I could have painted that scene for them, and beautifully. I wonder whether, if I had offered, I might have found another way out, might have survived by my brush at the whim of another fiat power. I did not. I went dumbly as a penitent, in a car that had been one of the palace fleet, its roof cut open now and bars welded to the upright pillars of the frame so that it was somewhere between a flatbed truck and a mobile stocks. I thought they would bring me to trial or simply send me to the border—the way they talked, it seemed as if I might be exiled, and the idea was more terrible than I would have thought. To leave, knowing one will return, is exciting. To leave and hear the key turn in the lock is banishment, and a blade in the soul. Exile, though, was better than I deserved.