Love and Hydrogen Page 12

  JUST ONCE, cooped in, I wandered down the Alchemists’ Lane near the cathedral: a small risk, with no tactical objective in mind. In each direction, children flew down narrow passages and called and hung from balconied houses. At night the peace inside me at being home was explosive, tumultuous; it dynamited the British superstructure erected by exile.

  Gabchik had worked his way up from nothing—a shirtless refugee floated over on a boat—through his own efforts, and as a result had absolute faith in his own opinions. I had no particular faith in my own opinions but found others’ opinions to be daft, crazy, senseless, abnormal. So we worked smoothly together.

  For part of training we stayed in some big shot’s summer home in the middle of nowhere. We had a wing to ourselves. When a room became filled with ration cans and meat-stained butcher’s paper and Gabchik’s cigar butts, we moved on to the next.

  Gabchik had never been hurt, not even in training. For the past three years I’d played ducks and drakes with my life.

  IN THE MORNINGS we reconnoitered. We pinned down the precise route. We found the right spot: a sharp bend in a street in Holesovice. Being German, he always passed within the same few minutes, and at the same speed. Police protection varied. Escape routes were good.

  Afternoons we kept to our rooms and practiced. Gabchik had been trained for two months to assemble his Sten very rapidly and with one hand. I had trained to do the same with the timer and detonator on my device. I called my device “Ottla,” after my little sister. It gave Zelenka the willies.

  MARCH COLLAPSED into April, April into May. Potato soup and kale and beets gave way to fresh asparagus. Had we really been playacting as killers for four months? Gabchik had even taken a lover: Rela Fafek, a teenager with a beautiful painted mouth whom Zelenka had apparently pined for for years. She worked as courier for the organization. He told me he sat her on a bench across from Zelenka’s front windows and put his hand inside her blouse.

  SHE HAD MULTIPLE USES, Gabchik confided. It was he who came up with the final plan. With the warm weather it was now Heydrich’s custom to motor to work with the top down. Since sometimes he traveled with police escort and sometimes without, Rela would on the appointed day travel ahead of him in a rented car, and make the bend in the road at Holesovice before he did. If he had his escort, she’d wear her summer hat. If not, she would be bareheaded.

  The day this was decided Zelenka and Vanek arranged a meeting, very excited. A watchmaker, summoned to fix a clock, had taken advantage of the emptiness of Heydrich’s office to read the typed personal schedule for the week on his desk. According to the schedule, Heydrich was to leave Prague permanently in two days. Zelenka and Vanek were delighted; they now hoped the whole business could be abandoned. Gabchik and I listened to their arguments with the openhearted faces of reasonable men.

  The next morning it was bright and clear: top-down weather. We each took our positions with our bicycles and our battered briefcases. Rela had already been dispatched. And there, posted right at the bend itself like a loitering farm boy, was Valchik, still grinning. If Rela went by hatless, he’d signal the Mercedes’ turn with a hand mirror.

  I stood about; walked my bicycle back and forth. Gabchik slumped on steps across the road and seemed to be snoozing, with his hand inside his briefcase.

  Rela drove slowly around the corner with her rented car, bareheaded. I could see Gabchik’s hand going inside the briefcase. Inside mine I screwed the detonator wires onto the terminals and moved the minute hand on the clock’s face to the 1. Valchik’s mirror flashed. I let the minute hand go. Gabchik dropped his briefcase and stepped into the street. The open Mercedes took the curve carefully. Gabchik pulled the trigger. The Sten jammed. The Mercedes jolted to a stop. Gabchik gazed openmouthed upon the spectacle of himself and the Mercedes. The chauffeur and Heydrich stood and drew pistols. I threw my briefcase. I threw it high to make sure, but it still planed downward too quickly. There was a flash of white light and I saw the passenger door shatter upward and an eagle tore my eye and scalp.

  I was facing the wrong way, on my knees. Someone had poured hot fluid down half of my head. I was trying to catch it all with my hands together at my chin. I was making a repetitive sound.

  There was shooting. I turned around and Heydrich’s chauffeur fell into the street in front of the car’s headlights. Gabchik was already turning a corner, still firing like a Red Indian.

