His father sat back in his seat. ‘I said I will bring it to you. I don’t know why you want to play with it anyway – the engine is broken, and besides, you are too old for that now, almost a man!’ His father forced out a bark of a laugh, and slapped his hand on the table as if he had made a wonderful joke. His mother laughed heartily along with her husband and Friedrich excused himself, walking away from his parents, who seemed to relax as soon as he left the table and fell into a conversation which he could not hear as he left the room.
He unpacked his cases, stacking the books on an empty shelf, and tacked a photograph on his wall of himself and Otto, dressed in their white shorts, t-shirts and black plimsoles in front of the running track. They were both smiling at the camera, their arms slung around each other’s shoulders, a slight mark visible on each of their hands where the night before they had pledged to be blood brothers, and used a letter opener to slice away the soft skin of their palms – only a centimetre – before they shook hands.
Would he see Otto again? Surely in a day or so he could broach the subject once more and invite Otto to come for spring. They could perhaps make a secret treehouse that his parents would never find.
He heard soft steps outside his door, and a light knock, and climbed off his bed hoping to see his father with his train set, or maybe his mother, to say goodnight.
Yet on the other side of the door there was no one, save for a small plate of meat, bread and cheese on a silver tray with a glass of milk. As he looked down the hallway, he saw the cornflower blue of Anna’s cap disappear down the stairs, towards his parents and the empty echoing foyer of the house he did not know.
Chapter 3
Anna
Anna walked with her hands stuck under her armpits to fend off the biting air that nibbled at her fingertips, turning them first white and then blue. She followed Schmidt who walked in front, wrapped in a thick coat, his hands encased in leather gloves. He smoked a thin cigar as he walked, humming a tune that Anna did not know and did not care for.
Her feet burned as they crunched through the frozen snow, the holes in the bottom of her thin soles leaking iced water into her already damp socks. The small track was hemmed in by thick pines and for a moment, underneath the light of the full moon and the prick of stars, she imagined that she was simply walking in the woods, her hand safely encased in Piotr’s as he told her which type of owl had just screeched through the air, what it ate, where it slept. If he were here now, he would know how to run and hide in the trees, dig a hole underground to shelter in, and forage for food.
Schmidt suddenly stopped in front of her and raised a hand to halt her. His head jerked from side to side, as if he were trying to hear something in the still air.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘Shhh!’
As they stood, Anna’s legs trembled with cold, fatigue and hunger, her teeth knocking against each other – her whole body seemed to be alive and working independently of her.
‘I said to be quiet!’ Schmidt hissed at her.
She tried to still the chatter of her teeth and held her breath, waiting.
Then, as if all was as he had expected it to be, Schmidt continued to walk, puffing at his cigar once more.
Although the camp was only a mile from the house, Schmidt seemed to take pleasure in making Anna hurry to work, so that she arrived breathless, her face covered in sweat, and when it came time to take her back so she could eat and sleep, his pace became leisurely.
She tried to slow her steps to match his, her face now downturned, looking at her sodden brown shoes – shoes that did not really belong to her. She wondered who had worn them before her – were they young, old? Then she remembered the bodies being carried, dragged and piled upon carts, to be buried in a large pit not far from her bunkhouse, and she felt sick at the thought of whose shoes they had been.
Piotr’s face came to her; his dark green eyes that showed his smile, his happiness when he was with her. She thought of his shoes: the clunky boots he wore, a lace missing, when they walked together in the countryside; the shiny brogues he wore when he took her to dinner or dancing.
She imagined his feet by the side of hers now, matching her stride like a mirror image, as if they were walking down the aisle, their families smiling at them.
‘Guten abend.’ Schmidt’s voice broke into her thoughts and she looked up, the wrought-iron gates in front of her, the gatehouse and guards with guns slung on their shoulders.
Schmidt spoke to the guards, who ignored Anna until finally Schmidt nodded in her direction. She took the ten or so steps forward that brought her through the gate, towards the shadows of the camp.
