The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [22]
BENTLEY: Making people unhappy is not what I like.
MIERNIK: It’s not you. Hasn’t he told you what’s happened?
BENTLEY: He? Who?
MIERNIK: Your Englishman.
BENTLEY: Nigel? What’s happened with you and Nigel?
MIERNIK: He gave me the sack. My government is taking away my passport.
BENTLEY: (Laughs). Oh, that. I thought it might be something else.
MIERNIK: You say “Oh, that?” This is not merely “Oh, that,” Ilona. If I go back to Poland, I go to prison. If I remain here or anywhere without papers I cease to exist. A man without a passport simply vanishes from life. He is a fugitive from everyone.
BENTLEY: I know. It’s terrible. I’m very sorry, Tadeusz, truly I am.
MIERNIK: What did you think I was talking about? There could be something worse?
BENTLEY: Not worse, more embarrassing. I thought perhaps you and Nigel had been comparing notes.
MIERNIK: Ilona!
BENTLEY: Men are men. I know how you can be.
MIERNIK: I cannot be like that. But I think your Englishman suspects something. He is very, very cold to me.
BENTLEY: Suspects something? How can he suspect anything unless one of us gives him reason?
MIERNIK: Have you given him reason?
BENTLEY: I haven’t seen him.
MIERNIK: Are you sure?
BENTLEY: What the hell is this, a police interrogation? What I do is my affair—not Nigel’s, and not yours either, my friend.
MIERNIK: I apologize. I didn’t mean . . .
BENTLEY: All right. I am not a piece of property.
MIERNIK: I have been wondering.
BENTLEY: Wondering what?
MIERNIK: If you would like to have dinner again. Tonight.
BENTLEY: I’ve eaten.
MIERNIK: Now you are angry.
BENTLEY: No, just not hungry.
MIERNIK: Tomorrow, then.
BENTLEY: I won’t be hungry tomorrow either, I’m afraid.
MIERNIK: I see. Once was enough.
BENTLEY: There is something I call Ilona’s Law. “Enjoy the experience but watch out for the aftermath.” I see it proved every day.
MIERNIK: Not with everyone with whom you have an experience, I expect.
BENTLEY: The vast majority.
MIERNIK: It’s a new experience for me to be in a majority of any kind. I don’t like it as much as I always thought I would.
BENTLEY: Miernik, you must stop feeling sorry for yourself all the time. With you, if it isn’t politics it’s sex. Why don’t you just live and make the best of things like everyone else?
MIERNIK: A good question. I think I won’t see you again. I thank you for everything.
BENTLEY: Look, Miernik, if you want to . . .
MIERNIK: Now it is I who say good-bye.
(Conversation terminates at 2006 hours.)
25. FROM MIERNIK’S DIARY.
5 June. Ilona phoned me at the office this morning and invited me to lunch. She drove me at an incredible speed out to Genthod to a restaurant beside the lake. We ate filets de perche and drank a great deal of Mont-sur-Rolle, sitting under the plane trees. Ilona ate her fish with her fingers, very rapidly. A ring of grease around her mouth from the fish. Why are the beautiful never disgusting? The more bestial they are and the more cruel, the better we love them. Ilona was—not contrite, but sorry she had been unkind when I phoned her Saturday night. She said I caught her at a bad time. She said she is like Nigel, all joy one moment and all black despair the next. When their moods coincide all is well. They must be marvelous lovers, or so I kept thinking as she chattered. We sat side by side on a bench. Watching her eat, I became sexually aroused. I hadn’t the courage to tell her this: she would have regarded it as a delightful new perversion.
Ilona wishes to be my friend. She says that friendship is the most extreme emotion of which she is capable. She calls her affair with Collins a sexual friendship. Ours, I think, is not to be that any longer. I am in difficulty and everyone must rally around, she told me. What could she do for me? She does not imagine that she can destroy me. She is the only beautiful girl I have ever had; I do not suppose that I will ever have another.
There is no longer any reason not to trust people. This flashed through my mind as Ilona and I talked. For years I have