Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

The boy colored at his spouse's high sentence, wanting to hurry to correct her where it had struck his ear that the girl had gone with it, great Christ, a measure or two too far. But the boy knew the damage had been done, that it was always already centuries too late ever to withdraw the smallest wrongness, that the proprietor— the man hovering ever more tellingly into position — a lofty enough presence to hover, actually — had heard all, judged all—"generations upon generations forever" indeed! — doubtlessly savoring the evidence on a tongue that would publish conclusions elsewhere.

Ah, God, the boy could hear the verdict carrying down the ages after him: "Innocent young dear has gone and got itself a goodish burden, now hasn't it? Dreadful silly luckless sap."

That did it, or so it seems not unsafe for us, less lucklessly, to suppose.

At any rate, grinning horribly, the boy motioned for the girl to fetch the "family" checkbook from her handbag — so that, by whatever means fiscal, the clock was got — and a note was accordingly made and thereafter wired to the fancy key that poked from the fancy keyhole whose lock could let you get at the lordly pendulum either for the errand of starting it up or, if ever required, shutting it down.

Sold .

And so forth and so on.

We are reporting they bought the clock.

A "GRANDMOTHER CLOCK" was what status the thing was rendered by the reference books in which its kind was pictured, this, it is not unlikely, in pursuit of a program to restrict the object to a rank not so grand at all — and though the provenance of the clock was very probably more local than not, still (the seller had seemed so tall, so hovering, so. . otherly ), once the clock had taken up its post against their bedroom wall (there was really nowhere else for them to fit their purchase, what with the premises being — the marriage was hardly yet out of its cradle — so cruelly unbaronial), the owners succumbed to the practice of engaging the phrase "our imported piece" whenever inquiries were made by one or another young couple who, after very persuasive fare indeed, at the card table set up for the purpose in the kitchen, were escorted back into the bedroom for a bit of TV with coffee, dessert, and cordials.

"Oh, but it's so unutterably special," the other wife would say. "No wonder you want it back here where you sleep, where a chic antique of its type can really be better appreciated on a much more frequent basis."

"Yeah, nice," the other husband would say. "So you guys inherit it from your families or something?"

But whatever enthusiasms the other young couple would insert into the ethers as they bit into cake and drank from goblets and sipped from demitasse cups no bigger than big thimbles, sooner or later someone would be bound to observe — generally when the clock's imperturbable chimes were finally being heard from — that the time was the better part of an hour fast.

Or slow.

But wrong.

Fast or slow but wrong.

Always wrong.

Never not anything but chaotically wrong.

Off.

Way off.

Not right.

Not once.

Nope, nowhere even close.

THERE WAS NO REMEDY for it.

Years into the marriage, the thing still tolled the hour nowhere near the hour — and when one went to the living room (oh, as they will to all couples who achieve the early stewardship of a magisterial property, other important possessions had issued to our couple, even a commodious enough living room had) to see what time it was, one had to smack one's head and reinstruct oneself that for such a use, for telling the time, the clock wasn't any good. Whereupon, whichever of them it was, this party would then get himself prayerfully down onto his knees, would work the fancy key, would draw open the panel whose business it was to keep from view the relentless commerce of the pendulum, would put a finger out to stop it, would then reset the whole affair, hideously mindful all the while that whatever adjustment was being made will have long since, hours hence, begun to yield to the mischief transferring exacting correction into more and more violent error.

The bother was pointless.

Clock people were summoned from other counties, from distant precincts, from bizarre neighborhoods, wild sullen grisly creatures, who, angrily bearded and extravagantly undeterred, brought with them menacingly exotic instruments and, sometimes, wordless ghostly staring children, their fathers keeping to their dismal labors for days without sleep, taking no recesses for food even — greasy oblongs of oil-darkened canvas spread out all about as the place more and more accumulated the inward parts of. . our imported piece! — the thing nauseatingly sundered, the inmost laid open, the hidden laid bare, the genius of the thing suddenly truly charmlessly alien, whatever the truth of its origin.

No help.

Nothing worked.

The clock kept keeping the wrong time.

But no one is saying the clock was ever a stroke less reassuring to look upon.

He who looked upon the clock was reassured.

She, too.

Made present to the wonder of things in being, of no change, of the venerable venerating itself, of nothing giving up in the teeth of everything defeating.

