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

by Carly Schabowski

  I picked up a leaf, deep red, its skeleton coming through a sparkling gold. I have it here with me and have placed it within the pages to show you. Can you see the way its edges are frayed, not by man, but by design? Little tiny nicks along the sides. It made me think that I am like this leaf, as are you. We are frayed, tattered, of course, by what has been done to us, and yet it will become a part of us, so much so that we will seem as though we are frayed by design and not by circumstance.

  One day I will be able to see you, all of you. I will wake early every morning, not to wake you but just to see you. Will you do the same for me?

  Liesl Becher is getting fat. I noticed it today. She left the house for the first time in months and snipped back the last few flowers that were holding on, the tops of her arms straining underneath the sleeves of her dress, her cleavage spilling out. I envied her. That is odd to say, but I do. I envy the weight she carries and imagine the food she eats to get that way. I can hear you now, telling me you should never call a woman fat, and I do agree – but what does it matter? She is so surly, so mean, that I can’t apologise. I actually laughed to myself as I wrote it – a slight against her, one she will never hear, but still it is my small revenge.

  I try to remember the last good meal I ate. I think it was in that basement of my father’s friend, on the day Father died – a last meal with the family all together – chicken and potatoes; hardly a feast, but something I wish for now.

  He had held on, trying to fight against the fever that rose with each hour. We tried to calm him in those deluded moments, and it was Szymon’s idea to tell him that we were already in England – we were safe.

  As soon as I told him, he let out a long sigh and a smile touched his lips. He was gone.

  Mother screamed and tore at her dress, her hair, and now it was her we had to calm. Katharina knocked on the hatch that led to the basement and waited. Soon, my father’s friend, Max, descended the stairs.

  He did not know where to look, I think. There was my mother on the floor in a ball, me trying to get her to be quiet, my father still on the bed, Szymon wide-eyed and quiet in the corner, and Katharina behind him, as if she did not want to return into the room.

  ‘Is he…?’ Max asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But Mother, she won’t calm down, I don’t know what to do.’

  Max left, his short legs stomping up the basement stairs then clattering above us. He returned quickly, a glass vial in his hands, a pipette already half full of potent liquid.

  I had to hold my mother’s head whilst Max placed the drops on her tongue, then I held her to me as she sobbed, soon growing quiet.

  Between us we moved her to the other bed and let her sleep.

  ‘What’s going to happen to Papa?’ Katharina asked quietly.

  Max scratched at his beard, lost in thought. ‘It’ll have to wait until tonight,’ he finally said. ‘You’ll come with me.’ He nodded at me.

  ‘I should come too,’ Katharina said.

  ‘No. You stay here, watch your mother and brother,’ Max told her.

  She stepped forward, confident now. ‘I must. I have to say the Kel Maleh Rachamim for him. Mother would have done it. It is for me to do it now.’

  Max looked at me – it was my decision now; I was the eldest. I looked to Szymon, waiting for him to say he would go in Katharina’s place, but his earlier bravado had left him, and he looked younger than his sixteen years.

  ‘I’ll stay with Mother,’ he said, and sat by her on the bed.

  I knew I shouldn’t have let her, I knew at the time it was a bad idea, yet I also knew that Father would want his daughter, with her soft, childish voice, to say the prayer for him.

  ‘Fine,’ I said reluctantly. ‘But you do as Max says. You must stay quiet at all times.’

  Katharina nodded; she was ready.

  It was past midnight when Max came to the basement once more, and gave both Katharina and me black coats and hats to wear.

  Szymon was curled up next to Mother, his arm around her, seeking comfort as he had done when he was very small.

  ‘If she wakes, give her a few more drops – no more than half the pipette, understand?’ Max asked him.

  Szymon nodded.

  ‘Do you want to say goodbye?’ I asked.

  Szymon stood and walked to Father, tears already spilling down his face. He kissed Father’s forehead then returned to Mother, curling himself around her once more.

