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

by Carly Schabowski

  He wondered who would take care of his home now – would someone live in it, side by side with his clothes and books?

  Suddenly the carriage door began to slide open, and Isaac craned his neck to see what was outside.

  One by one they were ushered out onto a stone and dirt track that sprouted weeds and grass in between cracks, as if life were still trying to show its face. Grey slush that had frozen overnight lay in mounds and the sky overhead matched it in colour, thick and heavy with the promise of new snow.

  Within seconds the tracks were full of scores of people, with guards standing in front of them, pushing and shoving them into smaller groups, then dividing them by male and female.

  ‘Put your belongings over here!’ A man stood in front of Isaac, wearing a brown woollen coat, the Star of David stitched onto his breast and an armband on his left sleeve, his cheeks rosy from the cold. ‘You deaf? I said, put your belongings over here! Now! On the cart!’

  Elijah stepped forward and placed his small tan suitcase onto the cart that was quickly becoming a heap of luggage.

  ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry,’ the man repeated. ‘You’ll get it back. You – I asked you to place your belongings on the cart.’ He turned once more to Isaac.

  ‘I have nothing,’ he simply said.

  ‘Nothing? A Jew with nothing?’ The man stared at the yellow star on Isaac’s coat.

  Isaac held his hands open.

  The man smirked at Isaac as if he had been waiting for someone just like him. He walked three or four steps towards a tall SS guard who stood aside, smoking a cigarette, his thick black coat wrapped around him, the lapels pulled up to keep his neck warm. He reminded Isaac of a crow.

  The black crow listened as the man spoke to him, his moustache twitching, perhaps in a smile. He flicked his cigarette with expert fingers so that it flew into a pile of slushed snow. Isaac imagined that it extinguished with a hiss, like the candles he used at home.

  The pair walked towards Isaac and he looked to Elijah, who was mumbling to another man about his magazine and whether he was indeed right to have brought it rather than the sheet music.

  ‘Name?’ The moustached man stood in front of Isaac, easily a head taller or more.

  ‘Isaac. Isaac Schüller.’

  ‘My Kapo here says you have no belongings?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not one thing?’

  Isaac could feel sweat colleting under his armpits, even though his breath hung in the frigid air.

  ‘No. Not one thing.’

  The moustache twitched again, then he turned to his Kapo and whispered in his ear, making him smile.

  Suddenly, the butt of the Kapo’s baton was pounded into Isaac’s stomach. He hit the ground and curled himself up into a ball as the man struck him on the back, the kidneys.

  ‘Straighten out!’ the Kapo commanded. ‘Move your legs!’

  Despite the pain, Isaac unfurled himself and lay flat on the ground, his breath quick and ragged.

  The Kapo kneeled over him, his hands rummaging in the inside pockets of Isaac’s coat, his face set and disappointed at the lack of jewellery, watches or wallet. Then, he smiled. Slowly he drew out a leather pouch, just larger than an envelope. He held it up to the moustached man like a prized trophy.

  ‘Ah now, nothing you said,’ the moustached man said. ‘Stand up.’

  Isaac placed the palm of his hand on the stony ground and heaved himself up, standing slightly doubled, wrapping his arms around his stomach where the brunt of the blow had hit him.

  He looked left to see if Elijah was there, a face, someone who could help him, but he was lined up with thirty or so other men, their eyes facing towards a line of barracks and barbed wire that lay ahead.

  Isaac looked back to the moustached man who was now unwrapping the leather pouch, revealing the tiny gold and silver instruments that lay within. He pulled out a miniature screwdriver, and held it close to look at the tiny engraving of Isaac’s name.

  ‘What are these?’ he asked.

  ‘They were my father’s,’ Isaac managed to gasp the words, his lungs feeling bruised. ‘They are mine now.’

  ‘Yours? And what do you do with them?’

  ‘I fix watches, clocks. Sometimes music boxes and jewellery puzzle boxes. Sometimes toys.’

  ‘Toys?’

  ‘Yes, children’s toys.’

  ‘Steam engines?’

  Isaac nodded.

