One might reasonably ask what the hell the head of the Nazi secret services was doing in a German fighter plane above a Soviet combat zone. The answer is that, along with his SS duties, Heydrich was a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe. In readiness for the war, he had taken flying lessons, and when the invasion of Poland began, he absolutely wanted to answer the call of duty. As prestigious as his post as head of the SD was, he regarded it as a bureaucrat’s job—and since the country was at war, he had to behave like a true Teutonic Knight: he had to fight. Thus he found himself, first of all, as a machine gunner in a bomber. But unsurprisingly he wasn’t keen on this secondary role, so he took command of a Messerschmitt 110 on reconaissance flights over Great Britain, and then of a Messerschmitt 109 (the German equivalent of the Spitfire) in which he broke an arm taking off during the Norwegian campaign. I got hold of a slightly hagiographic book that describes admiringly how he flew planes with his arm in a sling. Afterward, he fought in battles against the RAF.
While this was happening, Himmler was already worrying about him like a father. I have before me a letter dated May 15, 1940, written from his private train (the Sonderzug
Only two days later, Heydrich was picked up by a German “patrol”—his own men from Einsatzgruppen D—who had just liquidated forty-five Jews and thirty hostages. He’d been shot down by Soviet antiaircraft fire, crash-landed, spent two days and two nights in hiding, and finally crossed the German lines on foot. Returning home filthy and unshaven, he was also, according to his wife, quite unnerved by his misadventure, although it did give him what he’d wanted: the Iron Cross, first class—a highly respected medal in the German military. Following this glorious feat, however, he was never allowed to take part in any more aerial battles. Hitler himself, horrified in hindsight by the story of the Berezina, appears to have officially forbidden this. So, in spite of his efforts and his undeniable impetuosity, Heydrich never scored a single kill. His career as a pilot ended on this disappointing note.
Natacha reads the chapter I’ve just written. When she reaches the second sentence, she exclaims: “What do you mean, ‘The blood rises to his cheeks and he feels his brain swell inside his skull’? You’re making it up!”
I have been boring her for years with my theories about the puerile, ridiculous nature of novelistic invention, and she’s right, I suppose, not to let me get away with this skull thing. I thought I’d decided to avoid this kind of stuff, which has, a priori, no virtue other than giving a bit of color to the story, and which is rather ugly. And even if there are clues to Himmler’s panicked reaction, I can’t really be sure of the symptoms of this panic: perhaps he went red (that’s how I imagine it), but then again, perhaps he turned white. This is quite a serious problem.
I defend myself halfheartedly: it’s more than likely that Himmler had some kind of headache, and anyway, this thing about the swelling brain is just a cheap metaphor with which to express his fear. But even I’m not convinced by this. The next day, I delete the sentence. Unfortunately, that creates an emptiness that I don’t like. I’m not sure why, but I’m not at all keen on the segue from “smacked him in the face” to “He’s just heard the news.” Too abrupt: I miss the link provided by my skull metaphor. So I feel obliged to replace the deleted sentence with another, more prudent one. I write something like: “I imagine that his face, like a bespectacled little rat’s, must have turned red.” It’s true that Himmler’s fat cheeks and mustache made him rather rodentlike, but obviously this phrase lacks gravitas. I decide to remove “bespectacled.” The effect of “little rat’s,” even without the spectacles, still bothers me. You can see the advantage of this option, however, with its cautious qualifications: “I imagine…,” “must have…” With a hypothesis openly presented as such, I avoid the clash with reality. I don’t know why I feel the need to add: “His face is flushed.”
I had this vision of Himmler red-faced and with a blocked nose (perhaps because I’ve had a nasty cold myself for the past four days) and my tyrannic imagination wouldn’t budge from this idea: I wanted a detail of this kind for the Reichsführer’s face. But clearly I wasn’t happy with the result: I got rid of it once again. I contemplated this nothingness between the first and third sentence for a long time. And, slowly, I began to type: “The blood rises to his cheeks and he feels his brain swell inside his skull.”