Page 9 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

‘Do you think you will get to go back there again? It must be better than the laundry, surely?’

Anna lay in her bunk and pulled the thin blanket over her freezing body.

‘Your socks are wet.’ Nina had climbed down and hung the threadbare socks on the edge of her bunk, the drip-drip of water splattering the wooden floor. ‘Was it really that bad?’

‘I’m just too nervous around them, it’s like I can’t control my hands.’ Anna held out her hands to Nina, to show how they still tremored – whether from the cold or the evening, she was not sure.

Nina took Anna’s hands in hers, warming them. Anna smiled gratefully at her friend, whose face, although much younger than hers, bore the scars from almost a year in Auschwitz before being transferred to this camp, her cheekbones jutting from the thin stretch of skin as she smiled to comfort her.

‘You know the others are jealous.’ Nina sat on the edge of Anna’s bed now, still holding her hands, teasing some warmth into them.

‘They have no reason to be,’ Anna replied.

‘I think it was because you missed roll call tonight, so they were grumbling afterwards. We had to stand in the snow for three hours. They counted us once after two hours, but then found a way to see their counting was wrong, and made us stand and wait for another.’

‘And yet here you are trying to warm me,’ Anna said.

‘Well, the way I see it is that you helped me when I arrived. You gave me your own food and helped me to survive, so maybe it’s my turn to help you a little, if I can.’

A shout from the doorway alerted the women that it was time for sleep, and within seconds the bunkhouse was plummeted into darkness.

Anna felt Nina move away from her, the creak of the wood as she climbed above her into her own bunk, and then a whisper of ‘goodnight’ as the room fell quiet with the deep breathing of sleep.

Anna woke with her head facing the wall. She opened her eyes and looked at the slatted boards of the bunk that had engravings etched into the wood. She ran her fingers over a few, feeling the names and dates under her fingers, not daring to say them aloud.

She closed her eyes once more and wished for sleep, yet all she could see in the dark of her eyelids was the young boy from the night before, Sturmbannführer Becher’s son, Friedrich. He was a slight boy, wiry, yet she could tell from the way he moved, the way he sat, that he would grow tall and strong. His blue eyes were as bright as the cap that she had worn, and she had almost wanted to laugh and tell him that they were matching – like twins. Spilling the soup had angered Liesl Becher, and Anna had spent the rest of the evening in the larder, sorting and stocking, until Greta had given her some bread and cooked potatoes to eat before Schmidt came to take her back to the camp.

She had heard the boy talking carefully to his parents, and imagined that he looked like a small fawn with two tigers ready to pounce – carefully measuring his movements, his sounds, as if at any moment they would leap at him. When he had left the table after only eating a small amount of his soup, Anna made up a plate for him, even though Greta had warned her not to – his mother would see to it if she wanted to feed her son – yet Anna knew Liesl would not bother now her husband was home. Instead, she would talk to her husband even though he did not hear her, then they would sit in the salon and drink wine or whiskey, whilst listening to the music that came out of the polished brass horn of the gramophone.

Friedrich remined her of Elias, her younger brother, shy and yet brave – a look in his eyes as if at any moment he would surprise everyone with a joke, a song or a dance. She shook the image of Elias away, wishing now she had not thought of him at all.

‘Are you awake?’ A whisper from the bunk above – Nina.

‘I am,’ Anna whispered back.

Nina climbed down into her bed and lay behind her, her body warmth a welcome addition as they squeezed into the bunk together.

‘I was thinking about Kuba,’ Nina said, her breath tickling Anna’s ear as she spoke.

‘I know. I was thinking of Elias.’

‘But you know what happened to Elias. At least you have that.’

Anna felt like scolding her for her thoughtless remark, but her friend was only nineteen, and Anna knew she sorely missed the older brother from whom she had been parted when she had been first sent to Auschwitz and he somewhere else.

‘Do you think he is here? I keep asking but no one has heard his name before.’ Nina’s voice was small, like a little girl.

‘It means that you can keep hoping.’

‘You think he could still be alive?’ Nina’s voice pleaded for it to be true.

‘I know he is,’ Anna said. She turned to face Nina, their noses almost touching, Nina’s chocolate-brown eyes wide like a rabbit’s.

‘I miss you in the laundry,’ Nina said.

‘I miss you too.’

‘But then, when I am there, washing clothes, my hands raw, I think of you in that house and I wish they had picked me. I think I would be a good maid.’