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

by Carly Schabowski

  ‘Isaac,’ she said gently.

  He opened his eyes and tipped his head back, immediately rubbing at the back of his neck.

  ‘You were asleep,’ she said.

  ‘I was? Where am I?’

  ‘In the shed.’

  He looked about him, taking in Anna, then the floor of the shed, then back to Anna; finally he realised. ‘Of course I am. Yes. Herr Becher wants me here to check the cars. I must go and check the cars.’

  He made to heave himself up out of the chair, and Anna placed her hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him back down, so he sat once more. ‘Herr Becher isn’t here. So you don’t need to check the cars just yet. Drink this, and eat this.’ She handed him the bread.

  He ate slowly, and when he drank from the mug, his hands shook so much that he spilled the coffee, staining the whiskers on his chin. Anna felt a lump rise in her throat. She wanted to wipe his chin as she would a child, she wanted to cool his head from the heat, but she was unsure whether he would let her take care of him.

  ‘You should go to the infirmary when you return tonight,’ she told him.

  ‘I’ve been sleeping here,’ Isaac said. ‘Herr Becher wants me here. I don’t know why.’

  Anna suddenly thought of J. A. L., of the way he had been dragged out of the shed. She had an image of the same fate befalling Isaac – his old body dragged across the paving stones whilst brutal kicks and thumps battered him.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a good thing,’ Anna tried. ‘Maybe you will get rescued quicker – maybe when they leave, they will just let you go?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Isaac said, his voice indifferent.

  She tried again. ‘Anyway, the infirmary in our camp has run out of medicine. No one is being fed there. So maybe it’s better that you are here – it would do no good to show them how sick you are.’

  ‘What day is it, Anna?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s Friday.’

  He nodded. ‘Friday,’ he repeated. ‘I have lost track of the days. They are all disappearing from me.’

  Anna could not bear to see him this way. The Isaac she knew was slowly being replaced by a sick old man, whose mind was starting to slip away.

  ‘I think I know what happened to our mutual friend,’ Anna ventured.

  This time, Isaac’s eyes opened more. ‘Who? J. A. L.?’

  ‘Yes.’ She latched on to the fact that he seemed to brighten, if only a little. ‘Greta thinks his name was Adam.’

  ‘Adam – perhaps his middle name,’ Isaac said. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He died,’ Anna said simply. There was no need to tell him the details of the violence, the blood that had spoiled on the floor of this very shed. ‘He was homosexual too.’

  ‘Aha!’ Isaac sat straighter now. ‘So his letters, his love letters, they were to someone in the camp! I thought as much, but then I wondered how he had met a woman and fallen in love in such a way. Now, now it all makes sense. Here, Anna, get the papers. There are a few left – let’s read them together.’

  Anna scrabbled around on the dusty floor until she found the loose floorboard, picturing Adam doing the same as he tried to hide his writings to his love. She imagined the fear he would have felt as they dragged him out, the pain as he lay dying. Finding the papers, she pulled them out and sat on the upturned bucket. ‘Shall I read?’

  ‘Please do.’ Isaac was brighter now – a mystery had been solved. He crossed his arms and leaned back, closing his eyes whilst Anna began to read.

  Chapter 30

  J. A. L.

  September 1944

  They know.

  I can tell that something has shifted.

  This morning I was woken by a guard who had a scar over his eye. He grinned at me as I lay there and waited for the inevitable blow, but it did not come.

  ‘Get up,’ he told me. ‘You’re needed at the house.’

  It was too early for me to come here – the sky was still heavy with sleep – and yet he marched me here and asked me to wait in my shed.

  ‘What work should I do?’ I asked him.

  Again, that grin. ‘No work for you today.’

  As soon as he left, I needed to write. I think it is the last time that I will be able to. He saw us, you see, the guard with the scar, he saw as I kissed you behind the bunkhouse. A fleeting kiss – our first and our last.

