12. The Clockmaster sets the time

Nicole studied the shopkeeper’s face. There was something about his face.

“I’m sorry, I’m still a bit dazed…” She was startled at this confession. Back at school, she’d done the same thing. There was this History teacher – a balding old man who’d always instilled in her the most profound mistrust – to whom she’d confess, sometimes without even being asked, her misbehaviours. And she hated herself for it, in particular because, contrary to what happened with her father, whom she loved so devotedly and unconditionally, she could never lie or hide anything from that teacher. But she wasn’t thirteen anymore.

“I – bad day.” She attempted a clumsy smile, trying to charm her way out of the awkward moment.

“I see. Yes, we all have bad days. It happens…” His answer was civil; understanding of her embarrassment, imparting, to her relief, that he’d rather move on and not dwell on matters which were her personal affairs, anyway.

“What about the watch, then? Does the Baume & Mercier interest you? If, not, I may have something else… Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for? Maybe if we’d start from there ­– …”

Yes, please, start from there – start this whole thing all over again!

She wanted to say she’s looking for a watch like the one she left back in the apartment and she couldn’t remember the make or model. “You see, the thing is, I don’t know what I want…”

Before she could correct herself, the shopkeeper retorted “And maybe I can be of help?”

This perplexed her.

It wasn’t so much what he said, but the fact of making a question out if. Then again, maybe no; maybe this was just her imagination. But somehow – somehow she had the feeling of touching something hidden in his words, the shape of a truth unknown to her. Or was she reading too much into his words?

“Of help? Sure, I’d like your help”, she avoided his question. “I really don’t know where to begin. I keep losing stuff and forgetting stuff and, you know, always going from one place to another and, like, not keeping track of things. So, there. I don’t want anything too expensive. I left my watch at my place, you know –… And it’s not, like, I can go back now and fetch it, you see?...”

She stopped, realising the nonsense of her last sentence. A woman, she knew, can make men forgive them for their momentary lack of logic in trivial matters, but she had no intimacy with this shopkeeper to achieve that.

“It’s like your watches here, you know? – none of them tells the same time. It’s like me, my life sometimes gets the better of me. I need a watch – another watch, in case I lose or misplace mine.” This didn’t make much sense either, but she knew she had a point in alluding to the illogic in his shop.

His face became stern once more. “Do you live far, do you?”

She couldn’t understand his question and looked befuddled; an expression in her face that then turned into one of indignation at such an extemporaneous intrusion into her privacy. Undaunted at her expression, the shopkeeper added “I mean, if you can’t go back to your place to fetch your watch…”

Nicole realised she had betrayed herself. His question made sense; it was her lie that didn’t, had he known the truth – which, obviously, he could not have known. Yet, she couldn’t shake off the impression he knew more than his apparently commonplace words conveyed. And he kept staring at her, in the same uncaring way her History teacher did.

He relented from his gaze and sighed deeply as if what he had to say would weigh on him and had to be carried from deep inside him; like a painful confession that had been repeated several times but no-one paid attention, and that made him weary not only from confessing but also from not having someone that would listen.

“You see this big clock behind me? It’s a strange clock, isn’t it? The two dials – the hours that don’t match in neither –… Strange, no? People come in and notice it, and I can see it puzzles them. It has been puzzling them for years. For years, you have no idea. Year in and year out, they come in and look at this clock. But they never ask. It’s an oddity, but they never ask. And I see, you too, you want to know, but you don’t ask.

I’m sorry I don’t have a chair, but, if you don’t mind standing, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you because I see sufferance.

My name is Alfred Schmied and this clock is an experiment, my first attempt at making a unique and very special clock ­– but it's an experiment that never really worked properly, so this is the only and the last Schmied clock you'll probably ever see. The story of it goes back a long time, years back. Back to 1953. I was 19, a young man with lots of dreams laid on straight paths, if you see what I mean. I could’ve chosen to pursue one or the other dream, but no matter what dream I chose, I would always be on a straight path. That’s what happens when you’re 19. And, like everyone else, I chose my path. And, again, like everyone else, I realised later that the dreams I left unfulfilled were more alluring than those I’d accomplished. But I travelled; if a place didn’t please me, I’d move on. And I gave my heart away, too, only to recover it later when I thought it was lost for good. Like everyone else.

But one day I wondered what would happen if I’d be able to stop time. My time. What if, by – by some deal with the devil –, I could bring everything around me to a standstill? Do you see? Imagine the possibilities – every dream you ever had, you’d have a go at. Every love you ever felt you’d chase it. All at once, all in the same time. And it wouldn’t even matter if you’d grow old, everything was available because you had time on your side. And it wouldn’t matter either – do you follow me? – if eventually you’d die. Because you’d never see death coming; all you’d ever feel and perceive would be you being alive; you’d chase one cloud after the other in the sky and never know death; all you’d ever know was life. Timeless life.”

He no longer worried if she’d be following his train of thoughts.

There was a crack under the floor and the walls began to shake. And then stopped. Rain started pouring outside.

“Imagine this: imagine it’s June and it’s the end of spring. Your spring, according to your time. You’d have all the smells and aromas of spring and of early summer, concentrated into one day. And all the flowers would blossom and all the fruits would ripen and the sun would shine and love would come to you in all its manifestations and your dreams would be like one, like an apple you could pick with your hand. All into one minute. One instant.

All the clocks and watches would tell different times; you'd simply choose which time you'd want. Once the time told by one wouldn’t suit you, you’ take another one. All in the same day. And you could forget your watch, and never buy another watch again, because you wouldn’t need to measure time. Not anymore.”

Rain poured heavily now and Nicole felt the shop being lifted into the air. Angels carried it over the skies of New York. And she spun, weightless, in the words of the shopkeeper.

“That’s when I built this clock with double dials. The dial on the right would tell the time as any other watch; but the one on the left would tell the opposite time. I set the exact hour on both and let the clock run. I became the clockmaster from that moment on: all I had to do was subtract the hour told on the left dial from the hour on the right and the result would always be the hour I had initially set. For one day. And for every day after that. But one day – and that’s when, you see, I realised the experiment was flawed – the clock no longer told time. Any time. The fingers on one dial were just the opposite symmetry of the others, with the same day on both.” He rolled the crown setting the day, a large golden knob between the dials, and the same number appeared. “These are the days I lived.”

The shop floated on a cloud where tulips were blooming in splendour, before moving onto another cloud with hyacinths and cornucopias of abundance. Of fruits and flowers in a lush lost garden, where nights are mild and tender.

And the rain fell in torrents like the tears Nicole couldn’t – wouldn’t – shed.

“These are the days of lies and deception and of repeated mistakes.”