Until recently the shop had been exactly what the sign said it was. But thanks to the shifting social and political situation and to the circumstances of his new partner and part-time repairman, Lerchenau Bicycles came to be known among other misfits and enemies of the Reich as a sort of message center and rendezvous point where you could go for information or other forms of assistance.
If one knew enough to slide a heavy workbench out from the back wall and then lift a wooden trapdoor, you could descend a rickety staircase and find yourself in the building’s basement, a large, low and secret space beneath heavy floor joists. Fegelein hadn’t even known there was a basement when he had opened his shop. It is doubtful the landlord knew, since the stairs had been blocked off and boarded up for many years.
The basement was mostly empty when Fegelein discovered it, but with time it filled up. First he installed a bed and some other rudimentary furniture and used the space as a safe house for those who needed it. Willi had sheltered there the night of the teakettle. Next came various machines, tools and materials Fegelein had salvaged from all over, things which he thought might eventually come in handy. ‘Eventually,’ he said, ‘will come soon enough.’
By the time the war began in September of 1939, the basement had a small engraving studio and print shop that, on relatively short notice, could turn out an excellent passport and other convincing personal papers. It remained a safe house, and eventually became a stopping point for fleeing Jews, downed English and American pilots, and members of the resistance. Lives that were saved and lives that were lost passed through that basement.
After two nights in the Lerchenau basement, Willi had moved on to other hideouts. The Horvaths had an unused maid’s room in the attic of their building. Detective Hans Bergemann had access to a vacant garage across the alley from his apartment. From there he went to the cabin in the Bavarian Forest.
Once he was back in Munich, he registered as Karl Juncker with the local police as every new resident was required to do and made Tullemannstraße 54 his home. He kept his things there, his beloved Shakespeare volumes, his clothes, his bits of furniture. More and more, though, he stayed with Lola.
Lola’s small apartment had originally been a workshop belonging to a leather goods shop on Lindwurmstraße, a busy shopping street across town from Tullemannstraße. The door between the shop and workshop had been closed off years earlier when the workshop had been converted to an apartment. The apartment’s entrance was in the building’s courtyard. Next to the leather shop was a liquor store, with a large storeroom with two rear doors, one that opened into Lola’s courtyard and one that opened into the courtyard next door. And there was a profusion of doors around Lola’s courtyard leading off in various directions.
Willi investigated this labyrinthine arrangement and found it extremely satisfactory. He found two stairways to different roofs – the older part of the building had four stories and a steep slate roof; the newer addition had six stories with a flat roof and connections to adjoining roofs. He also found inside passages to two different alleys and meandering hallways of apartments, closets, and storage rooms.
Lola’s apartment was a single room of twenty-five square meters. There was a sink and a small gas stove in the kitchen alcove and a table and three upright chairs. The window beside the entry door faced south and actually got several hours of sun a day. Lola kept a few flowerpots with geraniums and forget-me-nots outside. The previous summer she had managed to grow a tomato plant and a cucumber, whose vine had climbed the green trellis nailed to her wall, giving the place the incongruent appearance of a country cottage.
Lola had hung a curtain across the middle of the room to separate the toilet and bedroom with its dresser, mirror, and bed from the rest of the apartment. The flush toilet had been added after the war and was enclosed in what looked like a wooden cupboard.
It was late evening the first time Willi stayed with Lola. He had a small canvas rucksack on his back. Lola was worried; she had expected him for supper. He apologized and explained he had been followed by a car. The driver had suddenly swerved to a stop in front of him, and two men had jumped out – thieves maybe, more likely Gestapo. Willi, still on the bike, swerved around them. The men jumped back in their car and gave chase. But Fegelein was right: in old Munich’s narrow, winding streets a car was no match for a bicycle. He took to the sidewalk, went through an alley too narrow for a car, and lost them.
‘I don’t think they knew who I was. They go after anyone and everyone these days. Anyone on the street after dark is prey for thieves or a suspect for the Gestapo. Anyway, I lost them, and here I am.’ Lola suspected Willi had been investigating her attack, and she didn’t like it. She knew he had somehow gotten his hands on the police report, and had been trying to find out what he could about the investigating officers, whether they were political and whether they were competent. But she threw her arms around him anyway and kissed him on the mouth.
Willi and Lola were on the wrong side of forty. They had each experienced love and disappointment more than a few times, and neither had given the other much thought over the years, except perhaps to wonder now and then what had become of Willi, or where was Lola