  Is he with you now, the guard with the scar? If they ask me, I will tell them I made you do it – I forced you – and perhaps they will leave you be.

  Oh, why did we risk it? In all the months of talking to one another, of telling each other about our lives and dreams, we never took a risk – not even to hold hands.

  Yesterday it was the stars, I know it was.

  I told you how I loved to watch them, that each time I did it gave me some hope, however foolish, that since they were always there, a permanent scar in the sky, it was possible that I would exist too – although only for a part of their lives, it is enough for me.

  You laughed, then ran your hand down my cheek, and our eyes locked. It was that simple and yet that complicated.

  Do you think I am being paranoid? Oh God, I hope I am! I hope they have brought me here so early for some job that must start as soon as the sun begins to rise.

  I will write as quickly as I can, just in case I am no longer here come tomorrow. I have foreseen the dangers of what could happen if you fall out of line – I have witnessed them first-hand. It would be foolish of me to think that if they did see us there will be no reprisal – there will be, and when it happens, I just pray to God that it is quick.

  I have not prayed in some time. It is as though I have forgotten how to.

  I told you the story of the day when I was young, when my father took me fishing and told me that God was everywhere. It was easier to believe that sitting on the riverbank, watching His creation. It has been harder here.

  I went away with my father and we talked of God once more. I was perhaps fifteen or so, no more than that. It was summer, our favourite time of year. The days were long and warm, the garden overflowing with colour, and bumblebees hummed happily, filling the still air with a sort of music from nature.

  Father had to go to Krakow to visit an academic friend of his who had some papers he was desperate to read. He asked me to accompany him, taking us on a train journey overnight, and to spend three days where we could visit the university and the bookshops.

  Of course, I went. The thought of spending time with Father surrounded by learning, by books and fine architecture, appealed more to me than having to spend most of my days in the house with my siblings, as I had very few friends.

  Krakow was the city I decided I would live in when I grew up. The Wawel Castle drew me to it, as though it could one day be my home! Oh, how I dreamt of wandering those streets at night, sitting at cafes and bars, talking with like-minded friends.

  Father’s friend, Mordecai, lived in Kazimierz in an apartment above a coffee shop. He was older than Father and wore his white beard long, his hair falling in knotted curls from under his skullcap, and wire-rimmed glasses that seemed too small for his large open face, which would perch almost on the edge of his nose so that he was forever pushing them back up with his index finger.

  ‘Welcome!’ He wrapped Father in a hug as soon as we arrived and then did the same to me.

  ‘This is your boy – this is him?’ he asked Father, who nodded.

  Mordecai’s apartment was full of books. They were stacked on the floor, on every available surface, so that it was almost a game to try to follow him to his tiny kitchen where he brewed us tea and gave us sweet pastries to eat. ‘From Turkey, from Istanbul,’ he told me, as I took one of the syrupy pastries from their box. ‘Not that I went there to get them. I’ve a friend, Ismail, who makes them and serves them with his strong coffee. I will take you there to meet him – you will like him very much.’

  I could only nod in reply as I chewed on the honeyed, flaky pastry that filled my mouth and made me feel
exceedingly happy that I had agreed to come on this trip with Father.

  Mordecai ushered us to his balcony overlooking the street on which he lived, full of bookshops, and cafes. The cobbled streets led towards a synagogue and beyond that, I could see a small square.

  ‘It’s quieter,’ Father said to Mordecai.

  Mordecai nodded. ‘It’s changing. That is for certain.’

  This was the first time I had ever understood the rumours. It was 1937, two more years before Mordecai would have to leave his home, but even then, sitting on the balcony with red begonias trailing from his window boxes, I could feel the tension, see how people hurried down the streets, their heads lowered.

  ‘It is the same in Posen,’ Father said.

  ‘They haven’t said anything at the university yet, have they?’

  Father shook his head.

  ‘What are they meant to say at the university?’ I asked him.

  ‘Nothing. Don’t worry.’ Father smiled at me and Mordecai changed the subject.