  ‘And clocks, you say? What about grandfather clocks – can you make them work if they are quiet?’

  ‘They take time, they are tricky, but yes, I can.’

  The moustached man seemed interested and placed the tiny screwdriver back in its pouch. ‘What else?’

  Isaac tried to think about all the things he had mended through the years. ‘Locks, sometimes, but not always… radios, but mostly watches and clocks.’

  The moustached man lost interest and pocketed Isaac’s pouch of tools. ‘Get in line,’ he said, and nodded towards the shorter line of men that Elijah stood in, away from the others who were now marching towards the black gates and watchtowers of guards and guns.

  ‘Wait in that line until someone tells you to move.’ The Kapo pushed Isaac towards the men who stood shivering with cold, their hands in their pockets, their eyes focused on the camp ahead where smoke billowed out in thick blasts from the buildings within.

  Chapter 2

  Friedrich

  By the time the car crunched over the gravelled driveway, the snow had turned to grey sleet that sludged down the car windows. Friedrich wiped his palm across the condensation that covered the inside of the glass and peered through at the distorted image of a three-storey red-brick house, its bay windows overlooking the driveway. He looked to a window to see if anyone had noticed his arrival, but all he could see was the dim orange glow of lamplight from inside.

  ‘We’re here.’ The driver turned to Friedrich. ‘Wait here and I’ll get the umbrella.’

  Friedrich ignored the driver and immediately opened the door, the iced rain dripping into his collar and tracking its way down his spine, making him shiver. He ran to the black lacquered front door and heaved the brass knocker up and down.

  ‘Friedrich!’ His mother smiled at him as she opened the door.

  Friedrich went to embrace his mother, but instead she simply placed her hand on his head as if in benediction. ‘You’re wet,’ she said, and wiped her hand on her cream skirt.

  ‘Where’s Father?’ he asked.

  ‘You brought all your things?’ She looked over his head as the driver brought in three brown leather suitcases. ‘Your books? You’ll need them.’

  ‘I did. Where’s Father?’

  ‘At work.’ She directed the driver to the second floor: ‘Second room on the left.’ Then, she turned her attention to him. ‘What are you doing?’

  Friedrich wasn’t sure. He stood dripping on the lacquered wooden floor next to a silent grandfather clock. He held on to the hem of his school blazer, and looked around him as if the answer could be found in the hallway.

  ‘You’re making the floor wet.’ She looked at his feet. ‘Go and get changed. Dinner is at seven, you’ll hear the dinner bell.’ She moved towards a door that led to the room with the large bay windows, stopping at the threshold and looking back at him. ‘It’s so good to see you, Friedrich. I am glad you are home.’

  When she had closed the door behind her, Friedrich let out a long sigh as if he had been holding his breath for the entire time. She hadn’t smiled when she had said she was glad he was home. She wasn’t glad, he knew. He had hoped that maybe, just once, she had wanted him with her.

  He climbed the staircase to the second floor and found his room – a single bed facing a narrow window that looked out onto the gravelled driveway, a thick green rug on the floor with matching green curtains, and a small framed photograph of his parents on his desk. He had had more at school – pictures on his walls, books, toys. He looked at the cases on the floor. He
had brought as much as he could pack in the time he had been given, but it had been so rushed that he had left most of his things behind. His dressing gown, he knew, was still hanging on the back of his door in his dormitory, next to Otto’s, who had been called home too.

  ‘What do you think is happening?’ Otto had asked him as they packed quickly, their faces flushed with effort.

  ‘Nothing. Maybe because we missed the Christmas holidays with them, now we will go home and there will be a tree and presents?’ Friedrich had said hopefully, though he didn’t really believe it.

  ‘Doubt it. Half the school are going, you know. I think it was those bombs last week – scared our parents silly.’

  ‘Not mine.’ Friedrich had sat back and drawn his legs to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. ‘They don’t care. I bet they’d be happy if a bomb landed right on the school.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’ Otto’s pudgy hand play-punched him on the arm. ‘They’re busy. I mean, your father is like the Führer’s right hand! He has to travel and do all those jobs. And your mother, well, she has to go with him, right? She has to set up a nice home for him wherever they go. My mother says that’s the most important thing for a wife to do, to look after her husband. I want one like that someday.’

