Doctor Fischer of Geneva Or The Bomb Party Read Online Free PDF

love with hatred. She couldn’t explain that to her daughter, but I could imagine the way it went – how he thrust his way in, as though he were stabbing an enemy. But he couldn’t be satisfied with one final blow. It had to be the death of a thousand cuts. He told her he forgave her, which only increased her sense of guilt, for surely there had to be something to forgive, but he told her also that he could never forget her betrayal – what betrayal? So he would wake her in the night to stab her with his goad again. She learnt that he had discovered the name of her friend – that harmless little lover of music – and he went to the man’s employer and gave him fifty thousand francs to sack him without a reference. ‘That was Mr Kips,’ she said. Her friend was only a clerk – he wasn’t important – he was no better than a clone that you could replace with another clone. His only distinguishing feature had been his love of music, and Mr Kips knew nothing of that. To Doctor Fischer it was an added humiliation that the man earned so little. He wouldn’t have minded being betrayed by another millionaire – or so her mother believed. He would certainly have despised Christ for being the son of a carpenter, if the New Testament had not proved in time to be such a howling commercial success.
    â€˜What happened to the man?’
    â€˜My mother never knew,’ Anna-Luise said. ‘He simply disappeared. And my mother disappeared too after a few years. I think she was like an African who can just will herself to die. She only spoke to me once about her private life and that’s what I’ve told you. As I remember it.’
    â€˜And you? How did he treat you?’
    â€˜He never treated me badly. He wasn’t interested in me enough for that. But do you know, I think the little clerk of Mr Kips had really pricked him to the heart, and he never recovered from the prick. Perhaps it was then he learned how to hate and to despise people. So the Toads were summoned to amuse him after my mother died. Mr Kips, of course, was the first of them. He couldn’t have been happy about Mr Kips. He had in a way exposed himself to Mr Kips. So he had to humiliate him like he humiliated my mother, because Mr Kips knew. He made him his lawyer, because that shut his mouth.’
    â€˜But what did he do to Mr Kips?’
    â€˜Of course you don’t know what Mr Kips looks like.’
    â€˜I do. I saw him when I tried to see your father the first time.’
    â€˜Then you know he’s bent almost double. Something wrong with his spine.’
    â€˜Yes. I thought he looked like the number seven.’
    â€˜He hired a well-known writer for children and a very good cartoonist and between them they produced a kind of strip-cartoon book called The Adventures of Mr Kips in Search of a Dollar . He gave me an advance copy. I didn’t know there was a real Mr Kips and I found the book very funny and very cruel. Mr Kips in the book was always bent double and always seeing coins people had dropped on the pavement. It was the Christmas season when the book appeared and my father arranged – for money of course – a big display in every bookshop window. The display had to be at a certain height, so that Mr Kips bent double could see if he passed that way. A lawyer’s name – especially an international lawyer who doesn’t deal in popular things like crime – is never very well known, even in the city where he lives, and I think only one bookshop objected for fear of libel. My father simply guaranteed to pay any costs. The book – I suppose most children are cruel – became a popular success. There were many reprints. There was even a strip-cartoon in a newspaper. I believe my father – and that must have given him great pleasure – made a lot of money out of it.’
    â€˜And Mr Kips?’
    â€˜The first he knew about it was at