Page 84 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

‘I’ve arranged for you to see our friend tomorrow,’ Mordecai told my father. ‘Best if you go alone.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Father asked.

‘Oh, of course not! We shall go and visit Ismail, shan’t we?’ He nodded in my direction and I nodded back in agreement.

I am not sure whether it was the wine, or whether they were talking in code – perhaps a bit of both – but for the entire evening, I could not follow what each of them said. There was much talk of papers, of travel, of identification, and of the possibility that we would just have to ‘wait and see what happens’.

Of course, now I know what Father was doing. He was trying to secure us a loan to leave as soon as we could, for he foresaw what would happen in a few years’ time. I do not know whether he did not get the loan, but I know he returned to Krakow once more in 1939, to try to secure papers once more. But again, it came to nothing.

The following morning, I woke in Mordecai’s apartment and my father had already left.

Mordecai told me to dress and that we would have breakfast with Ismail.

We followed the cobbled lane as far as the synagogue, then turned left down a narrower street. Here the shops were closer together, the buildings on each side almost touching, letting only a sliver of light peep through from above.

Although it was darker, it was brighter to me. One shop sold chocolates, a large black man standing at the doorway smoking, his white apron stained with smears of melted chocolate which he had been working with his hands. He smiled and said good morning to Mordecai, who greeted him by name and promised to be back later. At another, a small cafe, two men sat outside, sidelocks of curls escaping from their black hats, their arms raised as if in argument.

‘They are scholars,’ Mordecai told me. ‘Always arguing about some translation or meaning – pay them no heed.’

A bookshop caught Mordecai’s eye, the tables set out in front spilling over with books, but then he noticed something further down, a hand raised in greeting, and thankfully ignored the books.

We passed a jewellery store, all the emerald bracelets, diamond earrings and thick gold necklaces winking at us, then a French patisserie, the cakes displayed in the window so tiny and beautiful with their icing figurines and sugar-coated fruits that I wanted to stop. Mordecai noticed my glance. ‘We’ll visit here too,’ he promised. ‘My friend owns this – from France originally, he brought over his wares.’

It seemed as though everyone was Mordecai’s friend, each of them smiling and waving, the smells of pastries, cooking stews, wine, tobacco, chocolate, all mingling together into one rich aroma so that for a moment I forgot that I was still in Poland.

Finally, we reached Ismail. He was the colour of the milky coffee that Mother made, his eyes wide and bright, his smile taking over most of his face as he fell about himself trying to welcome me.

He sat us at a table on the cobblestones. Two other men sat smoking from a long hose attached to a yellow glass bottle that sat on the floor, adorned with an intricate design of a dragon, the scales of which were made from green glass, its eyes red, and the flames coming from its mouth a rich gold.

‘It’s called a shisha,’ Mordecai told me. ‘Instead of smoking cigarettes, you can smoke that, with all different flavours of tobacco.’

From inside, I could see Ismail talking to a younger boy, then he looked at us, grinned and came straight out.

‘It’s all sorted – I have placed your order,’ Ismail told Mordecai.

‘Sit with us, Ismail, come and meet my friend here.’

Ismail shook my hand, even though he had only just done so when I met him, and he sat next to Mordecai, the pair of them smiling at me as if I were some prized possession.

‘Mordecai has told me so much about you,’ Ismail began.

I was surprised by this. I had heard of Mordecai maybe three or four times before we had come to visit, and I wondered what Father had said about me.

‘You are very clever, just like your father.’

His voice was rich, his accent tinged with his own language. I liked it.

‘Ah, here – breakfast!’

The boy placed three tiny coffee cups in front of us, the liquid inside a dense brown that was almost black. There were perhaps three sips of coffee in the cup, and I couldn’t understand why it was so small.

‘It’s very strong,’ Ismail told me. ‘Very. So sip it as you eat, here.’

He took some bread from the tray that the boy held, still warm from the oven, then some cheese, olives, freshly sliced tomato, and some green stalks in a dish with lemon.

‘Eat, eat,’ he encouraged, building himself a sandwich of sorts – first the cheese, then a slice of tomato, a squeeze of lemon, and a few leaves from the stalky plant.

‘Parsley,’ Mordecai said, noticing my hesitancy over picking some up myself.