Page 72 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Leaves were stuck to my clothing. Leaves not like the one I have found and kept for you here. These leaves were rotten and damp. These leaves were dying.

My father would always tell me that you should try to find the positive in a negative event.

‘When you have two negative numbers, you can add them together to make a positive, just as you can translate this into your life. Take a negative, or two negative events, and you will surely find a positive.’

‘That can’t be, not in life,’ I had said to him.

‘Well, let’s find some examples.’ He relaxed into his wingback chair that he sat on in the evenings, either by the fireplace in winter or near the open windows in summer, the breeze causing the papers on his desk to flap as if they were wings about to take flight. ‘Let’s take my experiences as your first example. Your grandparents – my parents – died when I was still a young man. I had only your uncle for company and I felt completely at sea without my parents. Now, that was a negative experience in my life, and it did not end there. Soon, your uncle became sick, a disease of the brain, they say. In my opinion, it was pure grief. He was stricken with it, as you are when you have a fever, when you cannot move, feed yourself or dress yourself.

‘It was getting worse and I couldn’t manage him. A friend suggested a sanatorium at the lakes – a place where we could both rest, breathe in the fresh air and walk the gardens, marvelling at nature. I of course leapt at the chance – why, I had no other choice but to try, so your uncle and I travelled to the lakes. They were nestled deep in a valley, so that when we happened upon the house itself where we were to stay, it seemed at odds with all the nature surrounding it, as though we humans were not welcome and had built a structure to drain the earth of its beauty. I believe that I too, at that time, perhaps had a slight sickness in my brain, for I could only see the ugliness in the world, the sadness that came with loving, and I was unsure whether this world was really for me.

‘The sanatorium offered a quiet respite from the world. We had a room each, painted white with small watercolour paintings hanging on the walls – a boat at sea, a landscape. No doubt to bring some modicum of calm, yet they frightened me in a way I could not describe, and to this day still do not fully understand.

‘We spent our days walking, swimming, sitting on majestic lawns and reading books of fiction, not an academic argument in sight! I read voraciously, classical novels of wars and romance, adventures of pirates and Arabian nights. I read trying to fill my mind, and I told the stories to my brother in the evenings, who, bit by bit, was beginning to speak again and engage with me.

‘You can see that the two negatives were almost catastrophic to my life. There was little cheer in my soul and even my academic books, the promise of a lecturing job when I returned, were not enough to give me hope that things would ever be any different.

‘I had been there for perhaps three weeks when I admitted that I would always feel this way, and that perhaps I would just have to move through life a shadow of myself, until it was time for me to expire.

‘It was a Monday when things abruptly changed. It was, as it had been on most days, a clear day. The skies were bright blue, almost achingly so, with wisps of clouds streaking across. The birds sang, as birds do, the bumblebees buzzed, the leaves rustled in trees as a light wind blew through them – in a word, it was perfect and as it should be.

‘I sat on the lawn alone, for my brother had found a friend in another resident, who had convinced him to try his hand at painting. I was loath to join them with my silly fear of the paintings that hung in my room, so instead I sat in a deckchair, my sun hat tipped forward to avoid the glare, and read a story about a man who wanted to climb mountains to find if he could one day reach the heavens and touch the hand of God.

‘I can’t remember the name of the man in my book, but I was at a chapter where he was trying to convince an elderly relative to loan him the money he needed to go on his quest. It irked me, this chapter, the way the man was going to take all of his elderly relative’s money and spend it on something so foolish.

‘I threw the book down on the grass in temper, and must have proclaimed out loud, “Selfish, that’s all you are, selfish!”

‘A voice answered my outburst: “Well, that’s a fine thing to say when you don’t even know me.”

‘I tipped the brow of my hat back to take a look at the speaker, and there she sat, a few feet away from me on her own deckchair, wearing a cream summer dress, her hat on her lap, tendrils of hair escaping from the bun at the back of her head so that for a moment, to me at least, she wasn’t real but an image of a woman that I might dream about.

‘“I’m sorry,” I told her, my voice clumsy so that I internally scolded myself for sounding so childish.

‘She laughed at me then, a nice laugh, not mocking me, but delighting in my tantrum and my pathetic apology. “I forgive you,” she said.

‘She told me her name – Eve – and held out her hand so I had to stand and take it in mine in greeting. I must have bowed slightly, for she laughed again.

‘“Eve, the first woman,” I said.

‘“Well, I’m not quite the first, but I can say one thing.” She crooked her finger so I would come closer, then whispered, “I don’t like apples at all.”

‘I laughed then, a laugh that filled my belly, rose up, covered my face and reached my eyes – a laugh I had not known I was capable of.

‘When I sat once more, she told me her story, of how she was visiting her aunt and how she did not like the journey here, as she had had to come alone.

‘“When do you return home?” I asked.

‘“The day after next,” she said.

‘I was not meant to leave for another week or more, yet I found myself eager to leave now. “I will escort you home.”

‘“My home is Posen,” she said. “Where do you come from?”

‘“Gdansk.”

‘“Well, it is on your way, I suppose.”

‘“It is.”