Charles McCarry - The Miernik Dossier

“Why do you say that?” Zofia said sharply.

“The obvious reason, Zofia. If he has been kidnapped, then his captors must be very much aware of him. I know I am. Kalash, Nigel, the Amir-your brother is in everyone’s thoughts.”

She drew on her cigarette in the darkness. “You sound exasperated,” she said. “I guess I can’t blame you. This really is a stupid situation, and it’s all Tadeusz’s fault. I’d like to blame Kalash, but that’s unfair. My brother isn’t a child. Why should Kalash have held his hand? He wouldn’t have done it for you or Nigel. There would have been no need. With Tadeusz, there has always been that need. Things happen to him. He falls over everything.”

I couldn’t see Zofia’s face, but the tone of her voice fitted the words she was speaking. Her speech was flat, bitter, hopeless. If she did not believe Miernik to be the man he pretended to be, she was a gifted actress. There were only marginal reasons to doubt her. (None of my relatives knows what I really do for a living. Why should Miernik’s?)

“I will tell you a truth about Tadeusz,” Zofia said. “This quality he has of being a victim is not a fault. It’s his natural condition. It goes back to his birth. Each person is born intact, I believe, and is the same all through his life in spite of education, in spite of training, in spite of experience. No one ever changes. Tadeusz was born sad and clumsy. I’ll tell you something else. I have tried all my life to love him, and I’ve failed utterly. Pity I can feel for him; ever since I can remember I’ve been anxious not to hurt him. I have always done everything I could to make him certain that I, at least, love him. I can’t be sure he believes it, I don’t know how he can. But I hope he believes. Some people can be absolutely hopeless, unable to do the simplest thing, and still be lovable. Tadeusz is merely irritating. The more he tries to please, the more annoying he becomes. Had he come to Bratislava to fetch me instead of you, I don’t know what I would have done. I am so aware of his kindness, his loving nature. But I practically strangle with exasperation every time he does something for me. Of all the people my brother has ever known, only Sasha and you have been able to be patient with him. It’s a terrible thing. A person like Tadeusz traps anyone who feels sorry for him; he imprisons you in your own pity for him.”

Zofia fell silent. She was smoking one cigarette after another. Her voice, which is as light as a girl’s voice can be, had fallen into a monotone. She was ashamed of herself, but she couldn’t stop talking.

“When I was a child,” she said, “Tadeusz liked to play with me. I don’t mean games. He liked to dress me up, fondle me, it was like being a doll in a dollhouse. He would say something to me. Then he’d say, ‘Now you say…’ He’d give me my lines. It was Tadeusz speaking to Tadeusz out of my mouth, inventing my kindness. After Mother died he became my personal maid. I was very young, so I needed someone to help me get dressed and so forth. Each morning he’d wake me up with a wet kiss. Even as a young boy he had that very large head covered with black hair that stands on end, and big thick glasses covering his eyes. He’d get me up, wash me, dress me. He’d comb my hair for me. Everything he did with those hands of his hurt me. He pulled the hair right out of my head with the comb. He didn’t mean to, of course, the poor boy was trembling with the desire to be gentle. But he hurt me all the time. I used to squeeze my eyes shut and bite my lips to keep from screaming. I knew he would be devastated if I showed any pain. Father let him do it-I suppose he had my same feeling that to prevent him would be sadistic. Sasha talks about my spending all my time with him in the attic. Well, I loved Sasha-but I was up there playing the guitar mostly because it was a way to get away from Tadeusz. Tadeusz would follow me into the attic. Sasha taught him foreign languages with a kind of game. They would write each other secret messages out of foreign books. You pick the first word on a line, and note down the page number and the number of the line. Tadeusz would have to read and translate hundreds of words until he found the right one for his message. Sasha has a gift for making difficult things fun to do. Tadeusz loved this game of the book code. He always wanted me to play, but I could only do it with Polish books. I can’t tell you how glad I was when I reached an age where Tadeusz could no longer touch me. I don’t mean there was anything sexual in what he did. It was never that.”

Zofia gave a sudden deep laugh. “You know what I think?” she said. “I think my brother is a saint who was born too late. In the Middle Ages he could have gone into a monastery, where he would have been valued. By the time he was born, all the monasteries were closed. So he carries an invisible monastery around with him wherever he goes. In spite of everything he can do, the world keeps poking its fingers through the bars at him. Mouths whisper through the windows. Tadeusz cannot keep the world away from him, and now it really has got hold of him. I’ll bet he’s lying in some place a lot like this one, bound hand and foot, hungry and sore and thirsty and frightened out of his wits. And do you know what he’s thinking? He’s thinking, ‘What will happen to Zofia without me? Will she finish university? Has she had a good supper?’ It’s maddening, Paul. He’ll die, perhaps. And if he does, he won’t die screaming with fright, but muttering with worry.”

I remembered Miernik, kneeling in the moonlight at Kashgil with the Sten gun at his shoulder, and the tape recording of his session on the floor with Ilona, and the way he boxed me into going to Czechoslovakia, and a good deal besides. Zofia’s explanation of the book code didn’t much move me. To me Miernik didn’t seem quite the passive bungler Zofia made him out to be. Or any more in need of love than the monk she imagined he should have been. Miernik had found his monastery, all right. It was one of the last ones left, I thought sardonically, and the abbot was Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria and his spiritual successors. This was my last sardonic thought about Miernik.

Zofia still couldn’t sleep. I really could not listen to any more analysis of her brother. The girl and I lay in the oasis, talking about the stars. To keep her from telling me more about Miernik, I named all the constellations I could remember: Gemini, Orion, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Cygnus, Serpens. We calculated the distance to Alpha Centauri in miles and kilometers. Had Miernik been there he could have traced the connection between the prechristian myths after which the stars are named and the religious anxieties of the nuclear age. But he was down the road somewhere.

16 July. We started north again at sunrise. I was lightheaded and a little raw from lack of sleep. Both Zofia and I had painful sunburns. As we traveled north, the country became rougher and what little vegetation there had been ran out; we were only a hundred miles or so from the edge of the Libyan desert, and the air was hot to the touch, like the bottom of a cooking pot. The Land Rover, running in low gear and four-wheel drive most of the time, overheated. I kept on adding water from the jerry cans I’d filled at the oasis, straining out the green slime and the sand through a T-shirt.

I navigated as best I could with a compass and the relief map Kalash had given me. The map was an old British job and not always accurate; I thought often that I was lost when hills appeared before me that were not marked on the map, but finally I concluded that many features of the country simply had not been noted. I expected to find the ALF on the other side of every hill. The Land Rover, its motor roaring and its load rattling, seemed louder by the moment. Any terrorist within two miles could have heard us coming.