The Watchmaker

by Mike Rogers

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts 1, 2, 3

conclusion

Ikey explained to Minna that Yura had run out of the right kind of kosher parchment, which was why he hadn’t come back with a whole bundle of mezuzahs. It might even have been true, for all he knew, not a deliberate, full-scale lie, anyway.

“Maybe it’s better that way,” said Minna. “If they’re rounding up everyone who’s different, putting a sign over the door would only make it easier for them. It would remind them about us.”

* * *

Three days later, when Minna was out shopping, Yura came calling.

“I’m not staying,” he said. “I waited till I saw Minna go out... The fewer people know about this, the better. Here’s the paper that Manny wrote for us; parchment is only for kosher stuff. And here’s a watch for you to mend, if it really needs mending. Its being broken was just the excuse my contact used for getting hold of it. All you have to do is open it up and put the paper in—”

Even before Yura had finished his sentence, Ikey had the watch open and was inspecting it. “Hey,” he said, “this is a tourbillon. There won’t be room in the case. But what I always do is put the watches I mend in little chamois pouches, and slip the bill in with them... Does he need to see it, for it to have an effect?”

“Nope,” said Yura, “it’s just the characters. But they need to be near—”

“Will they know it’s me?”

“You flatter yourself, Ikey; Washington is full of watch-menders, and I’m sure they all do what you do. Besides, who’s going to connect whatever happens to a piece of paper in his pocket?”

“Pieces of paper,” said Ikey, “can do all sorts of harm.”

“Get on with the job. I’ll be just round the corner. My contact is getting the slow, cheap train at 3:00 p.m.”

Ikey squinted at the watch. For all the ‘made in Switzerland’ hype, the majority of the components in this one were Chinese. It was running fine, but he still made a couple of adjustments and, out of courtesy to any future watchmaker, made a note about them on the back of Mad Manny’s paper, which he popped into the bottom of the pouch, before snapping the watch shut and sliding it down to nestle snugly against Manny’s little contribution to the struggle. No one would even notice it was there.

Minna was still not back. Should he worry? No, she always had a gossip with Irma in the deli, and he knew she’d gone to buy olives and pickled gherkins.

When Yura came back, Ikey pressed the watch into Yura’s hand and asked, “What’s it supposed to retail for?”

“A hundred thousand, so I heard—”

“A swindle,” said Ikey. “Last time, I heard he gave them Breitlings...”

Ikey may have chosen to disregard politics, but he could never disregard watches. Yura had a mission, and didn’t stay to hear any more. But Ikey went and picked up his wife from the deli, and the pleasure of their unexpected reunion drove any thought of consequences out of his head.

* * *

Until, a week later, Yura turned up at Ikey’s place, smiling. Minna was out at the shops again. Ikey welcomed his friend into the apartment, saying, “I don’t got no rye; the best I can offer might be some sherry or, worst case, some seder wine left over from my Bar Mitzvah...”

“Ikey,” said Yura, “I’m happy with water. The Illustrated Man has retired from politics.”

“He had some kind of insight?”

“Nope, he had a car crash. Physical is always more important than the mental, for some kinds of people.”

“Tell me more,” asked Ikey, wondering if he ought to be feeling guilty rather than triumphant.

“We actually know, with some certainty, what happened.”

“How?”

“He had a dash-cam but, as is observable with some kinds of persons, he was more interested in himself than in others. He had turned it round to record himself!”

“No!”

“Yes! And it showed him reaching round, while he was doing a considerable speed, to scratch an itch which had just started right where that tattoo was!”

“That’s madness!”

“Doesn’t stop it happening. He obviously thought it was the right thing to do and didn’t worry about the consequences. As you and I have previously observed, that is a distinctive marker of the behaviour that is common among him and his associates. Though seldom, alas, with such extreme, not to say gratifying, effects on the individuals concerned.”

By now, with a growing euphoria which belied the relatively restrained tone of their conversation, Ikey and Yura had their hands on one another’s shoulders, and they were just beginning a kind of ungainly version of Zorba the Greek’s dance together, crossed with a reminiscence of a Central European polka, when Minna announced her presence by shutting the door behind her noisily enough to make the pair realise that she had overheard at least part of their conversation.

“Irma has laryngitis,” she said. “it was her husband in the shop.” Minna didn’t want them to think she’d come back deliberately early in order to eavesdrop. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Anything I should know about?”

They hesitated. They’d not involved her. Actually, they’d deliberately excluded her because they thought she might not approve. Sharing a guilty pleasure with someone who’ll probably think it’s more guilt than pleasure isn’t the pleasantest thing to do, but the men’s joy was so rare and so evident that it wouldn’t be easy for them to deny it.

