Page 83 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Father’s friend, Mordecai, lived in Kazimierz in an apartment above a coffee shop. He was older than Father and wore his white beard long, his hair falling in knotted curls from under his skullcap, and wire-rimmed glasses that seemed too small for his large open face, which would perch almost on the edge of his nose so that he was forever pushing them back up with his index finger.

‘Welcome!’ He wrapped Father in a hug as soon as we arrived and then did the same to me.

‘This is your boy – this is him?’ he asked Father, who nodded.

Mordecai’s apartment was full of books. They were stacked on the floor, on every available surface, so that it was almost a game to try to follow him to his tiny kitchen where he brewed us tea and gave us sweet pastries to eat. ‘From Turkey, from Istanbul,’ he told me, as I took one of the syrupy pastries from their box. ‘Not that I went there to get them. I’ve a friend, Ismail, who makes them and serves them with his strong coffee. I will take you there to meet him – you will like him very much.’

I could only nod in reply as I chewed on the honeyed, flaky pastry that filled my mouth and made me feel exceedingly happy that I had agreed to come on this trip with Father.

Mordecai ushered us to his balcony overlooking the street on which he lived, full of bookshops, and cafes. The cobbled streets led towards a synagogue and beyond that, I could see a small square.

‘It’s quieter,’ Father said to Mordecai.

Mordecai nodded. ‘It’s changing. That is for certain.’

This was the first time I had ever understood the rumours. It was 1937, two more years before Mordecai would have to leave his home, but even then, sitting on the balcony with red begonias trailing from his window boxes, I could feel the tension, see how people hurried down the streets, their heads lowered.

‘It is the same in Posen,’ Father said.

‘They haven’t said anything at the university yet, have they?’

Father shook his head.

‘What are they meant to say at the university?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing. Don’t worry.’ Father smiled at me and Mordecai changed the subject.

‘I went to Istanbul, you know, when it was still Constantinople. I much prefer the latter name and I have a mind to petition that they change it back, if for no other reason than it rolls off the tongue much easier!’ Mordecai laughed.

‘What was it like?’ I asked, taking the bait.

‘Oh my! What was it like?’ He rubbed at his beard and I saw a few crumbs of pastry fall from it. ‘Well, it is hot, hotter than here in summer. There are smells of spices all around, young boys on bicycles carrying loaves of bread on the back of them, shouting out and waving to their friends as they ride past each other. In the bazaars there are all manner of wondrous things – sweets, pastries, gold, brass, paintings, fine silk rugs. Why, that rug in there,’ Mordecai turned to the living room, ‘well, you can barely see it for all the books on top of it, but that there was from a bazaar. In the evenings I would sit with my friend Ismail – the one we shall visit later – and we would sip a pungent liquor flavoured with aniseed, then drink back cool water to take away the biting heat on our tongues. We would listen to the call to prayer that sang out on the cooling air of the night, the minarets seemingly touching the stars. On those days, I felt as though I were in a dream, or in a story at least, like One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. I told Ismail of this and one evening, as we sat, he bestowed on me a gold-plated lamp, with rubies on the side. He said it was a magic lamp, and a genie would appear if I rubbed at the sides to grant me wishes. Have you heard of the tale of Aladdin?’ Mordecai asked me.

I shook my head.

‘Well, now. Come with me.’

He took me into a room at the rear of the kitchen which I supposed could have been a bedroom, but he had made it into a study of sorts. It was filled with treasures from his travels, rugs that hung from the walls, gold, silver and bronze ornaments in a glass case, a heavy polished desk whose legs were made to look like tree trunks, the branches holding up the desktop.

Of course, there were books too. Red, blue and green leather-bound volumes, simple paperbacks, leaflets – it was as though Mordecai had collected every single thing ever written, and devoured the information. I decided in that moment that I wanted to be just like Mordecai.

He handed me a book he had been foraging for in a pile. It was bound in red leather, the pages edged in gold.

I held it to my face as I had always done with books, and smelled the leather, the pages.

I saw Mordecai watching me as I performed my ritual, and reddened.

‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ he said. ‘I do the same thing myself.’

He showed me the lamp that his friend Ismail had given him, and told me that he had rubbed its side every night for years, waiting to see the genie appear, but the genie had yet to grant Mordecai any wishes. ‘I feel that he moved to a new house,’ Mordecai said, as he placed the lamp back on his desk. ‘Perhaps he jumps about into other lamps and this one which Ismail gave me was vacated.’

‘Is Ismail your best friend?’ I asked. I had heard his name so many times now, and I had not yet been in Mordecai’s home an hour.

‘He has been my friend for many years. I am not sure that when you reach my age you have a best friend, but he is certainly my dearest. Do you have a best friend?’ he asked me.

I blushed at the question. I had had a best friend. But no more. And I did not want to talk about it.

Father was awaiting us on the balcony. He had poured red wine into three glasses, letting me have the smallest glass with barely a sip of wine in it, yet I was glad to be included as an adult.