Suddenly, the roll call stopped.
‘Over already?’ Joanna whispered to Anna.
Before Anna could respond, a cry rang out and all the women turned to the right, to see who Lange had found as her victim.
It was a young woman, perhaps Nina’s age or younger. Lange was screaming at her for fainting. Anna saw Lange bent over the woman, her arm rising to get traction with the truncheon that she hammered into the woman’s body, making it jump like a fish out of water.
With each blow, Anna flinched – One, two, three, four. It couldn’t go on much longer. Five, six. Anna bit down hard on her lip, tasting the metallic blood in her mouth. Seven, eight.
The woman’s body had stopped moving. She was as still as Marguerite.
Nine. Ten. Then, Lange stopped. She stood and straightened out her jacket, then wiped sweat from her brow.
‘Let that be a lesson to you all,’ she said, then nodded. ‘Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?’ she said with a smile, as the women froze to the spot and the counting began once more.
‘Two hours today,’ Joanna said as the women began to disperse, making their way to their work detail. ‘I counted. Each second, I counted. Two hours. In the other camp it was longer – sometimes five. You’re lucky, you know, to have come here and only here. I was in two other camps before this one.’
Lucky, Anna thought. She was lucky to have only been here five months. She was lucky not to be as thin and fragile as the others. She picked up Marguerite’s legs once more as Joanna heaved her up by the arms.
She looked at Marguerite’s face as they walked towards a cart already laden with the dead from the morning. She had always imagined that when people died, they looked at peace – at least, that was what her mother had told her when her father had died; he was at rest. Marguerite did not look at rest. Her skin wasn’t skin anymore, it was like tightened leather that had been left to bleach in the sun; her top front three teeth were gone, leaving gummy, gappy holes; her lips were dry and cracked and brown. She was not at rest.
They hauled her body onto the cart where it rested on top of two other women, their ages indistinguishable, their eyes still open, glassed over and dry.
‘If I go next, make sure you are the one to carry me to roll call – will you do that, Anna?’ Joanna asked, as she wiped her hands on the skirt of her dress.
Anna nodded. Joanna walked away, leaving her with Lange to be taken to the gates, where Schmidt would be waiting to rush her to the Bechers’ home.
When Schmidt left her at the kitchen door of the house, Anna could hear the call of the young boy Friedrich as he shouted for his mother.
Anna entered into the kitchen, where Greta, a local woman from the village, sat on a small wooden stool peeling potatoes, letting the washed skins fall into a bucket at her feet. Anna had the sudden urge to take a handful of the peelings and gorge on them until her stomach would silence itself.
‘She’s at it again,’ Greta said by way of greeting, her grey wiry hair caught back in a bun that seemed too tight on her scalp, so that her eyebrows were always pulled up in surprise. ‘Shouting this and that as soon as she woke. The young boy can’t even find her – he’s been at it too – asking for toys, food. It’s not even breakfast and I’m worn out by both of them. Here, make the coffee, will you?’
Anna moved to the polished silver coffee pot engraved with the Becher family crest – an eagle perched atop a cliff. Anna doubted it was really their crest; it was more likely that Liesl Becher wanted to show off to her friends when they visited.
‘You eaten?’ Greta stood by Anna’s side, and silently placed a lump of bread from the counter into Anna’s pocket. ‘You finish the coffee and I’ll take them breakfast. You pop into the garden and fetch some carrots, eh? Help me make the lunch.’
Anna smiled at Greta. She wished she could hug her for the kindness she had shown her since she had been given this work detail, just a few days before.
‘Of course,’ Anna said, her hand already in her pocket, feeling the warm bread under her fingertips.
Chapter 4
Isaac
The line of men moved slowly towards the high fences of the camp, which were topped with barbed wire and soldiers with guns who leaned over lookout towers, watching as the silent trudge of the new prisoners came closer.
