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

by Carly Schabowski

  Friedrich joined in, but his laugh was false. He knew that Otto was joking, but he also knew that his own mother certainly wouldn’t have cared for him – she would have left his skinny naked body to cry until it died. He wanted to tell Otto what he thought, but Otto would simply try to make him feel better – say it wasn’t true, and tell him his mother loved him. He didn’t want to hear that; he just wanted to sit for a moment in the dankness of the wood, the earthy smell of mushrooms that grew in clumps at the bases of trees filling his nostrils, his best friend by his side, and listen to the caw of birds in the trees, and the little squeaks from the baby birds as they took the food from their mother.

  Friedrich sat in the spare bedroom, looking out into the garden and to the camp beyond. The binoculars were on his lap but he hadn’t used them just yet, his thoughts on the trees that swayed in the breeze, bringing him the memory from the previous year of his friend and the baby birds.

  The blossoms had burst from their buds, dotting branches with white, yellow and pink. The bulbs that the gardener had planted in neat rows in the garden before he had stopped coming had begun to push up the dirt, lightening it with their green heads.

  The house was busy. His mother had ceased to be a ghost that wandered the hallways, crying and moaning. Instead, she had emerged from her bedroom, her hair pinned back, her eyes no longer glassy and unstaring. She shouted at Friedrich to stay out of her way, then spent hours on the telephone. He kept himself out of sight but he could hear snatches of her conversations as she talked to friends, family, and to a company that she wanted to ship her furniture to another place.

  Friedrich had tried to hear where it was being taken to, but her voice had been unusually quiet. He’d heard her talk about a date she needed them by, and then, ‘the address, yes, of course,’ before she tailed off, whispering so that only the company man on the other end could hear.

  In the past days she had become a flurry of activity, muttering to herself with a pen and pad of paper in her hands as she walked from painting to painting, table to chair, scribbling something down and then staring blankly out of the window as if the answer to her writings would suddenly appear.

  Friedrich desperately wanted to ask what was happening but knew he couldn’t. His father had barely been home – he had meetings, he said, he was needed elsewhere. He was short with not only Friedrich, which was normal, but also with his wife, and instead of falling into a pool of tears when he spoke to her, she would stare at him with narrow eyes and then walk away as if he had never uttered a word.

  A light rain spattered against the windowpane and Friedrich watched each drop as it tracked its way down the glass.

  Then he noticed the lantern begin to glow its burnt orange in the shed window, alerting him to Isaac’s arrival. Although his mother roamed the hallways, tiger-like, he could easily dodge past her and get to the shed.

  He placed the binoculars on the floor and crept out of the spare bedroom, noticing each squeak of the dusty floorboards as he walked.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, he looked down and saw two men, both wearing mustard-coloured overalls, wrapping the grandfather clock in cloth, a large crate next to them on the floor. Another man entered through the front door, carrying a large box. He shook his head like a dog to rid himself of the rain and trailed wet footprints into the dining room.

  Friedrich descended the stairs, spotting that the photographs and paintings that had hung on the walls had now disappeared, leaving clean rectangular spaces on the dirty white of the wallpaper.

  They were leaving. Of course they were. But where?

  Suddenly Friedrich was excited – of course, they were going home! Back to their townhouse in either Munich or Berlin. He wanted to race to the telephone to call Otto and tell him the news – they would be together again soon.

  He did not care if his mother heard him now, and ran down the rest of the stairs, almost bumping into one of the mustard-coloured men as he tried to edge the clock closer to the box, ready to lay it in its tomb-like case.

  ‘Watch yourself!’ the mustard man scolded him. ‘You break this, and I’ll tell your mother.’

  Friedrich ignored him, but then he saw a postmark on the lid of the case that would be hammered into place to hold the clock still.

  It was a strange postmark – one he had not seen before – but he made out the smudged word: Argentina.

  He knew the name of the country and tried to place it, straining to remember those long geography lessons where he and Otto, instead of listening to the teacher, had drawn silly pictures in the back of their books to make each other laugh.

