Page 11 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Anna nodded, her stomach turning at the sight of Marguerite, her mouth slightly open as if she’d died in the middle of taking a deep breath.

‘Bring her to roll call after you’ve eaten.’

Anna looked at Lange’s face – her eyes sunken in her fleshy face, her bulbous lips always moist and too red, as if she had just eaten – for some sort of emotion, but all she could see was disgust.

‘Did you hear me?’ Lange asked, pushing Anna hard in the shoulder.

‘Yes, Aufseherin.’ Anna looked at her feet.

‘Useless. All of you are useless!’ Lange’s voice bellowed and bounced off the bare walls.

Anna shuffled back in line as each woman stepped forward to wash quickly in cold water at the one washstand, then take their tin cup to one of the camp kitchen workers to ladle in weak coffee.

Anna took her small piece of almost stale bread out of her work dress pocket and sat on her bunk, accompanied by Nina, whose own hands were empty, save for the coffee.

‘Where’s your bread?’ Anna asked.

‘I ate it last night,’ Nina said, and sipped at the coffee.

‘You know you need to keep half now – that’s what they said – it’s supper and breakfast.’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Nina said.

Anna looked at her own piece of bread. Saliva had already gathered in her mouth in anticipation, and her stomach churned and bubbled with hunger.

‘Here.’ Anna passed the bread to Nina.

‘No! I can’t. It’s yours.’

‘I had some potatoes last night and some bread – I’m fine.’

‘They give you food?’ Nina was already reaching out for the bread.

‘The cook, Greta, did last night – maybe she will again.’ Anna pressed her shoulder against Nina’s.

Nina nodded as she ate, devouring the black bread and washing it down with coffee.

As soon as Anna had gulped down the last of her breakfast, she saw that Lange was motioning for her to bring Marguerite to the roll-call square, where each of them would be counted and checked.

‘I’ll help you,’ Nina offered.

‘You save your strength, I’ll ask Joanna.’

Joanna was less enthusiastic as she helped Anna manoeuvre Marguerite’s body out of the barracks towards the square; Anna carrying her legs and Joanna her arms, her limbs already becoming stiff.

‘What’s the point of counting her?’ Joanna huffed. ‘She’s dead. We can just say Marguerite is dead, and be done with it.’

‘At least she went in her sleep,’ Anna said, looking over her shoulder to see where she was going as she shuffled backwards.

‘Typhus is next. Hit the gypsy barracks two days ago with that last lot that came in. They’re in quarantine now. I bet Marguerite got it too.’

‘She wasn’t sick.’

‘Apart from coughing and sputtering all the time, no, she wasn’t sick,’ Joanna said wryly.

They stood in rows – Marguerite’s dead body on the floor beside them – and waited for the numbers that had been sewn into their uniforms to be called. The roster was taken; a few more had joined Marguerite in the night.

Lange walked amongst them as their numbers were called, checking each one of their uniforms for a mark, a rip, anything that would give her an excuse to use her truncheon.