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

by Carly Schabowski

  ‘You think we will survive?’

  ‘I’m telling you this so that you make sure you do. Keep your head down, don’t get into trouble.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet.’

  The following morning, Isaac worked quickly. He took the tiny face from the woman’s watch, leaving just the leather strap which was worn and ripped. The hands were still, yet the design on the face was nothing like he had seen before. Where each number should be was a tiny design. There were birds at twelve, as if they were kissing, made to look like the number itself. The number one was a tiny weeping willow, two a swan, then three a squirrel eating. It was something he would have thought suitable for a child, yet the tiny pictures were almost miniature works of art that only an adult could appreciate. When he had seen the watch face in amongst the others, he had thought at once of Anna, of her tale of the forest and the trees and animals that dwelled there. It was made for her, he knew, and he would make it even more exquisite.

  He knelt down and placed it in the hole where the bundle of papers lay, along with the tiny clasps he had taken from the man’s wristwatch weeks before. Bit by bit, he would make something new, something beautiful that would work and live again – something for Anna so he could see her face when he gave her his creation. He wanted to see her eyes smile, just as Hannah’s had done.

  ‘I’m alive!’ Levi’s voice was behind him, and Isaac got to his feet as quickly as he could.

  ‘So you are! Where have you been? Have you been sick?’ Isaac said, shaking Levi’s hand, both of them grinning at each other as if they were long lost friends.

  Levi sat on the upturned bucket, his long legs in front of him, thinner than before, his face almost skeletal. ‘I was. A bit of a bad chest, that’s all. Took a while but I made it. I knew I would.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t smell lemons,’ Levi said, then began to tie up a shoelace that had come undone.

  ‘Lemons?’

  ‘Yes, lemons.’

  ‘Levi, you will have to elucidate.’

  Levi sat up straight. ‘Lemons. It’s what you smell when you are dying.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘My grandfather and grandmother smelled lemons,’ Levi counted on his fingers, ‘my cousin, and probably my dog – he couldn’t actually tell me, but I knew.’

  ‘So that’s what I need to remember: if I smell lemons, I am near death.’

  ‘Well,’ Levi considered. ‘I mean, if you are perhaps near a lemon tree then you can logically conclude that it is not death you are smelling but an actual lemon.’

  ‘Thank you for explaining.’ Isaac sat down and added some oil to his lamp.

  ‘To work I must go.’ Levi stood. ‘Promise me if you smell lemons whilst I am gone, you will resist.’

  ‘I promise. What have they got you doing today?’

  ‘They want a brick wall instead of a fence around the back of the garden.’

  ‘Perhaps they are worried you will finally find a way to escape?’ Isaac grinned.

  ‘Perhaps. I think it is more likely they are worried who may want to get in.’

  Levi pretended to doff his cap, then left Isaac alone.

  He looked down at his work, at the watches staring silently at him, waiting for him to make time pass once more.

  Each watch told a story to Isaac as he mended them. The way they were worn, the way they broke, gave clues to him like a detective at a crime scene – a crack in the glass coupled with a missing link spoke to him of a busy, distracted husband, perhaps wealthy, who did not care what happened to his timepiece. Isaac imagined that he would come home each day and undo his watch, throwing it in the general direction of a table, yet missing, not even noticing when it fell on the floor with a thud.

  A thin gold chain that was attached to a pocket watch caught his eye. There was no cover, simply the watch face that ticked the seconds by. It was not broken. He lifted it and held it to his ear, listening to the soft tick-tock as it counted the seconds. There was nothing remarkable about the watch; it was simple, with no decoration or engraving, yet the thought of the gear train stopping to allow for the sound, the balance wheel oscillating back and forth to keep the time, was magical to Isaac, and he found himself laughing with joy.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ Anna appeared in front of him – how long had she been standing there?

  ‘It’s this. Here.’ He held the watch out to her.

  She placed the mug of coffee she was carrying onto his desk and held the watch.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ she said, and raised her eyebrow at him in question.

  ‘No, no, hold it to your ear.’

  Anna did as she was told and Isaac watched her, waiting. Within a few seconds, she closed her eyes as if she were going to fall asleep on the spot.

  He said, ‘It’s so soft, the ticking. Almost as if it wants to remain secret. In some, you can almost feel the pulse as it tells the time. Whoever made this did so with such care, the insides work beautifully together.’

  She opened her eyes. ‘The insides? You speak of them as if they are people!’

  Isaac’s smile faltered and he held his hand out for her to give the watch back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she sat down. ‘I didn’t mean to poke fun. I like the way you are so passionate about them.’

  ‘It’s all I have,’ he said, brushing his thumb over the clear glass.

  ‘Were you always a watchmaker, Isaac?’ Anna asked, her elbows on her knees, her hands cupping her chin like a small child. Isaac warmed at the picture of her – it was the same way he had sat as a child when his father would tell stories of his day.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘You did not have a family?’

  ‘I did, once.’ Isaac sipped at his coffee. ‘I was married. She was twenty and I twenty-two, but I had known her most of my life. Her parents ran a farm and I first saw her on the day the puppies were born.’