  He could see the outline of his mother in the dining room – she was with the wet man – and Friedrich scooted past quickly, into the kitchen and out to the garden, heading for the shed.

  Isaac was not alone when Friedrich entered. Anna was sitting on the bucket – his bucket that he would sit on when he came to visit. Stupidly, he wanted to push her off it and tell her that it was his, but then he saw that her eyes were red and tired, and her face seemed to have deflated, leaving cheekbones that jutted out, making her eyes look too big for her face.

  ‘Friedrich.’ Anna stood. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘We’re leaving,’ he cried. ‘It’s really happening.’

  He saw Anna look over his head towards the house, a crease in her brow.

  ‘When?’ Anna asked him.

  ‘There are men downstairs now, packing things, and I saw a postmark on a box, a label saying where to send the things – it said Argentina.’

  ‘I must go – she’ll be looking for me.’ Anna did not wait for a reply and scurried down the path towards his mother.

  Friedrich closed the door after Anna.

  ‘Argentina,’ Isaac said.

  Friedrich sat on the upturned bucket. ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  ‘South America,’ Isaac answered. ‘It’s very far away. It’s very hot.’

  Friedrich remembered now the comments about the heat from his father, how his mother had been upset by them – she did not want to go.

  ‘What if I don’t want to leave?’ Isaac was smiling, a faraway look on his face as if he were dreaming. ‘Isaac, what if I don’t want to go!’

  ‘It’s really happening,’ Isaac croaked, then began to cough, a hard cough that made him clutch his chest.

  Friedrich stepped forward to support him. He wanted to run back to Anna, to get her to help.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll be all right,’ Isaac said, as if reading his mind.

  ‘What will happen if we leave? Where will you go, back to the camp?’ Friedrich asked.

  Isaac stared at him and did not speak.

  ‘What if you come with us, what if we say to Father that you should come because you can fix things and we will need you. And maybe if Anna comes too then she can make sure we are all fed. We should ask, shouldn’t we, Isaac? We should try?’ Friedrich felt his throat growing tight, his eyes starting to burn.

  ‘I have to stay here,’ Isaac said simply, his voice tired, his movements slow.

  ‘But then so do I, because if I don’t stay, then how will you teach me how to fix things in your workshop?’

  ‘Friedrich, when you are a grown man, when your parents are old, like me, you can do whatever you wish. And that will be the time that you will come to find me and my shop.’

  ‘You promise?’ Friedrich sniffed.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I don’t like it inside the house,’ Friedrich said. ‘I don’t like our things being put in boxes or the way Mother and Father talk to each other – everything is so strange.’

  ‘I understand strange. Things have been strange for me for some time.’

  ‘Because of the camp?’

  ‘Yes, because of the camp.’

  ‘The gardener, he was in the camp too, wasn’t he? He had stripy clothes like you, but he didn’t come back when you and Anna did.’

  ‘Levi,’ Isaac said. ‘That was his name,
Levi.’

  ‘Why didn’t he come back with you?’

  ‘Because he couldn’t.’

  Friedrich thought of the baby birds once more in the woods with Otto. How one day, when they looked in the nest, wanting to see the fluffy bodies of the birds as they sprouted wings, only one remained in the nest, lying as if he were sleeping.

  ‘Did he die?’ Friedrich knew the answer but wanted to hear it – he needed to. He needed to know what happened at the camp, and what his father had done.

  ‘He did die, yes.’

  ‘How?’

  Isaac looked at his hands. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps from hunger, or perhaps from thirst.’

  ‘He was hungry?’ Again, Friedrich thought of the birds crying out for their mother, for their food. ‘Why didn’t someone feed him?’

  ‘There was no food for someone to feed him with.’

  ‘Like the baby bird,’ Friedrich said.

  ‘Like who?’

