Page 2 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

He closed the watch and ran his hand over the smooth metal circle. He had wanted to engrave it one day, but he had never known what to draw or write on it. Now he laid it on the countertop, and found his tiny needles that pounded up and down to engrave. Slowly, methodically, he began to write his name – Isaac Schüller – and then, remember me, January 1945.

Once he had finished, he blew on the gold plating, the dust clearing to reveal his handiwork. He wiped it and then wrapped it in a cloth and placed it back into its hiding place, securing the wood with a gold-tipped nail.

He did not linger once his task was complete; he did not look at the treasures he was leaving behind, nor even glance at the photograph of Hannah that sat next to his ledgers bound in blue leather.

Isaac blew out the candle with one breath and opened the door slowly, checking the street for anything, anyone, before leaving.

He did not lock the door as he normally would have – what was the point? Instead, he placed his hands in his coat pockets and, bowing his head to the icy wind, he walked towards home, his left leg leaving a slightly larger print in the snow as it painfully tried to keep up with his right.

Isaac’s house was a small affair, nestled in the valley between rolling hills that sprouted springy green grass in the spring and summer, where bright red poppies, blue wheels of fluffy cornflower petals and tall daisies would bob and weave in the breeze. He stood and looked at those hills, his house a dark silhouette below, and hoped he would see another spring. Perhaps he would, he thought. This village was small, only a few hundred souls spaced between farmlands, and other than the local police insisting upon the Star of David stitched onto their clothing, and that any Jew give his business to the Reich, no one had come to take them away yet. Even his shop had been left untouched – the Reich clearly uninterested in the small treasures it held.

As he began to walk again, he felt a tickle on the back of his neck, just like when Hannah would quickly kiss him there when he was bent over a dim light, fixing and tinkering with the pieces of a watch.

He turned, almost expecting – stupidly – to see her there, her head wrapped in her cream woollen scarf, her lips bright red with cold. But he was alone.

‘Silly old man,’ he said aloud, then laughed. The cold and tiredness was tricking him, he decided. He was about to turn away when two yellow headlights appeared, and came barrelling over the potholes towards him.

Isaac dreamt he was a child again. Summer had woken the valley into a thick carpet of wildflowers and trees of all shades of green against the clear blue sky. He was lying on his back, feeling the tickle of blades of grass underneath him. Hannah was by his side and he reached out his hand to take hers. He could feel the warmth of her skin, smell the sweetness of her, but he daren’t look at her in case she went away.

He could hear the caw of crows and magpies in the trees as they screeched a warning to protect their young, whilst the chirp and chirrup of sparrows and blue tits interrupted them, allowing a mellower song to ring out.

‘You have to get up now,’ Hannah told him.

‘I don’t want to,’ he said.

‘Don’t be like that, Isaac. You can and you must.’

‘But where will you go?’ Isaac finally turned to look at her, and instead of seeing her face – her beloved face that was round like a child’s, with plump cheeks and a tiny snubbed nose, her almond-shaped eyes wide like a cat’s and sparkling with green and amber – the face he saw was that of a man, with a thick moustache and slanted grey eyes.

‘Wake up!’ the man shouted.

Suddenly, Isaac opened his eyes fully.

‘Where am I?’ he mumbled.

‘You’ve been leaning on me for hours. My arm has fallen asleep. I’d let you sleep longer, really I would, but I couldn’t move,’ the man said.

Isaac’s legs were asleep, his knees tucked under his chin, and trying to move them sent pins and needles shooting under the skin.

‘Stand for a minute, but not long as you’ll lose your spot,’ the grey-eyed man said.

Isaac stood unsteadily, leaning against the cattle cart’s wooden slats, and shook each foot. As he did, he looked around. The meek daylight that seeped through the slats illuminated little, but he could just make out people lying on the carriage floor, covered in coats and blankets, bags underneath their heads as pillows. They were packed tightly, like litters of kittens nestling into their mother to find warmth.

Isaac blew into his cupped hands. The air that filled the cart was freezing, and though it blew through the slats, it didn’t take away the musty smell of dried human sweat and dirt.

‘You got on late.’ The grey-eyed man stood up beside Isaac. ‘I’m Elijah. I’d shake your hand, but it doesn’t seem right.’

‘Isaac.’ He blew into his cupped hands once more.

‘Lucky, that’s what you are,’ Elijah said.

‘Lucky?’

‘Like I said, you’ve only been on here, what, a few hours? Me, it’s been days I think, but I was lucky too – some of these have been on here a week.’

Isaac looked around him. He caught the eye of a woman, her face gaunt and pale, her arms wrapped around two smaller sleeping figures, their eyelids fluttering in dreams. Isaac hoped they would stay asleep; he could not bear to see their eyes.

‘Although,’ Elijah continued, ‘they’re lucky too. Other carts, I saw people standing, no room to sit. Imagine, standing for a week?’