The watch

1

Oh watch, stop your ticking

Make this night infinite…

May dawn never come

(Roberto Cantoral)

It all started with a watch… Very similar to this one. A Tissot I’d had for years. It had never failed me before. Once in a while I’d change the battery, the strap. A very reliable watch… Until that day. A Tuesday if I recall. The watch just stopped. I asked a colleague what Time it was. She said:

“Two o’clock, more or less. Has your fancy watch stopped?”

I had a crazy afternoon ahead: lunch at half past two, a very important meeting at four. My schedule was very tight, hundreds of pending issues at the office, dinner with my in-laws at nine …

I couldn’t live without a watch. Time, back then, was my most precious resource. I always wanted to cram things and things into the smallest amount of Time, until it exploded! Indeed, my schedule would fill up on its own. I never had a minute, not even a second. I was always late for everything, always trying to do more than I could.

I ran outside, looking for a watchmaker close to the office. I seemed to remember one only a block away. When I got there, it was about to close for lunch. I rushed in with such a concerned face that the watchmaker removed the ‘closed’ sign he’d barely put on the door.

The store looked a bit drab. The floor had not been swept in a while. The walls could use a few coats of paint. And the watches in display! The most recent model would have been to my dad’s delight when he was in high school! Yet. Yet. All the twenty-four clocks hanging on the wall marked exactly the same Time. To the second. Maybe the watchmaker was better with watches than with cleaning up the store. Anyway, beggars can’t be choosers. I said to the watchmaker:

“Good afternoon. Can you have a look at my watch? I think the battery ran out.”

The watchmaker reached out with a delicate hand, the long thin hand of a piano player, and said:

“Good afternoon, sir. Let me see what could be wrong.”

He looked like a bit like Pinocchio’s maker. What was his name? Ah! Yes! Geppetto. He could have been anywhere between sixty and ninety years old, with a white mustache, a slightly crooked smile, square glasses on the tip of his nose… A Geppetto lookalike. I felt like looking around for wooden puppets in the store.

He looked at my watch. He shook it. Went to his desk, behind the counter, to get some tools. He opened the watch. He didn’t say anything, just hummed through his teeth, which made my nerves stand on end! I could see the Time on the wall multiplied by twenty-four. Yes, twenty-four clocks. I counted them. Four rows of six. The Time was twenty-five past two!  Jesus! My lunch appointment was at half past two.

“So? Can you tell what’s wrong? Can you change the battery?”

He stopped humming. Looked at me, over his glasses, and said:

“No sir. It’s not the battery.”

“So, what is it?

“It’s the mechanism. See this little wheel?”

I could see a lot of wheels and cogs, and parts, and so on, but I wasn’t a watchmaker. Couldn’t tell one from the other. ‘Geppetto’ went on:

“No big deal. I can have it ready for Monday.”

“For Monday! Oh my God! No, no! You don’t understand. I need it now! I have a full day ahead, a very tight schedule, and without a watch, I can’t make it!”

I told him about my lunch, my meetings, my in-laws at nine. He looked at me. Sharp, intense, liquid blue eyes. I felt a bit stupid. I stopped running at the mouth.  I shut up, looking desperate, I guess. He asked me:

“Have you always been like this? Rushed by Time? Running for the extra second?”

I almost told him that I’d been running ever since I’d had my first watch, for my twelfth birthday, but … what was it to him? It was thirty-three past two (multiplied by twenty-four clocks on the damn wall). I said:

“Well, more or less… The truth is, I really, really need the watch. I can’t live without knowing the Time. I’d give anything to get the watch.” (Those were the blessed times before mobile phones, as you probably guessed.)

“Hmmm… You would give anything?” he said.

I thought the old man was going to charge me ‘anything’ extra, taking advantage of my situation, and I said:

“Yes. Anything.  When can you have it for me?”

The old man sighed. He kept silent for a few eternal seconds, staring at his twenty-four clocks on the wall: quarter to three! Jesus! Then, like a man who has made a difficult decision, he sighed again, and said:

“Well… If you really think it is more important than anything else…”

“Yes! Believe me! When can you have it ready?”

“At four-fifteen. I close at four-thirty. But…”

“But?”

“But everything has a cost.”

“Never mind the cost. How much will it be?”

“Money-wise, you mean?”

“Well, yes! Money! What else could it be?”

“Money is the least of my concerns. It will be fifty. But you need to know…”

I stopped listening to the old man. I put a Fifty note on the counter. It was a bargain anyway. I ran out without hearing his ‘buts’ and ‘waits!’ Maybe I wouldn’t be that late for my lunch.

3

I was late. Late to lunch. Then late back to the watchmaker’s shop. It was ten minutes to five.  My meeting! Without a watch, I just couldn’t make it! I was doomed. The old man was waiting for me.

“Here’s your watch, sir.” He said. “It took me quite a bit more work than I expected, and more Time, of course, but I think you’re going to like the result.”

