The Miernik Dossier

54. FROM OUR DEBRIEFING OF ZOFIA MIERNIK (TRANSCRIBED SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THIS FILE).

You must understand that I was uncomfortable from the beginning. First of all, I had hardly ever seen any foreigners except for German soldiers when I was a child and the occasional Russian later on. Here I was, out of Poland for the first time in my life, and surrounded by a lot of my brother’s friends who spoke languages I had only used in school. I did not always understand exactly what they were saying-the talk went back and forth so quickly, they were all so clever and sardonic. My friends in Warsaw were artists, serious people who suffered all the time and talked only of themselves and their painting and sculpture-which, incidentally, no one would ever be able to see because it was decadent. I am not a melancholy person and I used to long for gaiety.

Now I had more gaiety than I knew what to do with. I found all of them charming. Paul I liked at once. He seemed so kind and so free of envy and sadness-exactly as I had always imagined an American to be. Of course he did a generous thing for me at the very beginning, so I was grateful to him. Nigel was another matter. As things went on I realized that he was nothing like as cold and sarcastic as he seemed at first. As for Prince Kalash, I ask you to imagine the impression he made upon me, this enormously tall, absolutely black man with the manners of a king. He frightened and fascinated me.

I did not like Ilona at all, at the start or afterward. I liked her less when I saw the state Tadeusz was in when we got to Cairo. All his life my brother had been a morose person. He was easy to hurt. Ilona had hurt him badly. He thought she had made him happy, but she is not the sort to make anyone happy for very long. When first I saw her I realized the sort of girl she was. I am no puritan. I have nothing against sex. But there should be, if not actually love, then some feeling between people. Ilona was in-capable of feeling. Her aim in life was only sensation. Nigel was already her lover. Nigel was my brother’s friend. She used them against each other to increase her own pleasure. She would have used Paul as well but he was too strong for her.

Back to Cairo. Ilona and Tadeusz met us when we drove up to the hotel. They had been together for five days. My brother, following along behind her, had been transformed into a lapdog. He cringed with love for her. The change in him was nauseating. From a man with a brilliant mind and the very best instincts he had changed into a character out of a pornographic novel. His eyes never left her. Her eyes never touched him-except in amusement. When Nigel got out of the car, Ilona embraced him, pushing her whole body against his, and kissed him passionately. With her tongue. On the steps of the hotel, surrounded by strangers and servants. Tadeusz actually staggered at the sight. I looked at Tadeusz, looked at Ilona-and knew what the situation was. It was a shock. Perhaps it seems comical, but I had always assumed that my brother was a virgin. He has always been more like a priest than anything else. In fact, that’s what he wanted to be when he was a boy and I don’t think he ever entirely got over the idea. He was super-religious. To get mixed up with someone as carnal as Ilona must have torn him apart. His suffering was pathetic.

Q. We’d like to know a little more about the boat trip. Did anything happen that you thought was important?

A. No, nothing. It was a dreadful trip from the viewpoint of the food and the surroundings. A dirty ship, awful food. Kalash was sick most of the time. He complained about the bunk, which of course was too short for him. I believe he had to sleep on the floor. Nigel kept to himself a great deal. He was very moody, even short-tempered. When we got to Cairo I understood why. Paul and I were together a lot-most of the time. I played the guitar he had given me. He told me about his home in America. He comes from the mountains. Also, he wrote me a poem every night. He writes lovely poetry, but only when he has been drinking. It’s odd how sad his poems can be, when on the surface he is such a happy person.

Q. Was it on the ship that you and he…?

A. That’s not really your affair, is it? The answer is no. Everything happened much later. On the ship I knew what would happen eventually. We were young and together. From the start there was feeling between us. The details belong to Paul and to me.

Q. Of course they do. Our interest is not salacious. We are trying to understand the relationships, that’s all. Now, can we talk about Cairo? What happened there?

A. Not a great deal. There was the situation with Ilona. Nigel and Tadeusz began at that time to feel like friends again, I think. They realized neither of them was to blame. Ilona loved every minute of it. I make her sound cruel. It’s not that. She is amoral. What others feel does not affect her. I stopped detesting her when I learned about her past. How could she be a whole person after Belsen? But whatever the reasons, she is what she is, and she causes great, great pain. Things went on more or less as before-it was a holiday. It started out as a holiday. We had jolly times.

We went to the museum and saw the mummies. We found restaurants-life for these people takes place mainly in restaurants. We swam in the hotel pool. We drank big glasses of alcohol, various kinds of gin drinks. Except for Kalash, who is a strict Moslem. He drank lemonade.

We stayed only two days. On the first morning, Kalash and Nigel went off together somewhere in the car. Ilona left the hotel before any of us were awake and did not come back for breakfast. Nigel and Tadeusz were in a state. Where could she be? Nigel asked Kalash at breakfast if he had spent the night with Ilona. He made it into a joke, but it was no joke. Kalash said no, he had not seen her since the night before. When she came back she had a beautiful amber necklace she said she had bought in a bazaar. She tried it on for us; it was a necklace for a queen. She told a very amusing story about her bargaining with the Egyptian who sold her the necklace. She mimicked him, she mimicked herself. All the time I knew she was lying. I had seen the very same necklace in a shop in the hotel. Later I went by and asked if they still had it. “Ah, miss! Your dark-haired friend, the beautiful girl, bought it last night!” Why tell such a story? Paul too went off by himself and was gone for a long time. Everyone scattered, it was noticeable.

Tadeusz and I were left by ourselves. I bought a bathing costume and sat by the pool in the sun. Tadeusz sat with me, writing in his diary. He kept watching the door for Ilona. For once he had no brotherly advice to give me. He asked me a few questions about Paul. When I said I liked him Tadeusz beamed. He loved Paul Christopher. He kept telling me what a kind and honest boy Paul was. The others he liked-he was loyal to his friends. Paul he loved. A man can love a man, you know. Their friendships, when they are deep as Tadeusz’s and Paul’s seemed to be, are almost love affairs. They forgive each other and trust each other much more easily than they can do with any woman. A great romantic, Tadeusz. He was born into the wrong age. He was the ugly knight, Paul the beautiful knight. The ugly always think they owe something to the beautiful. Hence Ilona. And Paul.

Q. You never found out where everyone went?

A. I never asked.

Q. And the next day you left in the car? That was July second.

A. The next day we left in the car. We started down the Nile. After we had driven out to the Pyramids and the Sphinx. We all had our pictures taken on a camel in front of the pyramids. All except Tadeusz, of course.

Q. Why not Tadeusz?

A. He always hated being photographed. It amounted to a psychosis. He believed himself to be the ugliest man alive. Even now I have no picture of him. Once he told me, “If you have no photograph of me, you’ll remember my actions instead of my face. I don’t want you to be reminded each time you look at a photograph what a poor piece of work God made of me.”