Isaac’s hands shook as he walked and his teeth chattered, knocking against each other, making his head hurt. He could not see the others from the train as they walked under the black iron gates that welcomed them with the words Arbeit Macht Frei.
The sky seemed to hang lower inside the camp, so that Isaac wasn’t sure where the ground ended and the clouds began. It reminded him of strange, frantic dreams he had had as a child, where he would be walking through smoke, seeing shadows, yet he could never find a way through to clear air, to being able to see properly again.
He followed the man who wore a star like his own, the man who had been called the Kapo, who pushed and shoved at the new arrivals as they walked, seemingly delighting in their fear.
The men were marched into a room towards a desk where three soldiers sat, ledgers in front of them, demanding to see their identity cards, then telling them to go through to the room next door.
One by one, the line of men in front of him disappeared until it was only Isaac left, standing in front of the panel. The Kapo approached the soldiers, mumbling something in their ears.
‘Kennkarte?’ one of the soldiers asked.
Isaac handed over the curling yellow card that stated his name, his date of birth.
The man scribbled the details into the ledger. Then, Isaac saw, he added an exclamation point next to his name in the margin.
He wanted to ask what it meant, what all of it meant, but no one looked at him, only ushered him onwards.
There was a queue to go into the next room and, as each man waited, his head was shaved, the locks of hair falling to the floor in swift heaps.
Isaac removed his cap and held it between his fingers as the clippers moved over his scalp, taking away the pebble-grey hair that he had always allowed to grow long, letting the natural curls take over; mostly to delight Hannah, who had loved to twirl her finger in them in the evenings as he read a book.
‘In you go,’ the barber said, his own head bald, his clothes a striped uniform.
The room next door was tiled in grimy white, showerheads fixed to the wall. All of the men now stood in the centre of the room, unsure of what to do. As soon as Isaac entered, followed by four SS guards, the door crashed shut. He made his way to Elijah who was running his hand over his newly stubbled head, as if he were trying to figure out what had just happened.
‘Undress!’ a guard said. He had a large scar above his eyebrow and was tapping his black rubber baton impatiently against his leg.
At first, none of the men moved to do as they were asked. Instead, they looked at one another, like baby birds – no feathers and big eyes – waiting to see if they should really do as they had been told.
‘Undress!’ the lieutenant shouted again, and to make himself clear, he thwacked the baton against a young man’s leg, making him fall to the floor and cry out in pain.
The men quickly undressed, their jackets, trousers, shoes all heaped at their feet. Some men covered their private parts with their hands, as Isaac did, but some stood ramrod straight, their hands at their side, a look of defiance in their eyes.
‘Shower! Now!’
They stood under the showerheads, each one waiting for the rain of water to come.
At first nothing happened.
Isaac looked at the guards who were kicking at the bundles of clothes, waiting to see if anything of value came from them. One bent down and picked up a watch, turned it over in his hands, then placed it in his pocket.
Suddenly, the water came – an iced stream. All of the men immediately jumped out of the way. The guards shouted, and pushed them back under the water, so that soon all of them were goose-pimpled and w
hite with cold.
Isaac made the motions as if to wash himself; then, as suddenly as the water started, it stopped. No one was handed a towel or their clothes; instead they were marched out of the shower room into another, where each of them was handed a blue and white striped uniform with a number stitched onto the lapel and a pair of worn shoes.
They dressed quickly. The rough cotton clung to Isaac’s damp cold skin and offered little warmth. He noticed a stain on the trousers and a hole in the elbow of the sleeve – someone else’s clothes.
‘I’m glad I didn’t bring the sheet music now.’ Elijah was at Isaac’s side, watching as Isaac’s hands shook when he tried to fasten the buttons of his shirt. ‘Bet you’re glad you didn’t bring anything. Nothing to miss, nothing to wish for back.’
‘I want to go home,’ Isaac said quietly, suddenly feeling like a small child again, wishing for his father and mother, wishing that they would come and tell him it was going to be OK.
