Doctor Fischer of Geneva Or The Bomb Party by Graham Greene

‘Sit down, Jones.’ Then there was a long silence. For once it seemed that he was at a loss for words. I looked at the cracker and he picked it up and put it down again and the silence went on and on, so it was I who eventually spoke. I accused him. ‘You didn’t come to your daughter’s funeral.’
    He said, ‘She had too much of her mother in her.’ He added, ‘She even looked like her, when she grew up.’
    â€˜That was what Mr Steiner said.’
    â€˜Steiner?’
    â€˜Steiner.’
    â€˜So! Is that little man still living?’
    â€˜Yes. At least he was a few weeks ago.’
    â€˜A bug is difficult to finish,’ he said. ‘They get back into the woodwork where your fingernail won’t reach.’
    â€˜Your daughter never did you any harm.’
    â€˜She was like her mother. In character as much as in face. She would have harmed you in the same way given the time. I wonder what sort of Steiner would have come out of the woodwork in your case. Perhaps the garbage man. They like to humiliate.’
    â€˜Is that what you brought me here to say?’
    â€˜Not all, but a little part of it, yes. I have been thinking ever since the last party that I owe you something, Jones, and I’m not in the habit of running up debts. You behaved better than the others.’
    â€˜The Toads you mean?’
    â€˜Toads?’
    â€˜That was your daughter’s name for your friends.’
    â€˜I have no friends,’ he said in the words of his servant Albert. He added, ‘These people are acquaintances. One can’t avoid acquaintances. You mustn’t think I dislike such people. I don’t dislike them. One dislikes one’s equals. I despise them.’
    â€˜Like I despise you?’
    â€˜Oh, but you don’t, Jones, you don’t. You are not speaking accurately. You don’t despise me. You hate me or think you do.’
    â€˜I know I do.’
    He gave at that assurance the little smile which Anna-Luise had told me was dangerous. It was a smile of infinite indifference. It was the kind of smile which I could imagine a sculptor temerariously and heretically carving on the inexpressive armour-plated face of Buddha. ‘So Jones hates me,’ he said, ‘that is an honour indeed. You and I expect Steiner. And in a way for the same reason. My wife in one case, my daughter in the other.’
    â€˜You never forgive, do you, even the dead?’
    â€˜Oh, forgiveness, Jones. That’s a Christian term. Are you a Christian, Jones?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I only know I’ve never despised anyone as I despise you.’
    â€˜Again you are using the wrong term. Semantics are important, Jones. I tell you, you hate, you don’t despise. To despise comes out of a great disappointment. Most people are not capable of a great disappointment, and I doubt if you are. Their expectations are too low for that. When one despises, Jones, it’s like a deep and incurable wound, the beginning of death. And one must revenge one’s wound while there’s still time. When the one who inflicted it is dead, one has to strike back at others. Perhaps, if I believed in God, I would want to take my revenge on him for having made me capable of disappointment. I wonder by the way – it’s a philosophical question – how one would revenge oneself on God. I suppose Christians would say by hurting his son.’
    â€˜Perhaps you are right, Fischer. Perhaps I shouldn’t even hate you. I think you are mad.’
    â€˜Oh no, no, not mad,’ he said with that small unbearable smile of ineffable superiority. ‘You are not a man of great intelligence, Jones, or you wouldn’t at your age be translating letters about chocolates for a living. But sometimes I have a desire to talk a little way above my companion’s head. It comes on me suddenly even when I’m with one of my – what did my daughter