The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [7]
3. NO INTEREST IF MIERNIK DILEMMA GENUINE.
10. EXCERPT FROM THE DIARY OF MIERNIK (TRANSLATION FROM POLISH).
19 May. In the park today I spoke to P. [Christopher] about my situation. He offered no assistance. I think that his sympathy is aroused, however. His American manners make him seem more open than anyone plausibly can be. At lunch I made a scene with K. [Khatar] over some joking remark he made concerning slavery. My emotions are raw, and I overdid it. Must write to apologize. Now, of all times, he (and all the others) are important to me.
11. LETTER FROM MIERNIK TO KALASH EL KHATAR.
19 May
My dear Kalash,
I wish to apologize for my unforgivable behaviour at lunch today. In justification I can only say that I was much disturbed by a personal matter, and I am afraid that I permitted this to colour my reaction to your joking remarks.
As you know, I have the greatest respect for.the culture of your people. Also, I have very great affection for you in spite of the fact that you are a member of the ruling class!
I hope very sincerely that you will consider that I never said to you the things that I said.
Several of our friends will be coming to my flat on Sunday night at eight o’clock for the small party I mentioned to you last week. I very much hope that you will reaffirm our friendship by coming along to the party, bringing with you whomever you wish to bring.
Your affectionate and very contrite friend,
[signed] T. Miernik
12. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.
The disintegration of Tadeusz Miernik went public Sunday night at a party in his apartment. Miernik invited a small group of people up for drinks. Usually these affairs of Miernik’s are anything but wild; the party on Sunday was an exception. Miernik himself made it so.
I arrived a little late and found Collins, Brochard, Khan, and three girls already on hand. Of the females, the most noteworthy was Ilona Bentley, Collins’ companion. She is half English, half Hungarian. She has black hair to her shoulder blades and a face that will be ruined before she is thirty. It is not yet ruined. A light burns under her skirt.
It was apparent early in the evening that Miernik had noticed all this. Ilona sat on the floor at Collins’ feet. Miernik sat opposite, saying nothing, his eyes fixed on the girl. He wore a suit, a vest, a tie, polished shoes. Everyone else, just back from the mountains on a Sunday evening, wore sweaters and corduroys.
For his guests Miernik had provided Polish vodka, and nothing else. The vodka, several bottles of it, was chilled in ice buckets. Miernik kept one bucket beside his chair, and he filled the glasses out of the dripping bottle as soon as they were emptied. He insisted that the stuff be drunk Slav style: no sipping, right down the hatch with a cry of good luck.
This sort of drinking did not bring good cheer to our company. Among them, in addition to the melancholy Miernik, we had a concentration camp survivor (Ilona); a man who saw his three young brothers murdered by a Hindu who decapitated the little corpses and hung the heads around his neck on a string (Khan); a victim of mass rape by Russian troops (Brochard’s girl, an Austrian named Inge); and a veteran of the Maquis (Brochard).
Brochard was attempting to lighten the mood by singing bawdy songs. This failed because no one else knew all the French words, and because Collins wanted to hear about Brochard’s experiences as a boy guerrilla.
Brochard’s Maquis group operated, during the war, in the country around Geneva. He comes from a small town in the Jura. He joined the Maquis as a runner when he was only twelve. Apparently the Resistance felt that the Germans were not intelligent enough to suspect children. Brochard found out different when he was thirteen. He was arrested by a German patrol, which seized him as he bicycled from one village to another at two o’clock in the morning. The Germans took him to their headquarters, where he was questioned by a Wehrmacht officer. Brochard managed to get rid of a kitchen