  Friedrich could not answer and cried, allowing the tears to cover his face, allowing the sobs of confusion, of anger and loneliness, to finally spill out of him. He felt the arms of Isaac around him, holding him close, letting him cry for everything he couldn’t understand.

  Chapter 29

  Anna

  The house was in disarray. Liesl’s clothes were scattered on her bedroom floor, paintings and photographs stacked against walls, silverware laid out on the dining room table as if awaiting guests who would never arrive.

  Anna, as directed, spent her time placing the silverware into royal blue velvet pouches, each fork, knife and spoon allocated its own special place. Strange, she thought, that the Bechers would worry so much about their eating implements that they should make sure they had their own special bed, yet she slept on a straw-filled mattress, each morning waking with a new imprint, or a new scratch from the rough stuffing.

  She could hear Liesl’s footsteps above her, heavy and angry as she stormed into her bedroom, into Herr Becher’s bedroom and their bathroom, collecting things, trying to pack them, and then becoming so exhausted by the activity that she would lie down on her bed and scream.

  ‘She’s getting worse.’ Greta was by her side, more cloths and sheets in her hands ready to wrap the artwork in. ‘I thought at first she was getting better, when she stopped wandering round with that stupefied look on her face, but this, this is far worse.’ Greta looked to the ceiling as the wailing began.

  ‘When do they leave?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Who knows? Not that they’d tell me anyway.’

  Suddenly there was a hum in the air, and the plates stacked on the sideboard began to rattle as the plane descended lower. Instinctively, Anna crouched down low, as if the plane would land right on top of them.

  ‘Getting nearer,’ Greta said, her eyes scouring the garden outside, waiting to see the Americans arrive.

  ‘There were bombs all last night.’ Anna stood. ‘They are close.’

  ‘You look worried?’ Greta said.

  ‘I heard they are evacuating the camp tomorrow. Making us march elsewhere before they arrive.’

  Greta shook her head. ‘They’ll be here before they have a chance to march you anywhere. Mark my words – they’ll be here to save you.’

  Anna finished with the silverware and wrapped the plates, placing them carefully in boxes. A part of her hoped the plates would smash en route and that Liesl would open the crate to see her fancy china cracked and worthless. Smiling at the thought, she missed wrapping one, then two plates, giving them a chance to break.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ Greta asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Look out there, and here we are stuck inside.’ Greta pointed at the garden where the grass had grown long, dandelions bobbing their yellow heads, daffodils and tulips colouring the borders.

  ‘Come on, come with me, we deserve a break.’ Greta pulled on Anna’s arm and led her to the kitchen, where she instructed her to sit on the doorstep.

  She came out with two cups of coffee, and squeezed in next to Anna.

  ‘What about Liesl?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Her? Leave her to wail and scream. I’ve had it with that woman. Here, I’ll lock the kitchen door, stop her from finding us, all right?’

  Anna liked the feeling of annoying Liesl. She relished the moment of disobedience, feeling like the old Anna, the Anna before who would cheekily stay out later than she should, or play music when she should be studying.

  ‘I like it better like this,’ Greta said, as she sat back down once more. ‘The dandelions growing, the grass taking over as nature meant it to. You know, when they first arrived, they had that poor gardener mow the lawn nearly every other day, in stripes. Up and down he went, up and down, and then he’d have to bend over and pull out each dandelion, treating the grass so they would not return.’

  ‘Levi certainly worked hard,’ Anna said.

  ‘No, no, not him. The one before. He was a young lad, very quiet and polite. Half-Polish he was, so that when he spoke German, there was always a word he said with a different inflection – it was nice, sort of like hearing it anew. I always thought he would have made a nice singer; he had that kind of look about him.’

  Anna took a moment or two before she realised who Greta was talking about – J. A. L. and the diaries and letters. ‘Where is he now, where did he go?’

  Greta looked at the top of her coffee cup. ‘You know, they say that if you look at your coffee and the bubbles are in the centre of the drink, it will be a nice day. If the bubbles are at the side, it will rain. Strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Anna looked at Greta who still stared into her mug.

