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by Laurent Binet

  And they’re not the only ones. Gabčík and Kubiš will meet lots of ordinary people ready to risk their lives in order to help them.

  150

  I’m fighting a losing battle. I can’t tell this story the way it should be told. This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect—and these people, these real people who actually existed. I’m barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts. I keep banging my head against the wall of history. And I look up and see, growing all over it—ever higher and denser, like a creeping ivy—the unmappable pattern of causality.

  I examine a map of Prague, marking the locations of the families who helped and sheltered the parachutists. Almost all of them paid with their lives—men, women, and children. The Svatoš family, a few feet from the Charles Bridge; the Ogoun family, near the castle; the Novak, Moravec, Zelenka, and Fafek families, all farther east. Each member of each of these families would deserve his or her own book—an account of their involvement with the Resistance until the tragic dénouement of Mauthausen. How many forgotten heroes sleep in history’s great cemetery? Thousands, millions of Fafeks and Moravecs, of Novaks and Zelenkas…

  The dead are dead, and it makes no difference to them whether I pay homage to their deeds. But for us, the living, it does mean something. Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory and console ourselves with memory.

  No reader could possibly retain this list of names, so why write it? For you to remember them, I would have to turn them into characters. Unfair, but there you go. I know already that only the Moravecs, and perhaps the Fafeks, will find a place in my story. The Svatošes, the Novaks, the Zelenkas—not to mention all those whose names or existence I’m unaware of—will return to their oblivion. But in the end a name is just a name. I think of them all. I want to tell them. And if no one hears me, that doesn’t matter. Not to them, and not to me. One day, perhaps, someone in need of solace will write the story of the Novaks and the Svatošes, of the Zelenkas and the Fafeks.

  151

  On January 8, 1942, Gabčík (limping) and Kubiš walk upon Prague’s sacred earth for the first time. I’m sure they marvel at the city’s Baroque beauty. First, though, they must deal with the three great problems facing any secret mission: accommodation, provisions, and identification. London has equipped them with fake ID cards, but it’s not enough—far from it. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1942, you must be able to produce a work permit. And, above all, if you are stopped in the daytime hanging around in the streets—which will often be the case for Gabčík and Kubiš during the coming months—you must have a very good reason not to be working. The Resistance talks to the doctor who treats Gabčík’s foot: he diagnoses an ulcer in Gabčík’s duodenum, and for Kubiš an inflamed gallbladder, thus establishing the two men’s inability to work. So their papers are in order and they’ve got money. Now they must find a place to stay. But as they will soon discover to their pleasure, there is no shortage of people willing to help them even in these dark times.

  152

  Don’t believe everything you’re told—especially when the Nazis are telling you. They tend to be wrong in one of two ways. Either, like big fat Göring, they are guilty of wishful thinking, or—like Goebbels Trismegistus (called “the human loudspeaker” by Joseph Roth)—they lie shamelessly for propagandist ends. And quite often they do both at the same time.

  Heydrich is not immune to this Nazi trait. When he claims to have decapitated and neutralized the Czech Resistance, he probably believes what he’s saying—and it’s not completely false. Even so, it’s a somewhat hollow boast. On the night of December 28, 1941, when Gabčík injures himself in a clumsy collision with his native soil, the state of the Resistance in the Protectorate is worrying but not entirely hopeless. They still have a few cards up their sleeve.

  For a start, Tri kralové (“the Three Kings”—the unified organization of Czech Resistance movements) is still operational, despite taking some heavy blows. The three kings are the heads of this organization: three former Czechoslovak army officers. On Heydrich’s arrival in January 1942, two of them are put out of action: one is shot, the other tortured in a Gestapo jail. But that leaves one—Václav Morávek (with a k at the end, thankfully, so he can’t be confused with Colonel Moravec, nor with the Moravec family, nor with Emanuel Moravec, the minister of education). He wears gloves all year round because one of his fingers was severed sliding down a lightning conductor to avoid a Gestapo patrol. The last of the three kings is intensely active in coordinating what remains of his network, and continues to risk his life. He is waiting for what his organization asked for months before—the arrival of the parachutists from London.