  ‘The puppies?’

  ‘It is a childish story – are you sure you want to hear it?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Very well.’ Isaac sat back, holding the coffee mug in both hands. ‘There was a farm dog, a bitch. She was black and white all over with a black patch over one eye, so I called her Pirate. She was not a great farm dog, and instead of rounding up sheep or chasing away strangers, she would befriend them, laying her head in the soft wool of the sheep or licking a stranger’s palm. Every day she wandered into the village, and that was where I met her, on a street corner when I was twelve and sitting on the side of the road, trying to throw a stone to the other side in one go.

  ‘I’d had an accident the year before, falling through a frozen lake when I was playing with friends. I sliced my thigh open on the ice, tearing through the tendons and muscles, leaving me with a permanent scar, limp and pain. The throwing of stones was all I could do a year after my injury, and it was nice to have company from Pirate, who would nuzzle me and lick my face when I got mad that my game was not going well.

  ‘It must have been a week or more, and I had not seen her. I asked my father, who told me to take the walk to the farm – it would do my leg good, he said. I didn’t want to go. I knew how I looked and saw the glances from those on the street, their sympathy at the poor crippled boy. But my father, he was a man who could convince anyone to do something if he thought it was good for you, and after a few kind words of encouragement, he sent me on my way.

  ‘When I reached the farm track, I walked slower, my leg already aching. Cows munched on grass by the fence, their doleful brown eyes following me, and the sun warmed my back. I liked the farm track, the way the wildflowers bobbed their heads in the breeze and how the fields all around were dotted with sheep, cows and horses – it reminded me of the small figurines I would play with at home.

  ‘I was perhaps halfway to the farmhouse, the large barns looming in the distance, when a girl came running past me, screaming tha
t they were coming.

  ‘I of course had no idea what she meant and called out to her, but instead of answering me, she stopped and asked me what was wrong with my leg.

  ‘“I hurt it,”’ I told her stupidly.

  ‘She looked at the barn, the farmhouse and then back at me, as if deciding something. “I’ll walk with you,” she said, then traced her running steps back to me.

  ‘We walked together towards the farm, she explaining excitedly to me how her dog, the one I had called Pirate, was in fact a bitch and was about to have puppies.

  ‘I told her to run on ahead so she wouldn’t miss the birth, and she made a deal with me that if she ran on and left me alone, we would always be friends. We shook on it, and that was the deal sealed – from that day on until the day she died, we were each other’s best friend.’

  Isaac finished his story and looked to Anna whose eyes were closed.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘The way you describe it, it is as if I was there, as if I met her.’

  ‘I rarely think of that day, but now I have, it is as if it happened yesterday,’ Isaac said.

  Anna opened her eyes. ‘I tried to imagine what you would have looked like as a boy, and a young man on your wedding day.’

  ‘I certainly looked better than this!’ Isaac laughed, then ran a hand over the grey beard that now covered his chin and upper lip.

  ‘I can still see you – as you were,’ Anna said, then blushed.

  Isaac looked at his coffee cup, and drank some back. ‘You said you had a fiancé?’ he ventured.

  Anna was silent, and he looked to her, to see that she was crying.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

  ‘It’s all right. How can we not cry?’ She gave a weak smile.

  Isaac finished his coffee, not pushing the subject of her fiancé anymore. ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked her.

  She stood and took the mug away from him. ‘Tomorrow,’ she agreed.

  Isaac placed the quietly ticking watch inside the bundle he was keeping below the shed. He would tell Becher there were a few he could not fix. He was desperate to take a look at the quietly working mechanisms of the watch, using them in the one he was building for Anna.

  As he tucked it away, his hand found the bundle of papers. He pulled them out and shuffled backwards so his back leaned against the wall of the shed, then straightened his legs out in front of him. Slowly he found where he had read up to the day before, desperate to hear the voice from within, desperate to hear someone else’s story to take his mind away from the memory of Hannah.

  Chapter 15

  J. A. L.

  June 1944

  Dearest,

  Do you remember when I said I would write to you?

  I kept my promise and here I am, in a dank shed, finding words to say.

  It is strange to me that when I see you, I can think of so many things to tell you, yet now as my pen scratches words on this paper, my mind has gone blank. Perhaps it is too full of everything I want to say and now I am faced with it, I am not sure what should come first.

  Today it has rained all day, from the moment I woke before dawn until now, mid-afternoon. It is the kind of rain that sheets down, so that you can barely see in front of you. Liesl left the house a few hours ago to visit her son, who is at a school in Munich. Becher did not go with her, and I could sense her reluctance to go, as she kept returning to the house to fetch something else she may need for the trip.

  Again, they think I do not see them, do not know of their comings and goings, but because I am a ghost, a nothing, they do not see me, and I find that I can wander around their garden and grounds with little interruption.

