The Constant Man

the first blow struck, Willi was already elsewhere in his mind. It was a stormy spring day. The wind was whistling and driving hail down on them. He and Lola had been hiking around the Murnauer Moos. He wore shorts, a jacket, and a cap. It had been sunny earlier. He had finally broken in his boots and they no longer hurt, so they were running, seeking shelter, their steps pounding along the path. There was a chunk of black bread, Emmental cheese, and a bottle of water in his backpack. It bounced and crashed against his back with each step. There was a sweater too, he remembered. Suddenly they were swimming in the icy Riegsee until their skin could stand it no longer. Lola laughed as they ran from the water, shaking the water droplets from her body like a dog might, shaking and laughing. The sun danced in the droplets. The lake shimmered. The sun scooted from behind a cloud. It began to shower lightning all around them, then snow began falling in great gouts. The last thing Willi remembered was Lola rolling in a snowdrift and pulling him down on top of her.

Hearing shouts and screams, the captain came running back into the room and found the young SS man beating Willi’s torn and bloody back, kicking at his legs, and screaming like a wild animal caught in a trap. Willi hung on the floor from the straps, obviously unconscious, while the boy slashed at his body again and again and again, shrieking with each blow.

This boy, a seventeen-year-old who had finished his training just weeks earlier, had seen an opportunity. He had cursed the kapo and declared the beating he was administering weak, inadequate. He had torn the whip from the kapo’s hand, pushed the man aside, and flailed away in blind desperation. This would show his worth, this would teach the others in the barracks not to mock him. This would put an end to all the teasing about his thin, hairless chest, his baby face.

The captain yelled ‘Stop!’ three times and finally seized the boy’s arm before he stopped. The boy’s shirt was soaked with sweat and flecked with Willi’s blood. His face was red, his eyes were wild, and his body was heaving with his panting. ‘We don’t want him dead yet,’ said the captain.

The Riegsee

In one of those peculiar and meaningless coincidences that are sprinkled throughout life and usually go unnoticed, Lola found herself beside the Riegsee at the very moment Willi was being whipped, the very lake Willi had dreamed of as he was being beaten senseless. Thunder clouds were building over the lake and she was taking in laundry, pulling sheets and towels off the line and stuffing the clothes pins in her apron pocket. She almost tripped over Mephi, the big black poodle. He barked happily. He had fallen in love with Lola on the day she had come up the walk for the first time, and now he followed her constantly.

‘You’re not helping, Mephi,’ she said, laughing.

Mephi belonged to Fedor Blaskowitz. Fedor had named him for Mephisto, who first appears as a poodle in Goethe’s Faust. Fedor, Mephi and Lola lived in the steep-roofed, green cottage beside the lake. It was Fedor who, alerted by Bergemann, had gone to the Mahogany Room the day after Willi’s arrest to warn Lola, and to escort her to the first stop on her flight from Munich.

By the time Detective Sergeant Gruber showed up at the hotel to question and, if need be, arrest her, Lola was gone.

‘Where did she go?’ Gruber demanded.

Alex Kuzinski, the hotel manager said, ‘She got sick. She was vomiting.’ This was not a lie. The news from Blaskowitz had made her ill. ‘I ordered her to the hospital,’ said Alex. This was a lie. Alex was taking a big risk by lying about something Gruber could easily check. But Alex cared about Lola and could tell she was in trouble. What other choice did he have? And Gruber, true to form, didn’t check.

Bergemann had given Blaskowitz exact instructions. Lola and Blaskowitz had taken a taxi to an intersection not far from the Lerchenau Bicycles shop. They watched the taxi drive off and then walked the last few blocks to the shop.

On hearing the password, Gerd Fegelein, the one-time burglar, sprang into action. Many years retired from the only occupation he had ever truly enjoyed, Fegelein was pleased to be employed once again in illicit activity. He escorted Lola and Fedor a few blocks further to a safe house, a basement storeroom in an apartment building. The room was full of tools and equipment, but also had a bed and a few sticks of furniture.

Seeing how distraught Lola was in these early hours of her flight, Fegelein offered to visit her apartment and bring her whatever she might need to make her life a bit more comfortable and mitigate her distress. Blaskowitz was horrified. ‘Are you crazy? Her apartment will be watched,’ he said.

‘Of course it will,’ said Fegelein. He seemed to relish the thought. He described some of his professional successes for Blaskowitz, like the time he got away with some Fabergé knickknacks from the bedroom of a certain prince, while a party was going on in the very next room. ‘The apartment was on the top floor, by the way.’

‘But you were younger then, weren’t you?’ said Blaskowitz. ‘And you were eventually caught.’

‘But that was by Willi,’ Fegelein said, as though that didn’t count. Fegelein would not be dissuaded. He even asked Lola whether there was anything in particular that she wanted. He was happy for the adventure.

Lola lay down on the bed and almost immediately fell asleep. When she woke up many hours later, she was alone. A small lamp on the wobbly little table by the bed was burning dimly. And someone had brought a plate with some grapes, some cheese, a hunk of dark bread, and a kitchen knife. Bedside the bed