No one was sleeping when she arrived in her bunkhouse; all were undressing for bed, their thin arms and legs on display as their skin goose-pimpled with the cold. Anna made her way to her bunk, her friend Nina already in her bed above, the blanket pulled up to her chin and eyes closed.
‘You’re back!’ Nina’s voice was as excited as if she hadn’t seen Anna in weeks, when it had simply been a day.
‘I thought you’d be asleep.’ Anna sat on the edge of her bed, removing her shoes then her wet socks.
‘I was waiting for you. How did it go? Was it better today?’
Anna remembered the soup, spilling it, and Liesl’s scolding. ‘Not good.’
‘Do you think you will get to go back there again? It must be better than the laundry, surely?’
Anna lay in her bunk and pulled the thin blanket over her freezing body.
‘Your socks are wet.’ Nina had climbed down and hung the threadbare socks on the edge of her bunk, the drip-drip of water splattering the wooden floor. ‘Was it really that bad?’
‘I’m just too nervous around them, it’s like I can’t control my hands.’ Anna held out her hands to Nina, to show how they still tremored – whether from the cold or the evening, she was not sure.
Nina took Anna’s hands in hers, warming them. Anna smiled gratefully at her friend, whose face, although much younger than hers, bore the scars from almost a year in Auschwitz before being transferred to this camp, her cheekbones jutting from the thin stretch of skin as she smiled to comfort her.
‘You know the others are jealous.’ Nina sat on the edge of Anna’s bed now, still holding her hands, teasing some warmth into them.
‘They have no reason to be,’ Anna replied.
‘I think it was because you missed roll call tonight, so they were grumbling afterwards. We had to stand in the snow for three hours. They counted us once after two hours, but then found a way to see their counting was wrong, and made us stand and wait for another.’
‘And yet here you are trying to warm me,’ Anna said.
‘Well, the way I see it is that you helped me when I arrived. You gave me your own food and helped me to survive, so maybe it’s my turn to help you a little, if I can.’
A shout from the doorway alerted the women that it was time for sleep, and within seconds the bunkhouse was plummeted into darkness.
Anna felt Nina move away from her, the creak of the wood as she climbed above her into her own bunk, and then a whisper of ‘goodnight’ as the room fell quiet with the deep breathing of sleep.
Anna woke with her head facing the wall. She opened her eyes and looked at the slatted boards of the bunk that had engravings etched into the wood. She ran her fingers over a few, feeling the names and dates under her fingers, not daring to say them aloud.
She closed her eyes once more and wished for sleep, yet all she could see in the dark of her eyelids was the young boy from the night before, Sturmbannführer Becher’s son, Friedrich. He was a slight boy, wiry, yet she could tell from the way he moved, the way he sat, that he would grow tall and strong. His blue eyes were as bright as the cap that she had worn, and she had almost wanted to laugh and tell him that they were matching – like twins. Spilling the soup had angered Liesl Becher, and Anna had spent the rest of the evening in the larder, sorting and stocking, until Greta
had given her some bread and cooked potatoes to eat before Schmidt came to take her back to the camp.
She had heard the boy talking carefully to his parents, and imagined that he looked like a small fawn with two tigers ready to pounce – carefully measuring his movements, his sounds, as if at any moment they would leap at him. When he had left the table after only eating a small amount of his soup, Anna made up a plate for him, even though Greta had warned her not to – his mother would see to it if she wanted to feed her son – yet Anna knew Liesl would not bother now her husband was home. Instead, she would talk to her husband even though he did not hear her, then they would sit in the salon and drink wine or whiskey, whilst listening to the music that came out of the polished brass horn of the gramophone.
Friedrich remined her of Elias, her younger brother, shy and yet brave – a look in his eyes as if at any moment he would surprise everyone with a joke, a song or a dance. She shook the image of Elias away, wishing now she had not thought of him at all.
‘Are you awake?’ A whisper from the bunk above – Nina.
‘I am,’ Anna whispered back.
