The morning was frosty, but it was the first day of March, and Willi could feel the warmth of the sun on his hands and face. He sat in a cafe watching the street. The linden trees looked like they were dead, but soon they would have buds, then leaves. Then the birds would come. Willi had not seen Lola for twenty years – or was it even longer – but he recognized her as soon as she turned the corner. There was her red hair, of course, but also her light step. She went into the small grocery across the street. He waited ten minutes to be certain she hadn’t been followed, paid for his coffee, and crossed the street.
Willi looked stern and Lola cocked her head slightly and brushed a red curl back from her forehead as they shook hands. She smiled. She rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. To anyone watching, they might have been neighbors or colleagues, not friends who hadn’t seen one another in a very long time. As they looked into each other’s eyes, each of them was rearranging the furnishing of his own existence, to make room for this well known, even beloved, but entirely unexpected stranger.
Willi looked around. ‘Let’s walk, shall we?’ he said, taking Lola’s arm. As they walked, Lola told him what she had overheard at work. Willi asked her for details, and she told him everything she remembered the drunken SS men saying. ‘It sounded like they were coming for you. I had to warn you,’ she said.
‘I am very grateful,’ he said.
‘Are they coming for you?’ she said.
‘It’s likely,’ he said. Willi had already received other indications, and had been clearing out of his apartment.
‘Can I help you?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Willi. That sounded too hard. ‘You already have,’ he said. ‘But we shouldn’t meet again. I don’t want you involved.’ Willi felt a lump in his throat as he said it, so he said it again. He was having trouble navigating these waters. ‘I’ve always … been fond of you, Lola, but I can’t have you involved in my life.’
‘How have you been getting along, Willi?’ she said. ‘And thank you for stopping by Mutti and Papa’s.’
‘I had heard he was sick, and I’m glad he’s better. Don’t change the subject, Lola. Please. My life is a dangerous place. Especially right now.’
‘I’m getting that sense,’ she said. ‘Are you married?’
‘No,’ said Willi. ‘Lola, you’re not listening to me.’
‘Oh, yes, I am, Willi. You’re the one not listening: If I hadn’t overheard your name – hadn’t learned that the SS and the police are interested in you, and that they may know your whereabouts—’
‘I’m not your responsibility, Lola—’
‘You’re my friend, Willi; that’s an even bigger responsibility.’
And so, a few nights later, when the SS battered his door in, Willi and all his belongings were gone. The apartment had been stripped of every stick of furniture, every belonging. Only a lone teakettle had been left on the stove. The SS men circled around it as though it were explosive.
A furious manhunt followed. The SS went to all the sites they thought Willi frequented. It turned out that they knew very little about the man, despite his more than fifteen years on the force. ‘He’s like a goddamned ghost,’ said Obersturmbannführer Tannenwald. Even when they thought they were getting close, Willi would be several steps ahead of them.
Schloß Barzelhof
Willi was born into privilege. His grandfather had invented and manufactured the seamless ceramic pipe used in the reconstruction of Munich’s sewer system. The family lived in a villa he had built in Bogenhausen, on the outskirts of Munich. Willi had spent an idyllic childhood there, playing in the great walled garden, being pampered and cared for by his loving parents and grandparents.
In 1905, when Willi was twelve and seemed to be drifting through school, he was sent off to Schloß Barzelhof, a military boarding school in a castle in the Bavarian Forest near Passau. Many of the instructors at Barzelhof had served in the Imperial German Army.
Every day at five o’clock, the boys – there were about forty of them – were awakened. After washing up, they went off for an hour of running and calisthenics. After that they had a cold shower, put on their uniforms and marched to breakfast. Then came chapel, then classes – Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, geography, and German. At four they marched to the large gloomy common room where they did their assignments until supper at six.
After supper they returned to the common room for more study overseen by faculty proctors. There was no talking allowed. The long study tables were illuminated by gas lights. A fire crackled in the enormous fireplace. At eight thirty they went up to the dormitory where each boy had a cot and a footlocker for his belongings.
A strict code of conduct and an exaggerated sense of honor and duty prevailed at Schloß Barzelhof. It was no different from many other military boarding schools in that regard. And, like other such schools, it had its own way of doing things, what was spoken of as ‘the Barzelhof culture.’ This included certain harmless rituals, like the Polar Bear Swim on the first day of spring. The ice that remained along the edge of the river would be broken up and removed, and boys and teachers alike peeled off their clothes and jumped in. And just as quickly they scrambled out, shrieking and
