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The working-class district of Žižkov in eastern Prague is supposed to have the highest concentration of bars in the whole city. It also has lots of churches, as you’d expect in the “city of a hundred bells.” In one of these churches, a priest recalls that a young couple came to see him “when the tulips were in flower.” The man was short, with thin lips and piercing eyes. The young woman, I know, was charming and full of joie de vivre. They seemed to be in love. They wanted to get married, but not straightaway. The date they wanted to book was precise but uncertain: “two weeks after the war ends.”
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I wonder how Jonathan Littell, in his novel The Kindly Ones, knows that Blobel had an Opel. If Blobel really drove an Opel, then I bow before his superior research. But if it’s a bluff, that weakens the whole book. Of course it does! It’s true that the Nazis were supplied in bulk by Opel, and so it’s perfectly plausible that Blobel possessed, or used, a vehicle of that make. But plausible is not known. I’m driveling, aren’t I? When I tell people that, they think I’m mental. They don’t see the problem.
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Valčík and Ata (the Moravecs’ young son) have just had a miraculous escape during a police inspection that ended in the deaths of two parachutists. They are hiding out in the concierge’s apartment and telling him the story of their misadventure. I could tell this story, too, but what would it add, I wonder, to have yet another scene from a spy novel? Modern novels are all about narrative economy, that’s just how it is, and mine can’t keep ignoring this parsimonious logic. So, basically, all you need to know is that it was because of Valčík’s cool head and his perfect grasp of the situation that he and Ata were not arrested or killed.
Seeing how strongly this adventure and he himself have impressed the teenage boy, Valčík tells him helpfully:
“You see this wooden box, Ata? The Krauts could beat it till it started to talk. But you, no matter how much they beat you, you must say nothing. Nothing, you understand?”
That line, by contrast, is not at all superfluous to my story.
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You might have guessed that I was a bit disturbed by the publication of Jonathan Littell’s novel, and by its success. And even if I can comfort myself by saying that our projects are not the same, I am forced to admit that the subject matter is fairly similar. I’m reading it at the moment, and each page gives me the urge to write something about it. I have to suppress this urge. All I will say is that there’s a description of Heydrich at the beginning of the book, from which I will quote only one line: “His hands seemed too long, like nervous algae attached to his arms.” I don’t know why, but I really like that image.
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This is what I think: inventing a character in order to understand historical facts is like fabricating evidence. Or rather, in the words of my brother-in-law, with whom I’ve discussed all this: It’s like planting false proof at a crime scene where the floor is already strewn with incriminating evidence.
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Prague in 1942 looks like a black-and-white photo. The passing men wear crumpled hats and dark suits, while the women wear those fitted skirts that make them all look like secretaries. I know this—I have the photos on my desk. All right, no, I admit it. I was exaggerating a bit. They don’t all look like secretaries. Some look like nurses.
The Czech policemen directing the traffic look strangely like London bobbies with their funny helmets. And just when the Czechs had adopted the system of driving on the right …
The trams that come and go to the sound of little bells resemble old red-and-white train carriages. (But how can I know that, when the photos are in black and white? I just know, okay!) They all have round headlights that look like lanterns.
Neon signs decorate the façades of the buildings in Nové Město, advertising beer, brands of clothing, and Bata, the famous shoe manufacturer. In fact, the whole city seems to be covered in writing—and not only adverts. There are Vs everywhere: originally they were symbols of the Czech Resistance, but the Nazis appropriated them as an exhortation to the Reich’s final victory. There are Vs on tramways, on cars, sometimes carved into the ground; Vs everywhere, battling it out between two opposed ideologies.
Graffiti on a walclass="underline" Židi ven—Jews out! In shop windows, a sign to reassure the customers: Čisté árijské obchod—pure Aryan shop. And in a bar: Zada se zdvorile, by se nehovorilo o politice—Customers are kindly requested not to talk politics.
And then those sinister red posters, written in two languages like all the city’s road signs.
And that’s without even mentioning flags and other banners. Never has any flag signaled its meaning so powerfully as this black cross in a white circle on a red background.
Prague in the 1940s didn’t lack style, even if serenity was harder to come by. Looking at the photos, I keep expecting to see Humphrey Bogart among the passersby, or Lida Baarova, the beautiful and famous Czech actress who was Goebbels’s mistress before the war. Strange times.
I know a restaurant called the Two Cats in the old town, under the arcades: there’s a fresco above it, with two giant cats painted on either side of an arch. But as for the inn the Three Cats, I don’t know where it is or even if it still exists.
Three men are drinking there, and not talking politics. Instead, they’re talking timetables. Gabčík and Kubiš are sitting at a table opposite a carpenter. But this is no ordinary carpenter. He’s the carpenter at Prague Castle, and in this capacity he sees Heydrich’s Mercedes arrive every day. And every evening, he sees it leave.
Kubiš is talking to him because the carpenter is a Moravian, like him, and the familiar accent reassures him. “Don’t worry, you’re going to help us before, not during. You’ll be a long way away when we shoot him.”
Oh, really? So this is Operation Anthropoid’s great secret? Even the carpenter who’s being asked merely to provide the timetable is, without any further ado, told exactly what’s going to happen. I did read somewhere that the parachutists were not always rigorously discreet. Then again, is there any point in trying to conceal everything? The carpenter is hardly going to believe that they’re asking him for Heydrich’s schedule because they’re compiling traffic statistics. But when I reread the carpenter’s testimony I see that Kubiš did tell him, in his best Moravian accent: “Don’t breathe a word of this at home!” Well, as long as he told him …
So every day the carpenter has to write down the time of Heydrich’s arrival and departure. He also has to note whether or not he’s escorted by another car.
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