pledge of faith, not the City of God ornof Marx, but the city called Peace ofnMind.” But having rejected Christianitynand politics, they are, like Querrynin A Burnt-Out Case, neverthelessntroubled by their own faithlessness andn”keep fingering it like a sore.” Theynmove through a desolate moral landscape,nunable to understand, as the priestntells Rosie at the end of Brighton Rock,n”the . . . appalling . . . strangeness ofnthe mercy of God.” And if, in the end,nthey come to any grudging acknowledgmentnof God, they are likely to echonMaurice Bendrix’s perverse prayer innThe End of the Affair: “O God, You’vendone enough. You’ve robbed me ofnenough. I’m too tired and old to learnnto love. Leave me alone forever.”nNearly a decade ago, in his autobiographyn(A Sort of Life), Greene suggestednthat an epigraph for all of his novelsnmight well be fashioned from a passagenin Browning’s “Bishop Bloughram’snApology”:nOur interest’s on the dangerous edgenof things.nThe honest thief, the tender murderer,nThe superstitious atheist, demi-repnThat loves and saves her soul in newnFrench books—nWe watch while these in equilibriumnkeepnThe giddy line midway.nGreene’s people struggle against God,nthe world and themselves. Having lostnor compromised their religious faith,nthey wander in the wasteland of then20th century trying to find some kind ofncertainty upon which to focus theirnexistence. But they insist upon framingnthe answers to their questions on theirnown terms; they will not heed the counselnof the Spanish theologian to “Ix)venGod as He is and not as you imaginenHim to be.”nThese are the kinds of characters whonmove through Doctor Fischer of Genevanor The Bomb Party, Greene’s latest andnshortest (142 pages) novel. They areneither people who try to keep theirnequilibrium on “the dangerous edge ofn34inChronicles of Culturenthings” or hedonists who have lost theirnmoral balance and fallen into the abyss.nAll of them have souls, but most ofnthem are damned.nWe follow the story of Doctor Fischernthrough the eyes of Alfred Jones, a ploddingnagnostic widower in his fifties whonis a translator for a chocolate firm innGeneva. He marries Anna-Luise (somenthirty years younger), who is the daughternof the enigmatic Doctor Fischer, theninventor and purveyor of a popularntoothpaste. The Eden of their marriagenis soon invaded by Fischer and his apostles.nThe Toads, as Anna-Luise callsnthem, a pathetic group of rich and greedyndecadents who eagerly submit to Fischer’snhumiliations in return for the expensivengifts he condescends to giventhem at his bizarre dinners.nDespite the warnings of his wife,nJones is ambivalently drawn to the edgesnof Fischer’s circle and attends two partiesnat which the Toads are further debasednby their greed. At the second andnfinal dinner, after the death of Anna-nLuise in a skiing accident and his ownnbungled suicide attempt, he confrontsnFischer, calls his bluff, and, because henhas finally learned something about lifenand love in his brief idyll with Anna-nLuise, wins a tenuous moral victory. Butnthe five Toads—a decaying matinee idol,na retired Swiss general, a Swiss tax advisernand influence-peddler, a shadowynsybarite, and a blue-haired older Americannwoman—go mindlessly on theirnways.nAt first glance the story seems to bena reprise of the spiritual agonies of manynof Greene’s characters, from PinkienBrown of Brighton Rock and the whiskeynpriest of The Power to Doctor Plarrnof The Honorary Consul and Castle ofnThe Human Factor— and a dozen othersnwho confront some kind of supernaturalnpower by whom they are both attractednand repelled.nAs Jones becomes fascinated bynFischer, he is warned by his wife, “He’snhell,” and after Jones observes thatn”You make him sound like Our Fathernnnin Heaven—his will be done on earth asnit is in Heaven,” she replies, “Thatnabout describes him.” Hints of Satanismnor deity are dropped throughout thenstory as Jones, for example, sees Fischernas “The King Toad of them all,” whoncreates the Toads just “as God creatednAdam,” “a bit like God Almighty,” whontantalizes and rewards or punishes hisncreations according to their slavish responsesnto his temptations.nBefore the first party Jones suspectsnthat he is being tempted by Fischer.n”I’m not Christ,” he tells his “wife as shenalludes to the Savior’s temptations innthe desert, “and he’s not Satan, and Inthought we’d agreed he was God Almighty,nalthough I suppose to thendamned God Almighty looks very likenSatan.” But gradually the agnostic Jonesnbegins to see Fischer solely as the embodimentnof evil.nAs the final party ends, Jones provesninvulnerable to Fischer’s power and thengreed of the Toads. As he looks at thencorpse of his tempter, he thinks, “Thisn. . . was the bit of rubbish I had oncencompared in my mind with Jehovah andnSatan.” Later he realizes that the deathnof his wife and the suicide of Fischernhave somehow given him a sense ofnpeace: “Our enemy is dead and our hatenhas died with him, and we are left withnour two very different memories ofnlove. The Toads still live in Genevanand I go to that city as seldom as I can.”nThus evil is “as dead as a dog, and whynshould goodness have more immortalitynthan evil?”nvJreene has always supplied enoughnambiguity to satisfy most critics, andnthis latest novel creates plenty of puzzlesnfor the symbol-minded. Is FischernSatan or God? Are the Toads the devil’sndisciples embarked upon a Ship of Foolsnfor a voyage of interminable pleasurenand humiliation? Are Anna-Luise andnher mother the innocent victims of theneternal struggle between good and evil?nDoes Jones represent the man or womannwho fights against evil and wins a costlynand temporary victory? Greene gives usn