On the death of a clockmaker

the clock stopped beating the night Clockmaker died.
they took him away in an ambulance car
into the lifeless nauseated air of February (the month that reduced Pasternak to tears).

made in eighteenth century Paris, an acquired family heirloom, Clockmaker bought that austere masterpiece of a clock while stationed in a war-time Laos.
size of a small coffin, polished hazelnut wooden case with crystal lining:
a triumph of time-counting; its gold-plated pendulum has been swinging until Clockmaker's last breath escaped his parting lips.

oh, how much I'd give to return for a moment to that house twenty years ago when I cursed that Clock every time it made an awful rattle beating loudly twelve times to mark the midnight.
family china would move and make the noise of a porcelain dancing when a little earthquake strikes.
the whole house would shake.
we all would wake up but make no sound, laying in our beds and staring out the windows where the white northern nights reigned and made us cry a few tears of complete and utter happiness.

those white nights drove me insane.
Clockmaker was used to them like all northerners, but I, born in the south, found it bizarre and somewhat disturbing.

unlike Vladimir, the great baptiser of Russia, with whom Clockmaker shared a name, he was never baptised. Actually, he wasn't a believer at all or so he said to me and my cousin D when we found a little orthodox icon in his house and decided to play in church.
apotheosis of his personal religion, I later imaged, was the Fifty-Years-In-The-Party badge (now kept in my dad's drawer another family heirloom).

Clockmaker had many hobbies: he read relentlessly, carved figurines out of sandstone, made leather bookmarks and took great care of that old French pendulum clock that hung on the wall for as long as I remember.
the Clockmaker used to manually turn it every evening.
he was the only one who could ensure that the clock kept working

sometimes when I close my eyes I still hear that old clock beating like my grandfather's heart, slowing down and finally coming to a full stop.

a painful awakening.

Katya Becerra