Page 41 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

‘Will you…’

‘Will I…?’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry… I am being foolish.’

‘What were you going to ask me?’

‘Will you sit a while? Whilst I drink this?’

She nodded and sat on the upturned bucket that seemed to serve as the guest’s seat.

‘I have so few people to speak to during the day,’ he began in between sips.

‘But you have friends in the camp?’

Isaac nodded. ‘One. Elijah. He was sick for some time, and then he became quite close with a few of the others.’

‘But you are not close to them too?’

‘This work,’ Isaac looked at the tiny screws on his desk, the ribbon from the typewriters, the small can of oil he used to lubricate the cogs and wheels, ‘it makes them think I’m different from them. As though I am friends somehow with Herr Becher, or I am receiving a privilege.’

Anna nodded. She knew how he felt. Apart from Nina and Joanna, she too had felt excluded – noticed the looks the other women gave her, the whispers as she walked past – and had often wondered what the others really thought of her.

‘You think I am a silly old man, I’m sure,’ Isaac said, interrupting her thoughts.

‘I think I understand. And you’re not old.’

Isaac placed his coffee cup down, the quiver of his hand making the coffee spill onto the wood. He wiped it with his sleeve. He glanced up and saw Anna watching. ‘They are getting worse,’ he said, looking down at his hands as if they did not belong to him.

‘It’s the hunger and the tiredness,’ she said. ‘I find that my legs shiver when I stand too long, as if they are going to collapse under me at any moment.’

‘It is my age, my dear. I have aged more in these past weeks. It is as though I have added ten years to myself.’

‘It will be better when you can leave, when you can go home.’

‘Where is your home, Anna?’

‘A small town, north of Baden-Baden.’

‘Near the forest?’

Anna nodded and smiled widely at the thought of the Scots pines, beeches and elms that covered miles of countryside – the memory of home. The words rushed out of her, welcome as a cool stream in summer. ‘We played in the forest when the wind would not play with us – when we could not fly our kites. The ground there is always carpeted with dead leaves and twigs, so that when you walk it crunches and crackles. I loved that sound. Then,’ she leaned forward, ‘then you would hear the screech of a raven or the char-char of a woodpecker before the drumming as it made a new hole. One day we came across a wild boar who was giving birth. We sat in a thicket of ferns, and waited and watched whilst she grunted with the strain, her belly rippling as the babies tried to find a way out. It started to rain, but under the canopy of leaves we were mostly dry, with just the sound of the patter as the drops hit the leaves above us.

‘My brother asked me if the pig would die. It seemed as though she must do. She could not move, could barely breathe. He wanted to go home and fetch Father’s old shotgun, to end her misery, he said. But before I could chastise him, there was a new sound, a squeak, and there on the leafy carpet was a tiny pink boar. It must’ve been less than a minute before another one arrived, and then another. Then the mother wriggled herself to her feet to meet her babies. She cleaned them and nudged each one, until she lay down again and they each found a teat and began to suckle.’

Anna stopped, then felt herself redden. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I told you that. You must think me the silly one.’

‘Not at all. It sounds magical to me.’

‘It was. Before all this,’ Anna opened her palms and raised her arms, ‘it was sort of perfect, even when it wasn’t, even when bad things happened. It was still magical – but then, that is memory. To look back and make things brighter, bigger and better than they really were.’

‘When I look back, things are hazy for me. But then, that is my elderly mind.’ Isaac grinned at her then finished the rest of his coffee.

‘You’re hardly old, Isaac. It really is just this place. Here, I should get back.’ Anna stood and picked up the cup. ‘They are so beautiful.’ She looked at the watches Isaac had laid out in a box behind him in neat rows.

‘They’re almost fixed. Almost. But first the typewriters, and then I will finish them.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Anna left Isaac hunched once more over his tools, the light flickering on the walls of the shed as if he were not alone, as if ghosts of the past were watching over him.