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

by Carly Schabowski

  The study door opened, then slammed closed once more. There was the thump of footsteps, then they stopped and there was quiet. She heard the music next, soft, inviting – he was in the living room. She stood and, using a rag, pulled the warm plate from the oven and placed it on a silver tray along with cutlery and a napkin.

  After a quick knock on the living room door, she heard him bid her enter.

  ‘Anna,’ he said, surprised perhaps.

  She set the tray down on the low coffee table in front of him. He relaxed back in the stuffed sofa, his top shirt buttons open, a glass in his hand and the crystal whiskey decanter half empty on the side table.

  ‘Greta was ill,’ she apologised. ‘She will be back tomorrow.’

  His eyes were red, watery already from the alcohol. ‘She will, will she?’

  ‘I should go. Should I ask Schmidt to take me?’

  ‘Ah, Schmidt.’ He poured another measure of whiskey into his glass and drank it back in one go, then repeated the exercise once more. ‘Schmidt. Schmidt is asleep, Anna. Fast asleep on the couch in my study. The work I asked him to do, not completed. My wife, she’s asleep. My son – asleep? Who knows?’

  Anna was unsure of what she should say or do. Her eyes moved about the room, settling on the portrait of Liesl that hung above the fireplace.

  ‘She was a beauty, wasn’t she?’ He nodded towards the oil painting of his wife.

  ‘She is very beautiful.’

  ‘Not so much anymore,’ he whispered, then laughed. ‘Sit down, Anna.’ He patted the sofa cushion next to him.

  She pulled at a ragged nail and looked at the sofa. He patted it again. She willed her legs to move but they would not.

  ‘Anna?’ He patted the sofa with more force, causing a dancing of dust motes to spiral into the air under the lamplight.

  She stepped forward, her legs shaking, then sat and placed her hands on her lap as if she were at school, afraid to do the wrong thing.

  ‘Do you like the music, Anna?’

  ‘It’s very nice.’

  ‘It’s Chopin. Do you know Chopin, Anna?’

  She shook her head.

  He leaned back on the sofa and conducted an imaginary orchestra with his hand, sloshing the whiskey in the glass. ‘It’s old. So very old.’ Then he suddenly sat upright and faced Anna, who looked at him even though she didn’t want to.

  ‘Isn’t it funny how the past catches up with you, Anna? Isn’t it funny that no matter what, it will come back to you, whether you want it to or not?’

  ‘I – I’m not sure what you mean, Herr Becher,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you don’t understand,’ he sighed. ‘You couldn’t.’

  ‘I think I should probably go.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, you’re probably right. I’ll ask one of the guards at the gate to take you to the camp.’

  Anna stood, then felt something on her leg. She looked down and saw Becher’s hand stroking her knee, creeping up below the hem of her dress.

  ‘It’s a nice dress on you, Anna. Very nice.’ He smiled at her, showing his teeth which were moist from his drink.

  Anna nodded and walked away, feeling goose-pimples on her skin from where he had touched her. As she closed the door, she saw he was conducting his orchestra once more, his smile gone, his face set like stone.

  ‘Nina,’ Anna whispered. ‘Nina, are you awake?’ Anna stood with her feet on her bottom bunk, her face close to Nina’s, who was deep in sleep, her eyelids flickering with dreams.

  ‘Nina,’ she tried again.

  Nina’s eyes opened. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Shhh.’ Anna climbed into the bunk and curled in next to Nina.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Nina asked again.

  ‘Tonight. I don’t know. Something strange happened.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was Herr Becher. He…’ She tried to find the words. ‘I don’t know. He wanted to talk to me, and he put his hand on my leg as I left.’

  ‘Did he…?’ Nina trailed off.

  ‘No. Nothing like that. But I’m scared. I don’t want to go back. How can I make it so I don’t have to go back?’

  Nina stroked Anna’s head, just as Anna did for her when she was scared, worried about Kuba. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she soothed. ‘You don’t want to work here. It’ll be fine. Just stay out of his way – it’ll be fine.’

  Anna allowed Nina to soothe her to sleep, her hand stroking her head, reminding her of her father doing the same when she was small.

  Isaac welcomed her the next morning with a broad grin, his hands outstretched, ready to take the coffee from her like a child who is being given a present for the first time.

  ‘You look worried,’ he said between sips.

  ‘It’s nothing. I just didn’t sleep so well.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ he said.

  She shook her head, then sat on the bucket and waited for him to drink his coffee. ‘How are the watches coming along?’

  ‘Don’t try and change the subject – what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, really. I was just thinking about my family and it upset me, that’s all, I promise you.’

  ‘Tell me a happy memory of your family,’ Isaac said. ‘Trust me, it will make you feel better, just as the story I told you of Hannah has lightened my heart.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can think of anything.’ She tried, but couldn’t think past the buzzing in her ears from the sleepless night.

  ‘Tell me again about playing with your brother. You said you would fly kites when the wind picked up – tell me about that.’

  She sat for a minute, then closed her eyes trying to summon up the picture of her running in the wind, laughing as the kites caught a gust and flapped into the sky.

