Page 48 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

You told me once that dreams were where we could be free, where our lives could intertwine. I felt bereft after this dream, though, as if we were lost to each other forever. I wish I could dream of happier things, of life away from here. Yet I feel as though my mind is slowly catching up with reality and that my night-time escape is no longer that – there is no escape.

This sounds like madness, I know; I am slowly going mad. The heat, the hunger, the nightmare we are living in… at times I find myself closing my eyes during the day and willing myself to wake up.

I wish I could write the letters to you that I want to – the letters full of happiness, of memories of us – yet today there are none. There is only my madness to keep me company and such words to fill a page.

Chapter 16

Friedrich

The arguments between his parents continued. After the phone had been thrown, things had settled for a day or two, until one day his father came home from work and would not speak to anyone at dinner, taking his meal into his study and locking the door. When Friedrich had gone to bed, he had heard the tired screams from his mother, his father’s voice low and dangerous.

It was towards the end of February when his father spoke to him for the first time in weeks.

‘It is almost spring,’ his father said, turning to him with surprise in his eyes, as if he had just noticed the warmer air, the buds swelling on tree branches.

The slice of toast was halfway to Friedrich’s mouth and he froze, unsure whether to continue his breakfast on the rest of its journey or answer his father.

‘Speak!’ His mother’s voice was unusually high. ‘Speak! Are you deaf and dumb?’

Friedrich placed his toast back on the china plate, which had twirls and swirls of roses on the rim.

‘It is,’ he stuttered.

‘You like the sun, don’t you, Fried?’ His father’s eyes were large as he looked at him, and it scared him. When he called him Fried, his nickname, it made him anxious.

‘Remember when we went away to the coast? You played in the sand. Do you remember that?’

Friedrich shook his head.

‘No, no, maybe not. You were young. But you loved it. Being outdoors all day, swimming.’

‘Peter!’ his mother shouted. ‘Stop it.’

‘Stop what? Friedrich likes the sun, don’t you, the heat?’

‘I suppose,’ he said. He looked down at his toast, which had grown cold.

‘Let the boy speak!’ His father turned on his mother. ‘This constant barrage from you is exhausting! Don’t you know what I have to do each day? Don’t you know what is facing us?’

His mother began to cry, proper tears this time, which made her shoulders heave up and down.

Friedrich waited for his father to calm her, but he did not. Instead his teeth tore into his toast, ripping it then chewing silently, a little muscle in his cheek moving up and down with each bite.

‘May I be excused?’ Friedrich asked.

No one answered. No one looked at him, so he scraped his chair back, waiting for someone to shout at him for doing so, and when neither did, he walked from the room to his bedroom.

He sat on the edge of his bed and tried to understand what had happened, why his father had asked about the heat, or why it had made his mother cry.

His hands were cold. He tucked them under his armpits then thought of the gloves he had given Isaac. Isaac – was he still there? He must be. Anna was back, and the gardener.

He had tried to sneak out many times, but had always been caught by Schmidt, whose presence was forever felt in the house; either he sat in the living room, entertaining his mother whilst his father was at work – and not in the study as he should be – or he was prowling the hallways, looking for something amiss, something to scold Greta or Friedrich about.

He hated Schmidt. He hated the way he stank of tobacco from the cigarettes he rolled himself, and how he dropped ash all over the house and the furniture as if it were his own home. He hated the way he made his mother laugh, or would dine with her when his father was busy or away.

Schmidt had found it easy to lock him inside – literally by locking the kitchen and front doors – but Friedrich decided that today would be the day he outwitted the lazy fat Schmidt. He would go and talk to Isaac and maybe Anna, and they would make him feel a little better.

With his decision made, he waited for the slam of the front door signalling his father’s departure for work, and then the slow footsteps of his mother to her bedroom.