Read Online Doctor Fischer of Geneva Or The Bomb Party by Graham Greene - Free Book Online

it was many years ago, and she would be old now . . . nearly as old as I am, and the young lady, your wife . . .’
    And suddenly I realized who it was who stood there, supporting himself with one hand on the doorway, old and humble with no fight in him – there never had been any fight in him. I said, ‘She’s Doctor Fischer’s daughter, Doctor Fischer of Geneva.’ He crumpled slowly at the knees as though he were going down on them to pray, and then his head struck the floor.
    A girl who was showing a television set to a customer came running to help me. I was trying to turn him over, but even the lightest body becomes heavy when it’s inert. Together we got him on his back and she opened his collar. She said, ‘Oh, poor Mr Steiner.’
    â€˜What’s wrong?’ Anna-Luise asked, leaving the turntable of cassettes.
    â€˜A heart attack.’
    â€˜Oh,’ she said, ‘the poor old man.’
    â€˜Better ring for an ambulance,’ I told the girl.
    Mr Steiner opened his eyes. There were three faces looking down at him, but he looked at only one and he shook his head gently and smiled. ‘Whatever happened, Anna?’ he asked. In a few minutes the ambulance came and we followed the stretcher out of the shop.
    In the car Anna-Luise said, ‘He spoke to me. He knew my name.’
    â€˜He said Anna not Anna-Luise. He knew your mother’s name.’
    She said nothing, but she knew as well as I did what that meant. At lunch she asked me, ‘What was his name?’
    â€˜The girl called him Steiner.’
    â€˜I never knew his name. My mother only called him “he”.’
    At the end of lunch she said, ‘Will you go to the hospital and see that he’s all right? I can’t go. It would only be another shock for him.’
    I found him in the hospital above Vevey where a notice welcomes a new patient or an anxious visitor with a direction to the Centre Funéraire. Above on the hill the autoroute plays a constant concrete symphony. He shared his room with one old bearded man who lay on his back with wide-open eyes staring at the ceiling – I would have thought him dead if every now and then his eyes had not blinked without changing the direction of their stare at the white sky of plaster.
    â€˜It’s kind of you to inquire,’ Mr Steiner said, ‘you shouldn’t have troubled. They are letting me out tomorrow on condition I take things easy.’
    â€˜A holiday?’
    â€˜It’s not necessary. I don’t have to carry any weight. The girl looks after the television sets.’
    â€˜It wasn’t a weight that caused the trouble,’ I said. I looked at the old man. He hadn’t stirred since I came in.
    â€˜You needn’t trouble about him,’ Mr Steiner said. ‘He doesn’t talk and he doesn’t hear when you speak to him. I sometimes wonder what he’s thinking. Of the long voyage ahead of him perhaps.’
    â€˜I was afraid in the shop that you’d embarked on that voyage too.’
    â€˜I’m not as lucky as that.’
    It was obvious that no conscious will in him had fought against death. He said, ‘She looks exactly like her mother did when she was that age.’
    â€˜That gave you the shock.’
    â€˜I thought at first it was my imagination. I used to look for likenesses in other women’s faces for years after she died, and then I gave it up. But this morning you used his name. He’s still alive, I suppose. I’d surely have read in the papers if he had died. Any millionaire gets an obituary in Switzerland. You must know him as you married his daughter.’
    â€˜I’ve met him twice, that’s all, and it’s enough.’
    â€˜You are not his friend?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜He’s a hard man. He doesn’t even know me by sight, but he ruined me. He as good as killed her – though it was no fault of