  ‘I was nine years old when my father died,’ she began. ‘He was rarely at home so when he died, I felt guilty that I did not miss him more. My brother, he missed him, but I think he missed the thought of him – the thought of having a father like his friends had. My brother was younger than me by two years, but we were close as we only really had each other.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She was never the same after Father died. It was as though we reminded her too much of him, or perhaps the life we used to have. It was easier for her to spend time with friends, or organising events – anything to keep her mind away from us. But I did not mind. When she was home, she loved us, of course she did, but I could see the sadness in her all the time, so I was almost glad when she would tell us to amuse ourselves for the day, or that an aunt was coming to visit.

  ‘The kites. My brother loved them so we made three or four, all different colours, and would sit by the window each day, waiting for the wind to pick up so we could run in the park, my brother in front with the kite trying to catch a gust, and me behind holding onto the string. There was always something so thrilling, almost dangerous, about flying kites. They were attached by just that thin piece of string and anything could tear them away. If I didn’t give enough, it would not fly properly and crash into a tree where it would tear. If I gave too much, it would fly too high, catch a stronger gust, and the string would burn my hand as the kite tried to make its escape.’

  She opened her eyes, seeing Isaac, his elbows on the table in front of him, the mug in his hands, listening as if she were telling him how to magically disappear, and not a simple story of childhood.

  ‘I can see it,’ he said. ‘I can see you running, trying to control your kite. Your brother with you. It is as though it is my own memory.’

  ‘You did not have children?’

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘A son, Haim – meaning “life”. We had tried for so long that when he came, he was a complete blessing.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ she asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

  Isaac smiled weakly at her, his eyes watery. ‘He died. On his tenth birthday. He was a sickly child… On that day, on his birthday, I had done this for him – come here, look
.’ Isaac waved her over to him.

  She stood and walked the few steps to where he sat. One by one he pulled the tools from his pouch, then handed her something that looked like a tiny knife.

  ‘See there, at the end, underneath my own,’ he said.

  She brought the tool towards the thin light, but she felt the engraving under her thumb before she saw it – H. S.

  Silently, she handed the tool back, then returned to the upturned bucket, not knowing what to say.

  ‘It was Hannah who told me. She ran to me just like she had as a child, kicking dust up in her wake. But it was not a cry that I’d heard before – not one of joy, of pure excitement – it was like an animal that had been caught in a trap, in pain, unable to find its way out. I knew what had happened as soon as I saw her, as soon as I heard it. I knew my son was dead.’

  Isaac cried without making any noise. He sat staring at her, letting the tears fall freely from his eyes. She felt a lump in her throat, the sadness not just for Isaac but of knowing the noise that his wife had made – she had made it once herself.

  ‘You asked me before about my fiancé,’ she said. ‘The day I found out he had died, I made the same noise as your wife. I remember that I fell to the floor, pulling at the skirt of my dress, then I put it over my head as if I could make it all go away – make myself go away.’

  Isaac stood and walked towards her. He took her hands in his and squeezed them gently, as he had done when they had walked back to the camp one evening.

  Then he turned from her, got down on all fours and scrambled around near an old jerry can.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

  ‘Wait. Just wait there.’

  A minute passed as Isaac looked under a floorboard, and then he stood upright, a bundle of papers in his hands.

  ‘What is it?’ She stood and looked at the papers in his hands, all covered with curly, neat writing.

  ‘I found them,’ he said proudly.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here, in the shed, underneath the floorboard.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Letters, diaries, look here – drawings even.’ He pointed to a beautiful picture of a bumblebee that sniffed at a rose.

  ‘Sit. Sit.’ He waved his hand towards the upturned bucket. ‘I’ve been reading them. Not many. Perhaps we can read together? That way we don’t have to dwell on our own memories; we can read someone else’s.’

  Anna sat, her heart pounding as if they had both found the secret way out of the camp, and waited for Isaac to begin.

  Chapter 18

  J. A. L.

  August 1944

  Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

  Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

  I begin my writing today with Shakespeare once more. This time with words of love as I cannot find my own.

  Love endures. Is that what Shakespeare meant? I hope that is correct; I hope that love can endure, even in the doom we now find ourselves in.

  Love.

  I learned the word when I was little: first the love for my parents and my siblings, and then for a pet dog. Each love was different though – the love for my parents stupidly taken advantage of, as if they would always love me and me them. The love for my siblings was similar, yet I was aware that at times we could hate each other for any slight that we assumed one had committed.

  The love I had for my dog, for Bernard, was different again. This was a love for a best friend, and something that I had to care for. It made me wonder sometimes if it was how my parents felt about me.

  Bernard was truly my best friend in the whole world. My sister was jealous of him, of the bond I had with him, yet I know she loved him too and would find her napping with him, her arms wrapped around his neck, afraid to let him go.

  I did not have many friends as a child; I didn’t like playing the games the boys at school enjoyed. Instead I was happier with my nose in a book, trying to imagine the worlds that were described to me, trying to imagine what it would be like to live that life.

