Page 39 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

I desperately wanted to know what was in that parcel. Deliveries occur every day here – dresses she orders, or food, even furniture. It is as though they cannot live one day without something new arriving. But this was different; it woke her before dawn and that meant it was something important.

I must have dozed off for perhaps an hour, but not more, and it was the parcel that woke me.

At first, I could not understand the noise – scratching, then a woman singing, loud, then quiet, then silence. Finally, I understood they had taken receipt of a gramophone. Sure enough, Beethoven was soon heard, blasting through the house and sailing out to me in the garden. Then the music changed to something lighter. I imagined both Herr Becher and his wife arguing over which music to play – their tastes so different. They are so different from one another; it is only to be expected. Herr Becher is ramrod straight in everything he does; his orders, the way he moves. He seems kind but can then turn, quick as a flash. He reminds me of the old cat my grandmother had for catching mice. One moment you could stroke him and hear his purr, then the next, he would bite you or swipe at you, leaving a trail of blood, then simply walk away. That’s how Herr Becher is – you cannot trust the smile, the random thanks he sometimes bestows on my work in the garden. You cannot trust it at all.

Liesl is more transparent. She must be forty, yet she has not aged from being a spoilt child. She does nothing all day but eat and sleep. She will entertain guests now and then, but mostly she is surly and distant until her husband comes home, and then she transforms herself. She dresses for dinner with her husband as if they are going to the opera – ball gowns of silk and velvet, her hair shining and pinned back with mother of pearl pins, her lips rouged and her eyes bright and eager.

I see her, but she rarely sees me. She cannot help but look at her reflection in the window glass. If her husband is late, she stands fingering the pearls at her neck, as if he is away fighting in some foreign land and not simply down the rutted track that leads to the camp.

I tried to leave the shed a while ago, but was told to stay inside by the cook. Guests will be arriving soon and I cannot be seen. I asked when I was to leave to return to the camp, but the cook shook her head and has now locked me in here for the night. I cannot say I mind; I have a small torch, a bundle of food, and some water the kindly cook has given me to see me through the night, and I have made myself a bed from the old sacks and bit of rubbish stashed away in here. Besides, when I lie back, there are cracks in the shed roof, and from here I can see the stars and listen to the music that streams out from the dining room, and pretend I am somewhere else altogether.

I should talk to God tonight; I am sure He will hear me here.

Chapter 13

Anna

February 1944

A wave of typhus hit the camp, reminding Anna of those violent winds of summer storms that struck trees, leaving little in their wake. It seemed as though it was located in just one bunkhouse, where each morning Anna, Joanna and Nina were made to check sleeping bodies for a pulse, a breath, and those that expired were to be carried out to a pit at the rear of the bunkhouses where they were thrown in, one on top of the other, then their bodies set alight, the smell of burning flesh and hair clinging on to Anna’s clothes and skin.

Nina had fashioned them masks from pieces of material she had sneaked out of the laundry, which they wore when moving the bodies and then again when the pyres were lit.

Anna was moving the first body of the day, a woman from another bunkhouse who had died in the night, the others too weak to help. She carried the woman by her arms, Nina carrying her by the ankles. She looked to Anna the same as the others had – her mouth open, the skin on her body stretched so thin that it looked as though it would rip, her ribs pronounced like the carcasses of cows Anna had seen hanging in butcher shop windows.

At first, Anna had vomited when she had moved three bodies during those first days, her retching bringing up yellow bile that stung her throat and made her eyes water. She had cried too at night, silently into her pillow, mumbling a prayer for each of them. Yet now, after two weeks, the vomiting had stopped, the crying stilled to a few tears, but she still prayed for each of them.

Nina would not speak to Anna of the death that surrounded them. Instead she would talk of her birthdays she had spent with her family when she was small, of her father who she had adored, of the books she had read – anything but what was in front of her each day.

They threw the woman into the pit, her limbs tangled and bent at odd angles as she lay on top of another, and Anna felt a wave of nausea rise from her stomach, reaching her throat. She was glad of it – glad to know that she had not become so indifferent, so immune to the horror – she wanted to feel it.

‘I was just remembering the day my father bought us a dog.’ Nina walked a few steps in front of Anna towards the bunkhouse. ‘I loved that dog – did you ever have a pet, Anna?’

Anna shook her head – did the woman she had just thrown into that pit have a pet? Did she have a cat, perhaps, pure white and silky, that sat on a windowsill somewhere, waiting for her to come home?

‘You in?’ Joanna asked as soon as they both entered the bunkhouse, waving a deck of cards at them, fashioned from some cardboard she had bartered for with a lump of bread.

Nina sat down on the dusty floorboards, an upturned box featuring as a playing table. Anna stood watching Joanna count out the cards; for herself, Nina, a woman called Ami and for Anna. She sat next to Nina and crossed her legs, then removed her mask, breathing in the damp air. Around her women slept on their bunks, their blankets covering their whole bodies so that you could only see the scruff of hair on a pillow. Others sat together, talking – one had a book she had been gifted by a male camp guard. Joanna had told Anna and Nina not to ask what she had done to be given it.

As Anna looked at the scruffy designs Joanna had drawn, she recalled playing a game with Piotr, who had tried to cheat the entire time so that they had eventually fallen about, laughing like children.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Joanna asked, raising her dark eyes from her hand.

‘A memory,’ she answered, then rearranged her cards to try and find a sequence to get rid of some of them. She couldn’t, and picked up a card from the deck.

‘That’s all we have now,’ Joanna said. ‘Speaking of which…’ She rummaged around in her pocket and drew out four cigarettes, laying them down next to the cards.

‘Where did you get these?’ Nina picked one up, staring at it as if she had never seen one before.

‘A guard,’ Joanna said out of the side of her mouth, as she tried to light it with a thin match from a tiny box. ‘Got these too.’ She blew out the smoke and chucked the matches towards Nina.

‘But how?’ Anna asked, placing her own cards down to pick up the cigarette.

‘That fat guard, what’s her name – Elsa? Something like that. Anyway, she’s bringing in a few things as long as we give her some petrol and scraps of metal from the sheds and munitions store. She says she’s getting a fair price for them on the outside. So she pays me in these.’ Joanna blew out a long stream of smoke, closed her eyes and smiled, savouring the tobacco.

Anna did not smoke, not really. She had sometimes had a puff of Piotr’s, and now and again when she had drunk wine, and had once begged a cigarette from her brother.

‘You don’t want it?’ Joanna asked, nodding towards the cigarette Anna held in her hand.