Page 19 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Isaac looked up, his green eyes bright, white stubble across his chin and above his lip. He did not smile.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Greta said you had a list for her?’ She placed the cup on the desk and he immediately picked it up and held it in his hands, his face above the rising steam, closing his eyes as if savouring the warmth it provided.

‘Is this it?’ Anna picked up the piece of paper in front of him.

‘No!’ he shouted and grabbed the paper back from her, then placed it back on the desk and smoothed the crease out with one hand whilst still holding the cup with the other. ‘I don’t need anything.’

‘But Greta said…’ She trailed off.

‘Everything I need is already here. I have decided how to fix it, and there’s nothing I need.’

‘What should Greta say to Herr Becher?’

‘She should say that Isaac will fix the clock and that he does not need anything.’

She waited a second, then two, then three. He bent his head to study the paper once more, then picked up a pencil and began to write notes against it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled as he wrote. ‘When I am working, I get stuck inside my head a little. It makes me grumpy – at least that’s what my wife used to say.’

‘I get stuck inside my head too. But not because of work,’ she said.

He looked up at her now, as if she had just walked in. He studied her face, almost as if he were trying to place where he had seen her before.

‘I think of silly things,’ she said, the silence and his stare unnerving her. ‘I think of walking in the woods or of reading a book in an armchair next to the fire.’

‘Memories,’ he said. ‘We are all full of them.’

He was still staring at her, so she looked away from him, towards the neatly lined-up tools. ‘You’ve been busy,’ she said.

Finally, his eyes left her face. ‘I can’t work with clutter. I never could. I like things organised.’ Then, he drank back the soup and held the mug out towards her. ‘You’re waiting for this?’

She nodded and took it from him, his fingers brushing against hers, soft and feathery.

‘I’ll leave you to your work.’ She opened the door.

‘Come back again,’ he said softly – so softly that when Anna turned to look at him and his head was bent over his piece of paper once more, she wondered if she had imagined it.

In the kitchen Greta was sitting next to the oven, staring at her hands.

‘Are you all right?’ Anna asked.

Greta looked up. ‘Fine. My hands are failing me. They saw… they know that I’m not what I used to be.’

‘I’ll serve dinner.’

‘No. That Liesl will start again.’

‘Just let me try. I’ll be quiet.’ Anna crouched down and took Greta’s hands in hers. She could not lose her; she could not risk someone else overseeing her.

‘Just make sure you don’t talk to them, don’t look at them. Perhaps…’ Greta’s eyes lit up.

‘Perhaps what?’

‘What if I ask Herr Becher if you can wear an old maid’s uniform instead of that? That way perhaps Liesl won’t notice you as much?’

Anna looked down at her dirtied smock dress, the blue stripes dull against the grubby white. ‘We can try.’