  No one wrote anything about this life, though. No one said that this could be a possibility. Even when it began, when friends and family disappeared into the night, when my father lost his job and we were made to wear the yellow stars – it still seemed impossible that this could be where we ended up.

  We moved as the German army marched into our town on the Polish-German border, first to an aunt in the countryside and then to a friend of my father’s, another academic who told us he could hide us and keep us safe.

  The fact that we spoke both German and Polish helped somewhat. It meant that we were not confined to one country, and could pass ourselves off as someone else.

  ‘We’ll head to France,’ my father said one evening, as we sat in his friend’s basement, our home for over a year.

  He was feverish after catching a cold from the damp that lived on the walls, the mould that grew in between the cracks of the bricks, and the drips of water that ran down in summer and froze in winter.

  ‘Hush now,’ my mother told him, and placed a cool washcloth on his head.

  He did not stop, however. He sat in the bed he shared with Mother, bent over papers on which he drew maps, added dates and times of trains that his friend gave him.

  I sat with my sister and younger brother, all three of us huddled on a single bed that we had learned to sleep in together – not one of us daring to move in our sleep so it was as if we were mummies in their sarcophagi; their arms across their chests, perfectly still.

  I watched Father as he scribbled, his beard now long and white, his eyes squinting behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He had grown old this past year. There were more creases in his brow, more wrinkles around his thinning face.

  ‘Do you think he has gone mad?’ my brother, Szymon, asked me. He was eating as usual, popping small pieces of bread in his mouth and chewing them slowly.

  ‘Why can’t you eat it all in one go?’ My sister’s arm flung out and hit him.

  ‘Because it gives me something to do,’ he said and grinned.

  The pair of them loved to fight; my sister Katharina, almost nineteen, Szymon sixteen, and me the eldest, always trying to settle their disputes.

  ‘Don’t fight,’ I told them. ‘You’re always playing. It’s as though you don’t realise where we are.’

  ‘I do,’ Szymon said. ‘But I also have a theory.’

  ‘A theory? Your brain is the size of a pea; I doubt you have any theory in there.’ Katharina laughed.

  ‘I’ll have you know that it’s not just you two who have brains. I might not understand mathematics, or philosophy—’

  ‘Or anything,’ Katharina interjected.

  ‘But,’ Szymon pressed on, ‘I have a theory that if you act happy, even when things are bad, and if you find some humour, then you can survive. If we are serious and scared all the time, then where will that get us?’ He popped another tiny crumb of bread in his mouth, acting as if he were tasting fine chocolates.

  ‘You two are mad,’ I said, shaking my head, then looking at Father again, who mumbled something to Mother and made her smile.

  ‘We’ll go to England!’ Suddenly Father sat up straight, then tried to get out of bed, his thin legs like pencils inside his trousers. He stood, wobbly, his dressing gown over his shirt, cardigan and trousers, his kippah on his head.

  Szymon elbowed me in the ribs and giggled. ‘Told you – mad,’ he whispered.

  ‘Listen, listen to me now. We get to France and then we get to England. I have it all worked out. All of it.’ He flapped the papers at us.

  I took one of the sheets from him and saw a large circle with lines coming in and out of it, random scribbles by the side. I looked to Mother, whose eyes were filling with tears.

  Szymon took the paper next, and he did not jok
e, but looked to me and Katharina with wide scared eyes.

  ‘Yes, Papa, that’s exactly what we will do,’ I said. I climbed off the bed and led him back to his, laying him down and covering him with blankets. I placed the damp washcloth on his head, and nodded at his feverish murmurings.

  Soon he fell asleep.

  Mother sat on one of the two wooden chairs next to him, and sang prayers to him, allowing the weak tears to fall down her face as he slept.

  ‘It’s bad, isn’t it.’ Katharina had huddled herself into a ball on one corner of our bed; Szymon had stopped pecking at his bread.

  I nodded.

  ‘So we’re not going to France?’ Szymon asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We will be safe here.’ Katharina shunted over to him and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. ‘We have been safe so far and we will stay safe.’

  I remember sitting on the other chair, my eyes darting from my brother to my sister and then to my parents. I had to figure a way out for us, I had to get us to safety.

  But how?

  Chapter 19

  Isaac

  Isaac stopped reading. Anna’s face showed the emotions he felt – fear, sadness.

  ‘What happened next?’ Anna asked.

  ‘We can continue tomorrow,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Is it wrong that I want to read more? It’s as though the voice, the words – I don’t know.’

  Isaac nodded. ‘I know what you mean. It is as though it is our story, all the things we wished to say.’

  Anna picked up the empty mug from Isaac’s desk. ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, watching her leave and walk down the path towards the house where lights began to illuminate the darkened interior, where the Bechers awaited their breakfast and coffee, the fires to be lit.

  He placed the papers back into their hiding place and took out the pieces of watches he had hidden for his masterpiece.

  Ignoring the bag that held the jewellery he was to work on – removing engravings, fixing bracelets and earrings – he continued to work on the watch for Anna, wanting her to have something beautiful in her life that would always be hers.