“You two look really happy. It’s nice to see,” said Minna, turning the knife.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so pleased by someone else’s misfortune,” said Ikey, who had decided to take the lead because, after all, he had to keep on living with Minna.

“Hell,” said Yura, who had no such obligation, “he causes enough misfortune to others; time he had a bit for himself.”

“Who are we talking about?” asked Minna, taking off her coat and sitting down, and indicating with gestures to the men that they, too, should take the weight off their feet.

“The Illustrated Man,” said Yura, his tone indicating that he wasn’t about to abandon his justified animus against the object of their action.

Minna gave Ikey her standard querying look and got, as always, an answer.

“Your Hell’s Angel pin-up,” he said, showing that he wasn’t prepared to ditch his friend’s point of view just because his wife might disapprove of it.

“Aha,” said Minna, “and what’s happened to him? Tried a wheelie, and it fell off?”

“You could say that,” said Ikey, conscious that the role of chief negotiator had to be his, because he had the local knowledge.

“Bad?” asked Minna.

“Naw,” said Yura, because he was the one who really knew, “nothing worse than golf champions get when they drive drunk. Just shook him up, I reckon, because he says he’s leaving politics.”

“Well,” said Minna, “given what we all think about his politics, that’s a positive result... until we find out who replaces him. But I’m not altogether sure why you two are quite so interested in the business. You weren’t... involved in any way, were you?”

It’s always the silence that leads to the breakthroughs in interrogations. The interruption in the relentless questioning. The tension that no longer has to resist seeks an escape in the relief of confession.

“Well—” began Ikey, but Yura cut in over him.

“Your husband has such sharp eyes, right, and he spotted one of those tattoos, right, that he thought looked like Hebrew, right — only it wasn’t quite. It was one of the cabbalistic distortions that a mekhashef or a machshefa uses; you know, a sorcerer, a witch. And I got Mad Manny — you’ve heard of Mad Manny? No? It doesn’t matter — I got him to write out a spell that kind of activated that tattoo, you know? And... well...”

“You’re telling me that you and my husband conspired to cause an accident that harmed a member of the government and has led to his giving up his political career? And you’re proud of it?”

“I guess so,” said Yura. “Hell, we gotta try and do something, don’t we?”

“Sure thing,” said Minna, “but we don’t have to try and be like them, do we? That’s the whole point. Besides, do you really believe a few symbols on a piece of paper are going to make a difference? On the right bit of paper, in the right place and in sufficient numbers, maybe. But we gotta wait till the time comes round, not just do witchy stuff. Anyway, are you sure that mark really was what you thought it was? Or do you just wanna be convinced because you know that what he does is evil? He don’t need no secret Hebrew writing to be the bastard he is! Grow up! The tattooist coughed is probably all!”

Yura was hanging his head, getting up, shuffling away, sitting down again, leafing through the piles of magazines, finding a picture in one of them, looking closely, failing to find what he was looking for, realising he’d been mistaken, led astray by hope and secret knowledge and wondering how quickly he could get out of there before it looked as though he was running away in defeat.

He needn’t have worried; Minna had turned all her attention to Ikey.

“Ikey,” she said, “you remember that way back there was a court case about Creationism versus Darwin and Evolution, and the Creationists talked about The Watchmaker being God? You find a watch, right, in the middle of nowhere, and it’s so clever, and all its bits work, so it must have been designed and made, right? So there must be a Watchmaker, and the Watchmaker is God, because the Watchmaker made everything to work properly? You haven’t got Watchmaker Syndrome, have you, where you think you make everything happen because you put the cogs in the right place, and this one connects with that one, and so on?”

“Nope,” said Ikey, “there’s always bits of dust, and teeth that give way when they shouldn’t.”

“Good. I knew I needn’t really worry about you. Bye, Yura!”

Yura was good at judging the right moment to leave, but he still missed something because, the moment he’d closed the door behind him, Ikey said, “But I still know why he crashed. And I was responsible for it. And maybe for his giving up politics.”

“What!?”

“Yura said he was driving too fast. When do you drive too fast? When you’re late or when you think you’re late. I fixed his watch so it would always be slow or fast, and I made it switch between the two, unpredictably. I doctored his tourbillon — an unnecessary piece of crap — and I wrote THIS IS A WARNING on the back of Mad Manny’s spell. Maybe he saw it — maybe he didn’t — but if he did, after what had happened, or if somebody else did, and told him—”

“But why?”

“A guy that doesn’t treat other people right doesn’t deserve to have his time right, either.”

Minna must have agreed, because she hugged him. Which meant that she may not have heard Ikey reciting his own little credo: “The cogs go round, Minna, the cogs go round and make the hands move. But we make the cogs go round.”