The Clockmaker’s Gift

In Ravelle, time had a slower pace. The streets between the stone houses were meandering like the ribbon streets and every evening, in the air, the smell of bread from the old bakery and the faint scent of rain. At the very center of the town was to be found a little shop with a faded sign reading:

Emil's Timepieces - Repairs, Restorations, and Small Miracles.

Sitting in his wooden bench surrounded by hundreds of clocks, inside was Emil. Some were tall and proud; others were quite small and could fit in a pocket. They all ticked in different ways, soft, loud, hurried, lazy, but the rhythm that they made together, the softness of one and the loudness of another, the hurriedness of another and the laziness of yet another, they all worked in harmony to fill the room with life.

Emil was an old man now. His hands were withered and trembled slightly when he picked up a gear. Behind round glasses, like miniature moons, his eyes were hidden. He had been repairing clocks for over a half century and every clock that went out of his shop did so with a little bit of his soul.

But there was one clock that he could not repair.

It lay by the window, dusty - a beautiful silver pocket watch with "To Emil, from Clara" engraved on it.

Clara had been the love of his life, a painter, wild curly-haired, with a laugh that could make winter into spring. It was at the town square, when his cloth blew from his easel and landed on his face. She had laughed and he had blushed and somehow that accident became a lifetime of mornings and whispered dreams together.

For years, they kept to themselves, above the shop. She painted while he worked and every evening they heard the ticking clocks together, as if outside the world did not exist.

But in one winter, the coughing began.

It started small - only a shiver in her chest. And it got deeper and more heavy, stealing her breath day by day. Emil did everything: medicine, prayers, sleepless nights keeping an eye over her. But time, the very thing that he spent his life fixing, had turned against him.

When she died he stopped all the clocks in the shop. For an entire day, Ravelle was quiet. Then when he wound them up again, the silver watch she had given him would no longer tick again.

He never repaired it. He couldn’t.

Years passed. Emil grew slower, lonelier. Still they were brought and he still wound them with his quiet care, but every evening his eyes would turn towards the silver watch by the window.

One rainy afternoon a young girl came into the shop. She was probably twelve, in a red coat, carrying a small broken alarm clock.

"Shyly and shakily she asked, 'Are you the clockmaker?'" the speaker at the European Polymer Society's annual meeting in Florence, Italy, concluded.

Emil smiled faintly. “I suppose I still am.”

And she put the clock on his bench. “It was my mother’s. It doesn’t ring anymore.”

He nodded, taking it gently. Everything comes to a halt, at some point. But sometimes with patience, it can begin again.

As he worked, the girl explored the shop with wide eyes taking in the music of ticking watches around her. "Why, there are so many clocks" she asked.

Emil chuckled. "To help keep in my mind how precious time is."

The girl tilted her head. “You can’t forget time. It’s always there.”

He looked at her then - really looked - and for a moment he caught a shadow of Clara's eyes in her curious gaze. "Ah," said he low, "but it's a deceptive torrent to lose when you're not looking at it."

When he gave the fixed clock back he smiled in such a bright way, that for a heartbeat the room again was alive. She thanked him and ran out into the rain laughing, her voice trailing behind her down the street.

Emil sat by the window watching the rain that fell that night. Reflections of the world outside - streetlamps in puddles, silver slabs of cobble. His eyes again glanced at Clara's watch.

There was a movement inside him. Maybe it was the laughter of the girl or maybe it was the sudden feeling of gentleness that time had acquired. He picked up the old watch and his trembling fingers touched on the engraving.

“To Emil, from Clara.”

He opened it. The hands had been frozen at the moment she'd taken her last breath.

He sighed. "One more try, just that," he whispered.

He worked all through the night Polishing gears, changing springs, giving life to the tiny machine His hands went shaky, his sight became blurred, but he did not stop. The clock was against him, at every turn, stubborn and silent.

Until finally — click.

The second hand moved.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Emil froze, eyes wide. He held the watch against his ear. It was soft but rhythmic - like a heartbeat. He smiled, blurring the ticking world with tears.

The light outside came through the window, staining the room with gold. Emil sat back in his chair and continued to hold the watch. His eyes closed. There were a thousand heartbeats singing in unison around him, ticking on the clocks.

When the shopkeeper next door went in to check on him that morning, Emil was sitting there, calm, a smile on his face. There was the ticking of the silver watch in his palm.

And for the first time in years the shop was warm again -- as if time itself had finally forgiven him.