Free Doctor Fischer of Geneva Or The Bomb Party by Graham Greene Page A

happy Christmas to you all. I didn’t see the General in church. I hope he’s not ill. Ah! There he is.’ Yes, there the Divisionnaire certainly was, framed in the church doorway like a portrait of a Crusader, stiff as a ramrod in the back and in one rheumatic leg, with his conquistador nose and his fierce moustache – it was difficult to believe that he had never heard a shot fired in anger. He too was alone.
    â€˜And Mr Deane,’ Mrs Montgomery exclaimed, ‘surely he must be here. Why, he’s always here if he’s not filming somewhere abroad.’
    I could see we had made a very bad mistake. Midnight Mass at Saint Maurice was as social as a cocktail party. We would never have got away if at that moment Richard Deane had not appeared from the church, swollen and flushed with drink. We just had time to notice that he had a pretty girl in tow before we escaped.
    â€˜Good God,’ Anna-Luise said, ‘a party of the Toads.’
    â€˜We couldn’t have known they would be there.’
    â€˜I don’t believe in all this Christmas business, only I want to believe – but the Toads . . . Why on earth do they go?’
    â€˜I suppose it’s a Christmas habit like our tree. I went last year alone. For no reason. I expect they were all there, but I didn’t know any of them in those days – in those days – it seems years ago. I didn’t even know that you existed.’
    Lying happily in bed that night in the short interval between love and sleep, we could talk of the Toads humorously, as though they were a kind of comic chorus to our own story which was the only important one.
    â€˜Do you suppose that the Toads have souls?’ I asked Anna-Luise.
    â€˜Doesn’t everyone have a soul – I mean if you believe in souls?’
    â€˜That’s the official doctrine, but mine is different. I think souls develop from an embryo just as we do. Our embryo is not a human being yet, it still has something of a fish about it, and the embryo soul isn’t yet a soul. I doubt if small children have souls any more than dogs – perhaps that’s why the Roman Catholic Church invented Limbo.’
    â€˜Have you a soul?’
    â€˜I think I may have one – shop-soiled but still there. If souls exist you certainly have one.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You’ve suffered. For your mother. Small children don’t suffer, or dogs, except for themselves.’
    â€˜What about Mrs Montgomery?’
    â€˜Souls don’t dye their hair blue. Can you imagine her even asking herself if she has a soul?’
    â€˜And Monsieur Belmont?’
    â€˜He hasn’t had the time to develop one. Countries change their tax laws every budget, closing loopholes, and he has to think up new ways to evade them. A soul requires a private life. Belmont has no time for a private life.’
    â€˜And the Divisionnaire?’
    â€˜I’m not so sure about the Divisionnaire. He might just possibly have a soul. There’s something unhappy about him.’
    â€˜Is that always a sign?’
    â€˜I think it is.’
    â€˜And Mr Kips?’
    â€˜I’m not sure about him either. There’s a sense of disappointment about Mr Kips. He might be looking for something he has mislaid. Perhaps he’s looking for his soul and not a dollar.’
    â€˜Richard Deane?’
    â€˜No. Definitely not. No soul. I’m told he has copies of all his old films and he plays them over every night to himself. He has no time even to read the books of the films. He’s satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can’t be satisfied.’
    There was a long silence between us. We should in the nature of things have fallen asleep, but each was aware that the other was awake, thinking the same thought. My silly joke had turned serious. It was Anna-Luise who spoke the thought aloud.
    â€˜And my father?’
    â€˜He has a soul all right,’