HHhH: A Novel

by Laurent Binet

  But these mobile gas chambers, Heydrich explains, are still not sophisticated enough. He says: “Better solutions, more advanced and more productive, are on their way.” Then, his audience hanging on his every word, he adds abruptly: “All the Jews in Europe have been sentenced to death.” Given that the Einsatzgruppen have already executed more than a million Jews, you have to wonder who among his audience hasn’t yet understood this.

  This is the second time I’ve caught Heydrich overdramatizing this kind of statement. When he informed Eichmann, just before Wannsee, that the Führer had decided upon the physical elimination of all the Jews, his colleague was struck by the dramatic silence that followed this announcement. In both cases, even if nothing was really official beforehand, you can’t say it came as a great surprise. More than the pleasure of delivering a scoop, I think Heydrich enjoyed verbalizing the incredible, the unthinkable, as if to give substance to the unimaginable truth. This is what I’ve got to tell you—you already know it, but it’s up to me to tell you, and it’s up to us to do it. The orator, dizzy from speaking the unspeakable. The monster, drunk on the thought of the monstrosities he heralds.

  195

  The carpenter shows them the place where Heydrich gets out of his car each day. Gabčík and Kubiš look around. They pick a spot behind a house where they could wait for him, and from where they could shoot him. But the area is heavily guarded, of course. The carpenter makes it clear they wouldn’t have time to flee, that they would never get out of the castle alive. Gabčík and Kubiš are ready to die—they have been since the beginning, no question about it. But all the same they do want to try to stay alive. They need a plan that gives them a chance of getting away—a small chance but a chance nonetheless—because they both have hopes and dreams for after the war. In the Resistance, among all the Czechs who are risking their lives to help them, there are some brave and pretty young women. I know very few details of my heroes’ love lives, but I do know that after these few months operating secretly in Prague, Gabčík wants to marry Libena, the Fafek family’s daughter, and Kubiš the beautiful Anna Malinova, with her raspberry lips. After the war … They’re not deluding themselves. They know they have only one chance in a thousand of surviving the war. But they want to take that chance. They must, above all, accomplish their mission—absolutely. But that doesn’t mean they want to commit suicide. What a terrible thought.

  The two men walk back down Nerudova, the long street with its alchemists’ shop signs, connecting the castle to Malá Strana. Farther down, the Mercedes will have to go around a nice curve. Could be a spot worth looking at …

  196

  Heydrich is wrong about the Czech Resistance—it’s not dead yet. In order to collect the carpenter’s daily bulletin on Heydrich’s movements, they find a ground-floor apartment just below the castle. Whenever necessary (every day, I suppose), the carpenter comes and knocks at the window. A young girl opens it. Two of them take turns; the carpenter thinks they are not only sisters but also the two parachutists’ girlfriends—which they might well be. The carpenter and the girls never exchange a word. The carpenter hands over his piece of paper and leaves. Today, he has written: “9–5 (without).” In other words: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Without an escort.

  Gabčík and Kubiš are confronted by an insoluble problem. They have no way of knowing in advance whether Heydrich will be escorted by a second car, filled with bodyguards. The statistics based on the carpenter’s reports do not show any fixed pattern. Sometimes without, sometimes with. Without: they’ll have a small chance of getting out alive. With: no chance at all.

  So, to carry out their mission, the two parachutists must surrender themselves to this horrifying lottery. They must choose a date with no idea whether Heydrich will be escorted. Whether their mission is extremely risky, or whether it’s actually a suicide mission.

  197

  Riding bicycles, the two men keep making the same journey—from Heydrich’s home to the castle, from curve to curve. Heydrich lives in Panenské Břežany, a little spot in the suburbs a quarter of an hour by car from the city center. One part of the journey is particularly isolated: a long straight line with no houses nearby. If they managed to immobilize the car they could shoot Heydrich here without anyone seeing. They consider stopping the car with a steel cable strung tightly across the road. But afterward, how would they get away? They’d need their own car or motorbike. And the Czech Resistance has neither. No, it has to be done in the middle of town, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a crowd. They need a curve in the road. Gabčík’s and Kubiš’s thoughts are curved and twisting. They dream of the ideal curve.

  And they end up finding it.

  Well, “ideal” is perhaps not the right word.

  198

  The curve in Holešovice Street (ulice v Holešovičkách in Czech), in the Libeň district, has several advantages. First of all, it is almost a hairpin, so the Mercedes will be forced to slow right down. Next, it’s at the foot of a hill where they can post a lookout to warn them of the Mercedes’s arrival. Finally, it’s in the suburbs, midway between Panenské Břežany and Hradčany: neither in the city center nor in the countryside. So it offers the possibility of escape.

  The Holešovice curve also has some disadvantages. It’s at a crossroads intersected by tram tracks. If a tram goes by at the same time as the Mercedes, there’s a danger the operation will be compromised—because the car might be hidden or civilians put at risk.

  I have never assassinated anyone, but I suppose there is no such thing as ideal conditions: a moment comes when you have to decide. And anyway, there isn’t time to find anything better. So Holešovice it is: this curve that no longer exists, swallowed up by a highway ramp and by modernity, which couldn’t care less about my memories.