Nina climbed down into her bed and lay behind her, her body warmth a welcome addition as they squeezed into the bunk together.
‘I was thinking about Kuba,’ Nina said, her breath tickling Anna’s ear as she spoke.
‘I know. I was thinking of Elias.’
‘But you know what happened to Elias. At least you have that.’
Anna felt like scolding her for her thoughtless remark, but her friend was only nineteen, and Anna knew she sorely missed the older brother from whom she had been parted when she had been first sent to Auschwitz and he somewhere else.
‘Do you think he is here? I keep asking but no one has heard his name before.’ Nina’s voice was small, like a little girl.
‘It means that you can keep hoping.’
‘You think he could still be alive?’ Nina’s voice pleaded for it to be true.
‘I know he is,’ Anna said. She turned to face Nina, their noses almost touching, Nina’s chocolate-brown eyes wide like a rabbit’s.
‘I miss you in the laundry,’ Nina said.
‘I miss you too.’
‘But then, when I am there, washing clothes, my hands raw, I think of you in that house and I wish they had picked me. I think I would be a good maid.’
‘You’re good at everything.’ Anna smiled at Nina and touched the tip of her nose with her own. ‘You work hard and that’s what you must do. Then one day, you can do whatever you want to do.’
‘Like be a dancer.’ Nina closed her eyes for a moment, and Anna imagined that she was picturing herself twirling in front of an audience applauding her.
‘What do you want to be, Anna?’ Nina opened her eyes.
‘I’m too old for that now.’
‘You’re only twenty-nine, you can still decide.’
‘I feel older than that.’
‘Me too. I feel old. My bones and my legs – everything hurts.’
Anna flexed her toes in response and felt the pain as she did. It was as if all her muscles and tendons had tightened since she had arrived, like her bones had been broken and put back together again, the skin shrinking over her as the fat that had filled her breasts, her thighs and her stomach had seemingly melted away, leaving little else than a structure to hold her head and make her work.
‘I don’t know. For now, a maid is what I am, and then maybe one day things will be different.’
‘They will be, isn’t that what you always say? Don’t you think they will be different?’
‘Maybe for you, dear Nina.’
‘Why not for you?’ Nina’s face in the darkness looked pained, as though she was going to cry.
‘Maybe for me too,’ Anna said, taking her arm from under the thin blanket and stroking Nina’s hair, which was beginning to grow back after being shorn at Auschwitz, reminding Anna of downy baby hair. ‘Maybe for me too.’
Anna’s hand soothed Nina to sleep and back to a dream, where, she hoped, Kuba was waiting, telling his sister that all was well, and that they would be together again.
The second time Anna woke that morning was to the sound of Aufseherin Margarete Lange’s voice booming around the bunkhouse, alerting them that it was the beginning of their day.
Nina was no longer in Anna’s bunk but making her own bed, pulling the blanket over her pillow, taking as much care as if she were at home.
Anna swung her legs out of her bunk and placed her feet on the wooden floor, feeling the freezing cold seep through her soles. She dressed quickly in her work dress, tying the blue scrap of cloth over her greasy brown hair, made her bed and then quickly got in line for breakfast.
In front of her was Joanna, a woman she had met at the camp, but had since found out was from the village next to her.
‘It’s not even light,’ Joanna said, as the other women woke and dressed. ‘You’d think they wouldn’t want to get up before dawn just to wake us up.’
‘Lange seems to enjoy it,’ Anna said, as the Aufseherin wandered the bunks, pushing women aside, swatting them with the back of her hand now and then if she thought they were moving too slowly.
Anna watched as Lange made her way to the back of the bunkhouse and shouted at the lump that was Marguerite, still huddled in bed.
‘Up! Up, you lazy pig!’ Lange shouted.
When there was no movement, Lange hit the lump with her baton, waiting for some reaction, but there was none.
‘You – you there.’ Lange pointed her baton at Anna. ‘Come here.’
Anna walked over, knowing what she would see when she was made to remove the blanket from Marguerite.