  Morávek is also the conduit for the incredible information sent to London by one of the greatest spies of the Second World War—a high-level German Abwehr officer called Paul Thümmel (code name A54; alias René). He alone was able to warn Colonel Moravec of the Nazi invasions of Czechoslovakia, of Poland, of France (in May 1940), of Great Britain (planned for June 1940), and of the USSR (in June 1941). Unfortunately, the countries in question were not always able or willing to heed such warnings. But the quality of the information greatly impressed London, and it was only through Morávek that it could arrive—because A54 was based in Prague and, prudently, wanted to deal with only one Allied agent. So he is one of Beneš’s trump cards, and the president spends whatever it takes to keep him onside.

  At the other end of the chain are the ordinary Resistance fighters—little people like you or me, except that they are willing to risk death by hiding comrades, storing materials, and delivering messages. They form a significant Czech shadow army, which can still be counted upon.

  Gabčík and Kubiš may only be two men, charged with fulfilling a daunting mission. But they are not alone.

  153

  In a Prague apartment in the Smichov district, two men wait. They jump when the bell rings. One of them gets up and opens the door. A man walks in, quite tall for the time. It’s Kubiš.

  “I am Ota,” he says.

  “And I’m Jindra,” one of the men replies.

  Jindra is the name of one of the most active internal Resistance groups, organized by a sport and physical culture association, the Sokols.

  They pour tea for the newcomer. A heavy silence is finally broken by the man who introduced himself in the organization’s name:

  “I would like you to notice that the house is guarded, and that we each have something in our pocket.”

  Kubiš smiles and takes a pistol from his jacket. (In fact, he’s got another one up his sleeve.)

  “I like toys too,” he says.

  “Where have you come from?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Our mission is secret.”

  “But you’ve already told lots of people that you’ve come from England.”

  “So what?”

  A silence, presumably.

  “Don’t be surprised that we don’t trust you. There are many double agents in this country.”

  Kubiš says nothing. He doesn’t know these people. He may need their help, but he’s clearly decided that he’s not answerable to them.

  “Do you know any Czech officers in England?”

  Kubiš agrees to name a few. He responds more or less graciously to some other potentially embarrassing questions. The second man intervenes. He shows Kubiš a photo of his son-in-law, who’s gone to London. Kubiš recognizes him, or doesn’t recognize him, but he seems at ease because he is. The man who called himself Jindra speaks again:

  “Are you from Bohemia?”

  “No, from Moravia.”

  “What a coincidence—me too!”

  Another silence. Kubiš knows he’s being tested.

  “Could you tell me whereabouts?”

  “Near Třebíč,” Kubiš replies grumpily.
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  “I know that area. What would you say is unusual in the train station at Vladislav?”

  “There’s a beautiful clump of rosebushes. I guess the station boss likes flowers.”

  The two men start to relax. Kubiš adds:

  “Don’t be offended by my silence. All I can tell you is the mission’s code name: Anthropoid.”

  What’s left of the Czech Resistance tends to be guilty of wishful thinking. For once, it’s not wrong.

  “You’ve come to kill Heydrich?” asks Jindra.

  Kubiš is stunned:

  “How do you know that?”

  The ice is broken. The three men drink more tea. Now everyone who’s anyone in the Prague Resistance will be at the service of the two parachutists from London.

  154

  For fifteen years, I hated Flaubert. I held him responsible for a certain kind of French literature—devoid of grandeur and imagination, content to portray mediocrity, wallowing in the most boring sort of realism, reveling in the very petit bourgeois universe it claims to denounce. And then I read Salammbô, which immediately became one of my ten favorite books.

