The Miernik Dossier (15 page)
Zofia has not changed at all. She is the same willful girl. It was my plan that she should go at once to Geneva and stay in my flat. I believe that Léon and Ilona would care for her until I am able to find a place for us to be together. But as soon as she heard of our trip to Sudan, Geneva was out. She insists on coming along. Paul merely shrugs when I discuss this with him. He agrees to discuss it with Kalash.
I have already made the mistake of mentioning the possibility to Nigel. Naturally he is opposed; I think perhaps he will change his mind when he meets Zofia. “This is not supposed to be an expedition on which one brings along one’s sister,” Nigel says. He points out the danger in the desert. He reminds me that Kalash speaks often of bandits. “You are putting your sister in danger of rape.” Actually I think he is just opposed to having to deal with another Miernik. I annoy him. It is more than his natural impatience now. . . . Ilona. Poor Nigel has found that he is not so nonchalant about this girl as he thought. It is impossible to regret what happened between Ilona and myself. I am shocked that I should feel such indifference to my betrayal of a friend, but there it is—a truth to be faced.
Tonight I thought nothing could intrude on my happiness. I have not felt such emotion or known such serenity since I was a child. On my way to collect Zofia, all my life flowed by in my memory. She is the last link to that short interval of happiness that I knew (and Zofia was too young to know) between my birth and the war and Mother’s death. Zofia suffered more from Father’s death than I. All capacity for sorrow was lost to me when Mother was killed. I have never until now been able to think about the details of that death. I mean think in words. The picture is in my mind at all times, and I push it down a hundred times a day.
We are walking across the field. The earth is still cold after the winter. It is muddy—streaks of wet earth slimy under our feet. The daisies have opened, and also some yellow flowers that must have been jonquils. There are cattle in the next field. We walk into the woods and suddenly we are surrounded by a group of Polish soldiers—ragged and filthy. They call themselves partisans but in fact they are stragglers, semi-criminals who have seized on the war as an excuse for banditry. Father had explained this to me and now I see that what he said was true.
They are bold with Mother. One of them touches her on the breast and she leaps away and, holding my hand, begins to run. Behind us I hear the hard breathing of running men. Mother slips on a patch of mud and falls. There is a long brown streak on her skirt, like filth. I try to help her up. I feel a blow on the back of my head. They are all around us. Mother lies on the ground, panting, her eyes filled with—not fear but contempt. “Tadeusz,” she says, “go home. I’ll be along.” I am pulled to my feet and kicked on the tail of my spine. The pain is nauseating. I run into the woods and hide, covering my eyes with my hands.
I hear a burst of machine gun fire. I creep back and find my mother’s naked body. They have pulled her dress upward over her head, so her face is hidden. On her stomach are five tiny blue holes, and under her body a pool of red blood. Her legs are pulled apart as if they wanted to break them from her body. I find her underclothes and pull the torn cloth over her legs, to cover her. I lift her body and pull down her dress. Her hair is loose and stained with the blood she coughed into it.
I knew what had happened to her. I did not want Father to know that Poles had done this. So I told him a German airplane strafed us. I was in such a state of shock I could hardly talk. But I could lie. Father never believed it. Never. But it was better that I could let him blame the Germans: he had sent us into the countryside so that we would be safe.
Nigel does not know what he does when he speaks to me of Zofia being raped by bandits in the desert.
42. R
EPORT BY
C
OLLINS.
My attempts to elicit details of Christopher’s adventure in Czechoslovakia have so far come to nothing. Christopher himself is uncommunicative, and Prince Kalash seems already to have forgotten the incident. It was, he says, a boring day spent in a boring country. Miernik will say nothing. He sits up much of the night, writing in his diary. He carries this journal with him in the small briefcase that he has in his possession at all times.
2. Last night (18th June) Miernik gave a celebratory dinner at the Hochhaus Restaurant to introduce us to his sister. Zofia Miernik is a beautiful and intelligent girl and she would have been the feature of the evening if Miernik himself had not turned up in evening clothes. He went ahead of us to the restaurant to supervise arrangements. He had booked the best table on the terrace, which has a marvellous view of Vienna. By the time we arrived, champagne (German variety) was chilling in ice buckets and a squadron of waiters was bowing and flourishing napkins. Miernik, in his double-breasted dinner jacket and old-fashioned starched collar (with
white
tie), looked rather like a trained bear. (Christopher’s description.) But as usual he had got exactly what he wanted: just the right table, just the right degree of obsequious service, just the right tunes from the orchestra. His helpless air is an illusion. He is a tyrannical stage manager.
