Whenever I talk about the book I’m writing, I say, “My book on Heydrich.” But Heydrich is not supposed to be the main character. Through all the years that I carried this story around with me in my head, I never thought of giving it any other title than
I’m all too aware that my two heroes are late making their entrance. But perhaps it’s no bad thing if they have to wait. Perhaps it will give them more substance. Perhaps the mark they’ve made in history and on my memory might imprint itself even more profoundly in these pages. Perhaps this long wait in the antechamber of my brain will restore some of their reality, and not just vulgar plausibility. Perhaps, perhaps … but nothing could be less sure! I’m not scared of Heydrich anymore. It’s those two who intimidate me.
And yet I can see them. Or let’s say that I am beginning to discern them.
On the borders of eastern Slovakia is a city I know well—Košice. This is where I did my military service: I was the sublieutenant responsible for teaching French to the Slovakian air force’s young future officers. Košice is also the town where Aurélia—the beautiful Slovak woman with whom I had a passionate five-year relationship, nearly ten years ago now—was born. And incidentally, it is, of all the world’s cities I’ve ever visited, the one with the highest concentration of pretty girls. And when I say pretty, I mean exceptionally beautiful.
I don’t see any reason why this should have been any different in 1939. The pretty girls stroll eternally on Hlavná ulica—the long main street that is the heart of the town, lined by gorgeous pastel-colored Baroque houses, with a magnificent Gothic cathedral at its center. Except that, in 1939, you also see German soldiers, who greet the pretty girls discreetly as they pass. Slovakia has indeed gained its independence—the prize for its betrayal of Prague—but it is an independence surveyed by the friendly, searching eyes of Germany.
Jozef Gabčík sees all of this, walking up the grand main street: the pretty girls and the German soldiers. He’s been thinking it over for several months now.
Two years ago he left Košice to work in a chemical factory in Žilina. He has come back today to meet up with his friends from the 14th Infantry regiment, in which he served for three years. Spring is late and the stubborn snow whispers under his boots.
The cafés in Košice rarely open onto the street. Normally, you have to go under a porch, then either up or down a staircase, in order to reach a well-heated room. Gabčík meets his former comrades in such a café that very evening. Reunited over pints of Zlatý Bažant (a Slovak beer whose name means “Golden Pheasant’), everyone is very happy. But Gabčík hasn’t come just to make a social visit. He wants to know where the Slovak army is, and its position with regard to Tiso, the collaborator.
“The field officers have fallen in with Tiso; you know, Jozef, for them, the break with the Czech staff, it’s a chance to get promoted more quickly…”
“The army hasn’t protested: neither the officers nor the troops. It’s a new Slovak army, so they’ve got to obey the new Slovak government. That’s understandable, isn’t it?”
“We’ve wanted independence for years, so who cares how we get it! Tough shit for the Czechs! If they’d treated us better, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation now! You know as well as I do that the Czechs always got the best jobs. In the government, the army, everywhere! It was a scandal!”
“Anyway, we had no choice: if Tiso hadn’t said yes to Hitler, we’d have been flattened like they were. And yeah, I know it’s a bit like being occupied, but in the end we’ve still got more autonomy than we had with the Czechs.”
“In Prague, you know, German is now the official language! They’re closing all the Czech universities. They’re censoring all Czech culture. They’ve even shot at students! Is that what you want? Believe me, this was the best solution…”
“It was the only solution, Jozef!”
“Why should we have fought when it was Hácha himself who told us to surrender? All we were doing was obeying orders.”
“Beneš? Yeah, yeah, but he’s fighting the war from London—that’s much easier. Us poor bastards are stuck here.”