‘I know, I know.’ Elijah patted him on the shoulder. ‘Me too.’
‘This way!’ The lieutenant was back, flitting between the men like a ghost – one minute gone, the next he was back – his baton twitching and his thin smile offering no comfort.
The men were ushered into a line again, and like ants they followed one another, no one daring to look anywhere but straight ahead.
Down the corridor they walked, their shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. Then they were stopped, and one by one they were photographed: from the front, side, back.
Isaac had only had his photograph taken once, on his wedding day. Now, when he stood in front of the box camera, he stupidly wanted to smile. And then he looked at the guards, at the line of men, and his silly idea flew away. He set his eyes forward, his mouth in a line.
The bunkhouse was a short walk from where the men had been registered, stripped of their belongings, their hair and their names, across a large concrete square, past another brick building, then another, to a long shed, again encased with more barbed wire, more watchtowers, more men with guns.
Each was given a thin blanket and pillow and assigned an empty bunk, told to make it, and then they were shut in for the night.
‘No food, no water?’ Elijah was in the top-tier bunk one over from Isaac, a younger man called Jan below him, who had been in the camp for some time.
‘You’ll get something tomorrow,’ Jan said from the bottom bunk. ‘Not much, mind you – but something.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘I’d sleep if I were you,’ Jan said.
Isaac lay back on his straw mattress, feeling the pricks of the stalks in his back. His leg ached and he rubbed at it, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm himself by imagining Hannah’s face.
‘You awake?’ Elijah asked.
‘I am.’ Isaac turned on his side to look at Elijah, who was doing the same. All around them were the whispers of the men as they asked questions, forged friendships, and tried to make sense of the reality they now found themselves in.
‘Are you married?’
‘I am – I was… My wife died ten years ago,’ Isaac replied.
‘I was never married. Not once. I thought perhaps I had some more time, but I’m not sure I do now.’
‘How old are you, Elijah?’
‘Forty-five, you?’
‘Almost sixty.’
‘I know what will happen to us here, I know. They’ll not let us out. I doubt I’ll get married.’
‘Things can change. I never thought Hannah would die, I never thought this would ever happen. But it has. So, things can change again, you know? The British and Americans will find us,’ Isaac said hopefully.
‘Quiet down!’ Jan’s voice came from below. ‘Keep thinking like that if you want, but I’ll tell you now, in a day or so, you’ll be so tired, so hungry that those thoughts will disappear.’
‘There’s no harm—’
‘Shh, quiet now,’ Jan interrupted Isaac. ‘Get your sleep, you’ll need it.’
The morning had not yet broken when Isaac was woken by the Kapo from the train tracks. His name was Adam, Jan had told him, a Jew, a prisoner just like them who slept in other barracks and was given better food, better clothes, as long as he helped keep them all in line.
‘How can he do that?’ Isaac asked Jan as they left the bunkhouse. ‘How can he turn on his own people?’
‘You say that, and I agree with you, but Adam was in three camps before this one. He is just trying to survive.’
‘So, you think it is right?’
‘I think it is wrong. I think he will have to live with this for the rest of his life if he does survive. We hate him, of course we do, but there is a fine line between the hate that we feel and our jealousy at the privileges he has. You’ll see. Give it time – you’ll see how this place can change a man.’
Jan fell silent as they marched outside into the sleet that now fell from the dense clouds. Each man was counted, then counted again. Now and again, for no reason, one or two men were singled out and walked away by a guard.
After more than an hour, Isaac could barely feel his toes or fingers, and the pain in his leg throbbed from standing for so long. He couldn’t understand why they had to count again and again. Then, he realised. As the time passed the men became weaker, colder, more tired, and this was when some would find their legs crumbling beneath them, and this was when the guards and Kapos found delight in meting out punishment.
With each beating of each man, the roll call began again.
Those who were new to the camp were made to stand longer whilst the others were sent to their work – none of them had eaten. Isaac stood with Elijah and a few others from the train.
