Karkaroff wished he were the man others thought he was, because others thought him a coward.
True, he was a coward, and he knew it. But to others, that was all – a thin shell of fear enclosing total emptiness.
He wished it were so, because he could handle fear. It was everything else that unsettled him: the despair, the bitter regret, even something that tasted like sorrow as he curled to sleep on the hard Siberian ground, shivering under a ragged cloak.
Karkaroff wished he were merely a cardboard coward, instead of a three-dimensional human. It would hurt much less.