  ‘It was like that on the day the poor boy did not come back. I’d looked at my coffee that morning, and it told me the weather would be clear. It was clear – at least for that time of year, when it was getting cold and the branches were becoming bare. I remember being happy that day, thinking to myself that at least we’d have no rain. We’d had rain for weeks, you see, and that poor boy was almost covered head to toe in mud all the time.

  ‘I was peeling vegetables for dinner, right there at the sink, as I do most days, when there was a crash through the side gate and three SS guards came marching in. They went straight to the shed and I heard the boy cry out, then a bang and then another.

  ‘I ran to the door and screamed at them to stop, but they wouldn’t listen to me – I mean, why would they?

  ‘They dragged him out of the shed by his feet, and I saw that his face was bloody from the blows they had dealt him. It was a sport for them, I think. They seemed to delight in what they were going to mete out to him. Each one kicked at him, in the ribs, the legs, even his head. His whimpers were drowned out by the noise of their boots hitting the bone. I turned away and hid my face after a moment; I couldn’t watch them kill him. Perhaps it was a minute later, perhaps two, when they stopped. I looked up and saw that each one was pissing on him. Actually urinating on his body, which was battered and bleeding. It was then that I noticed Frau Becher at the window, watching the whole thing, a blank expression on her face, and there at the side gate was Herr Becher, smoking a cigarette and leaning against the gate as if he were simply on a break from a busy day at work.

  ‘Two of the men picked up his body by the arms and the feet, and took him towards a waiting truck. I shouted at the remaining guard, who had a prominent scar above his eye. “May you burn in hell for this!” I was crying, my hands shaking, stupidly hoping that Frau Becher had not heard my outburst.

  ‘The guard just lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke into my face. “It’s him who’s disgusting,” he said. “All this time and you had a homosexual working here – right here where Herr Becher lives. You can bet he’ll burn in hell when we’re finished with him.”

  ‘“He’s not dead?” I asked, wanting to run to the truck and help him.

  ‘“Not yet.” The guard grinned. “Give us an hour or so, and he will be.”

&n
bsp; ‘He walked away from me and I think I stood there in that garden for an hour or more, staring at the bloodstains on the grass, the paving stones, and spattered on the floor of the shed. Eventually I found my breath and my mind came back to me once more. Inside I filled a bucket with hot, soapy water and scrubbed at the blood, washing the violence away.’

  Greta finished, sipping at her coffee, then turned to Anna. ‘I wish it had rained that day, I wish my coffee and its bubbles had been wrong. I keep thinking that if it had rained, maybe Becher and his guards would have waited, given him a few more hours, none of them wanting to get soaked in the downpour. It’s stupid, I know. They wouldn’t have cared about the weather; they would have done what they did regardless.’

  Greta stopped talking. Anna could hear the squawks of crows in the trees then the flap of wings. She imagined J. A. L. here, in this very garden, the blows raining down on him, the fear he must have felt.

  She shivered. ‘What was his name?’ Anna asked, her voice thin and tired.

  ‘He never said. He wasn’t like you and Isaac – he kept to himself, his head down. That was why I was so surprised when they came for him. He hadn’t broken a single rule. Here, take Isaac a cup before we get back to work. If she comes looking, I’ll tell her you’re doing laundry – I doubt she’ll want to come searching for you.’

  Anna made Isaac a cup of coffee, taking with her a piece of bread that Greta had left on the side for her hands to find.

  As she walked towards the shed, she heard Greta call out, ‘I think it may have been Adam – his name. I’m sure I heard someone say that to him. Adam.’

  Adam, Anna thought. His middle name, perhaps? She looked at the ground in a different way now, imagining that the blood which had spilled from his body was somehow still there.

  Opening the door, she found Isaac asleep, his head hanging down to his chest, his breathing heavy. As she placed the mug on his desk, she reached over and rested her hand on his forehead, feeling his skin raging now with fever.