The Miernik Dossier

45. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.

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.