Belmont had probably been thinking along the same lines, for he protested, ‘We should have drawn for turns. ‘
Mrs Montgomery found her cracker and pulled. There was a small pop and a little metal cylinder fell on to the snow. She poked out a roll of paper and gave a scream of excitement.
‘What’s wrong?’ Doctor Fischer asked.
‘Nothing’s wrong, you dear man. Everything’s splendidly right. Credit Suisse, Berne. Two million francs.’ She ran back to the table. ‘Give me a pen, somebody. I want to fill in my name. It might get lost.’
‘I would advise you not to fill in your name until we have considered things very carefully,’ Belmont said, but he was speaking to a deaf woman. Richard Deane stood stiffly to attention. At any moment, I thought, he will salute his colonel. He must in his mind have been listening to the last orders he had been given and Belmont had the time he needed to reach the bran tub before him. He hesitated a little before pulling his cracker out: the same small cylinder: the same paper, and he gave a little smile of self-satisfaction and his eye winked. He had calculated the odds - he had been right to bet. He was a man who knew all about money.
Deane said, ‘I will go, sir, if I may go alone.’
All the same he didn’t go. Perhaps the director at that moment had ordered’ Cut.’
‘What about you, Jones?, Doctor Fischer said. ‘The odds are narrowing.’
‘I prefer to watch your damned experiment to the end. Greed is winning, isn’t it?’
‘If you watch you must eventually play - or leave like Mr Kips.’
‘Oh, I’ll play, I promise you that. I’ll bet on the last cracker. That gives better odds to the Divisionnaire.’
‘You’re a stupid and boring man,’ Doctor Fischer said, ‘there’s no credit in choosing death if you want to die. What in God’s name is Deane doing?’
‘I think he’s improvising.’
Deane was still by the table, pouring out another glass of port, but no one this time had taken advantage of the delay for only myself and the Divisionnaire were left.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Deane said. ‘It’s a kind thought. Dutch courage never did anyone any harm - Quite unnecessary in your case, captain, I know - Thank you, sir, but the more unnecessary it is the better the flavour - If you come back safely we’ll split another bottle - Cockburn’s, like this, I hope, sir.’
I wondered if he would spin the dialogue out till dawn, but at the last sentence he put down his glass, saluted smartly and marched to the bran tub, fumbled for a cracker, pulled it, and fell on the ground beside the cylinder and the cheque.
‘Dead drunk,’ Doctor Fischer said and told the gardeners to carry him into the house.
The Divisionnaire looked at me from the end of the table. He asked, ‘Why did you stay. Mr Jones?’
‘I have nothing better to do with my time, General.’
‘Don’t call me that. I’m not a General. I am a Divisionnaire.’
‘Why have you stayed, Divisionnaire?’
‘It’s too late to turn tail now. I haven’t the courage. I should have gone to the tub first, when the odds were better. What was that man Deane saying?’
‘I think he was acting a young captain who volunteers for a desperate mission.’
‘I am a Divisionnaire, and Divisionnaires don’t go on desperate missions. Besides, there are no desperate missions in Switzerland. Unless this is the exception. Will you go first, Mr Jones?’
‘What do you think of convertible bonds?’ I heard Mrs Montgomery ask Belmont.
‘You have too many already,’ Belmont said, ‘and I think it will be a long time before the dollar recovers. ‘
‘I suggest you go first, Divisionnaire. I’m not in need of money and it gives you the better odds. I’m after something else.’
‘When I was a boy,’ the Divisionnaire said, ‘I used to play at Russian roulette with a cap pistol. It was very exciting.’ He made no move to go.
I could hear Belmont saying to Mrs Montgomery, ‘I am thinking myself of investing in something German. For example Badenwerk of Karlsruhe pay eight and five-eighths per cent - but then there’s always the danger of Russia, isn’t there? A rather unpredictable future.
As the Divisionnaire seemed unwilling to move I did. I wanted to bring the party to an end.
I had to sort through a lot of bran before I found a cracker. Unlike the boy with a cap pistol I felt no excitement - only a quiet sense when I touched the cracker that I was closer to Anna-Luise than I had been since I waited in the hospital room and the young doctor came to tell me she was dead. I held the cracker as though I were holding her hand, while I listened to the conversation at the table.
Belmont said to Mrs Montgomery, ‘I have rather more confidence in the Japanese. Mitsubishi pay only six and three-quarters, but it’s not worth taking unnecessary risks with two million.’
I found the Divisionnaire was at my side.
‘I think we ought to go now,’ Mrs Montgomery said.
‘I am afraid something may be going to happen, though of course in my heart of hearts I am sure Doctor Fischer has only been having a little joke with us.’
‘If you would like to send your car home with the chauffeur, I will drive you back and we can discuss your investments on the way.’
‘Surely you will wait till the end of the party?’ Doctor Fischer asked. ‘It won’t be long delayed now.’
‘Oh, it’s been a wonderful last party, but it’s getting too late for little me.’ She fluttered her hands at us. ‘Good-night, General. Good-night, Mr Jones. Wherever is Mr Deane?’
‘On the kitchen floor, I suspect. I hope Albert doesn’t take his cheque. He would certainly give notice and I should lose a good manservant.’
The Divisionnaire whispered to me, ‘Of course, we might just walk away and leave him? If you would come with me. I don’t want to go alone.’
‘In my case I have nowhere to walk to.’
In spite of the whisper Doctor Fischer had heard him.
‘You knew the rules of the game from the start, Divisionnaire. You could have left with Mr Kips before the game started. Now because the odds are not so good you begin to be afraid. Think of your honour as a soldier as well as the prize. There are still two million francs in that tub.’
But the Divisionnaire did not move. He looked at me with the same appeal. When one is afraid one needs company. Doctor Fischer went mercilessly on: ‘If you act quickly the odds are two to one in your favour.’
The Divisionnaire shut his eyes and found his cracker at the first dip, but he still stood irresolute beside the tub.
‘Come back to the table, Divisionnaire, if you are afraid to pull, and give Mr Jones his chance.’
The Divisionnaire looked at me with the sad expressive eyes of a spaniel who tries to hypnotize his master into uttering the magic word ‘walk ‘. I said, ‘I was the first to take out a cracker. I think you should allow me to pull mine first.’
‘Of course. Of course,’ he said. ‘It is your right.’ I watched him until he had returned to the safe distance of the table, carrying his cracker with him.
With my left hand gone it was not easy for me to pull a cracker. While I hesitated I was aware of the Divisionnaire watching me, watching as I thought, with hope. Perhaps he was praying - after all I had seen him at the midnight Mass, he might well be a believer, perhaps he was saying to God, ‘Please, gentle Jesus, blow him up.’ I would probably have made much the same prayer - ‘Let this be the end’ - if I had believed, and didn’t I have at least a half-belief, or why was it that as long as I held the cracker in my hand I felt the closeness of Anna-Luise? Anna-Luise was dead. She could only continue to exist somewhere if God existed. I put one end of the protruding paper tape between my teeth and I pulled with the other end. There was a feeble crack, and I felt as though Anna-Luise had withdrawn her hand from mine and walked away, between the bonfires, down towards the lake to die a second time.