Page 59 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Isaac ate without tasting the bread and then sat sipping at the coffee, allowing himself to savour it.

‘You’re sick,’ Anna said, a crease in her brow.

‘And you look even thinner,’ Isaac remarked.

Anna nodded. ‘Things are changing though; the Americans are coming,’ she said excitedly. Although dark circles were beneath Anna’s eyes, she was brighter than before, as if the thought of the Americans was bringing her hope.

Isaac wanted to tell her that they would be lucky to see them, that maybe by the time they arrived they would all be dead from hunger, but he could not take that hope from her. ‘They are,’ he said simply.

‘Just think, Isaac, that soon we will be out of this place! We can find our family; we can go wherever we want to go.’

‘And where will you go, Anna?’

‘Away from Germany. Maybe America. I’d take my friend Nina, and her brother and anyone else I can find. We can live in the sun, near a coast, and everything will be bright and colourful.’

Anna’s dream lifted a weight from him, and he allowed himself a moment to imagine her laughing, wearing a bright red dress, her cheeks plump and belly full.

‘I have to get back.’ Anna looked at the house. ‘Frau Becher is hysterical at the moment, demanding things every minute of the day and then screaming at everyone. I’ll come back later?’

Isaac nodded and let her leave. He looked at the blank pages in front of him and realised they were not the papers he wanted to see.

It took him over five minutes to get down on all fours and find the bundle of J. A. L.’s musings. He had to sit and catch his breath before he started to read, and as soon as he’d finished the first page, he wished he had never started.

Chapter 20

J. A. L.

August 1944

Things have changed yet again. It is strange to think that things do change here – it surprised even me, whose days are spent working and nights sleeping.

I was asked yesterday to help at the morgue. This was unusual, and I felt a shiver of fear as soon as my number was called for the work detail. I wanted to tell the guard that this was not where I was supposed to be, that I was meant to be in Herr Becher’s garden, pruning, mowing their lawn.

I and two others were led to the rear of the morgue, where on the grass lay the naked body of a teenaged boy who was over six feet tall, and another smaller boy, perhaps only three feet.

‘Freaks,’ the guard said, and kicked the foot of the taller boy. ‘You know, they are both fifteen – can you imagine, a fifteen-year-old who keeps growing to the sky, and then a boy the same age shunted towards the ground?’

The guard lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke so that for a second the bodies were in a haze, almost as if it were all a dream, or a nightmare.

‘See those barrels over there?’ The guard pointed to two large vats with steam pouring out of them. ‘Put them in there, then sit and wait until all the flesh is off them. Then bring them out and lay them on the ground. Keep the water boiling – stoke the coals underneath, don’t let them go out. You’ve no idea how long it took me this morning to get them going.’

I felt vomit rise in my throat, the coffee and bread from the morning stuck there as I tried to swallow it down.

One of the others did vomit, covering his shoes. The guard spat on the floor in distaste.

‘They’re coming to collect the skeletons tomorrow, so we need it done today.’

‘Where are they going?’ I asked, surprising myself and waiting for the inevitable blow that was to come from either his fist or baton.

The guard seemed happy to talk though, his eyes excited. ‘The Führer’s museum, of course! He will have skeletons of all the strange shapes you Jews grow into. Can you imagine it? A whole museum showing the truth! It will be a sight to see when it is finished.’

With that, the guard dropped the rest of his cigarette on the ground, his black boot scuffing it until it died.

‘I’ll be over there,’ he indicated a watchtower, ‘and if I’m not, someone else will be.’

We nodded at him – we knew. There was always someone watching, always someone with a gun in their hands, desperate to pull the trigger for any reason.

‘Is he serious?’ the man who didn’t vomit asked me.