  Katharina and I wrapped Father in a clean white sheet that Max had given us, then a dark blue blanket. Between the three of us, we clambered up the basement stairs to Max’s living room. Max promptly closed the hatch and shifted the dresser back on top of it.

  I hadn’t been outside for months – a year perhaps, or more – and it was strange at first to breathe the clean air. It was almost thick, like soup, and I could not get enough of it.

  Max had procured a small horse and cart from a neighbour, and we placed the body on the cart, Max setting off quickly down the dark cobbled streets of his village, the horse’s hooves too loud, echoing and bouncing off the buildings so I was sure at any moment someone would appear.

  But luck was on our side. The night was clear, so clear that Katharina and I did not speak for some time. Instead we looked to the sky, which seemed so big now, dotted with stars that winked at us.

  ‘Have they always done that?’ Katharina asked. ‘The stars, have they always looked that way?’

  I knew what she meant. It was as though we were seeing the sky, a road, a tree, for the first time. As if we had been blind and someone had given us back our sight.

  Max drove up a slight hill and stopped at a thick wood, the town below us.

  ‘I think this is the best place,’ he said, getting down from the cart. ‘When we can, we will bury him properly, but for now, this will have to do.’

  We chose a pine tree to bury him under, close to the grassy slope of a field that ran down into the valley. ‘That way, he’ll still be able to see the stars,’ Katharina said.

  Max suddenly realised the time. ‘I’ll have to get the cart back now – they need it for deliveries come dawn.’ He looked at our hole, Father not yet buried, the prayers not yet said.

  ‘You go,’ I told him. He had done so much for us; I did not want him to worry more than he needed to.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘There’s no one about. We’ll be quick as we can, then we’ll walk back to the house. We’ll be an hour or so at most.’

  Max bit his lip. ‘It’s risky.’

  ‘Probably less risky than the empty cart going back into town?’ Katharina added.

  ‘You’re right, yes, you’re right.’ Max climbed aboard the cart and guided the horses back down the hill, leaving Katharina and me to say our final farewells to Papa.

  We were placing the last clod of earth over him when it happened. Katharina was ready to say the prayer, tears streaming down her face, when a car turned in the valley below, its headlights now shining up the hill.

  We backed our way into the wood, the spades dropping from our hands as we stepped further and further into the darkness.

  ‘It’ll just go past,’ I whispered, feeling my heart beating in my throat, my temples.

  She gripped my hand tightly and I hers, hearing the engine strain as it reached the crest of the hill and then it slowed, the gears quieter.

  It did drive past – slowly, ever so slowly, and I exhaled with relief, but it was too soon. The car stopped, the red beams of the rear lights shining like menacing eyes through the branches.

  ‘We should run.’ Katharina began to move, but I pulled her to me.

  ‘It’s safer if we just stay still, just stay still and be quiet.’

  Someone got out of the car and began to whistle. I could not see them completely, but I could hear them as they pissed on the dank earth of the wood, hitting twigs and leaves.

  ‘How much further?’ the voice rang out.

  Another car door opened, then s
lammed shut. The smell of cigarette smoke. ‘Not far. An hour.’

  ‘Did you eat before we left?’ the first man asked. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘No time. You know what it’s like when we get a fresh batch of them in – you don’t have a minute to think, let alone eat.’

  ‘Did you get anything good at least?’

  ‘One rat fell off the train, half dead he was. Had a pocket full of rare gold coins though. They spilled out and I got them before anyone else saw.’

  ‘Good work. Bastard Jews don’t deserve all that money.’

  ‘Well, it’s back where it belongs now.’ The man laughed.

  ‘You need to piss?’

  ‘Take the rest of my cigarette, I’ll try.’

  The other man began to urinate, the stream slower.

  Katharina sneezed.

  That’s all it was. A sneeze. A stupid sneeze.

  The man stopped pissing. They went quiet. Katharina began to cry.

