Doctor Fischer of Geneva Or The Bomb Party Read Online Free

was polite of you to have called, even if it was not really necessary.’ It was obviously a dismissal.
    â€˜Good-bye, Doctor Fischer,’ I said. I had nearly reached the door when he spoke again.
    â€˜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 –’
    â€˜Porridge is a Scottish dish,’ I said, ‘not Welsh.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜I didn’t get on at all.’
    â€˜He was a beast to you?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t say that – he was totally uninterested in both of us.’
    â€˜Did he smile?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜He didn’t invite you to a party?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Thank God for that.’
    â€˜Thank Doctor Fischer,’ I said, ‘or is it the same thing?’

5
    A week or two later we got married at the Mairie with a witness whom I brought from the office. There had been no communication from Doctor Fischer, although we had sent him an announcement of the date. We felt very happy, all the more happy because we would be alone – except, of course, for the witness. We made love half an hour before we went to the Mairie . ‘No cake,’ Anna-Luise said, ‘no bridesmaids, no priest, no family – it’s perfect. This way it’s solemn – one feels really married. The other way is like a party.’
    â€˜One of Doctor Fischer’s parties?’
    â€˜Almost as bad.’
    There was someone standing at the back of the room in the Mairie whom I didn’t know. I had looked nervously over my shoulder, because I half expected the arrival of Doctor Fischer, and saw a very tall lean man with hollow cheeks and a twitch in his left eyelid which made me think for a moment that he was winking at me, but, as he gave me a blank glare when I winked back, I assumed he was an official, attached to the mayor. Two chairs had been placed for us in front of the table, and the witness, called Monsieur Excoffier, hovered nervously behind us. Anna-Luise whispered something I didn’t catch.
    â€˜What did you say?’
    â€˜He’s one of the Toads.’
    â€˜Monsieur Excoffier!’ I exclaimed.
    â€˜No, no, the man at the back.’ Then the ceremony began, and I felt nervous all through the affair, because of the man behind us. I remembered the place in the Anglican service where the clergyman asks if there is anyone who knows just cause or impediment why these two persons should not be joined in Holy Matrimony you are to declare it, and I couldn’t help wondering whether a Toad mightn’t have been sent for that very purpose by Doctor Fischer. However, the question was never asked, nothing happened, everything went smoothly, and the mayor – I suppose it was the mayor – shook our hands and wished us happiness and then disappeared quickly through a door behind the table. ‘Now for a drink,’ I said to Monsieur Excoffier – it was the least we could do in return for his mute services – ‘a bottle of champagne at the Trois Couronnes.’
    But the thin man still stood there winking at us from the back of the room. ‘Is there another way out?’ I asked the clerk of the court – if that is what he was – and I indicated the door behind the table, but no, he said no. It was quite impossible for us to go that way – that wasn’t for the public, so there was nothing we could do but face the Toad. When we reached the door the stranger stopped me. ‘Monsieur Jones, my name is Monsieur Belmont. I have brought something for you from Doctor Fischer.’ He held out an envelope.
    â€˜Don’t take it,’ Anna-Luise said. We both in our ignorance thought it might be a