The Watchmaker of Dachau: An absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical novel

by Carly Schabowski

  They threw the woman into the pit, her limbs tangled and bent at odd angles as she lay on top of another, and Anna felt a wave of nausea rise from her stomach, reaching her throat. She was glad of it – glad to know that she had not become so indifferent, so immune to the horror – she wanted to feel it.

  ‘I was just remembering the day my father bought us a dog.’ Nina walked a few steps in front of Anna towards the bunkhouse. ‘I loved that dog – did you ever have a pet, Anna?’

  Anna shook her head – did the woman she had just thrown into that pit have a pet? Did she have a cat, perhaps, pure white and silky, that sat on a windowsill somewhere, waiting for her to come home?

  ‘You in?’ Joanna asked as soon as they both entered the bunkhouse, waving a deck of cards at them, fashioned from some cardboard she had bartered for with a lump of bread.

  Nina sat down on the dusty floorboards, an upturned box featuring as a playing table. Anna stood watching Joanna count out the cards; for herself, Nina, a woman called Ami and for Anna. She sat next to Nina and crossed her legs, then removed her mask, breathing in the damp air. Around her women slept on their bunks, their blankets covering their whole bodies so that you could only see the scruff of hair on a pillow. Others sat together, talking – one had a book she had been gifted by a male camp guard. Joanna had told Anna and Nina not to ask what she had done to be given it.

  As Anna looked at the scruffy designs Joanna had drawn, she recalled playing a game with Piotr, who had tried to cheat the entire time so that they had eventually fallen about, laughing like children.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ Joanna asked, raising her dark eyes from her hand.

  ‘A memory,’ she answered, then rearranged her cards to try and find a sequence to get rid of some of them. She couldn’t, and picked up a card from the deck.

  ‘That’s all we have now,’ Joanna said. ‘Speaking of which…’ She rummaged around in her pocket and drew out four cigarettes, laying them down next to the cards.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ Nina picked one up, staring at it as if she had never seen one before.

  ‘A guard,’ Joanna said out of the side of her mouth, as she tried to light it with a thin match from a tiny box. ‘Got these too.’ She blew out the smoke and chucked the matches towards Nina.

  ‘But how?’ Anna asked, placing her own cards down to pick up the cigarette.

  ‘That fat guard, what’s her name – Elsa? Something like that. Anyway, she’s bringing in a few things as long as we give her some petrol and scraps of metal from the sheds and munitions store. She says she’s getting a fair price for them on the outside. So she pays me in these.’ Joanna blew out a long stream of smoke, closed her eyes and smiled, savouring the tobacco.

  Anna did not smoke, not really. She had sometimes had a puff of Piotr’s, and now and again when she had drunk wine, and had once begged a cigarette from her brother.

  ‘You don’t want it?’ Joanna asked, nodding towards the cigarette Anna held in her hand.

  ‘I do.’ Anna placed it in her mouth and allowed Nina to light it for her. The first drag made her cough and splutter, which made the others laugh. But after a few drags, she felt lightheaded and decided she liked the feeling. ‘Won’t you get in trouble?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Maybe. I say it’s worth the risk. Besides, I doubt a guard is going to let everyone know what she is doing.’

  Anna played three eights, then Nina two fours.

  ‘You know, the typhus is gone,’ Joanna said, as she took the last drag of her smoke where it fizzled and crackled against the filter. ‘It’s pure starvation that’s killing people now.’

  Anna shook her head – she had seen how weak these women were, how they coughed and sweated.

  ‘I’m telling you. There’s no food. They know it. Easier to control us if they keep us locked up – no food, let all the weakest go.’

  At the mention of food, Anna’s stomach rumbled in response. She placed a hand on her abdomen, feeling how it had shrunk even more, flat, full of air and nothing else.

  ‘Lange!’ someone shouted, running into the bunkhouse.

  Joanna quickly grabbed the cards and shoved them down her dress; Anna, Nina and Ami extinguished their cigarettes.

