HHhH

sent to Ravensbruck. This is what the text said:

The vivisection experiments on 74 young female prisoners constitute one of Ravensbruck’s most sinister episodes. The experiments, conducted between August ’42 and August ’43, consisted of mutilating operations aimed at reproducing the injuries that caused the death of Reinhard Heydrich, the gauleiter of Czechoslovakia. Professor Gerhardt, having been unable to save Heydrich from a gaseous gangrene, wished to prove that the use of sulphonamides would have made no difference. So he deliberately infected the young women with viruses, and many of them died.

Passing over the inaccuracies (“gauleiter,” “Czechoslovakia,” “gaseous gangrene”), I now know that this story will never truly end for me, that I will always be learning new details relating to the extraordinary story of the assassination attempt on Heydrich on May 27, 1942, by Czechoslovak parachutists sent from London. “Above all, do not attempt to be exhaustive,” said Roland Barthes. There you go—some good advice I never took.

257

A rusty steamboat glides across the Baltic, like a Nezval poem. Jozef Gabcik is leaving behind the dark coastline of Poland and a few months spent inhabiting Krakow’s alleyways. He and the other ghosts of the Czechoslovak army have finally managed to set sail for France. They walk around the boat, tired, worried, uncertain, but at the same time joyful at the prospect of finally fighting the invader, although they don’t as yet know anything about the Foreign Legion, Algeria, the French campaign, or London fog. They bump into one another clumsily in the narrow gangways, searching for a cabin, a cigarette, or a familiar face. Gabcik leans on his elbows and watches the sea: such a strange sight for someone, like him, from a landlocked country. That’s probably why his gaze is not fixed on the horizon—too obvious a symbol of his future—but on the boat’s waterline, where the waves swell and crash against the hull, then retreat and crash again in a hypnotic, deceptive movement. “Got a light, comrade?” Gabcik recognizes the Moravian accent. The lighter’s flame illuminates his countryman’s face. A dimpled chin, lips made for smoking, and in the eyes—it’s quite striking—a little bit of the world’s goodness. “My name’s Jan,” he says. Smoke curls into the air and vanishes. Gabcik smiles silently. They’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other during the journey. Mixed with the shadows of the soldiers in civilian clothes who pace around the boat are other shadows: disoriented old men, misty-eyed lone women, well-behaved children holding a younger brother’s hand. A young woman who looks like Natacha stands on deck, her hands on the railing, one leg bent up at the knee, playing with the hem of her skirt. And me? I am also there, perhaps.

A Note About the Author

Laurent Binet was born in Paris in 1972. He is the author of La Vie professionnelle de Laurent B., a memoir of his experience teaching in secondary schools in Paris. In March 2010, his debut novel, HHhH, won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. Binet is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature.

A Note About the Translator

Sam Taylor was born Nottinghamshire, England. He is the author of three books of fiction, The Republic of Trees, The Amnesiac, and The Island at the End of the World. HHhH is his first translation.

Copyright

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2009 by Editions Grasset et Fasquelle

Translation copyright © 2012 by Sam Taylor

All rights reserved

Originally published in 2009 by Editions Grasset et Fasquelle, France

English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint material from Milan Kundera’s Encounter, translated by Linda Asher, copyright © 2009; translation © 2010. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Binet, Laurent.

[HHhH. English]

HHhH / Laurent Binet ; translated from the French by Sam Taylor. — 1st American ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-374-16991-6 (alk. paper)

1. Heydrich, Reinhard, 1904–1942—Assassination—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Underground movements—Czechoslovakia—Fiction. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Germany—Fiction. I. Taylor, Sam, 1970– II. Title.

PQ2702.I57 H4413 2012

843'.92—dc23

2011046063

First American edition, 2012

Parachute art by Adly Elewa

www.fsgbooks.com

eISBN 9781429942768

This work received translation support from the Centre National du Livre.

,

Notes

1

Oradour-sur-Glane was a village in France whose 642 inhabitants were all massacred by SS troops in 1944.

2