  The cook sent me to the shed as soon as they left and brought me some food. She told me to stay inside for a while and said she will fetch me if she hears a car. She is a nice woman, and it is she, in fact, who has given me the means by which to write to you – something to do, she told me when she passed me some sheets of paper and a leaking pen, something to keep your mind busy.

  She is right, of course; my mind seems so slow and jumbled. The days roll into one large chunk of time that is mostly misery and despair. The bodies – so many of them. Piled high, awaiting burial, or, as someone told me, a fire, where a pit is dug into the ground and the dead thrown in, allowing the flames to eat away at what is left of them.

  This is not the letter I wished to write you.

  Let me begin again, my love.

  I always thought that at this age, I would be a professor of mathematics, or perhaps history, like my father. It was he who taught me about logic, about fact, about looking at what is presented to you and finding the truth within. I wonder now, what would he think of this?

  When I was thirteen, I sneaked into one of his lectures, where he spoke of the Roman Empire, of the developments they made and the atrocities they committed. It was afterwards, when I sneaked back out again and set off, walking quickly home in the weak winter light, that I felt a tap on my shoulder as I rounded the corner by the bookshop, and there he was. I expected him to scold me for sneaking out of the house, but all he did was smile and walk the rest of the way home with me.

  At the time, I remember being confused by his behaviour, but now I realise he was happy that I was like him – that I had a mind that could not settle, that had to know everything.

  My mother used to call my father’s mind a rubbish bin – one that collected every morsel of information, every scrap that no one else wanted. Yet he turned those pieces of knowledge into something more, something beautiful and useful.

  I wish now I could make you something beautiful. I wish I could take all of this nonsense and make some sense of it for you, and give you hope. Yet all I can give you is the words I know, to tell you I love you, and that you have made all this bearable; it is you who have given me something beautiful and hopeful.

  One day I picture us together. I can hear you laughing as I write this! Yes, together. I see us in a farmhouse, out in the countryside where I used to spend summer holidays, near the lakes of Zakopane. We could have a life together there, me studying and researching, you tending our garden and making the flowers grow. If it were not for you, and your knowledge of the earth, I think I would not still be alive. It is your mind I use to do the work they ask of me, and when I plant, I imagine it is your hands in the dirt, pushing down seeds, carefully patting the soil on top, smiling to yourself as you think of what will push out of the ground come spring and summer.

  We will have a dog, perhaps a cat for mousing, but it must be a friendly cat – not like that scrap of fur that was my grandmother’s. We will walk every afternoon, hike into the hills and mountains and stop to look at the view, holding hands and laughing.

  In the evening we will rest by the fire in winter, and in the summer, we will sit in our garden, sipping at drinks, eating our supper and planning our days ahead.

  Can you imagine it? Are you lying down, your eyes closed, seeing the vision of our life together?

  The rain has stopped now, and I see a break in the clouds and hope that the sun will shine – although it will take me from you – for a short time at least.

  I will go now, and write soon.

  I love you.

  July 1944

  In summer my mother cleaned the house, from top to bottom. She would say that most people do it in spring, ready for the summer months, yet she wanted the warmth that the season provided.

  She would fling open every door and window, allowing the cool breeze to seep into our home, take out rugs and, with our help, beat the dust out of them with a wooden beater.

  The dust would fly up in the air and I would wonder where it went. Did it just rain back down and cling once more to the threads of the carpets? Did it cling to me?

  Father said that dust was particles of us – of our life – our skin, our hair, the outside that we brought in with us on our shoes. When I told Mother this, she would frown with distaste and say, ‘All the more
reason to clean them then.’

  I didn’t like that she was getting rid of us, our past year. In my child’s mind I would imagine that the dust was me, playing with my friends as we fought battles down by the river, the dirt and soot I brought home with me forever clinging to the life around us.

  There is dust in the air today.

  It began just after I arrived at the house, and I can hear the crackle, smell the burning, see the clouds of smoke that filter into the sky and block out the sun. Dust – that is what we all are and what we become, filtered back into the sky and back into the world once more.

  It is macabre that I think this way. But it gives me some sort of joy to think that those bodies burning in the pyre today are finding their way back to their loved ones, where they will cling onto their clothes, their hair, the furniture in their homes, reluctant to leave.

  I have promised myself that if I ever leave here I will never beat a carpet again, I will not move the dust that settles around me; I will let it sit, and let it live next to me, allowing those who have died to come back once more.

  August 1944

  The mood in the camp is changing.

  It is as though the guards are emboldened by the heat. It reminds me of Shakespeare: For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

  The blood is boiling in their veins and I can see it as they count us in the morning, the sun already high and burning, their faces red and sweating. Their nostrils flare as if they are bulls ready to charge us at any moment, for any mistake they think we have made.

  This morning a young inmate fell. The heat, the exhaustion of digging ditches and the lack of food and water overcame him, and his legs fell from under him as if the bones had been removed. A guard pounced on him, kicking him as he lay unconscious, until another joined in, and then another. The thuds of their boots striking his body were sickening. He leapt off the ground with each strike, like a fish flapping out of water, yet he did not make a sound.