3. Zofia Miernik arrived with Christopher. She was wearing a blue frock cut very low at the neck, which certainly was not purchased in Warsaw. She speaks fluent German with almost no accent. On meeting Prince Kalash, she revealed that her English is excellent as well. Whatever else they may be, the Mierniks (assuming that Zofia is in fact a Miernik) are an educated family. Once we were seated, Miernik had the champagne opened and stood for a toast. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I present to you my sister, Zofia, in the hope that your friendship for her will be as steadfast as your friendship for me.” We all drank, though I did so with understandable mental reservations. Miernik then began snapping his fingers at the waiters, and a meal was served that actually began with caviar and ended with baked Alaska. Obviously it cost a fortune, but one assumes that Miernik has adequate sources of money.
4. I attempted to interrogate Zofia. A look of amusement crept over Christopher’s face. Miernik apparently had less confidence in his “sister’s” discretion; he was distinctly nervous. I asked Zofia how long she planned to remain in Vienna before returning to Poland. “I plan to travel for some time,” she said. How exactly did she travel to Vienna? Was it not inconvenient to leave Poland? “Friends were very kind,” Zofia said, “it was a very enjoyable journey—so much to see I had never seen before.” Yes, but how did she come— by air? by railway through Berlin? “By car, mostly. You’ve no idea how bad the roads are in the people’s democracies—but even that is preferable to flying; one is likely to land in a meadow or on a strip of country road.” She told of a friend who had flown to Bulgaria. Every hour or so, the old Dakota nosed over and bumped down in a field. Peasants came scrambling out of the woods carrying cages with chickens in them and blanket rolls, elbowing each other away from the door of the aircraft in a free-for-all rush for the seats. Some sat on the floor, eating sausages. Fifteen years under Communism has not deprived Zofia of her sense of class consciousness; as she mimicked the Bulgarian peasants she might have been a duke’s poor relation trying to talk in Cockney. If all this was produced by the Polish secret service they have a right to be pleased with their methods. Prince Kalash asked Zofia to dance and she rose and followed him onto the floor (H.R.H. does not let females walk ahead of him, of course). The Viennese were frozen in the middle of their fox-trots by the sight of this towering black holding a perfect Aryan specimen in his arms. As they danced it was plain that Prince Kalash would be raising no objection to Zofia’s joining our expedition. After they returned to the table, Zofia excused herself. Prince Kalash, lifting his wineglass and giving Miernik a friendly glance, observed: “Your sister has beautiful breasts. That is rare in a white woman.” Miernik has learnt that Khatar’s style of speech is never meant to be insulting. “I’m very happy you think so, Kalash,” he said. “Since childhood Zofia has been quite beautiful.” But when we returned to the hotel, Miernik was careful to escort his sister to her room himself, and I’m sure he advised her to lock the door.
5. After Zofia Miernik had retired, and her brother had gone out for his usual midnight walk, Christopher rang me up and invited me to the bar. Over a cognac he told me that Miernik was determined to take Zofia along on the remainder of the trip. Prince Kalash is, as I predicted, more than willing. “Miernik is afraid you’ll be disagreeable about it,” Christopher said. “I am to use my influence with you to persuade you to accept the inevitable.” There was no basis on which I could openly object to her coming along. I said I thought it was a bad idea to introduce a girl into the situation, especially such a good-looking one. Christopher refuses to see a problem. No doubt his instructions as well as his instincts tell him to keep an eye on Zofia. Once again I tried to implant the idea that Zofia cannot possibly be Miernik’s sister. “I don’t see why not,” Christopher said. “I don’t look anything like my brothers and sisters. Besides, what difference does it make?” There is between us a sort of cousinship; he sees that I am an agent like himself, and he understands. Each of us takes it for granted that the other is under discipline, though nothing has ever been stated in the open about this. There are limits to this kind of a relationship: I cannot cross the boundary to ask him what precisely he was doing in Czechoslovakia. He cannot come over to my side to volunteer any information. The conversation dwindled down to an hour of good-natured chaff about the Mierniks. “If they do have the same father,” Christopher said, “the old man must have been under an enchantment. He got old Tadeusz while he was still a frog, and Zofia after he was turned into a prince.” That’s as good a theory as any I’ve been able to put forward.