  ‘What about her son?’

  ‘Come on, Fried. It’s really not that bad. You’ll go see them, and then we’ll be back here in no time.’

  ‘And if we’re not?’

  Otto shrugged. ‘Then we’ll write to each other and see each other in the summer. Let me know what your new house is like, and maybe I can come and stay for the summer with you?’

  ‘It’s hardly new. They’ve been there nearly two years and I’ve never seen it.’

  ‘Well, it’s new to you! Think of the adventures you can have. Gosh, I hope they’ve got you a garden. We can build a treehouse!’

  Friedrich now stood at the slice of a window in his new house in the countryside outside Munich, looking at the grey gravelled drive, the grey stone walls that surrounded it, and the black gates that kept them firmly inside. Was everything grey here? Where was the garden?

  He left his room and tried the doorknobs across the hall from him – surely, they would have a view of the garden – but all of them were locked. He tried each of the three doors – once, twice – and even pushed his scrawny eleven-year-old body against the heavy oak as if it would yield to him.

  Exasperated, he returned to his room, lay on his single bed, and fell into a fitful sleep, tears silently working their way down his cold cheeks.

  The dinner bell woke Friedrich with three gongs that seemed to echo off the empty walls of his room and down the corridor with its locked doors. He sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then opened his valise and took from it a clean light blue shirt and navy trousers.

  Once dressed, he descended the staircase, noticing the pictures hanging on the wall – a watercolour of the seaside that his mother said she had painted as a child; a mottled brown photograph of his grandfather and his father as a child, their coal-black eyes seemingly dead and yet staring at him as he passed by.

  ‘Hurry up!’ his mother’s voice rang out to him, and he took the rest of the stairs with quick steps until he reached the foyer, looking around him to see where the dining room lay.

  ‘In here. I can see you dawdling, you know.’

  Friedrich looked left and there, through the half-open door, he could see the white linen tablecloth, the silverware, and his father.

  He went in and took the place that had been set for him near the window, his father at the head of the table, his mother opposite, dressed in a plum taffeta gown that clashed with her white-blonde hair.

  ‘Sir,’ Friedrich said to his father, as he draped a napkin over his lap.

  His father looked up from the stack of papers he was reading. ‘You made it back then.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘No reading at the table, Peter.’ His mother’s voice was high and light. She giggled when his father patted her hand.

  ‘You are quite right, my dear. Quite. A new dress?’

  She smoothed the creases on her lap. ‘It is modelled after a picture of Eva’s dress when she was at the theatre with the Führer. I think it is almost the same!’

  ‘You look perfect, my dear. Absolutely perfect.’ He patted her hand again.

  Friedrich shifted in his seat.

  A maid entered the room, dressed in a striped dress of blue and white, her head covered in a piece of cornflower-blue cloth. She did not look at Friedrich as she moved around the table, ladling the soup into their bowls.

  When she reached Friedrich, he could smell her – she smelled of the dirt he had played in as a child, of sweat and a stale smell, like the dampness in the cellar, as if she had been hidden away amongst the dusty bottles of wine and boxes of old clothes. Her hand shook a little as she spooned in his soup, and a splash left the bowl and splattered on the tablecloth.

  ‘Really! Anna!’ his mother exclaimed.

  Anna did not look up, did not speak. Her hand shook more, and Friedrich could see the spidery blue veins through the tight white skin of her wrist.

  ‘Anna, go! Get Greta. Don’t come back in here tonight, I cannot bear you today.’

  Friedrich looked to his father, who seemed not to notice the servant woman and was heartily spooning soup into his mouth. Now and again it got caught on his moustache, and he stuck out his tongue like a snake to quickly lick the drops away.

  ‘You really can’t think this is a good idea, Peter?’ his mother asked when Anna had left. ‘Why can’t we get a local girl like the last time? This is not going to work, it really isn’t.’

