‘He wants you to join the Toads.’
‘But I’ve got nothing against the Toads. Are they really as bad as you say? I’ve seen three of them. I admit I didn’t much care for Mrs Montgomery.’
‘They weren’t always Toads, I suppose. He’s corrupted all of them.’
‘A man can only be corrupted if he’s corruptible.’
‘And how do you know you aren’t?’
‘I don’t. Perhaps it’s a good thing to find out.’
‘So you’ll let him take you into a high place and show you all the kingdoms of the world.’
‘I’m not Christ, and he’s not Satan, and I thought we’d agreed he was God Almighty, although I suppose to the damned God Almighty looks very like Satan.’
‘Oh, all right,’ she said, ‘go and be damned.’
The quarrel was like a dying wood fire: sometimes it seemed to dwindle out, but then a gathering of sparks would light a splinter of charred wood and flare for a moment into a flame. The dispute only ended when she wept against the pillow and I surrendered. ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘I don’t owe him anything. A piece of pasteboard. I won’t go. I promise I won’t go.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you are right. I’m wrong. I know you aren’t a Toad, but you won’t know you aren’t unless you go to that damned party. Please go, I’m not angry any more, I promise. I want you to go.’ She added, ‘After all, he is my father. Perhaps he’s not all that bad. Perhaps he’ll spare you. He didn’t spare my mother.’
We were tired out by the dispute. She fell asleep in my arms without making love and presently I slept too.
Next morning I sent my formal reply to the invitation: ‘Mr A. Jones has pleasure in accepting Dr Fischer’s kind invitation…’ I couldn’t help saying to myself: What a fuss about nothing, but I was wrong, quite wrong.
6
The quarrel was not revived. That was one of the great qualities of Anna-Luise: she never went back to a quarrel or back on an agreed decision. I knew, when she decided to marry me, she meant it to be for life. She never once mentioned the parry again and the next ten days were among the happiest I’ve ever spent. It was an extraordinary change for me to come home at night from the office to a flat which wasn’t empty and to the sound of a voice which I loved.
On one occasion only the happiness seemed a little threatened when I had to go into Geneva to see an important Spanish confectioner from Madrid on some business for the firm. He gave me an excellent lunch at the Beau Rivage, but I couldn’t take full advantage of the meal because he talked about nothing but chocolate from our aperitifs on - I remember he chose an Alexander cocktail sprinkled with grains of chocolate. You might think the subject of chocolate a rather limited one, but it certainly wasn’t, not to an important confectioner with revolutionary ideas. He finished the meal with a chocolate mousse, which he criticized severely because it didn’t contain some scraps of orange skin. When I left I felt a bit liverish as though I had sampled every kind of chocolate my firm had ever manufactured.
It was a heavy humid autumn day and I walked away towards the place where I had left my car, trying to escape the wetness of the air and the wetness of the lake and the taste of chocolate which clotted my tongue, when a woman’s voice said, ‘Why, Mr Smith, you are exactly the man I want.’ I turned and there was Mrs Montgomery in the doorway of an expensive shop - a kind of Swiss Asprey’s.
I said, ‘Jones,’ automatically.
‘I’m so sorry. Oh, what a memory I have. I don’t know why I thought you were Mr Smith. But it doesn’t make any difference because it’s a man I want. Just a man. That’s all.’
‘Is this a proposition? ‘ I asked, but she didn’t see the joke.
She said, ‘I want you to come in here and point out four objects which you would like to possess - if you were extravagant enough to buy them.’
She pulled me into the shop by the arm and the sight of all those luxury goods sickened me rather as the chocolate at lunch had done - everything seemed to be in gold (eighteen carat) or platinum, although for the poorer customers there were objects in silver and pigskin. I remembered the rumours which I had heard about Doctor Fischer’s parties, and I thought I knew what Mrs Montgomery was after. She picked up a red morocco case containing a gold cigar-cutter. ‘ Wouldn’t you like to have this? ‘ she asked. It would have cost me nearly a month’s salary.
‘I don’t smoke cigars,’ I said. I added, ‘You shouldn’t choose that. Didn’t he give those away at his wedding party? I don’t suppose Doctor Fischer likes repeating himself. ‘
‘Are you sure?’
‘No. I think after all they were swizzle sticks.’
‘But you aren’t sure?’ she asked in a tone of disappointment and put the cigar-cutter down. ‘You don’t know how difficult it is to find something which will please everybody - especially the men.’
‘Why not just give them cheques?’ I asked. ‘You can’t give cheques to people. It would be insulting. ‘
‘Perhaps none of you would be insulted if the cheques were large enough.’
I could see she was reflecting on what I said, and I have reason to believe from what happened later that she must have repeated my remark to Doctor Fischer. She said, ‘It wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all. Think of giving a cheque to the General - it would look like a bribe. ‘
‘Generals have taken bribes before now. Anyway, he can’t be a general if he’s Swiss. He’s probably only a Divisionnaire. ‘
‘But the idea of giving a cheque to Mr Kips. Why, it’s unthinkable. You mustn’t tell anyone I told you, but Mr Kips in fact owns this store.’ She brooded. ‘What about a quartz watch in gold - or better still platinum? But then perhaps they have one already.’
‘They could always sell the new one back.’
‘I’m sure not one of them would dream of selling a gift. Not a gift from Doctor Fischer.’
So my guess proved to be right and the secret was out. I saw her gulp as though she were trying to swallow it back.
I picked up a pigskin photograph frame. As though people who shopped in that store mightn’t be clever enough to know what one used a pigskin photograph frame for, the management had inserted a photograph of Richard Deane, the film star. Even I had read enough newspapers to recognize that handsome old-young face and the alcoholic smile.
‘What about this?’ I asked.
‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ Mrs Montgomery wailed, but all the same, as it turned out, she must have repeated even that mocking suggestion back to Doctor Fischer.
I think she was glad to see me go. I hadn’t been helpful.
7
‘Do you hate your father?’ I asked Anna-Luise after I had told her all the events of that day, beginning with my lunch with the Spanish confectioner.
‘I don’t like him.’ She added, ‘Yes, I think I do hate him.’
‘Why?’
‘He made my mother miserable.’
‘How?’
‘It was his pride. His infernal pride.’ She told me how her mother loved music, which her father hated - there was no doubt at all of that hatred. Why it was she had no idea, but it was as if music taunted him with his failure to understand it, with his stupidity. Stupid? The man who had invented Dentophil Bouquet and founded a fortune of many million francs stupid? So her mother began to slip away to concerts on her own and at one of them she met a man who shared her love of music. They even bought discs and listened to them in secret in his flat. When Doctor Fischer talked of the caterwauling of the strings she no longer tried to argue with him - she had only to walk down a street near the butcher’s, speak in a parlophone and take a lift to the third floor and listen for an hour happily to Heifetz. There was no sex between them - Anna-Luise was sure of that, it was not a question of fidelity. Sex was Doctor Fischer and her mother had never enjoyed it: sex was the pain of childbirth and a great sense of loneliness when Doctor Fischer grunted with pleasure. For years she had pretended pleasure herself; it wasn’t difficult to deceive him since her husband was not interested in whether she had pleasure or not. She might well have saved herself the trouble. All this she had told her daughter in one hysterical outburst.