43. R
EPORT FROM THE FILES OF THE
V
IENNA CRIMINAL POLICE.
The body of a well-dressed male was discovered at approximately 1015 hours on 19 June in the Prater, in shrubbery between the Hauptallee and the Trotting Course. Discovery was made by Fräulein Hilde Schenker, who had entered the park with the purpose of bird-watching.
There was no identification on the body. Through comparison of fingerprints taken from the cadaver with those in the central police files, it was established that the dead man was one Heinz Tanner, aged about forty, domiciled at III. Vienna, Baumgasse 17.
The body showed no marks of violence. The preliminary ruling of the ambulance physician was that Tanner had died of natural causes, probably of a heart attack.
An autopsy was ordered after the identity of the dead man was established. Time of death was approximately 0130 hours 19 June. Examination of the mucus of the nose and throat, of the lung tissues, and of the other internal organs revealed traces of cyanide. Forensic investigation suggests that cyanide was introduced into the body in the form of a spray.
This leads to the conclusion that the victim was murdered, probably by an assailant who approached and sprayed cyanide into Tanner’s face from extremely close range.
A similar method has been used twice in the past year. The victims were the leader of a Polish émigré group in Munich (18 October) and a young woman in Berlin (11 January) who was suspected of being engaged in espionage activities.
Tanner’s dossier shows a history of contacts with known representatives of foreign intelligence services. (See secret files.)
It is assumed that this crime was politically motivated. No information of any kind relating to this crime is to be made available to the press, which has already reported that an unidentified man died of natural causes in the Prater on the relevant date.
44. N
OTATION BY THE
A
MERICAN STATION IN
G
ENEVA.
Records of the Swiss federal police indicate that Tadeusz Miernik was absent from Switzerland last October 17—18 and on January 11. In both cases he reentered the country by train.
Christopher reports Miernik was absent from his hotel from midnight until at least 0130 on 19 June, the date of Tanner’s death.
Vienna is asked to withhold this information from its Austrian police liaison for the time being.
*
World Research Organization: A specialized agency of the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. It carries out research on social questions (e.g., crime, discrimination, medical care, political organization) and publishes reports that take into careful account the sensitivities of its 101 member nations. WRO has a professional staff of 400, representing 71 nationalities. The Organization has always attracted large numbers of Intelligence operatives from a wide variety of countries. Employment by WRO is regarded as excellent “cover” because it provides diplomatic Immunity and, in the eyes of the host country, professional respectability. WRO is typically the base, rather than the target, of intelligence agents who are unwittingly employed by it.
*
A Brazilian national of Polish-Russian birth who is believed to have contacts with Soviet intelligence. He travels frequently in Eastern Europe with the ostensible purpose of negotiating contracts for the purchase of goods manufactured in Western countries.
*
”You shall abstain, shall abstain! /That is the eternal song.” (A quotation from Goethe’s
Faust.)
*
”A11 men become brothers.” (From Schiller’s “An die Freude.”)
*
A Czech prison, equivalent to the Russian Lubiyanka.
45. R
EPORT BY
C
HRISTOPHER.
21 June.
Journal of the Miernik Expedition (cont’d): We rose at five and were on the road by six. Through most of the morning it was a silent ride, partly because of the gray weather, partly because of the strain created by Zofia’s presence. Collins does not like having her along, and he is not one to conceal his emotions. He is now barely civil to any of us.
We arrived in Innsbruck in time for lunch. After the meal, Kalash and Miernik went off to find a cuckoo clock for some relative of Kalash’s, and Zofia and I went for a walk through the town while Collins stayed with the car. Zofia was subdued; I don’t know whether it’s a reaction to the excitement of the other night, or whether she’s disturbed by Collins’ hostility. We passed a music shop and I took her inside and bought her a guitar. She was delighted by the gift and kept the instrument with her when we got back in the car. As we climbed toward the Brenner, she played a little and the Polish songs brought a smile to Miernik’s lips. Even Collins softened a little and asked for a couple of songs.
