Page 79 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

‘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.