The Harrowing off Heaven

By Paul Gray

DOCTOR FISCHER OF GENEVA OR THE BOMB PARTY

by Graham Greene; Simon & Schuster; 156 pages; $9.95

Though he set his 20 previous novels in widely different locales, Author Graham Greene has always concentrated on a single terrain: the shadow zone where betrayal meets despair. This moral penumbra may fall across an entire country or bisect a drawing room or a double bed. Ordinary people can pass through it ignorantly and unharmed, save for the occasional grotesque accident. The only ones constantly in jeopardy are the marginal men in a skeptical century, those knowingly burdened with a soul that is eligible for damnation.

One of the ongoing marvels of Greene's career has been his ability to restate his central vision so often while repeating himself so seldom. His latest novel continues this extended performance splendidly. No one familiar with his fiction could possibly mistake Doctor Fischer of Geneva for the work of anyone else or conceivably stop reading the book because it feels familiar. As uncannily as ever, Greene extracts surprise from the inevitable.

Alfred Jones, in his mid-50s, translates business letters for a chocolate concern at Lake Geneva. He lives alone, the sum of past subtractions. He lost his parents and his left hand during the London blitz in 1940; his wife died giving birth to a daughter who did not survive. Just as arbitrarily as it deprived him, life suddenly holds out a reward. He meets Anna-Luise, a beautiful woman 30 years his junior, and falls in love. More amazing still, she loves him in return. The sole threat to their happiness is the possible opposition of her father, Doctor Fischer, who earned his immense fortune by inventing a toothpaste called Dentophil Bouquet. Jones visits his prospective father-in-law and learns with relief that the doctor seems utterly indifferent to his daughter's plans. Only after the wedding does Fischer do anything at all: he invites Jones to a dinner party. Anna-Luise responds with horror and begs her husband not to expose himself to Fischer's corrupting power. "Oh, all right," she says after much argument, "go and be damned."

Greene characters do not make such remarks casually, and Jones quickly finds himself a spectator at a perverse theological banquet. Doctor Fischer's party consists of the host heaping humiliations and abuse on five wealthy guests, who have undergone this treatment many times before. They endure and come back for more of the same because Fischer passes out handsome gifts at the end of each dinner. "For several years now I have been studying the greediness of the rich," he explains to Jones. "They'll do anything to get their presents for nothing." And so, he goes on, will people accept any cruelty from God, as long as a sop is thrown to them now and then to forestall suicide. "For example," he tells Jones, "you are a poor man, so he gives you a small present, my daughter, to keep you satisfied a little longer." Fischer's doctrine is the most important clue in Greene's moral thriller; two climaxes are promised and then delivered. Fischer's crisis will come when he exhausts his powers to humiliate. Jones will face his when he loses Anna-Luise.

Although it would be comforting to report that the sympathetic Jones comes off better than the doctor, matters are not that simple. True, Jones does not torture people, but that might be simply because he is less important than Fischer in an unimaginably malignant cosmos. Greene, the artist, does imagine this universe as the worst and not necessarily the only possible one. It is always a mistake to understand him too quickly or simply. If preached from a pulpit, the theology bandied about in this novel would empty most churches in seconds. Says Fischer: "I wonder by the way . . . how one would revenge oneself on God. I suppose Christians would say by hurting his son." No character contradicts this view of religion as endless ferocity and agony, though a consolation is implied in the narrative: better to believe in this har rowing of heaven than in nothing.

Because of its brevity, Doctor Fischer of Geneva seems more parable than novel. Greene sometimes takes short cuts to the allegorical without first passing through the fictional. The reason for Fischer's vendetta against God and man is insufficiently anchored in credibility: his wife, now dead, betrayed him by sharing her love of classical music (which Fischer hated) with a lowly male clerk. The doctor's overresponse seems mad, while much of the novel's power stems from the likelihood that he is sane. This confusion may be irritating on the surface; it also serves the author's purpose perfectly. Doctor Fischer coexists. He chases the very vision of infinite betrayal that will confirm his trust; he pursues evil in the hope of finding its limit, and good on the other side. He meets himself, finally, on that border that Graham Greene long ago plotted for his age. --Paul Gray

Excerpt

"He gave me another of his little dangerous smiles...

'Goodbye, Doctor Fischer,' I said. I had nearly reached the door when he spoke again.

'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--'

'Porridge is a Scottish dish,' I said, 'not Welsh.'

'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?

'I didn't get on at all.'

'He was a beast to you?'

'I wouldn't say that--he was totally uninterested in both of us.'

'Did he smile?'

'Yes.'

'He didn't invite you to a party?'

'No.'

'Thank God for that'

'Thank Doctor Fischer,' I said, 'or is it the same thing?' "

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