The Miernik Dossier (20 page)

The Cadillac is not designed for this kind of travel. It overheated several times and twice got stuck in the sand when the wheels slid off the harder surface of the dirt road. It is obvious that we are going to have to have a second vehicle, a Land Rover or a Jeep, if we are going to make it to El Fasher. Kalash agrees and tells us that we’ll have no trouble buying what we need in Port Sudan. If we live, we’ll arrive there tomorrow morning. I’ve no doubt that Kalash can accomplish anything in Sudan. When we arrived at the frontier, he stopped the car, spoke one sentence in Arabic, received a smart salute from the guard, and drove right on through. “Now, Miernik, you can stop worrying about clerks and passports,” Kalash said. “In Sudan, my name is your passport.”

We camped last night by the sea on a cliff a few miles above the town of Dunqunab. Kalash chose the spot carefully. It is, he says, exactly opposite Mecca across the Red Sea. He prayed for quite a long time at sunset and sunrise, facing in the holy direction, while the rest of us shuffled around in embarrassment. There is something incongruous about Kalash, of all people, prostrating himself and banging his head on the ground. But his religiousness is obviously genuine, while it lasts. As soon as he says his final “amen” and slaps the dirt off his robes he is the Kalash we have always known and loved: bitter tongue, sardonic eye, stiff pecker. “I have gone forty-eight full hours without a woman,” he told me tonight as he turned away from Mecca; “we really must do something about this monastic arrangement of tents.” Kalash has only one tone of voice: distinct. His words were clearly audible to the girls; Ilona flashed a joyful smile at Zofia. It was not returned.

While the girls made supper, Kalash and Collins opened the secret compartment of the Cadillac and extracted an armload of weapons: three Sten guns and a couple of German automatics. The two of them bought these firearms in Cairo. Kalash thinks we may need them when we get into bandit country. While Kalash and Collins sat at the camp table, loading clips from a pile of cartridges, Miernik pulled me aside. “Paul, you must protest! We must get rid of these guns. We were not consulted about this at all. It’s dangerous merely to carry these things! Suppose we are stopped by the police?” I told him I didn’t think the Sudanese police would present much of a problem to Kalash. Moreover, if there were bandits along the route, we’d need something to scare them off with. “Bandits?
Bandits?
Nigel spoke of bandits, but I thought it was a joke,” said Miernik. “I cannot take Zofia where there are bandits.” He was in a state of great agitation, and even now, when I have all but concluded that he is straight from the KGB, I feel a little sorry for him. Even if he’s acting all the time, letting his emotions crawl all over the surface of his skin must be bad for his nerves. Dealing with him is certainly bad for mine.

Finally he consented to shoot at a target with the rest of us. Collins turned out to be competent with the submachine gun and the pistol: he shoots fast, without sighting, a pretty certain sign that he’s had training. Kalash is not too bad for an amateur. I shot as awkwardly as I could, still building cover. (Collins grinned at me, absolutely sure that I was faking it.) Collins had been goading Miernik all through the shooting, apologizing for the noise, telling him to stand well back, warning him about shooting himself in the foot. By the time Miernik’s turn came, he was angry. His lips were set, his eyes were turned aside, and he looked (as he usually does when he is disturbed) as if the sweat was ready to burst through the pores of his face. He took the Sten gun out of Kalash’s hand, slapped a clip into the receiver, and stepped up to the mark. He was as steady as a rock and the picture of perfect shooting technique. Every round in the bull’s-eye with the Sten. Every round in the bull’s-eye with the pistol. He stared at Collins contemptuously, tossed him the empty Walther, and stalked away.

It was a remarkable display of shooting. And a remarkable breakdown in self-control. “Well,” said Collins. “Isn’t
that
interesting?” Kalash took off his sunglasses and watched Miernik’s thick figure tramping up the little hill that separated us from the camp. “If I were you, Nigel,” he said, “I’d be very careful about creeping into Ilona’s bed while that Communist is about.”

We have been eating well out of the cans. Ilona is an inventive cook and a very efficient one, a circumstance that gives me one more opportunity to mention that appearances can be deceiving. Zofia, who shines with domesticity, exhausted her kitchen lore when she made tea in the Czech farmhouse and sliced all that bread and cheese and salami for Kirnov and me: she cannot open an egg without breaking the yolk. Whereas Ilona, whom the Marquis de Sade would have picked out of the crowd across a football stadium (if Ilona didn’t spot him first), is a treasure. “I like to wife about,” Ilona will say, stirring up a
sauce béchamel over
the camp stove, or sewing on buttons for Miernik. She complains, as we all do, that Kalash will allow us no wine. “How can I make sauces without Chablis?” Ilona demands.

“I won’t have you ruining the desert with your filthy Christian ways,” says Kalash. “Once your liver is cleaned out, your disposition will improve, Ilona. You’ve always been a most agreeable girl, but your thoughts are muddy. You stumble in your speech. Wine, my dear, wine is what does it.”