“Thank you. How much do I owe you?”

“Fifty, sir, but you already paid me. Remember? Just before you left. But…

“But what? Is there something wrong?”

“No. Not at all… The watch is fine, sir, but I had to change several parts, and I added a special feature since I was… inside the engine, so to speak. Look: you see the crown on the side of the watch? On this model you have to pull it to set the Time or date. Now if instead of pulling the crown, you press it, you push it down…”

“Yes! Yes! What happens if I press it? Sorry, but I’m really in a hurry!”

“I know, sir. I know, you are in a hurry. Always in a hurry… That is precisely why I added this special feature. If you press the crown, your watch will yield you more. You will find it a precious feature. Used with moderation…”

“Well, thank you so much for everything. I really must run now. Good bye.”

“Good bye, sir”, the watchmaker said in a soft voice.

The watchmaker didn’t look so much like Geppetto anymore. He looked concerned. As I walked out the door he managed to throw a last warning at me:

“Do be careful, sir! Don’t overdo it with the crown, it’s…”

5

I made it to my meeting, late, of course. Then to another two that had sneaked in. Then to the dinner with my in-laws, where I arrived close to eleven. My wife didn’t speak to me for a week. And I forgot about the crown. That is, until the following month, when I had to change the date Then I remembered. Out of curiosity (I should have remembered about the cat), I pressed the crown down.

Nothing happened. I looked at the watch, all i order apparently. I thought about Geppetto. Silly old man, I thought. I was just about to pull the crown up again, when I got a call from a customer. It took me twenty minutes to calm him down, assure him that his shipment would be in first thing to-morrow morning. Blatant lie of course. The ship hadn’t even left China. When I hung up, I looked at my watch, which I had left on my desk. ‘Couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the same Time! Well, one or two more minutes more perhaps. I looked closer at the watch. Had it stopped? The hand of the seconds barely advanced. But still, it seemed to move. I pulled the crown, and the hand of the seconds began to move. So that’s what the old man meant about a special feature? It just stopped the watch? Big deal…I pushed the watch forward twenty minutes, which I guessed the phone call had lasted. Then another twenty minutes more. I always set my watch about twenty minutes forward so I wouldn’t be late. With obvious lack of success, I know.

I spent the rest of the morning dealing with my in-box. I had a meeting at one o’clock. I arrived at half past one, almost two according to my watch… The meeting room was empty. They all came in five-ten minutes later, a look of surprise on their face.

“Helloooo! Is that really you? Have you fallen out of bed this morning? Never seen you arrive on Time for a meeting!”

“Well”, I said. “Just… New Year’s resolutions… You know…”

“New Year’s resolutions? This is February.”

“Well. You know. I’m a bit late someTimes.”

I managed to sneak a peek at someone’s watch: one o’clock on the dot! Impossible. I’d lost–or gained– twenty-five minutes in the course of the morning. When? How? I was sure that the customer’s call had lasted at least twenty minutes. I was staring at my watch, dumbfounded, when my boss told me:

“Anything wrong with your watch? Can we start the meeting? Like now?”

7

After the meeting, I went back to my office. I closed the door, which I never do, and looked closely at my watch. It looked normal, just like before. I pressed the crown down… The watch stopped. Well, almost. With a lot of patience, one could see the hand of the seconds moving. But at a negligible speed. Ever so slowly. Snail speed. I left the crown pressed down. And went on hacking at pending issues. An hour later, according to my calculations, I went out to ask my secretary for the Time. Only five minutes had gone by! I don’t know how I kept a straight face. I muttered a quick thank you, turned around and pulled the crown up again. Impossible. It. Just. Couldn’t. Be!

I left my watch alone for the rest of the day and devoted myself to emptying my in-box. But that night, at home, when everyone was asleep, I remembered an urgent report I had to read for the next day. I pressed the crown again. I read the report in what felt like an hour. My watch had barely moved ahead a few minutes.

11

In the following days, I began experimenting with my “improved” watch. I thought several Times about going to see ‘Geppetto’, and I didn’t. Either I didn’t have Time (good excuse) or I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I tried the watch alone, accompanied, working, driving, dining, whatever and I never really understood how it worked. If I was alone, the crown pressed, others’ Time seemed to slow down. If I was with someone, the watch “trapped” my companions. I had to handle such situations with care. The watch seemed to have a range of five to ten meters. It wasn’t very consistent.

I thought about taking the watch to another watchmaker to open it, but I was afraid they would break it down. So, I accepted the surprise gift, the added “feature” and dedicated myself to the Mastery of Time. It felt like a sweet revenge against Time who’d always been my hidden enemy. Now, at last, I had control!

At first, I used the “Crown of Time” just a little, in emergencies, when something got stuck, and I needed extra Time. To expedite my ever-growing “current” files and pending issues. To empty my in-box. To prepare my meetings like no one else! Obviously, the more I did, to my bosses’ puzzled dismay, the more they loaded my plate! Didn’t matter. A small pressure on the “Crown of Time”, and that was it!