  When I had the idea of going back to the Middle Ages to sketch the origins of Czech-German hostilities, I wanted to find a few examples of historical novels whose action takes place before the modern era. I thought again of Flaubert.

  While composing Salammbô, Flaubert worries in his letters: “It’s History, I know that. But if a novel is as boring as a scientific book…” He also felt that he was writing “in a deplorable academic style,” and then “what bothers [him] is the psychological aspect of [his] story,” all the more so as he must “make people think in a language in which they never thought!” Regarding research: “When I research a word or an idea, I let my mind wander into infinite daydreams…” This problem goes hand in hand with that of veracity: “As for my archaeology, it will be ‘probable,’ that’s all. As long as no one can prove that what I’ve written is nonsense, that’s all I ask.” There I’m at a disadvantage: it’s easier to be proved wrong about the registration number of a Mercedes in the 1940s than the harnessing of an elephant in the third century before Christ.

  Even so, I am comforted by the idea that Flaubert, long before me, writing his masterpiece, felt this same anguish and asked himself these same questions. I am also reassured when he writes: “Our worth should be measured by our aspirations more than our works.” That means I’m allowed to make a mess of my book. Everything should come together more quickly now.

  155

  Unbelievable—I’ve just found another novel about the assassination! It’s called Like a Man, and it’s by a certain David Chacko. The title is supposed to be a rough translation of the Greek word anthropoid. The book is extremely well researched. I get the impression the author has utilized everything currently known about Heydrich and the attack—even some fairly obscure (and sometimes questionable) theories such as the hypothesis that the bomb contained poison. I was greatly impressed by the mass of details he’s gathered and I’m inclined to think they’re authentic, as I haven’t found a single one that I know to be false. This has forced me to qualify my opinion of Seven Men at Daybreak, the Alan Burgess novel I had previously thought rather fanciful. I had been particularly skeptical about the swastika branded on Kubiš’s ass. I also condescendingly picked up on a glaring error regarding the color of Heydrich’s Mercedes, which the author claimed was green. But David Chacko’s novel agrees with Burgess’s on both points. And since I haven’t otherwise been able to spot a single mistake in his book—even with very specific details that I had imagined, in a fit of slightly delirious pride, were perhaps known only to me—I am bound to trust what he writes. Suddenly I start questioning myself. But this Mercedes—it was black, I’m sure. Not only in the army museum at Prague, where the car was exhibited, but also in the numerous photos that I checked. Obviously, in a black-and-white photo, it would be easy to confuse black with dark green. And admittedly there is some controversy over the exhibited Mercedes: the museum claims it’s the original, but certain people dispute this, saying that it’s been re-created (with the blown tire and the smashed rear right door) as an exact replica. But even if it is a replica, surely they would have made sure they got the color right! Anyway, I’m probably attaching too much importance to what is, at the end of the day, just a background detail. I know that. In fact it’s a classic symptom of neurosis. I must be anal-retentive. Let’s move on…

  When Chacko writes: “The castle could be entered in several ways, but Heydrich, the showman, always came and went by the main gate, where the guard was,” I am fascinated by his certainty. I wonder: “How does he know? How can he be so sure?”

  Another example. This is a dialogue between Gabčík and Heydrich’s Czech chef. The chef is telling Gabčík about the security surrounding Heydrich in his own house. “Heydrich scorns protection, but the SS take their job seriously. He’s their leader, you know. They treat him like a god. He looks like they say they all want to look. The Blond Beast. They actually call him that in the service. You won’t be able to truly understand Germans until you realize they mean it as a compliment.”

  Chacko’s art resides in his skill at integrating historical fact—Heydrich really was nicknamed the Blond Beast—into psychologically acute dialogue. It is through dialogue that he turns history into fiction. And I must say, loath as I am to use this method, that he does it very successfully: I was really gripped by several passages. When Gabčík replies to the chef, who has just given him a terrifying description of Heydrich, “Don’t worry. He’s human. There’s one way to prove that,” I cheered as if I were watching a Western.