‘Pull the blanket back,’ she ordered.
Anna did not want to. She imagined what was underneath and could not bear to see any more death. It was daily – either in this bunkhouse or others – as each stream of new prisoners arrived from other camps, their bodies already frail, sick and failing. They were dying before Anna’s very eyes.
‘Pull it back, I said!’ Lange swatted at Anna’s arm, causing her skin to sting with pain.
Anna slowly peeled the blanket back, and there beneath it was the pale, skeletal body of Marguerite, her eyes closed, her lashes so black against her porcelain skin. Anna gently touched her neck to find a pulse, even though she knew there wouldn’t be one.
‘Dead?’ Lange asked, raising an eyebrow.
Anna nodded, her stomach turning at the sight of Marguerite, her mouth slightly open as if she’d died in the middle of taking a deep breath.
‘Bring her to roll call after you’ve eaten.’
Anna looked at Lange’s face – her eyes sunken in her fleshy face, her bulbous lips always moist and too red, as if she had just eaten – for some sort of emotion, but all she could see was disgust.
‘Did you hear me?’ Lange asked, pushing Anna hard in the shoulder.
‘Yes, Aufseherin.’ Anna looked at her feet.
‘Useless. All of you are useless!’ Lange’s voice bellowed and bounced off the bare walls.
Anna shuffled back in line as each woman stepped forward to wash quickly in cold water at the one washstand, then take their tin cup to one of the camp kitchen workers to ladle in weak coffee.
Anna took her small piece of almost stale bread out of her work dress pocket and sat on her bunk, accompanied by Nina, whose own hands were empty, save for the coffee.
‘Where’s your bread?’ Anna asked.
‘I ate it last night,’ Nina said, and sipped at the coffee.
‘You know you need to keep half now – that’s what they said – it’s supper and breakfast.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ Nina said.
Anna looked at her own piece of bread. Saliva had already gathered in her mouth in anticipation, and her stomach churned and bubbled with hunger.
‘Here.’ Anna passed the bread to Nina.
‘No! I can’t. It’s yours.’
‘I had some potatoe
s last night and some bread – I’m fine.’
‘They give you food?’ Nina was already reaching out for the bread.
‘The cook, Greta, did last night – maybe she will again.’ Anna pressed her shoulder against Nina’s.
Nina nodded as she ate, devouring the black bread and washing it down with coffee.
As soon as Anna had gulped down the last of her breakfast, she saw that Lange was motioning for her to bring Marguerite to the roll-call square, where each of them would be counted and checked.
‘I’ll help you,’ Nina offered.
‘You save your strength, I’ll ask Joanna.’
Joanna was less enthusiastic as she helped Anna manoeuvre Marguerite’s body out of the barracks towards the square; Anna carrying her legs and Joanna her arms, her limbs already becoming stiff.
‘What’s the point of counting her?’ Joanna huffed. ‘She’s dead. We can just say Marguerite is dead, and be done with it.’
‘At least she went in her sleep,’ Anna said, looking over her shoulder to see where she was going as she shuffled backwards.
‘Typhus is next. Hit the gypsy barracks two days ago with that last lot that came in. They’re in quarantine now. I bet Marguerite got it too.’
‘She wasn’t sick.’
‘Apart from coughing and sputtering all the time, no, she wasn’t sick,’ Joanna said wryly.
They stood in rows – Marguerite’s dead body on the floor beside them – and waited for the numbers that had been sewn into their uniforms to be called. The roster was taken; a few more had joined Marguerite in the night.
Lange walked amongst them as their numbers were called, checking each one of their uniforms for a mark, a rip, anything that would give her an excuse to use her truncheon.
Anna stood straight, her eyes ahead, focusing on the backs of women’s heads that were illuminated by the spotlights that came from watchtowers. The warmth of their breaths hung in the still air, their bodies twitching and shaking with the cold.
The Watchmaker of Dachau: An absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical novel Page 3
