Page 21 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Isaac nodded and grasped the weighty brass knob, feeling the cool metal under his hand click as he pushed it open then closed it gently behind him.

Isaac looked about the room. On the floor was the train set, completed as he was told it would be, the neat rows of red and green trains lined up at the station where tiny figures waited for their journey. Fake trees were dotted about the landscape, then another station, this one with small cars waiting for the new arrivals outside. The picture in front of him made him smile – as if he were here to play and not to work.

‘Shhh,’ a voice said.

Isaac, to his surprise, saw a boy, perhaps ten or eleven years old, sitting cross-legged on his single bed, a book by his side, his golden hair shiny and forming a curtain of a fringe over his bright blue eyes.

‘I’m here to fix the train,’ Isaac said.

‘Mother told me to go and play outside,’ the boy whispered. ‘But I don’t like the outside in the cold, so I hid under my bed when she checked.’

‘I should come back later…’ Isaac walked backwards, his hand feeling for the doorknob.

‘No! Don’t!’ The boy jumped off the bed. ‘Please. Mother says you can fix it. Even Papa said you are going to fix the grandfather clock – he says you can fix anything. Please. It’s just the engine, the red one, it won’t go, and they’ll make me study or practise my music if I’ve nothing else to do. Please?’

Isaac took his hat a few inches off his shaved head and ran his hand over the stubble. ‘Let me see,’ he said.

He bent down and picked up the engine. Underneath the chassis he unscrewed the plate that held the engine’s insides in place, then sat on the floor as he tinkered with the parts.

‘Do you live in the shed?’ the boy asked him.

‘No.’

‘Where do you live then?’

‘With the others,’ he said.

‘Which others?’

Isaac sighed – did the boy really not know? ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

‘Eleven. Just.’

‘I’ll fix the train and then you can play.’ Perhaps he was too young to realise what was happening around him.

‘I came from school yesterday. They closed it and I had to come here. It’s boring here, there’s no one to play with.’

‘Quite,’ Isaac muttered, as he concentrated on the tiny mechanisms.

‘You have the same clothes as the maid,’ the boy said.

‘I do.’

‘Her name is Anna, and your name is Isaac – I heard Mother and Father talking. They always think that I cannot hear them – but I think it is because they don’t see me – they forget that I am there.’

Isaac smiled to himself; he knew what that felt like too.

‘Are you a Jew?’

Isaac nodded.

‘I thought so. You’re supposed to have long noses though, and sometimes just one eye, and long teeth and long scratchy nails and—’

‘Enough!’ Isaac slammed the engine down hard on the floor. The boy was startled. ‘Do I look like that to you? Look at me,’ Isaac demanded.

‘No,’ the boy said in a quiet voice. ‘No, you don’t look like the pictures on the posters.’

Isaac picked up the locomotive engine once more, his hands shaking again – not with the pain of arthritis, but with anger.