  Obviously, the scenes in which he describes Gabčík being given a blow job in the middle of the living room, or Kubiš jerking off in the bathroom, are probably invented. I know that Chacko doesn’t know if Gabčík was given a blow job, nor (if he was) in what circumstances, and he certainly doesn’t know where or when Kubiš jerked off: this kind of scene, by its very nature, has no witnesses—well, with a few rare exceptions—and Kubiš had no reason to tell anyone about his little jerk-off sessions, and he didn’t keep a diary. But the author deals perfectly with the psychological dimension of his novel, which is full of interior monologues, and makes no claims to exact historical accuracy. Indeed, the book opens with the formula: “Any similarity of characters or events to real persons or actual events is coincidental.” In other words, Chacko wanted to write a novel—well researched, admittedly, but without being a slave to the facts. So he bases his tale on a true story, fully exploiting its novelistic elements, blithely inventing when that helps the narration, but without being answerable to history. He’s a skillful cheat. A trickster. Well… a novelist, basically.

  Now that I look at the photos more carefully, I’m unsure about the color. The exhibition was several years ago, so perhaps my memory is betraying me. But I really see it black, that Mercedes! Maybe my imagination is playing games with me? When the time comes, I’ll just have to decide. Or verify the truth. One way or the other.

  156

  I asked Natacha about the Mercedes. She remembers it being black as well.

  157

  The more powerful Heydrich grows, the more he behaves like Hitler. Now, like the Führer, he tortures his colleagues with long, impassioned speeches on the destiny of the world. Frank, Eichmann, Böhme, Müller, and Schellenberg listen quietly to their boss’s delirious commentaries as he bends over a map of the world:

  “The Scandinavians, the Dutch, and the Flemish belong to the Germanic race… the Middle East and Africa will be shared with the Italians… the Russians will be driven back beyond the Urals and their country will be colonized by peasant soldiers… the Urals will be our eastern border. Our new recruits will do their national service there and they’ll be trained in guerrilla warfare as border guards. If anyone’s not willing to fight tooth and nail, I’ll let them go, I won’t do anything to them…”

  Intoxicated by his own powe
r, Heydrich—like his master—already imagines himself master of the world. But there’s still a war to be won, Russia to be conquered, and a long list of heirs to supplant. Heydrich’s star may still be rising through the black night of the Reich, but even looking at it optimistically, all of this is very premature.

  The battle between Hitler’s potential successors has always been ferocious. Where does Heydrich fit in, stuck out here in this backwater? Many people, fascinated by his evil aura and using his meteoric rise as evidence, argue that he would have ended up succeeding (or deposing) the Führer.

  But in 1942, the road to the highest peak is still long. More than ever, Heydrich is being wooed by the first rank of pretenders. Göring, Bormann, Goebbels—all try to lure him away from Himmler, who jealously watches over his right-hand man. Even if his new role in Prague and his responsibility for the Final Solution have given him an added dimension, Heydrich is not yet quite at their level. Göring is still officially the regime’s number two and Hitler’s designated successor, even if he’s fallen well behind in the race to succeed Hitler. Bormann has replaced Rudolf Hess at the head of the Party and by Hitler’s side. The propaganda machine controlled by Goebbels is, more than ever, propping up the regime. Himmler is in charge of the Waffen SS, whose combat divisions are covering themselves in glory on every front, and he is also in total control of the system of concentration camps—two areas where Heydrich has no power.

  Even if his position as Protector now allows him to short-circuit the hierarchy above him by appealing directly to Hitler, Heydrich still hasn’t decided to supplant Himmler. However insignificant Himmler may look, Heydrich knows his boss should not be underestimated. And besides, his position as number two in the SS means he can hide behind Himmler if the need arises, allowing him to bide his time until he becomes so powerful that he need fear no one.