  Heydrich was standing upright in the back seat, empty-handed. His uniform was torn and flapped slightly over his chest.

  I reeled back, found my bicycle, pulled myself onto it, and started pedaling, seeing as though through a bath, keening at our stupidity and ineptitude.

  I FOUND THE PREARRANGED safehouse. A woman there did what she could with my wounds. An organization doctor did what he could for my eye. I asked after the examination if it was much damaged. He said it had been jellied by a metal fragment. I got a hold of myself and congratulated him on the vividness of his language.

  IN OUR SEPARATE hiding places, there was nothing to do but listen to the radio, set to the faintest volume possible, switched off at the slightest sound. I had nothing for the pain, and the bandages over my eye were continually soaking through. All exits from Prague were blocked. Martial law was proclaimed. Anyone leaving their homes after nine or before six would be shot. With all movement stilled, a building-to-building, room-to-room search had been initiated. Ten thousand—ten thousand!—hostages had been arrested. On the second day there was a burst of martial music and the announcement that one hundred of the ten thousand had been shot. All guests had to be registered. Failure to do so was punishable by death for the entire family. Until the attackers were apprehended, red posters would be hung on kiosks daily, listing the executed.

  Heydrich had not been killed. He had barely been touched. For a week, according to the radio, he got better and better, and then he died.

  The radio announced that the entire Protectorate was guilty of sheltering the assassins. Then it was silent. For the rest of the day, requiem music played.

  The next morning there was the shaking of armored vehicles in the streets.

  The day after that was the news of Lidice—a mining village fifteen miles out of town—all the men shot—all the women and children sent to the camps. The buildings set afire and razed to the ground. Topsoil was to be spread over the site. Grass was to be planted.

  IN A HIDDEN CRYPT of the sub-basement of a Greek Orthodox church we wailed and pounded the stone and slapped our own faces.

  “Two hundred men,” Gabchik cried. He was still unhurt. He was talking about Lidice alone. Valchik was there, with Hruby and Bublik. Two others.

  “Three hundred women and children,” Gabchik cried.

  “Shut up,” Valchik said, his hands on his ears. “Shut up shut up shut up.”

  The priests brought us food. For water we had a small cistern.

  We didn’t need light. We had our self-hatred.

  Children with neutral expressions stood around in my imagination. I wanted to put my thumb in my bad eye and find my brain.

  We passed right from bitter harangues into sleep. In my dreams I was the Prince of Evil. Father appeared over me and told me to use the big spoon and to not fool around.

  Valchik had stopped grinning. Vanek asked to see us. Zelenka asked to see us. We let no one in. We hung on the iron ring of the slab when they tried to lift it. We clamored to give ourselves up to stop the killings. There were shouting matches through the stone.

  Gabchik had long since gone silent in his sleeping-niche in the wall. We’d dragged and dumped the coffins into the middle of the chamber. Valchik and Hruby still argued and strategized and speculated in bitter whispers. For twelve-hour stretches we sat. We kept to ourselves with our heads bowed, our backs to the stone. We were lacerated by pictures. We contemplated the faces of dead children. We relieved ourselves in a grate. The last two words Gabchik had said had been Rela Fafek’s name.

  Then, as we had expect
ed and prayed, the Germans found us.

  They came for us before dawn. We’d come to recognize the very early morning by the additional dampness. Someone must have betrayed our hiding place. We heard first the deployment of heavy trucks; then the treads of half-tracks. We had plenty of time to prepare. Being German, they spent an hour boxing in the square, eradicating escape routes. Valchik and Hruby began attacking a corner of the crypt wall facing the street. They used their pistol butts and part of a metal balustrade. Their plan was to escape into the sewer system.

  I gathered up two automatic pistols and four or five ammunition magazines. Hruby asked what I thought I was doing. I told him I was going to go kill Germans.

  Two others collected pistols and came with me: Opalka and Schwartz. Valchik and Hruby continued their work on the wall. Bublik looked on from where he sat, as if watching a chess match in the park. Gabchik lay in his niche.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Come with me,” I urged him.

