after forty years has been debunked. Instead, he sits in his office straining to get any fix on the kind of person Kiril really is. Stern can’t imagine what went on inside the man, as he was standing before the King of Sweden to receive his medal, only a few feet away from the person from whom he had literally stolen the right to acclaim. Did he bother to rationalize? Or did he simply pretend even to himself that the theft had never occurred? The latter was Stern’s guess. But that, in truth, was the only thing we could do when it came to the inner life of others—guess. Donne had declared that
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