  ‘I went to Istanbul, you know, when it was still Constantinople. I much prefer the latter name and I have a mind to petition that they change it back, if for no other reason than it rolls off the tongue much easier!’ Mordecai laughed.

  ‘What was it like?’ I asked, taking the bait.

  ‘Oh my! What was it like?’ He rubbed at his beard and I saw a few crumbs of pastry fall from it. ‘Well, it is hot, hotter than here in summer. There are smells of spices all around, young boys on bicycles carrying loaves of bread on the back of them, shouting out and waving to their friends as they ride past each other. In the bazaars there are all manner of wondrous things – sweets, pastries, gold, brass, paintings, fine silk rugs. Why, that rug in there,’ Mordecai turned to the living room, ‘well, you can barely see it for all the books on top of it, but that there was from a bazaar. In the evenings I would sit with my friend Ismail – the one we shall visit later – and we would sip a pungent liquor flavoured with aniseed, then drink back cool water to take away the biting heat on our tongues. We would listen to the call to prayer that sang out on the cooling air of the night, the minarets seemingly touching the stars. On those days, I felt as though I were in a dream, or in a story at least, like One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. I told Ismail of this and one evening, as we sat, he bestowed on me a gold-plated lamp, with rubies on the side. He said it was a magic lamp, and a genie would appear if I rubbed at the sides to grant me wishes. Have you heard of the tale of Aladdin?’ Mordecai asked me.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, now. Come with me.’

  He took me into a room at the rear of the kitchen which I supposed could have been a bedroom, but he had made it into a study of sorts. It was filled with treasures from his travels, rugs that hung from the walls, gold, silver and bronze ornaments in a glass case, a heavy polished desk whose legs were made to look like tree trunks, the branches holding up the desktop.

  Of course, there were books too. Red, blue and green leather-bound volumes, simple paperbacks, leaflets – it was as though Mordecai had collected every single thing ever written, and devoured the information. I decided in that moment that I wanted to be just like Mordecai.

  He handed me a book he had been foraging for in a pile. It was bound in red leather, the pages edged in gold.

  I held it to my face as I had always done with books, and smelled the leather, the pages.

  I saw Mordecai watching me as I performed my ritual, and reddened.

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ he said. ‘I do the same thing myself.’

  He showed me the lamp that his friend Ismail had given him, and told me that he had rubbed its side every night for years, waiting to see the genie appear, but the genie had yet to grant Mordecai any wishes. ‘I feel that he moved to a new house,’ Mordecai said, as he placed the lamp back on his desk. ‘Perhaps he jumps about into other lamps and this one which Ismail gave me was vacated.’

  ‘Is Ismail your best friend?’ I asked. I had heard his name so many times now, and I had not yet been in Mordecai’s home an hour.

  ‘He has been my friend for many years. I am not sure that when you reach my age you have a best friend, but he is certainly my dearest. Do you have a best friend?’ he asked me.

  I blushed at the question. I had had a best friend. But no more. And I did not want to talk about it.

  Father was awaiting us on the balcony. He had poured red wine into three glasses, letting me have the smallest glass with barely a sip of wine in it, yet I was glad to be included as an adult.

  ‘I’ve arranged for you to see our friend tomorrow,’ Mordecai told my father. ‘Best if you go alone.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Father asked.

  ‘Oh, of course not! We shall go and visit Ismail, shan’t we?’ He nodded in my direction and I nodded back in agreement.

  I am not sure whether it was the wine, or whether they were talking in code – perhaps a bit of both – but for the entire evening, I could not follow what each of them said. There was much talk of papers, of travel, of identification, and of the possibility that we would just have to ‘wait and see what happens’.

  Of course, now I know what Father was doing. He was trying to secure us a loan to leave as soon as we could, for he foresaw what would happen in a few years’ time. I do not know whether he did not get the loan, but I know he returned to Krakow once more in 1939, to try to secure papers once more. But again, it came to nothing.