  ‘You!’ Lange boomed as she entered, pointing at Anna. ‘Come with me.’

  Frightened, Anna turned to Joanna and Nina – what had she done? Had Lange seen the cards, the cigarettes? Did she think Anna was behind it?

  Anna walked towards Lange, then out into the open.

  ‘You’re needed at the house,’ Lange sneered. ‘Seems they can’t do without you.’

  ‘But I thought we were in quarantine?’ As soon as the question had left Anna’s mouth, she wished she could shove it back inside.

  ‘Are you questioning me?’ Lange narrowed her eyes at her, her hand already on her baton.

  ‘No. No. I just don’t want to make them sick.’

  Lange slapped the side of Anna’s face, then looked at her hand and grinned. ‘You feel fine to me,’ she laughed, leaving Anna with a red handprint on her cheek.

  As they walked towards the gate, she thought of what Joanna had said – there was no typhus anymore. They were keeping them locked away, starving them until there would be no one left.

  ‘It is so good to see you.’ Greta enveloped her in an embrace as soon as she entered, her body warm and comforting.

  ‘And you,’ Anna said as she pulled away.

  ‘You’d better change. Your dress is in the drawer over there.’

  Anna dressed quickly, almost happy to be wearing the brown dress once more, feeling as though she were something more than just an inmate in a camp – she was almost human again.

  ‘Take this to Isaac, will you?’ Greta handed her a mug of coffee. ‘And tell him that Herr Becher wants the typewriters fixed by tomorrow at the latest.’

  Anna nodded and walked towards the shed, the glow of the lamp welcoming her.

  ‘You’re back.’ Isaac looked up at her as she entered, his hands already reaching for the warm drink.

  ‘I am.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m glad you are well.’

  ‘I was not quarantined; it seems to have missed the men’s camp somehow.’

  ‘Well, I am glad to see you are all right,’ she said, and she turned to leave him to his work.

  ‘You are?’

  She looked back at him, his face thinner than the last time she had seen him, his hands trembling as they held the weight of the mug. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Will you…’

  ‘Will I…?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry… I am being foolish.’

  ‘What were you going to ask me?’

  ‘Will you sit a while? Whilst I drink this?’

  She nodded and sat on the upturned bucket that seemed to serve as the guest’s seat.

  ‘I have so few people to speak to during the day,’ he began in between sips.

  ‘But you have friends in the camp?’

  Isaac nodded. ‘One. Elijah. He was sick for some time, and then he became quite close with a few of the others.’

  ‘But you are not close to them too?’

  ‘This work,’ Isaac looked at the tiny screws on his desk, the ribbon from the typewriters, the small can of oil he used to lubricate the cogs and wheels, ‘it makes them think I’m different from them. As though I am friends somehow with Herr Becher, or I am receiving a privilege.’

  Anna nodded. She knew how he felt. Apart from Nina and Joanna, she too had felt excluded – noticed the looks the other women gave her, the whispers as she walked past – and had often wondered what the others really thought of her.

  ‘You think I am a silly old man, I’m sure,’ Isaac said, interrupting her thoughts.

  ‘I think I understand. And you’re not old.’

  Isaac placed his coffee cup down, the quiver of his hand making the coffee spill onto the wood. He wiped it with his sleeve. He glanced up and saw Anna watching. ‘They are getting
worse,’ he said, looking down at his hands as if they did not belong to him.

  ‘It’s the hunger and the tiredness,’ she said. ‘I find that my legs shiver when I stand too long, as if they are going to collapse under me at any moment.’

  ‘It is my age, my dear. I have aged more in these past weeks. It is as though I have added ten years to myself.’

  ‘It will be better when you can leave, when you can go home.’

  ‘Where is your home, Anna?’

  ‘A small town, north of Baden-Baden.’

  ‘Near the forest?’