There was still a lot of snow beside the road at the top of the pass. We stopped at the summit and walked around shivering in our summer clothes. It was a brilliant day at that altitude, with the Dolomites rising through the clouds to the south. Kalash got out his camera and posed us all against the snowy backdrop. Miernik moved as the shutter clicked, then volunteered to take a shot of all of us with Kalash. Collins said, “Miernik, why do you always jump about when your picture is being taken? Kalash has a whole roll of film showing one American, one Englishman, and a Polish blur.”
There was difficulty at the Italian frontier over Miernik’s passport. The
commandante
of the border post was puzzled that Miernik should have been given a thirty-day visa on a passport that expires in eleven days’ time. Moreover, he does not like Polish passports. He examined every page of the little brown book and subjected Miernik to an hour of questions. It was all very polite, but Miernik was in that state of acute distress which any contact with men in uniform seems to produce in him. It was hard to blame the Italian for being suspicious. Zofia, it turns out, is traveling on an Ecuadorian passport. (This document may well be genuine; it shows her true name and actual date and place of birth; no doubt Kirnov has an obliging friend in some Ecuadorian consulate.) Kalash, too, is a rare bird to appear at an Alpine outpost, and both Collins’ passport and mine are filled with suspicious visas and stamps. By any standards, we are a peculiar group.
Kalash saved the situation in the end. He did not mind the wait (he has told me that he has no sense of time, a quality he regards as one more proof that he is a wiser and happier man than any white who grew up surrounded by clocks) but he saw that the rest of us were getting impatient. He strode into the customs post and we saw him through the window, talking to the Italian while Miernik fidgeted in the background. I thought he might try bribery, and I had a picture of all of us languishing in some damp jail in Bolzano.
Then we saw the
commandante
smile, nod, and sit down at his desk. He scribbled for a moment in Miernik’s passport and banged away at it with his rubber stamps. Miernik and Kalash emerged. “That man is a bureaucrat,” Kalash explained. “He needed a way to cover his tracks, but of course he hasn’t the imagination to invent a solution. I told him to cancel Miernik’s thirty-day visa and substitute one that expires when the passport expires. A great light broke in his brain, as perhaps you saw through the window. So we can go, taking this dangerous Communist along with us. I think I have a great future in diplomacy. Ambassador to some Christian country. It’s good for the mind to deal with the Catholics, they are so eager to be honorable. If that man had been an Arab, we could have given him some money and avoided all this bother. But where would the intellectual challenge have been?” He patted the roof of the car, as if rewarding a willing beast. “The Cadillac had a good deal to do with it as well,” he said. “Had we arrived on motorcycles, old Miernik would be in chains. A policeman always reckons that if one has money enough to buy a big car, one has money enough to buy a bigger policeman. He hesitates to trifle with a Cadillac. A Rolls-Royce would have been just as frightening in your palmy days, Nigel. No more, alas.”
“Such foolishness,” Miernik said, stamping around in the road, flourishing his passport. “If I were a spy I would not be coming into Italy on a Polish passport. Spies have American passports. He actually searched my sling for concealed weapons or maybe microfilm. I could not reason with him.”
Kalash pushed Miernik into the car and shut the door. “You really must speak to Miernik,” he said. “I found him talking Latin to that Italian. The man speaks perfectly good English. He asked me why Miernik was speaking Romanian if he was a Pole. Really, I’m surprised Miernik didn’t unpack his rosaries and wave them about.
Latin.
I ask you, Paul. He suffers from intellectual egomania.” As is his habit when he is overcome by disgust, Kalash went promptly to sleep in the back seat. I drove down the mountain, a good deal slower than Kalash had driven up the other side.
We arrived in Verona in the late afternoon. Miernik, of course, had all the Baedeker details. He took us on a walking tour of the city, ending in a grubby little courtyard in which is located, according to the tourist guides, the balcony of Juliet. Miernik denounced it as a fake. Kalash picked up Zofia and tossed her onto the balcony, which is not far above ground level. Then, standing with one hand on his heart, he recited Othello’s death speech.
“That’s the wrong play, Kalash,” Miernik said.
“I know it is, you bloody pedant. I never played Romeo at Oxford, at least not on stage. It’s a foolish play in any case, all Shakespeare’s plays are very foolish. People killing themselves for sex—an Italian might, I suppose. But a Moor? I rather like that line about taking the circumcised dog by the throat, though. My ancestors were certainly put off by all that English foreskin. Made the fairies among ’em shudder.
