Page 46 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Isaac looked at his coffee cup, and drank some back. ‘You said you had a fiancé?’ he ventured.

Anna was silent, and he looked to her, to see that she was crying.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

‘It’s all right. How can we not cry?’ She gave a weak smile.

Isaac finished his coffee, not pushing the subject of her fiancé anymore. ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked her.

She stood and took the mug away from him. ‘Tomorrow,’ she agreed.

Isaac placed the quietly ticking watch inside the bundle he was keeping below the shed. He would tell Becher there were a few he could not fix. He was desperate to take a look at the quietly working mechanisms of the watch, using them in the one he was building for Anna.

As he tucked it away, his hand found the bundle of papers. He pulled them out and shuffled backwards so his back leaned against the wall of the shed, then straightened his legs out in front of him. Slowly he found where he had read up to the day before, desperate to hear the voice from within, desperate to hear someone else’s story to take his mind away from the memory of Hannah.

Chapter 15

J. A. L.

June 1944

Dearest,

Do you remember when I said I would write to you?

I kept my promise and here I am, in a dank shed, finding words to say.

It is strange to me that when I see you, I can think of so many things to tell you, yet now as my pen scratches words on this paper, my mind has gone blank. Perhaps it is too full of everything I want to say and now I am faced with it, I am not sure what should come first.

Today it has rained all day, from the moment I woke before dawn until now, mid-afternoon. It is the kind of rain that sheets down, so that you can barely see in front of you. Liesl left the house a few hours ago to visit her son, who is at a school in Munich. Becher did not go with her, and I could sense her reluctance to go, as she kept returning to the house to fetch something else she may need for the trip.

Again, they think I do not see them, do not know of their comings and goings, but because I am a ghost, a nothing, they do not see me, and I find that I can wander around their garden and grounds with little interruption.

The cook sent me to the shed as soon as they left and brought me some food. She told me to stay inside for a while and said she will fetch me if she hears a car. She is a nice woman, and it is she, in fact, who has given me the means by which to write to you – something to do, she told me when she passed me some sheets of paper and a leaking pen, something to keep your mind busy.

She is right, of course; my mind seems so slow and jumbled. The days roll into one large chunk of time that is mostly misery and despair. The bodies – so many of them. Piled high, awaiting burial, or, as someone told me, a fire, where a pit is dug into the ground and the dead thrown in, allowing the flames to eat away at what is left of them.

This is not the letter I wished to write you.

Let me begin again, my love.

I always thought that at this age, I would be a professor of mathematics, or perhaps history, like my father. It was he who taught me about logic, about fact, about looking at what is presented to you and finding the truth within. I wonder now, what would he think of this?

When I was thirteen, I sneaked into one of his lectures, where he spoke of the Roman Empire, of the developments they made and the atrocities they committed. It was afterwards, when I sneaked back out again and set off, walking quickly home in the weak winter light, that I felt a tap on my shoulder as I rounded the corner by the bookshop, and there he was. I expected him to scold me for sneaking out of the house, but all he did was smile and walk the rest of the way home with me.

At the time, I remember being confused by his behaviour, but now I realise he was happy that I was like him – that I had a mind that could not settle, that had to know everything.

My mother used to call my father’s mind a rubbish bin – one that collected every morsel of information, every scrap that no one else wanted. Yet he turned those pieces of knowledge into something more, something beautiful and useful.

I wish now I could make you something beautiful. I wish I could take all of this nonsense and make some sense of it for you, and give you hope. Yet all I can give you is the words I know, to tell you I love you, and that you have made all this bearable; it is you who have given me something beautiful and hopeful.

One day I picture us together. I can hear you laughing as I write this! Yes, together. I see us in a farmhouse, out in the countryside where I used to spend summer holidays, near the lakes of Zakopane. We could have a life together there, me studying and researching, you tending our garden and making the flowers grow. If it were not for you, and your knowledge of the earth, I think I would not still be alive. It is your mind I use to do the work they ask of me, and when I plant, I imagine it is your hands in the dirt, pushing down seeds, carefully patting the soil on top, smiling to yourself as you think of what will push out of the ground come spring and summer.

We will have a dog, perhaps a cat for mousing, but it must be a friendly cat – not like that scrap of fur that was my grandmother’s. We will walk every afternoon, hike into the hills and mountains and stop to look at the view, holding hands and laughing.

In the evening we will rest by the fire in winter, and in the summer, we will sit in our garden, sipping at drinks, eating our supper and planning our days ahead.

Can you imagine it? Are you lying down, your eyes closed, seeing the vision of our life together?