  Anna nodded and smiled widely at the thought of the Scots pines, beeches and elms that covered miles of countryside – the memory of home. The words rushed out of her, welcome as a cool stream in summer. ‘We played in the forest when the wind would not play with us – when we could not fly our kites. The ground there is always carpeted with dead leaves and twigs, so that when you walk it crunches and crackles. I loved that sound. Then,’ she leaned forward, ‘then you would hear the screech of a raven or the char-char of a woodpecker before the drumming as it made a new hole. One day we came across a wild boar who was giving birth. We sat in a thicket of ferns, and waited and watched whilst she grunted with the strain, her belly rippling as the babies tried to find a way out. It started to rain, but under the canopy of leaves we were mostly dry, with just the sound of the patter as the drops hit the leaves above us.

  ‘My brother asked me if the pig would die. It seemed as though she must do. She could not move, could barely breathe. He wanted to go home and fetch Father’s old shotgun, to end her misery, he said. But before I could chastise him, there was a new sound, a squeak, and there on the leafy carpet was a tiny pink boar. It must’ve been less than a minute before another one arrived, and then another. Then the mother wriggled herself to her feet to meet her babies. She cleaned them and nudged each one, until she lay down again and they each found a teat and began to suckle.’

  Anna stopped, then felt herself redden. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I told you that. You must think me the silly one.’

  ‘Not at all. It sounds magical to me.’

  ‘It was. Before all this,’ Anna opened her palms and raised her arms, ‘it was sort of perfect, even when it wasn’t, even when bad things happened. It was still magical – but then, that is memory. To look back and make things brighter, bigger and better than they really were.’

  ‘When I look back, things are hazy for me. But then, that is my elderly mind.’ Isaac grinned at her then finished the rest of his coffee.

  ‘You’re hardly old, Isaac. It really is just this place. Here, I should get back.’ Anna stood and picked up the cup. ‘They are so beautiful.’ She looked at the watches Isaac had laid out in a box behind him in neat rows.

  ‘They’re almost fixed. Almost. But first the typewriters, and then I will finish them.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Anna left Isaac hunched once more over his tools, the light flickering on the walls of the shed as if he were not alone, as if ghosts of the past were watching over him.

  Anna shuddered at the thought as she walked back to the house. She had never believed in ghosts before – they were made up in tales told by friends or to siblings on a dark winter’s night, when the wind howled and trees tapped their spindly fingers against the windows, all designed to scare the listeners to squeals and laughter.

  She looked back at the shed before she opened the kitchen door, leaving the crouching watchmaker to his work, yet watching everything he did.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Anna asked Greta, as soon as she was inside the warmth of the kitchen.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Are they evil, do you think, like the tales you tell as children?’

  ‘No, not evil. They are restless, trying to find their way home again. Why, have you seen something?’ Greta looked up at Anna, ignoring the bubbling pot on the stove which was threatening to boil over.

  ‘No. I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘If you do, say a prayer and wish it on its way, it’ll leave you be then.’ Greta nodded at her.

  Anna smiled and left Greta to her cooking, making her way to clear the dining table after the family’s breakfast.

  Yet when she reached the dining room, the table was not empty of the family. Liesl Becher sat at her end of the table, the fireplace an open mouth behind her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said, unsure of whether to leave or to stay.

  Liesl looked up, her eyes red and puffy as if she had been crying all night. She waved a hand at the table. ‘Clear it.’

  Anna nodded and began to stack the plates, one on top of the other, watching her every movement so as not to spill any crumbs from the bread plate, or allow a smear of egg yolk to drop onto the table and stain it.

  ‘Do you know what I miss?’

  Anna looked at Liesl, shocked. Liesl’s red eyes were trained on her, her pink dressing gown wrapped around her, her enormous bosom escaping through a gap. Anna shook her head.

  ‘I miss dancing. And restaurants. That is what I miss. Not that you would know what I’m talking about.’ Liesl sighed, then stirred her coffee so that the spoon tinkled at the side of the china.

  Anna made to leave, but Liesl continued to talk so she stood, dumbly holding the dirty plates in her hands, her eyes focusing on the fireplace behind Liesl.