After dinner, while Ilona sat on the ground, scratching Kalash’s feet (his father, the Amir, has a concubine who is the most accomplished foot-scratcher in Islam), Miernik got out a notebook and interviewed Kalash about his ancestry. What was his exact relationship to the Prophet? “One doesn’t go about reciting these pedigrees, Miernik. Put away your pen and enjoy the evening.” Miernik persisted. “Very well,” said Kalash. “I am of the sons of Mohammed and his wife Kadija, who was the Prophet’s first convert, and who died after the Prophet was besieged in Mecca.”

Miernik was impressed. “I had no idea,” he said, scribbling on his pad. “Well,” Kalash said, “no one else has, either. The family has scrolls with the genealogy all marked down. But is it true? What is true at the point where the Holy Koran leaves off? The Khatar family always had a lot of weak blood, younger sons who didn’t like to lop off heads and testicles as the line of the elder sons to which I belong always enjoyed doing. They sat about in our mountain strongholds, watering the family tree. Not exactly objective scholarship, but good enough for my ancestors. From what the Koran says I think the Prophet must have been a good deal like my father—a big strong fellow who knew how to enjoy this world while waiting for the ineffable pleasures of the next. He started the custom of using the sword on those who were reluctant to believe in the heaven of Islam. Showed the beggars how wrong they’d been. Before their heads had rolled to a stop they found themselves in outer darkness, regretting they hadn’t listened to one of my forebears. My family have always been enthusiastic missionaries. I learned how to handle a sword before I could talk. Very important skill in a world teeming with infidels. Can you handle a sword, Miernik?”

A full moon was shining. The air over the desert was so clear that you could see the lunar craters and mountains and seas with the naked eye. Zofia and I went for a walk; the sea was not far away and I thought she’d enjoy a stroll along the beach. (She had never seen salt water until we got to Naples.) About a hundred yards from the camp I heard running footsteps behind us: Miernik. He handed me a loaded pistol. “What is that for?” I asked. “Better to have it and not need it than the other way around,” Miernik said. Zofia giggled. I took the clip out of the gun, putting the ammunition in one jacket pocket and the weapon in the other.

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.  F
ROM
M
IERNIK’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 to me. The knowledge filled me with guilt: I had cuckolded my friend, brought this girl to a hundred orgasms, walked with her through the streets of Rome with my secretions swimming in her womb. And for nothing. The jealousy that I felt in Naples (and before, and even while Ilona whimpered under me) would never come again. Yet it gave me a moment of life before I subsided into my coma.

So, on with the sleepwalking. Kalash cuts a magnificent figure in his robes. In the desert he becomes a fragment of nature absolutely at peace, walking on the bones of his ancestors. He says it will take ten days to reach El Fasher. It is almost fifteen hundred miles over awful roads, through desert. The Cadillac will be worn out by the time we get there. Or perhaps before. Kalash is quite prepared to walk if necessary. I am not; I have promises to keep. In Port Sudan we bought a Land Rover from some cousin of Kalash. We had a mechanic check it over, and it seems to be all right. We have a chain to pull the Cadillac if necessary. The Land Rover cost five thousand dollars; I do not like to think what the price might have been if we had bought it from someone to whom Kalash was not related. Kalash, of course, carries no money: what king does? Christopher and Collins between them contributed three thousand. That meant that I had to make up the balance from Zofia’s rucksack. It was a painful moment. Nigel :“Come, come, Miernik, we all know you’ve got a lot of money on you. Give.” How could he know? He could not. It’s part of his tactic to penetrate me: he is like a clumsy window washer, hanging above the street, smearing the pane with a dirty rag. When at last he can see inside he will mistake the scene for something it is not. In many ways Nigel is a stupid man: he mistakes harassment for domination, and cheap curiosity for imagination. But it was better to pay than to be marooned in the desert.

That prospect pleases me less all the time, because of Zofia. Where she is concerned I am alive. She is a dull pain for me; worry has coiled around my stomach for her ever since I was left with responsibility for her. She looks like Mother—slimmer, and her gaiety has not yet turned into kindness—but otherwise she is very like her. Mother found me comical too, but with the same forgiveness.

Kalash’s machine guns awakened my anxiety. He really does believe in the possibility of bandits. That aspect of this country was not covered by my research: I know the language, the history, the religion. Knowing the names of everything does not equal knowledge. Knowledge is what I gained in that grove of trees in Poland, dressing Mother’s corpse. Hearing the Sten guns go off, smelling the cordite, I listened for a woman’s shriek.

This time, Zofia. I did not want to leave her alone out of sight beyond that hill. Prey: my sister might be prey to some band of animals. (I never have sex that I do not smell the woods where Mother died: ferns rotting in the damp earth: Ilona said the first time that I smelled of ferns: I was startled into another passion when I thought myself empty.) As I got ready to shoot, Nigel once again tried to annoy me, and he succeeded. I knew what the look on his face would be after he saw me shoot. Miernik?
A marksman?
He was suitably astonished.