relief he wasn’t there. So there was no one I had to speak to. I was alone, I could go back alone to our flat, it was the next best thing to being with her.