  ‘Shhh,’ I told her. If she would just stay quiet, then perhaps they would leave.

  But she could not. She sobbed louder, her hand still gripping mine.

  ‘Run!’ I told her.

  We ran, tripping on fallen logs, our hands flailing through the air, pushing ourselves back up again. There was a shot in the darkness, then shouting for us to stop.

  I felt as though I was in a dream where I was trying to run but my legs would not work. I knew they could, must, go faster.

  ‘Oh God, oh God!’ I said aloud. It was over. I knew it was over.

  They reached Katharina first, and I think perhaps I could have got away, but I could hear her screaming and crying, and I had to go back for her – I could not leave her alone.

  Leaves were stuck to my clothing. Leaves not like the one I have found and kept for you here. These leaves were rotten and damp. These leaves were dying.

  My father would always tell me that you should try to find the positive in a negative event.

  ‘When you have two negative numbers, you can add them together to make a positive, just as you can translate this into your life. Take a negative, or two negative events, and you will surely find a positive.’

  ‘That can’t be, not in life,’ I had said to him.

  ‘Well, let’s find some examples.’ He relaxed into his wingback chair that he sat on in the evenings, either by the fireplace in winter or near the open windows in summer, the breeze causing the papers on his desk to flap as if they were wings about to take flight. ‘Let’s take my experiences as your first example. Your grandparents – my parents – died when I was still a young man. I had only your uncle for company and I felt completely at sea without my parents. Now, that was a negative experience in my life, and it did not end there. Soon, your uncle became sick, a disease of the brain, they say. In my opinion, it was pure grief. He was stricken with it, as you are when you have a fever, when you cannot move, feed yourself or dress yourself.

  ‘It was getting worse and I couldn’t manage him. A friend suggested a sanatorium at the lakes – a place where we could both rest, breathe in the fresh air and walk the gardens, marvelling at nature. I of course leapt at the chance – why, I had no other choice but to try, so your uncle and I travelled to the lakes. They were nestled deep in a valley, so that when we happened upon the house itself where we were to stay, it seemed at odds with all the nature surrounding it, as though we humans were not welcome and had built a structure to drain the earth of its beauty. I believe that I too, at that time, perhaps had a slight sickness in my brain, for I could only see the ugliness in the world, the sadness that came with loving, and I was unsure whether this world was really for me.

  ‘The sanatorium offered a quiet respite from the world. We had a room each, painted white with small watercolour paintings hanging on the walls – a boat at sea, a landscape. No doubt to bring some modicum of calm, yet they frightened me in a way I could not describe, and to this day still do not fully understand.

  ‘We spent our days walking, swimming, sitting on majestic lawns and reading books of fiction, not an academic argument in sight! I read voraciously, classical novels of wars and romance, adventures of pirates and Arabian nights. I read trying to fill my mind, and I told the stories to my brother in the evenings, who, bit by bit, was beginning to speak again and engage with me.

  ‘You can see that the two negatives were almost catastrophic to my life. There was little cheer in my soul and even my academic books, the promise of a lecturing job when I returned, were not enough to give me hope that things would ever be any different.

  ‘I had been there for perhaps three weeks when I admitted that I would always feel this way, and that perhaps I would just have to move through life a shadow of myself, until it was time for me to expire.

  ‘It was a Monday when things abruptly changed. It was, as it had been on most days, a clear day. The skies were bright blue, almost achingly so, with wisps of clouds streaking across. The birds sang, as birds do, the bumblebees buzzed, the leaves rustled in trees as a light wind blew through them – in a word, it was perfect and as it should be.

  ‘I sat on the lawn alone, for my brother had found a friend in another resident, who had convinced him to try his hand at painting. I was loath to join them with my silly fear of the paintings that hung in my room, so instead I sat in a deckchair, my sun hat tipped forward to avoid the glare, and read a story about a man who wanted to climb mountains to find if he could one day reach the heavens and touch the hand of God.

