The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [70]
We scrambled down a bank and walked along the beach. White sand, white surf, pale girl in the white moonlight. Zofia has a way of walking with her head down and her hands behind her, just like Miernik. She said, “Tadeusz thinks he startled you today, with the guns.”
“Well, he shoots a lot better than one would expect. Where did he learn that, in the army?” (Trap! Miernik was never in the army!)
“No,” said Zofia, “he was never in the army. He had asthma. But he was trained to shoot when he was a youth. Everyone had to learn a sport, the authorities wanted to do well in the Olympics. Tadeusz couldn’t run because of his asthma. He was a very good wrestler and boxer, but he always lost to boys who were less good because he ran out of breath. They said, all right, you don’t need to breathe to be a marksman. They discovered he was a kind of genius with firearms. My father said it was because Tedeusz is wholly lacking in aggression—when he shot, there was no emotion. The target was just a target, not an enemy. So he was very cool. It was an intellectual problem—trigonometry with noise. But Tadeusz hated it, and as soon as he got out of school he stopped competing. The authorities were very upset. Tadeusz managed to lose several competitions and they finally let him go. They realized he was losing on purpose. I suppose the Americans won the gold medals in shooting as a result. I’m sure Tadeusz’s lack of patriotic fervor is noted down in his dossier.”
For everything Miernik does there is a simple explanation.
Zofia and I walked on until we came to a rock formation that blocked the way. We walked back barefooted through the fringe of the tide; the water of the Red Sea was warmer than the air. We encountered no bandits. When we reached the camp everyone had gone to bed. I put the Walther in one of my boots and fell asleep with the sharp smell of the pistol in my nostrils. I dreamed in great detail of a Miernik. Not Tadeusz.
66. FROM MIERNIK’S DIARY.
Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen blühn?* What fragrance can be smelled through a mask? I carry the curse of a witness. I do not live, I observe life. I thought that Ilona would carry me into the center of experience. With this girl I would see only the dark of my eyelids, I would smell, touch, hear—feel. But who stood beside the bed in Rome, looking down on the hairy body and the silken body joined together? Who heard the groans and the whispers? Who observed the fluids dripping down to stain the sheets? Miernik. The real Miernik, the true. As the hairy one ejaculated into the tight purse of Ilona’s belly, he was more a part of the cold witness than of Ilona. Life has no power over me. I have been trained by experts not to live. Death itself does not interest me: it is the final act of life: only that. Life is not enough.
Still in all, I am not yet perfect. I know remorse. I am as wracked by guilt as a drunkard. I go to sleep with a groan, awake with a cry. “Filthy bastard!” I mutter, conversing with myself. These interior dialogues I have with the true Miernik are my last form of prayer: “God damn you!” Since childhood I have wished to summon a force more powerful than the real Miernik. “Loathe him!” I instruct the saints, with a finger pointed at my heart. If Kalash is among the sons of Mohammed, I was begotten by Augustine. “O Lord, make me pure—but not yet.”
Here in the desert I have lost all desire for Ilona. Even if she put her mouth on me I would not change. She does not know this: that flagrant kiss for Nigel in Cairo was designed to show her power. I realized, watching his hands on her body, that even she means nothing