Autre pays, autres mœurs.
”
We walked on to the Albergo Due Torre for supper. The atmosphere seemed gay enough when we entered—music, dancing; eager waiters: Italy is the last outpost of cordiality. We ordered food and wine and sat back to enjoy the scene. At the next table was a party of Germans. One of them, a blond type in a coat with a belted back, rose and bowed to an Italian female child at the adjoining table. He called for a waltz and danced with the little girl, who must have been about eight years old. His companions, another man and two middle-aged women, laughed in delight. The German took the child back to her parents and thanked her with another deep bow. Then he sent her a big pink drink full of fruit, and bowed again, clicking his heels. Miernik watched coldly (as did all of us except Kalash), and Zofia stared fixedly at her wineglass. The Germans wore that air of racial superiority which some of them seem to think is the correct attitude for a traveler south of the Alps. It was apparent that they had been officers at one time, and they spoke Italian.
“Waffen
SS,” Collins murmured, “returning to the happy scenes of wartime duty.”
The violinist, a small, shriveled man wearing round smoked glasses (not sunglasses—old-fashioned smoked lenses, almost black), scuttled across the floor to the Germans’ table. He smiled and asked in broken German if he could play a German song for them. The man who had danced with the child gave him a cursory glance and named a song. The violinist played it. The other German requested a different song. None of the Germans paid any attention to the musician as he played; they went on with their conversation, laughing across the table at one another.
The Germans began by asking for songs everyone knows:
Röslein, Die Lorelei,
and so on. Then they changed to a long list of obscure German drinking songs. They gave the violinist no rest between tunes. As soon as he completed one they asked for another and demanded that he play each faster than the one before. “I want to see your fingers dance, Maestro,” said one of the Germans with a guffaw. He and his friends began giving the instruction in unison:
“Più rapido!”The
violinist obeyed them. He tap-danced around the table, pointing the neck of his violin at the ceiling and floor, wiggling his hips, smiling in a crazed desire to please. It was Pavlovian. Zofia said, “That man must have been in one of their camps.” I believe she was right. The skin of his face was drawn back in a desperate grin, his body jerked. It was like watching a skeleton dance out of the gates of Dachau.
In the middle of a tune, the Germans rose. The violinist continued his jig, the grin fixed on his face. He was running with sweat. The Germans dropped money on the table to pay their bill. Then the one who had danced with the child gave his companions a humorous wink. He took a thousand-lira note out of his pocket, spat on it, and slapped it on the violinist’s sweaty forehead. It stuck there. The violinist gave a high giggle and kept on playing with his head thrown back so the bill would not fall off.
Miernik’s chair went over backwards. He was standing and speaking to the Germans. He held a table knife in his hand. The Germans stood their ground, either astonished by this display of bad manners or unfrightened by a one-armed man with a dull knife. One of the German women carried a Pekingese in her arm; throughout the meal and the violin concert she had been feeding it and talking to it.
“One moment,” Miernik said. “I want to kill your dog.” The woman shrieked, and a look of real horror came into her eyes. Her husband stepped between the dog and Miernik. “You are drunk,” he said.
“Quite sober,” Miernik said. “Hand over the dog. We have been watching you and we have our orders. The dog must die.”
The German turned on his heel and began to herd his friends toward the door. “Halt!” Miernik shouted. “Come back or I shoot.” The Germans stopped and turned around again—all except the woman with the dog. She now had both arms around the animal. She stared at Miernik over her hunched shoulder. “You are insane,” she cried.
“How long have you been hiding this dog?” Miernik asked in the loud German he was speaking. “Speak up—and remember there are witnesses present.”
“Who are you?” asked the German. “You are not a German.”
“My name does not matter. It is enough that you know that I am an officer in the Dog Death Brigade. You have forgotten that dogs are not human beings. They are dogs.
Dogs.
Dogs who are shitting on our sacred soil, taking food from the mouths of good human children.”
The violinist looked from Miernik to the Germans, and his giggle changed to a spasmodic, snorting laugh. He had heard this sort of talk somewhere else. With his hand over his mouth, he scuttled away, the thousand-lira note fluttering to the floor behind him.