Once I mastered my Work Time, I set about to control my Free Time. I could play tennis for two hours in-between meetings, go to the movies at any Time. I would see others’ perplex expressions, as they looked at their own watch, shook it. I would have lunch with friends for four hours, having pressed the “Crown of Time”, it only would about ten, fifteen minutes. Holidays became truly eternal, as long as I handled my watch with care, gaining Time only by short intervals. My wife left me. I took a lover, and then another, and another. After a while, each would notice something weird and couldn’t take it anymore I controlled Time, mine and that of a few others around me in short periods.

At first, I thought I would be tired: some of my days lasted forty-eight hours in “Outside Time”, as I began to call it. Yet, interestingly, I didn’t feel the need for more sleep! It was as though my “Crown Time” had no effect. After a few months, I someTimes multiplied my daily Time by two, three, or four.

13

The first clue that something might be wrong was an itchy nose. One morning, as I was shaving, I looked in the mirror, I saw that the tiny hairs in my nostrils had grown a lot. I didn’t give it much importance, I cut the hairs off with a pair of moustache scissors, and that was it. But then the hairs started to grow and grow so quickly that I had to cut them every other day! I remembered my dad, who, when I was a kid, had a strange device to cut the hairs in his nose. And then, when he was older, he had to shave his ears from Time to Time.

I too, started to get hairs on my ears, still not a major problem, until one day, on a holiday, I decided I’d grow a beard. After a week, I realized my beard was all white. Not even grey. White! Fortunately, my hair hadn’t fallen out, but I was getting greyer every day. A month later, my hair was completely grey.

I went to see a doctor, who found nothing wrong with my health. When he asked me my age, he just looked at me without a word. Started scribbling on my file and said:

“Well, all your labs look normal… Maybe you are a little tired, stressed, because some details point to an older age…”

He shook his hand in the air, as if to minimize the issue, and said:

“I’m going to prescribe something to help you sleep better and vitamins, so you can recover some strength, and I’ll see you in a fortnight. Is the 20^th all right?”

17

Two weeks later, I felt twenty years older. I had a hard Time climbing the stairs. I’d fall asleep at lunchTime. When I got to his office, the Doctor did not recognize me. When he looked at my file, he frowned.

“What happened to you? Let’s see, let me check you out.”

He checked me from head to toes, took  my pressure, looked at my teeth, checked my vision (I already needed reading glasses), and said:

“My dear sir, you’re in excellent condition for a man of… sixty years! Which is what a cursory exploration tells me. Of course, we shall need to do a few more exams and labs. But you tell me you’re thirty-two?”

“Well, yes. Thirty-two. No more, no less. What’s wrong with me?”

“Well, nothing apparently,” he said. “There is a genetic disease, where those affected age very quickly, but, that is generally diagnosed at birth or in the first two years of life, and sadly, the patients rarely live beyond twenty, twenty-five years. Now… I’ve never heard of a single case diagnosed in an adult… It would seem…”

“It would seem?”

“It would seem as though you have lived  every hour of your life twice or more…”

Then I understood. The Goddamn watch! To make things worse, as usual,  so as not to waste too much Time in the waiting room, I had pressed the Time Crown! I pulled it up and ran out to find the watchmaker.

19

The twenty-four clocks on the wall marked exactly the same Time: three hours and twenty-two minutes and five seconds. The watchmaker had a watch in his hand, and he was talking to a customer. He looked at me, squinted, and without a word made me sit down on a chair in front of the counter. When the customer left, the watchmaker put the ‘closed’ sign on the door and explained everything to me.

23

The twenty-four clocks on the wall marked exactly the same Time: two hours, twelve minutes and seven seconds. A harried young executive was standing at the counter, speaking to a watchmaker with a white beard. The watchmaker said:

“So, young man, that’s the story, that’s what happened to me. With Time, there is no turning back. Never ever. There can be no cheating with Time. Time is Time and all you can do is ‘play around’ with the utmost care. Which I haven’t done. Time got back at me. I dropped everything. I started to work in the shop to help. To learn the trade. So when ‘Geppetto’ died, I took over the store. And I like it.  I’m good with watches. Almost as good as ‘Geppetto’ was.”

“Now, you tell me you have an emergency. You’re asking me to fix this fancy watch of yours for half past three, because you have an ‘urgent meeting at four’. Half past three is a little more than an hour away. I can do it. But I shall have to press the crown on my watch just a tiny little bit, to make up for Time, and that means I must change your watch a tad. Add a new feature. Your own personal ‘Crown of Time’. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

The end

Author’s note. This is for Liz. I guess this post is a good example of “Old School Lit Fic.” Another one of my “old” Spanish short stories. I have switched from Word Translate to ChatGPT. Amazing improvement in quality. I’d say a 20-30%. Of course one still has to edit every line but it does save a lot of Time. Hmm. That reminds me. I have to pull the Time crown back up again.