It was okay.

THE CHILDREN HAD COME and gone.

To be sure, the notion of the generations was just beginning to exert itself good and proper the year the couple packed up and gave up the place where the marriage had conducted its offspring into the habits that had been proclaimed for them. So here was the time for something smaller and more manageable, for a dwelling better fitted to the compressions of middle age — and the clock, of course, went to this dwelling with them — all the time in the world for passing such a patrimony along to the first one to wed — no, to the first one to honor the ceremonies of homemaking — oh, but no yet again — to the first one to express the resolution to prostrate himself and spouse before a token of the household, consenting to welcome unto their destinies the instruction the clock would give.

BUT, LOOK — see how we, the tellers of what is told, are not exempt from what is said?

Behold, must not the clock keep perfect time before the story can claim for itself storyhood?

And so it does!

All day.

Every day.

And all the next ones, too.

MAGIC!

How else to explain but as magic?

The spontaneous institution of what was helplessly wanted — everything in unimprovable order — nothing even a tock's tick off.

Go ahead, call the timekeepers in, get in touch with the lucky custodians, telephone from right in there — we mean from right in there in the little sleeping room the widow and I have now taken to storing the clock in and to keeping tidied and anointed for the visits of our children's children's children.

You'll see.

Say "Could you please tell me what time it is, please?"

Now watch the clock.

Right on the money, yes?

But here is the thing.

Every time the old woman and I hear it chiming the time it really is, a ridiculous condition of panic takes up our minds in its hands and twists. I mean, the clock, the good old clock — our very index of the durable order of things — has got us scared stiff.

HE DID NOT MEAN IN Ahnenerbe, in Ahmecetka, in Ananiev, in Apion, Arad, Armyansk, Artemovsk, Aumeier, Auschwitz, Baden, Bad Tölz, Baetz, Ballensiefen, Balti, Belzec, Beresovka, Bergen-Belsen, Bessarabia, Birkenau, Blizyn, Bobruisk, Bolzano, Borisov, Borispol, Brabag, Bratislava, Breendonck, Breslau, Brest Litovsk, Buchenwald, Budzyn, Bukovina, Chelmno, Chisinau, Chmiolnik, Chortkov, Cservenka, Czestochowa, Dachau, Dorohoi, Dorohucza, Dubno, Flir, Florstedt, Flossenbürg, Gomel, Gorlitz, Grodno, Hilversum, Kamenka, Karlovac, Karsava, Kaunas, Kharkov, Kirovograd, Kislovodsk, Kistarcsa, Klimovichni, Koblenz, Kobryn, Kodyma, Kopkow, Kowel, Krakow-Placzow, Krzemienec, Kulmhof, Kummer, Kurhessen, Kursk, Kysak, Kyustendil, Langleist, Larissa, Lida, Liscka, Litzenberg, Ljubljana, Lodz, Lom, Lublin, Lvov, Majdanek, Malkinia, Mariupol, Mielec, Mitrovica, Mogilev, Moldavia, Monowitz, Nasielek, Neu-Sandez, Nevel, Novo Moskovsk, Novo Ukrainka, Olshanka, Opitz, Oppeln, Oswiecim, Pionki, Plovdiv, Poltava, Poniatowa, Poznan, Pristina, Pskov, Raschwitz, Ravensbrück, Rawa-Ruska, Regensburg, Rovno, Saarbrucken, Saarpflaz, Salonika, Sambor, Sdolbunov, Silesia, Simferopol, Skopje, Slavyansk, Slivina, Slovakia, Slovenia, Slutsk, Sluzk, Smolensk, Snigerevka, Snovsk, Sobibor, Sonsken, Struma, Staden, Stammlager, Stettin, Szarva, Szeged, Szolnok-Doboka, Taganrog, Tallin, Târgu-Mures, Tarnopol, Tartu, Theresienstadt, Tighina, Timisoara, Tiraspol, Tizabogdany, Tomaschow, Transnistria, Trawniki, Treblinka, Trikkala, Trzynietz, Turck, Turda, Uzhorod, Vapniarka, Varna, Vijnita, Vilna, Vinnitsa, Vitebsk, Vitezka, Volhynia-Podolia, or in Vyazma, or in Zakopane, or in Zangen, or in Zupp.