  “Gabchik,” I said. “They’re coming.”

  “Kubish,” he said. He spoke slowly and distinctly. “I do not want to be mistaken for a hero,” he said.

  We ensured everyone had a pistol and a few rounds before we left. I set one beside Gabchik in his niche. I climbed the steps weeping, and after listening carefully we pushed open the slab.

  Opalka and Schwartz made their way to the choir loft while I replaced the carpet over the slab and pulled a metal lectern over the carpet.

  In the loft we listened. Soon we heard the Germans tiptoeing about like clumsy children in their big brothers’ rainboots. Schwartz continually wiped his eyes and Opalka prayed or whispered imprecations to himself.

  In came our friends along the north wall, a little shock troop of Gestapo and SS, led by the sexton. They held an automatic rifle to his neck. We waited until we were sure he would give away the others. When the German officer stooped and raised the carpet, I fired and missed. With one eye my depth perception was off. All three of us fired and missed. We fired again. One of the Germans threw up his hands and tumbled to the floor.

  The clerestory windows shattered inward all together. Glass showered us like a rain of gravel. Machine gunners from the outside chipped and filed the stonework. From the chancel the shock troops had taken cover and were also firing small arms. More soldiers rushed in. We had a clear field of fire to the entrance to the crypt, and there was only one way up to us. Thousands of rounds ricocheted harmlessly through the air.

  Schwartz was clopped on the head by a tossed grenade. It made a sound on his skull like a wooden block. He tossed it back and it exploded below. Two, three, four came after it. We tossed them back. One we missed blew us off our feet. The cathedral’s vault was a bowl of water, jolted and righting itself. Opalka stood, bleeding from the ear. A force like hornets tore into his shoulders and he tilted and tumbled down the stairs. He still held his pistol and we could still hear him firing. Schwartz’s legs were smashed and he pulled himself into the corner. Greasy blood smeared in a broad S behind him. He fumbled with his pistol. More grenades bounced and clattered into our little space. I addressed myself to Churchill, who crouched beside me in a black frock coat. I asked if he knew that we called our shortwave radios “churchillkys.” He said that he did, and that he was honored. He gave a little bow. He asked where Gabchik was. I told him Gabchik was too wise and clear-sighted to cope with life.

  Blood from a wound on my hand had marbled and hung in the air. The instant itself was a large hallway, airy with corridors, worthy of observation. A grenade an arm’s length away in mid-ignition showed the light of the sun.

  “The Germans are at the top of the stairs,” Churchill remarked. He leaned close but seemed awkward about touching me. He smelled of cigars.

  I nodded.

  “I do, at intervals, stand in awe before the unfurling scroll of human destiny,” he said ruefully.

  “I would not have foreseen this,” I agreed.

  “The iron demands of war. Duty inescapable,” he said sadly.

  “We’ve killed thousands with our heroics,” I shouted. “A whole village paved under.”

  He told me that Rela had died, as well. And my parents. “The pain ahead is so extreme,” he said. “Perhaps it’ll come this morning. Perhaps in a week. Perhaps never. The trick is to bear the sudden violent shock or, if need be, the prolonged vigil.”

  “Tell the world these Czechs fought for all the wrong reasons,” I cried.

  “I’ll tell the world the Czechs are still in the field, sword in hand,” he answered. His voice carried great kindness. The light of the grenade expanded like a tent in all directions.

  He said not to cumber our thoughts with reproaches. We fought to serve an unfolding purpose. More misfortunes and shortcomings lay ahead. We fought by ourselves alone, but not for ourselves alone. I told him that as Czechs we moved along a circle whose perimeter was closed. The circle belonged to us only as long as we kept moving; the moment we stepped aside or hesitated, through forgetfulness, fright, astonishment, or fatigue, it spun off from beneath us, leaving us in free fall. We were outside the law; no one knew this, but everyone treated us accordingly. He took my hand. I spat in his. The expanding light lifted itself through me. I told him we would yield in such a way as to shame the victors.