“If you did not have that arm in a sling,” the German said, “I would slap your face for you.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Miernik said. “Your late leader, Reichsführer Himmler, would do practically anything to protect a dog. He may be dead, but the kingdom of his ideas lives on. Take your dog and go. But remember: one day soon the gutters will run red with the blood of dogs.”
The German put his arm around his wife, who by this time was sobbing as she reassured her Pekingese in baby talk. They left. Miernik poured wine for all of us, and sat down.
For the remainder of the meal we talked about Puccini. Miernik believes that romantic composers prepared the ground for totalitarian politicians: both deal in illusions, knowing that the illusions people have about themselves as individuals and as nations are stronger than reality.
Miernik and Zofia retired early. Kalash, walking around the silent town with Collins and me, chuckled over our translation of Miernik’s confrontation with the Germans. “It’s nice to see him show a little wit,” Kalash said. “But you Europeans really are tribalistic. No hope for you, I’m afraid, until you pass out of this primitive stage and learn to be more cool-headed about all these enmities and superstitions.”
Later, passing Zofia’s room, I stopped, meaning to knock. Through the door I heard her voice and Miernik’s, speaking in Polish. I have to report that I felt no curiosity at all about what they might be saying; I was, instead, happy that Miernik at last had someone besides me to talk to late at night.
22 June.
Uneventful day, except for what sounded like a raging argument between Zofia and Miernik in Polish as we sped down the
autostrada
toward Naples. Thinking that there might be some substance in what they were saying, I used my dandy Zippo for the first time. This is not, incidentally, the least conspicuous device you could have given me. I don’t smoke, so I have to manipulate it inside my pocket. I leave you to struggle with the tapes. The car will be in the garage of the Albergo Commodore tonight. It will be loaded on the ship at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.
46. T
RANSCRIPT OF
M
IERNIK AND
Z
OFIA
M
IERNIK,
22 J
UNE,
“C
ADILLAC LOG” (TRANSLATION FROM
P
OLISH
).
| Z OFIA: | . . . not going to be a very pleasant ride if you go on like this. We went over all this last night. |
| M IERNIK : | Zofia, you never change. You do something horrid and then put the blame on those who want to help you. |
| Z OFIA : | Horrid? How horrid? I am an adult, Tadeusz, and I made the decision as an adult. There was nothing for me where I was. I was learning nothing. |
| M IERNIK : | But simply to quit without telling me. It was unfair— not to say dishonest. I should think you could have trusted me. And poor Sasha. When he couldn’t find you, think how he must have felt. |
| Z OFIA : | Sasha found me. He understood perfectly. |
| M IERNIK : | I don’t understand perfectly. You throw away your university degree, you go to live with a lot of scruffy people who call themselves artists, who are under constant surveillance by the police. It’s unbelievable. You might have put everything in danger. Suppose the whole group had been arrested? How would Sasha have found you then? |
| Z OFIA : | But all those things did not happen, Tadeusz. Sasha found me, I am here, all is well. And I have no use for a degree from Warsaw University that means nothing. |
| M IERNIK : | Nothing? It means the difference between a life as a professional, a teacher perhaps, and life as an outcast. Even in the West they attach some importance to education. |
| Z OFIA : | Tadeusz, I don’t want to teach. I am not a professional type. You are. I’m not. Also, I’m capable of taking care of myself. |
| M IERNIK : | Living five in a room with men and girls together, with no bath, with no proper papers? If that’s how you take care of yourself . . . We spent years building up a certain picture of you, and you tear it up on a whim. |
| Z OFIA : | Tadeusz, I wasn’t in any danger. I was quite happy, in fact. That’s something, isn’t it? To be happy in Warsaw while one is young? It was nothing terrible. Now, thanks to you and Sasha, it’s done with. If I ever want to go back to a university I can do it. |
| M IERNIK : | Irresponsible. When I think that I asked Sasha to help you, thinking the danger was so much less than it was . . . The danger was your fault. |
| Z OFIA : | There was no danger to Sasha. He can do anything. |
| M IERNIK : | Perhaps he can. But to ask him to take extra chances as you did. I don’t know how I can apologize to him. |
| Z OFIA : | If you do, he’ll laugh at you. It was a lark for Sasha. |
| M IERNIK : | You think everything is a lark. Life is not a lark. You have never been asked to do an ugly thing in your life. You could have ruined everything. |