  Because I do remember now. Each day, each hour, the memory grows clearer. On this bend of Holešovice Street, I feel I’ve been waiting forever.

  199

  I’m spending a few days on vacation in a beautiful house in Toulon, and I’m doing a bit of writing. This is no ordinary house: it’s the former residence of an Alsatian printer who, in the course of his job, rubbed shoulders with Paul Eluard and Elsa Triolet.* During the war he was in Lyon, where he printed false papers for Jews and stocked books by the underground publisher Éditions de Minuit. At the same time, the land surrounding his house in Toulon was occupied by German army camps, but apparently no one lived in the house, which remained in good condition. The furniture and the books were not touched, and they’re still here.

  This man’s great-niece, knowing of my interest in the period, shows me a slim volume taken from the family library. It’s the original edition of The Silence of the Sea by Vercors, published on July 25, 1943, “the day the Roman tyrant fell,” as it says in the back of the book. It is signed by the author and dedicated to the great-uncle:

  To Madame and Pierre Braun, with feelings that link all those engulfed in dark days by

  The Silence of the Sea

  Sincerely yours, Vercors

  I am on vacation and I hold a bit of history in my hands. It is a very sweet and pleasant feeling.

  200

  There are alarming rumors about Heydrich. He will leave Prague. For good. Tomorrow, he must take the plane to Berlin. No one knows if he will return. This would obviously be a relief to the Czech people, but it would be a disaster for Operation Anthropoid. Alarming news for the parachutists, and also—although they know nothing about it—for the French. It is whispered among historians that perhaps Heydrich, having accomplished his mission in the Protectorate, now has his eye on what today we would call “a new challenge.” Having dealt so ruthlessly and brutally with Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich would now sort out France.

  He has to go to Berlin to discuss this with Hitler. France is in turmoil; Pétain and Laval are worms; if Heydrich could deal with the French Resistance the way he dealt with the Czech Resistance, that would be perfect.

  This is only a theory, alth
ough it is backed up by Heydrich’s trip to Paris two weeks earlier.

  201

  That’s right—in May 1942, Heydrich spent a week in Paris. I have found the film of his visit in the archives of the National Audiovisual Institute. A clip from the day’s French news: fifty-nine seconds of filmed reportage. Speaking in that nasal voice so typical of the 1940s, the newsreader announces:

  “Paris. Arrival of Mr. Heydrich, the SS general, chief of police, Reich representative in Prague, asked by the head of the SS and the German police, Mr. Himmler, to officially appoint Mr. Oberg, major general of the SS and of the police in the occupied territories. Mr. Heydrich is the head of the International Commission of the Criminal Police, and France has always been represented at this commission. The general took advantage of his stay in Paris to receive Mr. Bousquet, secretary-general of the police, and Mr. Hilaire, secretary-general of the administration. Mr. Heydrich also made contact with Mr. Darquier de Pellepoix, who, along with Mr. de Brinon, has just been named commissioner for Jewish affairs.”

  I have always been intrigued by this meeting between Heydrich and Bousquet. I would really like to have the minutes of their conversation. After the war, Bousquet let it be known for a long time that he stood up to Heydrich. And it’s true that he categorically refused to give in on one point: that the powers of the French police should not be reduced; these powers consisting essentially of the right to arrest people. Jews in particular. Heydrich is happy to let the local police deal with this: it’s less work for the Germans, after all. As he tells Oberg, his experience in the Protectorate has shown him that an autonomous police and administration will produce better results. Provided, of course, that Bousquet leads his police “in the same spirit as the German police.” But Heydrich has no doubt that Bousquet is the right man for the job. At the end of his stay, he says: “The only person who has youth, intelligence, and authority is Bousquet. With men like him, we will be able to build the Europe of tomorrow—a Europe very different from that of today.”

  When Heydrich tells René Bousquet about the next deportation of stateless (that is, non-French) Jews interned at Drancy, Bousquet spontaneously suggests that stateless Jews interned in the free zone should be deported as well. How very obliging of him.

  202

  René Bousquet was a lifelong friend of François Mitterand. But that is far from his worst offense.

  Bousquet is not a cop like Barbie, or a militiaman like Touvier; nor is he a prefect like Papon* in Bordeaux. He is a high-level politician destined for a brilliant career, but who chooses the path of collaboration and gets mixed up in the deportation of Jews. He is the one who ensures that the raid on Vél’ d’Hiv† (code name: Spring Wind) is carried out by the French police rather than the Germans. He is thus responsible for what is probably the most infamous deed in the history of the French nation. That it was committed in the name of the French state obviously changes nothing. How many World Cups will we have to win in order to erase such a stain?

  After the war, Bousquet survives the purge of Nazi collaborators that took place in France, but his participation in the Vichy government nevertheless deprives him of the political career that had appeared his destiny. He doesn’t live on the streets, though, and gets positions on various boards of directors, including that of the newspaper La Dépêche du Midi; he is the main force behind its hard-line anti-Gaullist stance between 1959 and 1971. So, basically, he benefits from the usual tolerance of the ruling class for its most compromised members. He also enjoys the company—not without malice, I imagine—of Simone Weil, an Auschwitz survivor who knows nothing of Bousquet’s collaborationist activities.