  REACH FOR THE SKY

  Guy comes into the shelter this last Thursday, a kid, really, maybe doing it for his dad, with a female golden/Labrador cross, two or three years old. He’s embarrassed, not ready for forms and questions, but we get dogs like this all the time, and I’m not letting him off the hook, not letting him out of here before I know he knows that we have to kill a lot of these dogs, dogs like his. Her name is Rita, and he says, “Rita, sit!” like being here is part of her ongoing training. Rita sits halfway and then stands again, and looks at him in that tuned-in way goldens have.

  “So . . .” The kid looks at the forms I’ve got on the counter, like no one told him this was part of the deal. He looks at the sampler that the sister of the regional boss did for our office: “A MAN KNOWS ONLY AS MUCH AS HE’S SUFFERED.” —ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. He has no answers whatsoever for the form. She’s two, he thinks. Housebroken. Some shots. His dad handled all that stuff. She’s spayed. Reason for surrender: she plays too rough.

  She smashed this huge lamp, the kid says. Of one of those mariners with the pipe and the yellow bad-weather outfit. His dad made it in a ceramics class.

  Rita looks over at me with bright interest. The kid adds, “And she’s got this thing with her back legs, she limps pretty bad. The vet said she wouldn’t get any better.”

  “What vet?” I ask. I’m not supposed to push too hard; it’s no better if they abandon them on highways, but we get sixty dogs a day here, and if I can talk any of them back into their houses, great. “The vet couldn’t do anything?”

  “We don’t have the money,” the kid says.

  I ask to see Rita’s limp. The kid’s vague, and Rita refuses to demonstrate. Her tail thumps the floor twice.

  I explain the bottom of the form to the kid: when he signs it, he’s giving us permission to have the dog put down if it comes to that. “She’s a good dog,” he says helpfully. “She’ll probably get someone to like her.”

  So I do the animal shelter Joe Friday, which never works: “Maybe. But we get ten goldens per week. And everybody wants puppies.”

  “Okay, well, good luck,” the kid says. He signs something on the line that looks like Fleen. Rita looks at him. He takes the leash, wrapping it around his forearm. At the door he says, “You be a good girl, now.” Rita pants a little with a neutral expression, processing the information.

  It used to be you would get owners all the time who were teary and broken up: they needed to know their dog was going to get a good home, you had to guarantee it, they needed to make their problem yours, so that they could say: Hey, when I left the dog, it was fine.

  Their dog would always make a great pet for somebody, their dog was always great
with kids, their dog always needed A Good Home and Plenty of Room to Run. Their dog, they were pretty sure, would always be the one we’d have no trouble placing in a nice family. And when they got to the part about signing the release form for euthanasia, only once did someone, a little girl, suggest that if it came to that, they should be called back, and they’d retrieve the dog. Her mother had asked me if I had any ideas, and the girl suggested that. Her mother said, I asked him if he had any ideas.

  Now you get kids: the parents don’t even bring the dogs in. Behind the kid with the golden/Lab mix there’s a girl who’s maybe seventeen or eighteen. Benetton top, Benetton skirt, straw blonde hair, tennis tan, and a Doberman puppy. Bizarre dog for a girl like that. Chews everything, she says. She holds the puppy like a baby. As if to cooperate, the dog twists and squirms around in her arms trying to get at the pen holder to show what it can do.

  Puppies chew things, I tell her, and she rolls her eyes like she knows that. I tell her how many dogs come in every day. I lie. I say, We’ve had four Doberman puppies for weeks now. She says, “There’re forms or something or I just leave him?” She slides him on his back gently across the counter. His paws are in the air and he looks a little bewildered.

  “If I showed you how to make him stop chewing things, would you take him back?” I ask her. The Doberman has sprawled around and gotten to his feet, taller now than we are, nails clicking tentatively on the counter.

  “No,” she says. She signs the form, annoyed by a sweep of hair that keeps falling forward. “We’re moving anyhow.” She pats the dog on the muzzle as a good-bye and he nips at her, his feet slipping and sliding like a skater’s. “God,” she says. She’s mad at me now, too, the way people get mad at those pictures that come in the mail of cats and dogs looking at you with their noses through the chain-link fences: Help Skipper, who lived on leather for three weeks.