  ‘I can’t remember the name of the man in my book, but I was at a chapter where he was trying to convince an elderly relative to loan him the money he needed to go on his quest. It irked me, this chapter, the way the man was going to take all of his elderly relative’s money and spend it on something so foolish.

  ‘I threw the book down on the grass in temper, and must have proclaimed out loud, “Selfish, that’s all you are, selfish!”

  ‘A voice answered my outburst: “Well, that’s a fine thing to say when you don’t even know me.”

  ‘I tipped the brow of my hat back to take a look at the speaker, and there she sat, a few feet away from me on her own deckchair, wearing a cream summer dress, her hat on her lap, tendrils of hair escaping from the bun at the back of her head so that for a moment, to me at least, she wasn’t real but an image of a woman that I might dream about.

  ‘“I’m sorry,” I told her, my voice clumsy so that I internally scolded myself for sounding so childish.

  ‘She laughed at me then, a nice laugh, not mocking me, but delighting in my tantrum and my pathetic apology. “I forgive you,” she said.

  ‘She told me her name – Eve – and held out her hand so I had to stand and take it in mine in greeting. I must have bowed slightly, for she laughed again.

  ‘“Eve, the first woman,” I said.

  ‘“Well, I’m not quite the first, but I can say one thing.” She crooked her finger so I would come closer, then whispered, “I don’t like apples at all.”

  ‘I laughed then, a laugh that filled my belly, rose up, covered my face and reached my eyes – a laugh I had not known I was capable of.

  ‘When I sat once more, she told me her story, of how she was visiting her aunt and how she did not like the journey here, as she had had to come alone.

  ‘“When do you return home?” I asked.

  ‘“The day after next,” she said.

  ‘I was not meant to leave for another week or more, yet I found myself eager to leave now. “I will escort you home.”

  ‘“My home is Posen,” she said. “Where do you come from?”

  ‘“Gdansk.”

  ‘“Well, it is on your way, I suppose.”

  ‘“It is.”

  ‘“Then I accept your offer. You may escort me home.”

  ‘Her home became my own very quickly, and when my brother was well, he joined us and celebrated our marriage.’

  ‘Mother…’ I said to him, interrupting his story, realising it was the stor
y of how they had met.

  ‘Indeed, your mother. She was the positive out of my negatives, and since then, she had given me three more positives which have filled my life up so much that no negative experience can ever diminish them.’

  I write this story of my parents mostly for you, because, you see, you are my positive out of the two negatives – losing my father and being sent here. If it were not for those two circumstances, I would never have met you, and I would never have fallen in love.

  So, you see, my life will be defined by this positive experience and it will grow into a life of more great things, the negatives soon overshadowed and forgotten like a bad dream. This I carry with me now, this message, because it’s all we can do. It’s the only thing that they cannot take from us.

  Chapter 25

  Anna

  It was Herr Becher’s turn to be frantic. His wife had quietened since her evening in Munich, and Greta had told Anna that she suspected he had given her some laudanum. ‘She’s got that same ghostly stare my grandmother had when she had taken it. Mark my words, he’s drugged her to keep her quiet.’

  Now though, Becher roamed the hallways like a hungry bear, kicking at things that he deemed in his way, screaming at his son if he dared to leave his room. Greta and Anna tried to stay away from him as much as possible.

  ‘Greta!’ Becher screamed one evening from the living room, his voice contending with the music that ripped out of the gramophone. Never had Anna heard classical music sound so menacing, so utterly consuming.

  ‘He wants you to serve him his dinner,’ Greta said when she returned to the kitchen, shaken and pale.

  Anna remembered the last time she had been alone with Becher and wished that she could refuse.

  ‘Now, girl. Go and give it to him before he screams the house down.’

  Anna took the tray, the rare meat he had asked for swimming in its own blood, staining the white, fluffy potatoes pink.

  She set it as carefully as she could in front of him in the living room.