The Moravec family consists of the father, the mother, and the youngest son, Ata. The eldest son is in England, flying a Spitfire. They are namesakes of Colonel Moravec, but not blood relations. Like him, however, they are resisting the German occupation.
And they’re not the only ones. Gabčík and Kubiš will meet lots of ordinary people ready to risk their lives in order to help them.
I’m fighting a losing battle. I can’t tell this story the way it should be told. This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect—and these people, these real people who actually existed. I’m barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts. I keep banging my head against the wall of history. And I look up and see, growing all over it—ever higher and denser, like a creeping ivy—the unmappable pattern of causality.
I examine a map of Prague, marking the locations of the families who helped and sheltered the parachutists. Almost all of them paid with their lives—men, women, and children. The Svatoš family, a few feet from the Charles Bridge; the Ogoun family, near the castle; the Novak, Moravec, Zelenka, and Fafek families, all farther east. Each member of each of these families would deserve his or her own book—an account of their involvement with the Resistance until the tragic dénouement of Mauthausen. How many forgotten heroes sleep in history’s great cemetery? Thousands, millions of Fafeks and Moravecs, of Novaks and Zelenkas …
The dead are dead, and it makes no difference to them whether I pay homage to their deeds. But for us, the living, it does mean something. Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory and console ourselves with memory.
No reader could possibly retain this list of names, so why write it? For you to remember them, I would have to turn them into characters. Unfair, but there you go. I know already that only the Moravecs, and perhaps the Fafeks, will find a place in my story. The Svatošes, the Novaks, the Zelenkas—not to mention all those whose names or existence I’m unaware of—will return to their oblivion. But in the end a name is just a name. I think of them all. I want to tell them. And if no one hears me, that doesn’t matter. Not to them, and not to me. One day, perhaps, someone in need of solace will write the story of the Novaks and the Svatošes, of the Zelenkas and the Fafeks.
On January 8, 1942, Gabčík (limping) and Kubiš walk upon Prague’s sacred earth for the first time. I’m sure they marvel at the city’s Baroque beauty. First, though, they must deal with the three great problems facing any secret mission: accommodation, provisions, and identification. London has equipped them with fake ID cards, but it’s not enough—far from it. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1942, you must be able to produce a work permit. And, above all, if you are stopped in the daytime hanging around in the streets—which will often be the case for Gabčík and Kubiš during the coming months—you must have a very good reason not to be working. The Resistance talks to the doctor who treats Gabčík’s foot: he diagnoses an ulcer in Gabčík’s duodenum, and for Kubiš an inflamed gallbladder, thus establishing the two men’s inability to work. So their papers are in order and they’ve got money. Now they must find a place to stay. But as they will soon discover to their pleasure, there is no shortage of people willing to help them even in these dark times.
Don’t believe everything you’re told—especially when the Nazis are telling you. They tend to be wrong in one of two ways. Either, like big fat Göring, they are guilty of wishful thinking, or—like Goebbels Trismegistus (called “the human loudspeaker” by Joseph Roth)—they lie shamelessly for propagandist ends. And quite often they do both at the same time.
Heydrich is not immune to this Nazi trait. When he claims to have decapitated and neutralized the Czech Resistance, he probably believes what he’s saying—and it’s not completely false. Even so, it’s a somewhat hollow boast. On the night of December 28, 1941, when Gabčík injures himself in a clumsy collision with his native soil, the state of the Resistance in the Protectorate is worrying but not entirely hopeless. They still have a few cards up their sleeve.