  His past finally catches up with him in the 1980s, however, and in 1991 he is charged with crimes against humanity.

  The investigation ends two years later when he is shot in his own house by a madman. I vividly remember seeing that guy give a press conference just after killing Bousquet and just before the cops arrested him. I remember how pleased with himself he looked as he calmly explained that he’d done it to make people talk about him. I found that utterly idiotic.

  This ridiculous moron deprived us of a trial that would have been ten times more interesting than those of Papon and Barbie put together, more interesting than those of Pétain and Laval … the trial of the century. As punishment for this outrageous attack on history, this unimaginably cretinous man was given ten years; he served seven, and is now free. I feel a great repulsion and mistrust for someone like Bousquet, but when I think of his assassin, of the immense historical loss that his act represents, of the revelations the trial would have produced and which he has forever denied us, I feel overwhelmed by hate. He didn’t kill any innocents, that’s true, but he is a destroyer of truth. And all so he could appear on TV for three minutes! What a monstrous, stupid, Warholian piece of shit! The only ones who ought to have a moral right to judge whether this man should live or die are his victims—the living and the dead who fell into the Nazis’ claws because of men like him—but I am sure they wanted him alive. How disappointed they must have been when they heard about this absurd murder! I can feel only disgust for a society that produces such behavior, such lunatics. Pasternak wrote: “I don’t like people who are indifferent to truth.” And worse still are those bastards who are not only indifferent to it but work actively against it. All the secrets that Bousquet took with him to his grave … I have to stop thinking about this because it’s making me ill.

  Bousquet’s trial: that would have been the French equivalent of Eichmann in Jerusalem.

  203

  Anyway, let’s talk about something else. I have just discovered the testimony of Helmut Knochen, appointed chief of the German police in France by Heydrich. He claims to reveal something that Heydrich told him in confidence and which he never repeated to anyone until now. His testimony dates from June 2000. Fifty-eight years later!

  Heydrich supposedly told him: “The war can no longer be won. We must reach a negotiated peace and I am afraid that Hitler can’t accept that. We must think about this.” We are meant to believe that Heydrich reached this conclusion in May 1942—before Stalingrad, at a time when the Reich had never looked stronger.

  Knochen sees in that an extraordinary clairvoyancy on Heydrich’s part. He considers the Blond Beast much more intelligent than all the other Nazi dignitaries. He also believes that Heydrich was thinking of overthrowing Hitler. And based on this he proposes the following theory: that the assassination of Heydrich would have been a high priority for Churchill, who absolutely refused to be deprived of total victory over Hitler. In other words, the British would have supported the Czechs because they were afraid that a wise Nazi like Heydrich might remove Hitler and save the regime through a negotiated peace.

  I suspect it’s in Knochen’s interests to associate himself with the theory of a plot against Hitler, in order to minimize his own (very real) role in the police machine of the Third Reich. It is even perfectly conceivable that, sixty years later, he actually believes what he’s saying. Personally, I think it’s bullshit. But I report it anyway.

  204

  A poster on an Internet forum expresses the opinion that Max Aue, Jonathan Littell’s protagonist in The Kindly Ones, “rings true because he is the mirror of his age.” What? No! He rings true (for certain, easily duped readers) because he is the mirror of our age: a postmodern nihilist, essentially. At no moment in the novel is it suggested that this character believes in Nazism. On the contrary, he displays an often critical detachment toward National Socialist doctrine—and in that sense, he can hardly be said to reflect the delirious fanaticism prevalent in his time. On the other hand, this detachment, this blasé attitude toward everything, this permanent malaise, this taste for philosophizing, this unspoken amorality, this morose sadism, and this terrible sexual frustration that constantly twists his guts … but of course! How did I not see it before? Suddenly, everything is clear. The Kindly Ones is simply “Houellebecq does Nazism.”

  205


  I think I’m beginning to understand. What I’m writing is an infranovel.

  206

  The moment is getting closer, I can feel it. The Mercedes is on its way. It’s coming. Something floating in the Prague air pierces me to my bones. The twists of the road are spelling out the destiny of a man, and of another, and another, and another. I see pigeons take off from the bronze head of Jan Hus and, in the background, the most beautiful view in the world: Týn Church with its sharp black turrets, whose gray and evil-looking façade is so majestic that it makes me want to fall to my knees every time I see it. The heart of Prague beats in my chest. I hear the bells of the tramway. I see men in gray-green uniforms, hear their boots clicking on the cobbles. I’m nearly there. I have to go. Yes, I must travel to Prague. I have to be there when this happens.

  I have to write it there.

  I hear the engine of the Mercedes as it glides along the road. I hear Gabčík breathing, wrapped up in his raincoat, waiting on the pavement. I see Kubiš standing opposite, and Valčík posted at the top of the hill. I feel the smooth cold mirror at the bottom of his coat pocket. Not yet, not yet, uz nie, noch nicht.