252
The most appropriate tribute paid by the Nazis to Heydrich’s memory was not Hitler’s speech at his zealous servant’s funeral, but probably this: in July 1942 the program to exterminate all Poland’s Jews began, with the opening of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Between July 1942 and October 1943, more than two million Jews and almost fifty thousand Romany will die as part of this program. Its code name is Aktion Reinhard.
253
What is he thinking of, this Czech worker behind the wheel of a van one morning in October 1943? He drives through Prague’s winding streets, a cigarette in his mouth, and his head, I imagine, full of worries. Behind him, he can hear wooden crates or boxes sliding around and banging against the walls in rhythm with the curves through which he passes. Whether because he’s late or just because he’s impatient to get his chore over with so he can go and have a drink with his friends, he is driving fast over the snow-damaged tarmac. He doesn’t see the little blond figure running along the sidewalk. When this figure rushes into the road with that suddenness typical of children, he brakes—but it’s too late. The van hits the child, who rolls into the gutter. The driver does not know that he has killed little Klaus, eldest son of Reinhard and Lina Heydrich. Nor does he know that this moment of inattention will see him sent to a concentration camp.
254
Paul Thümmel (alias René, alias Karl, alias A54) has survived in Terezín until April ’45. But now that the Allies are at the gates of Prague, the Nazis are evacuating the country and they don’t want to leave any embarrassing witnesses behind. When they come to fetch him so he can be shot, Paul Thümmel asks his cell mate to send his regards to Colonel Moravec, if he ever gets the chance. He adds this message: “It was a real pleasure to work with the Czechoslovak information services. I am sorry it has to end like this, but I am comforted to think that all we accomplished was not in vain.” The message will get through.
255
“How could you have betrayed your comrades?”
“I think you’d have done the same thing for a million marks, Your Honor!”
Arrested by the Resistance near Pilsen during the last days of the war, Karel Čurda is tried and sentenced to death. He is hanged in 1947. As he climbs onto the scaffold, he tells the hangman an obscene joke.
256
My story is finished and my book should be, too, but I’m discovering that it’s impossible to be finished with a story like this. My father calls me to read out something he copied down at the Museum of Man in Paris, where he visited an exhibition on the recently deceased Germaine Tillion, an anthropologist and Resistance fighter who was sent to Ravensbrück. This is what the text said:
The vivisection experiments on 74 young female prisoners constitute one of Ravensbrück’s most sinister episodes. The experiments, conducted between August ’42 and August ’43, consisted of mutilating operations aimed at reproducing the injuries that caused the death of Reinhard Heydrich, the gauleiter of Czechoslovakia. Professor Gerhardt, having been unable to save Heydrich from a gaseous gangrene, wished to prove that the use of sulphonamides would have made no difference. So he deliberately infected the young women with viruses, and many of them died.
Passing over the inaccuracies (“gauleiter,” “Czechoslovakia,” “gaseous gangrene”), I now know that this story will never truly end for me, that I will always be learning new details relating to the extraordinary story of the assassination attempt on Heydrich on May 27, 1942, by Czechoslovak parachutists sent from London. “Above all, do not attempt to be exhaustive,” said Roland Barthes. There you go—some good advice I never took.
257
A rusty steamboat glides across the Baltic, like a Nezval poem. Jozef Gabčík is leaving behind the dark coastline of Poland and a few months spent inhabiting Kraków’s alleyways. He and the other ghosts of the Czechoslovak army have finally managed to set sail for France. They walk around the boat, tired, worried, uncertain, but at the same time joyful at the prospect of finally fighting the invader, although they don’t as yet know anything about the Foreign Legion, Algeria, the French campaign, or London fog. They bump into one another clumsily in the narrow gangways, searching for a cabin, a cigarette, or a familiar face. Gabčík leans on his elbows and watches the sea: such a strange sight for someone, like him, from a landlocked country. That’s probably why his gaze is not fixed on the horizon—too obvious a symbol of his future—but on the boat’s waterline, where the waves swell and crash against the hull, then retreat and crash again in a hypnotic, deceptive movement. “Got a light, comrade?” Gabčík recognizes the Moravian accent. The lighter’s flame illuminates his countryman’s face. A dimpled chin, lips made for smoking, and in the eyes—it’s quite striking—a little bit of the world’s goodness. “My name’s Jan,” he says. Smoke curls into the air and vanishes. Gabčík smiles silently. They’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other during the journey. Mixed with the shadows of the soldiers in civilian clothes who pace around the boat are other shadows: disoriented old men, misty-eyed lone women, well-behaved children holding a younger brother’s hand. A young woman who looks like Natacha stands on deck, her hands on the railing, one leg bent up at the knee, playing with the hem of her skirt. And me? I am also there, perhaps.
A Note About the Author
Laurent Binet was born in Paris in 1972. He is the author of La Vie professionnelle de Laurent B., a memoir of his experience teaching in secondary schools in Paris. In March 2010, his debut novel, HHhH, won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. Binet is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature.
A Note About the Translator
Sam Taylor was born Nottinghamshire, England. He is the author of three books of fiction, The Republic of Trees, The Amnesiac, and The Island at the End of the World. HHhH is his first translation.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Copyright © 2009 by Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle
Translation copyright © 2012 by Sam Taylor
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2009 by Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle, France
English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint material from Milan Kundera’s Encounter, translated by Linda Asher, copyright © 2009; translation © 2010. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.