  ‘I don’t like the heat. Well, I do, when we holiday, and I can cool off in the sea or a swimming pool. But the heat, all day every day…’

  Anna’s hands were cold, her feet frozen. What was she talking about?

  ‘You wouldn’t know anything about it.’ Liesl stood and walked towards her. ‘But in a strange way, it’s all your fault, isn’t it? That I should perish in the heat. That I should miss dancing. It is, isn’t it, your fault?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Anna muttered, the plates knocking against each other as her hands shook.

  Liesl, standing directly in front of Anna now, laughed, and then Anna felt the sting of her palm across her face, and dropped the plates in shock.

  As Anna bent down to pick up the crockery, Liesl laughed once more as she walked out of the room. ‘Clean it up,’ she said, her cackle continuing as she climbed the stairs.

  ‘What happened?’ Greta was by Anna’s side, trying to help her with the dishes.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. She was talking about the heat. But it’s cold. And then she said it was my fault.’

  ‘Go and put some cool water on your cheek, I can see her handprint.’

  Anna gingerly touched her face, then returned to the kitchen and splashed cool water on her skin, soothing the sting of the second slap of the day.

  Chapter 14

  Isaac

  That evening, Isaac was glad to see that Anna would be walking back to the camp with him. As soon as he saw her, he smiled, then wished that Levi were there to see him doing as he wished – trying to find some happiness.

  Then, he saw her – really saw her – a young woman, and he an ageing man, and his smile faltered for a moment until he saw her return the gesture, allowing it to reach her eyes.

  They fell into a matching stride, their shoulders touching, Schmidt a few steps behind, humming his annoying tune and smoking his cigar, not realising that Isaac was glad he was making them walk slowly, glad of the extra moments with Anna.

  ‘How was your day?’ he asked her, his tone the same as if he were asking Hannah when he returned from the workshop.

  She looked at him, then bit her lower lip as if she were about to cry.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I just want to go home,’ she said, a tear tracing down her cheek.

  Without thinking, he took her hand in his, briefly, and gave it a squeeze as if he were hugging her with all his might.

  Shocked, she looked down at her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Isaac whispered, then moved away from her.

  They walked in silence, only the crunch of their f
ootsteps on the ground, and the rustle of leaves and undergrowth as night-time visitors sought food.

  Then, her arm was back against his and a slight brush of her fingers on his fingertips, so fleeting that he wondered if he had imagined it.

  As they reached the gates, quietly she said, ‘Thank you,’ and disappeared towards the women’s block, the spotlights from the watchtower illuminating her as she walked.

  Three bunks were empty in the bunkhouse when Isaac reached them. All three belonged to brothers, aged between eighteen and twenty-two.

  ‘Where are they?’ Isaac asked Jan as he washed his face.

  ‘Where do you think?’ Jan said, then pushed past to his own bunk.

  Isaac followed, the coughing and quiet murmurs echoing around the bunkhouse.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Are you really going to ask me that? Do you not see the chimneys, not smell the burning?’

  ‘I’m at the house,’ Isaac said dumbly.

  ‘Ah yes, that you are. At the house. Lucky you.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for it. They asked for me.’

  ‘Well, whilst you are at the house, at the pleasure of our guards, men are taken away every day to the buildings with chimneys. Do you know what happens in those rooms? They are gassed, all together in one room, and then their bodies are burned.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Isaac’s throat was dry.

  ‘How can I not know? They make us burn the bodies. They make some of us march them to the room in which they will die. We tell them they are going for a shower.’

  A chill ran down Isaac’s spine as he remembered the shower room from his first day, the iced water running over his body, the men pushed together, frightened. Was that how it was?

  ‘I – I didn’t know.’

  ‘Like I said, you are lucky.’ Jan lay down and turned his back on Isaac. Then, his head turned briefly. ‘You said before, to Elijah, that you would get out of here, that the Americans and British would save us. I didn’t believe you, but I do now. They are coming, you can see it in the guards’ faces. They are forgetting things; they talk amongst themselves more. But more of us are dying – so I’d say you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of getting through this. Maybe more so because you’re at the house.’