‘Your work details.’ A guard stepped in front of them, a boy it seemed, perhaps no more than eighteen, whose blond hair and blue eyes were the epitome of the Reich. He called out each number, and the men had to look at their shirts to check if it was theirs that was called. Each one was assigned their place of work – labour, factory, morgue.
Isaac checked his own number multiple times, but his was never called. Soon he was the only one left standing as each of the others were marched to work.
‘Schüller.’ The blond guard stood in front of him. ‘We’ve a special job for you.’
Isaac wasn’t sure whether to ask what it was or to say thank you; instead he nodded.
He shuffled after the blond guard who led him towards a watchtower and gates, where a short, fat man waited on the other side, puffing at a thin cigar.
Isaac stood in front of him.
‘So, you’re him, are you?’ the fat man said, eyeing him up and down.
Isaac looked over his shoulder at the blond guard who was now walking away.
‘You want to go back inside?’ the fat man asked through a thick plume of smoke. ‘I doubt it. Follow me.’
The fat man turned from him and walked quickly away, so Isaac had to half run to keep up with him, his leg painful and slowing him down.
The trees along the track bowed under the weight of the snow, the only sound Isaac’s fatigued footsteps as he tried to keep up with the fat man, who would turn around every few seconds to bark at him to hurry up.
Isaac stopped to catch his breath and rubbed at his thigh, the muscles feeling torn underneath. He looked about him and imagined himself running into the safety of the trees.
‘Don’t even think about it.’ He was by his side, and Isaac felt the cold metal of a pistol on his temple. Isaac slowly straightened and he lowered the gun. ‘I’d almost dare you to try and run. It would be like hunting a wounded rabbit. Not much sport, I grant you, but I do love the thrill of a hunt – don’t you?’ He grinned at Isaac.
A whump of snow hit the ground from a low-hanging branch, causing a bird to flap its wings in fright.
‘Get moving.’
Isaac began to walk once more, his leg dragging a little behind him. He licked at his cracked lips and quickly stooped down to grab a handful of snow, sho
ving it into his mouth, the icy freshness a quick comfort.
They rounded a bend and in the distance Isaac could see the chimney pots of a house, the smoke billowing from them as those inside warmed themselves against the morning’s chill. A memory suddenly assaulted him – a morning like this one, where the clouds, grey and purple, were laden with snow, when he sat by a fireplace warming his hands as Hannah sat across from him, a bundle in her arms to which she softly sang.
He shook his head to make the memory go away, but it sat, stubborn, willing him to remember the warmth of the fire as the wood hissed and crackled with heat, the caramelised, nutty scent of fresh coffee that he had just brewed, the sound of Hannah’s voice as she sang a lullaby.
‘Are you deaf?’ The fat man’s voice broke into his reverie. ‘I said go in.’
Isaac realised that they had reached the house, and the gates in front of him were opened by two armed guards who eyed him as he walked past.
Isaac followed him down a gravelled driveway that led to the house, where large bay windows still had curtains shut against the early morning. They turned away from the black lacquered front door towards the side of the house, round a pathway that led to the rear. Here, the man stopped and opened a door, the blue paint peeling from the woodwork.
‘Another one, Herr Schmidt?’ An old woman with grey hair appeared as if she had been waiting for them.
‘He was asked for by Sturmbannführer Becher,’ he replied.
The old woman shook her head. ‘She’ll not be happy, you know. She wasn’t happy about the girl and she won’t be about this.’
‘Put him in the shed, that’s what I was told.’ He nodded towards the half fallen-down garden shed nestled between a row of fir trees.
‘Out there? He’ll freeze, it’s too cold.’
‘Not your problem.’
Isaac felt as though he was not really there. Neither looked at him, yet they talked of him as if he were a stray dog. He wanted to say something, wanted to do something so they would look at him.
The Watchmaker of Dachau: An absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical novel Page 4
