Page 47 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

The rain has stopped now, and I see a break in the clouds and hope that the sun will shine – although it will take me from you – for a short time at least.

I will go now, and write soon.

I love you.

July 1944

In summer my mother cleaned the house, from top to bottom. She would say that most people do it in spring, ready for the summer months, yet she wanted the warmth that the season provided.

She would fling open every door and window, allowing the cool breeze to seep into our home, take out rugs and, with our help, beat the dust out of them with a wooden beater.

The dust would fly up in the air and I would wonder where it went. Did it just rain back down and cling once more to the threads of the carpets? Did it cling to me?

Father said that dust was particles of us – of our life – our skin, our hair, the outside that we brought in with us on our shoes. When I told Mother this, she would frown with distaste and say, ‘All the more reason to clean them then.’

I didn’t like that she was getting rid of us, our past year. In my child’s mind I would imagine that the dust was me, playing with my friends as we fought battles down by the river, the dirt and soot I brought home with me forever clinging to the life around us.

There is dust in the air today.

It began just after I arrived at the house, and I can hear the crackle, smell the burning, see the clouds of smoke that filter into the sky and block out the sun. Dust – that is what we all are and what we become, filtered back into the sky and back into the world once more.

It is macabre that I think this way. But it gives me some sort of joy to think that those bodies burning in the pyre today are finding their way back to their loved ones, where they will cling onto their clothes, their hair, the furniture in their homes, reluctant to leave.

I have promised myself that if I ever leave here I will never beat a carpet again, I will not move the dust that settles around me; I will let it sit, and let it live next to me, allowing those who have died to come back once more.

August 1944

The mood in the camp is changing.

It is as though the guards are emboldened by the heat. It reminds me of Shakespeare: For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

The blood is boiling in their veins and I can see it as they count us in the morning, the sun already high and burning, their faces red and sweating. Their nostrils flare as if they are bulls ready to charge us at any moment, for any mistake they think we have made.

This morning a young inmate fell. The heat, the exhaustion of digging ditches and the lack of food and water overcame him, and his legs fell from under him as if the bones had been removed. A guard pounced on him, kicking him as he lay unconscious, until another joined in, and then another. The thuds of their boots striking his body were sickening. He leapt off the ground with each strike, like a fish flapping out of water, yet he did not make a sound.

Eventually they stopped, and he lay still. Someone was asked to take his body to the morgue. No one checked if he was dead – I just hoped that he was, as the pyres have been burning for days now and the thought that he might be awake, his body enveloped in flames, is too much to bear.

Word has spread amongst us that the war may soon be over. The Americans are coming, so they say, getting closer each day. Indeed, the planes that have been flying overhead have increased, the drone of their engines a constant hum in the air, and sometimes we hear as bombs drop and crash into the ground.

Will they come?

Why are the pyres burning so much? Why are the guards more sadistic than usual? Why are they agitated when the planes fly overhead, each of them looking upwards, their eyes showing the fear that we have all felt for so long? Can it be true?

My days are as long as the sun deigns to shine now. I am to dig a new flower bed for Liesl, to uproot young trees that she does not like. I am to chop firewood for their fires in the winter, I am to work until I cannot move. And yet I cannot complain, for it would be worse to be digging and building on the camp, or on the roads; it would be worse to be stuck in the cramped hot factory making munitions; it would be worse.

* * *

My dearest,

Another letter to you. I dreamt of you last night, a frantic dream that seemed so real, so that when I woke, I was not sure where I was.

We were visiting my family, and I was nervous. I stood at the front door, your hand in mine, and you kissed me and told me it was going to be all right.

My father opened the door, and looked at us, and smiled.

That smile was all I needed from him – that smile said that he approved and that our lives would now be blessed. But then you disappeared, and I looked to my hand and yours was gone. Instead I stood alone in the street and the front door was now closed, my father hiding inside.

What do you think that means? Do you think dreams mean anything at all?