Page 73 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

‘“Then I accept your offer. You may escort me home.”

‘Her home became my own very quickly, and when my brother was well, he joined us and celebrated our marriage.’

‘Mother…’ I said to him, interrupting his story, realising it was the story of how they had met.

‘Indeed, your mother. She was the positive out of my negatives, and since then, she had given me three more positives which have filled my life up so much that no negative experience can ever diminish them.’

I write this story of my parents mostly for you, because, you see, you are my positive out of the two negatives – losing my father and being sent here. If it were not for those two circumstances, I would never have met you, and I would never have fallen in love.

So, you see, my life will be defined by this positive experience and it will grow into a life of more great things, the negatives soon overshadowed and forgotten like a bad dream. This I carry with me now, this message, because it’s all we can do. It’s the only thing that they cannot take from us.

Chapter 25

Anna

It was Herr Becher’s turn to be frantic. His wife had quietened since her evening in Munich, and Greta had told Anna that she suspected he had given her some laudanum. ‘She’s got that same ghostly stare my grandmother had when she had taken it. Mark my words, he’s drugged her to keep her quiet.’

Now though, Becher roamed the hallways like a hungry bear, kicking at things that he deemed in his way, screaming at his son if he dared to leave his room. Greta and Anna tried to stay away from him as much as possible.

‘Greta!’ Becher screamed one evening from the living room, his voice contending with the music that ripped out of the gramophone. Never had Anna heard classical music sound so menacing, so utterly consuming.

‘He wants you to serve him his dinner,’ Greta said when she returned to the kitchen, shaken and pale.

Anna remembered the last time she had been alone with Becher and wished that she could refuse.

‘Now, girl. Go and give it to him before he screams the house down.’

Anna took the tray, the rare meat he had asked for swimming in its own blood, staining the white, fluffy potatoes pink.

She set it as carefully as she could in front of him in the living room.

‘Do you know who touched the gramophone?’ he asked her, cutting into the meat with force so that the knife scraped and squealed against the plate.

‘No, sir,’ she answered.

‘It’s just that I noticed a week or so ago that it had been used and moved slightly from its home. I wondered whether you would know something about that?’

She shook her head and tried to stay still, not shift, not look guilty.

Then he laughed. ‘As if you would even know how to work one!’

He shoved another chunk of meat into his mouth and settled back against the couch cushions to chew it. ‘Probably my darling wife. She would know that it would irk me.’

Suddenly he stood and licked the juice from the meat off his lips, missing some that dripped down his chin. He moved towards her, smiling, and she stood as still as possible, wishing that she could suddenly become completely invisible.

He stood a head or so taller than her, but he bent his knees slightly so that his nose was tip to tip with hers, and she felt his hand find its way underneath her dress to roughly grab her inner thigh and begin to work its way upwards. She pulled back, but his other hand seized her waist and pulled her to him. ‘Now, now, Anna, you’re mine – you know that, don’t you? I own all of you Juden. Whatever I say, you must do.’

She felt his fingers near her underwear and she closed her eyes, smelling the alcohol and meat breath as his lips settled on her cheek, her neck.

He groaned with the pleasure of touching her and it made her open her eyes. She stared beyond him at the oil painting of his wife.

‘Father?’ Friedrich’s voice came from behind her, and suddenly Becher set her free.

She ran from the room, leaving the boy to be shouted at for disturbing his father, for ruining his evening.

Greta took one look at Anna’s face as she ran back into the kitchen and hurried her outside. ‘Go to the shed. Go now to Isaac, and I will fetch Schmidt and tell him to take you both back to the camp as soon as he can.’

‘But they have not said we can go yet.’ Anna began to cry.