  The following morning, I woke in Mordecai’s apartment and my father had already left.

  Mordecai told me to dress and that we would have breakfast with Ismail.

  We followed the cobbled lane as far as the synagogue, then turned left down a narrower street. Here the shops were closer together, the buildings on each side almost touching, letting only a sliver of light peep through from above.

  Although it was darker, it was brighter to me. One shop sold chocolates, a large black man standing at the doorway smoking, his white apron stained with smears of melted chocolate which he had been working with his hands. He smiled and said good morning to Mordecai, who greeted him by name and promised to be back later. At another, a small cafe, two men sat outside, sidelocks of curls escaping from their black hats, their arms raised as if in argument.

  ‘They are scholars,’ Mordecai told me. ‘Always arguing about some translation or meaning – pay them no heed.’

  A bookshop caught Mordecai’s eye, the tables set out in front spilling over with books, but then he noticed something further down, a hand raised in greeting, and thankfully ignored the books.

  We passed a jewellery store, all the emerald bracelets, diamond earrings and thick gold necklaces winking at us, then a French patisserie, the cakes displayed in the window so tiny and beautiful with their icing figurines and sugar-coated fruits that I wanted to stop. Mordecai noticed my glance. ‘We’ll visit here too,’ he promised. ‘My friend owns this – from France originally, he brought over his wares.’

  It seemed as though everyone was Mordecai’s friend, each of them smiling and waving, the smells of pastries, cooking stews, wine, tobacco, chocolate, all mingling together into one rich aroma so that for a moment I forgot that I was still in Poland.

  Finally, we reached Ismail. He was the colour of the milky coffee that Mother made, his eyes wide and bright, his smile taking over most of his face as he fell about himself trying to welcome me.

  He sat us at a table on the cobblestones. Two other men sat smoking from a long hose attached to a yellow glass bottle that sat on the floor, adorned with an intricate design of a dragon, the scales of which were made from green glass, its eyes red, and the flames coming from its mouth a rich gold.

  ‘It’s called a shisha,’ Mordecai told me. ‘Instead of smoking cigarettes, you can smoke that, with all different flavours of tobacco.’

  From inside, I could see Ismail talking to a younger boy, then he looked at us, grinned and came straight out.

  ‘It’s a
ll sorted – I have placed your order,’ Ismail told Mordecai.

  ‘Sit with us, Ismail, come and meet my friend here.’

  Ismail shook my hand, even though he had only just done so when I met him, and he sat next to Mordecai, the pair of them smiling at me as if I were some prized possession.

  ‘Mordecai has told me so much about you,’ Ismail began.

  I was surprised by this. I had heard of Mordecai maybe three or four times before we had come to visit, and I wondered what Father had said about me.

  ‘You are very clever, just like your father.’

  His voice was rich, his accent tinged with his own language. I liked it.

  ‘Ah, here – breakfast!’

  The boy placed three tiny coffee cups in front of us, the liquid inside a dense brown that was almost black. There were perhaps three sips of coffee in the cup, and I couldn’t understand why it was so small.

  ‘It’s very strong,’ Ismail told me. ‘Very. So sip it as you eat, here.’

  He took some bread from the tray that the boy held, still warm from the oven, then some cheese, olives, freshly sliced tomato, and some green stalks in a dish with lemon.

  ‘Eat, eat,’ he encouraged, building himself a sandwich of sorts – first the cheese, then a slice of tomato, a squeeze of lemon, and a few leaves from the stalky plant.

  ‘Parsley,’ Mordecai said, noticing my hesitancy over picking some up myself.

  I made a similar sandwich and popped a black olive in my mouth, just as Ismail and Mordecai did. Then, like a mirror image, I sipped at my coffee. Although basic, the flavours were so exotic to me. I was used to porridge for breakfast.

  ‘Your father told me that you were having some trouble at school,’ Mordecai began. I felt my face flame as it had when he had asked the previous evening about friends.

  ‘I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but you see, I think you will find we would understand.’