  His father ignored her and turned his gaze to Friedrich, his eyes so hooded by bushy eyebrows that Friedrich was never sure what exact colour they were.

  ‘You brought all your books back with you?’ he asked Friedrich.

  ‘I did, Father.’

  ‘Good. You’ll have a few weeks before the tutor comes, so I expect you to teach yourself for a while.’

  ‘A tutor? Will I not be going back to school?’ Friedrich stirred his soup with his spoon and thought of Otto.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  As soon as he had asked the question, Friedrich wished he could take it back. His mother sucked in her breath and his father placed his spoon by his bowl. ‘I said no. That is enough for you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Friedrich said, feeling as if he were small again and asking questions – why is the sky blue, why can’t I have cake? Questions were not permitted – not then and not now.

  ‘You’ll keep to your room, read, learn. Keep out of your mother’s way too – she has things to do.’

  The dining room door edged open and a short man entered, his stomach drooping over his black belt, his thick thighs straining against his grey trousers. Friedrich watched him walk towards his father, not asking permission to be in the room, his tiny wisp of a moustache, so much like the Führer’s, twitching on his lip as he finally found the words to speak.

  ‘I have them here,’ he managed to say to Friedrich’s father, white globs of spittle immediately forming in the corner of his mouth, making Friedrich wipe his own with his napkin.

  ‘Schmidt, good work.’ His father took the papers that this Schmidt handed him.

  ‘He’s here,’ Schmidt observed, nodding in Friedrich’s direction but speaking now to his mother.

  ‘Arrived today,’ she answered, her voice edged with tiredness.

  Schmidt made a noise that reminded Friedrich of his mathematics teacher when one of the students got an answer wrong.

  His father looked up. ‘Friedrich, this is my assistant, Herr Schmidt. He will sometimes be in the house when I am not home and will work in my study. You will not get in his way, you understand?’

  Friedrich nodded.

  ‘When I am not here, and when your mother is busy, he is in charge and whatever you do, he wi
ll tell me about it.’

  Friedrich looked to the fat Schmidt who was now smiling with thin lips, the spittle still edging the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Friedrich answered.

  ‘Good. Very good. He’ll be here tomorrow?’ his father asked.

  ‘I’ll collect him myself,’ Schmidt answered, then turned from the family, walking quickly towards the door, his heavy footfall echoing on the wooden floor as he strode purposefully away.

  Friedrich shuddered at the thought of being in the house alone with Schmidt. The way his dark piggy eyes had looked at him with no emotion, and the way that man spoke to his parents, gave Friedrich the feeling of having a teacher about the house who was not afraid to use the cane.

  Friedrich ate his soup slowly, trying not to think of the spittle that had decorated Schmidt’s lips, the silence in the room only interrupted by his mother beginning to chatter about Eva Braun, the fashion, her hair.

  ‘Is there a garden?’ Friedrich asked, when there was a pause.

  ‘There is,’ his father said. ‘At the rear. It stretches out towards a small stream and a few trees. You can play up to the trees but not beyond. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Can I build a treehouse? That way, maybe if Otto can visit…’ He trailed off, seeing the look on his father’s face.

  ‘Otto won’t be visiting,’ his mother said. ‘No treehouses.’

  Friedrich wanted to ask why not, but knew better. Instead he asked, ‘Did you bring my train set with you?’

  ‘Oh, Friedrich!’ His mother played with the pearls at her neck. ‘You’ve been here less than a day, and the number of questions coming out of your mouth is exhausting!’

  ‘Now, now, Liesl.’ His father stood and kissed the top of her head. ‘You know your mother gets tired, Friedrich. You must let her be.’

  ‘I tried to look for it, but the other rooms were locked,’ Friedrich said.

  ‘I have already found it for you. It is in the spare room and I will bring it to you tomorrow.’

  ‘If you give me the key, I can get it?’ Friedrich ventured, wanting to see the view from the house, the garden and the stream, imagining what it would be like to one day build a treehouse and sit high in the branches, almost touching the sky. ‘That way I won’t upset you or Mother.’