The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,119
rude guest who damages or destroys the property of his host! Really, if you think about it, I could be a godsend to this town, an English horologist at once beyond the reach of his own guild and unbound by the strictures that would govern the actions of any Austrian clockman. I discussed all this with Herr Doppler last night. He told me I might advertise my services freely and repair or examine any timepiece I cared to – with the owner’s consent, of course.’
‘You make a strong case, Herr Gray. But you must understand, my clock is special. It is Herr Wachter’s finest creation … after the town clock, of course. In some ways, it’s even finer.’
‘It is marvellous,’ I agreed.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘I will not be your first customer, but if you can find someone else willing to let you examine their timepiece, I’ll consider giving you a peek at mine. Don’t look so discouraged, Herr Gray – I haven’t set you an impossible task. Herr Wachter made many timepieces during his years here. You won’t find a household in Märchen without at least one.’
‘I’m not at all discouraged,’ I told her. ‘I’ll make inquiries around town today.’
‘Just one other person,’ she reiterated with a broad wink, ‘and my cuckoo is all yours.’
As with Herr Doppler the night before, I had the sense that Inge’s meaning was twofold. But before I could manage a reply, she turned and made her way into the kitchen, the back of her dress swaying voluminously from side to side with the quiet tolling of her hips. The sight put me in mind of my visit to the clock tower the day before, when I’d watched the bells of the campanile swinging soundlessly in the falling snow. I felt an incongruous stirring of passion, as if the mechanism of desire had become unbalanced in me. As I said, I like women with meat on their bones, but this was beyond anything I had ever experienced. What would it be like to sink into those rolls of flesh, I wondered, to scale the soft mountain of that massive body?
A familiar whirring sound shook me from my reverie. What followed was as extraordinary as I remembered – perhaps even more so, for I was fully awake now and, not taken by surprise as I had been the night before, able to register details that had escaped me when the room had been illuminated by a single candle instead of bright lamps and a roaring fire.
The little coppery dragon that emerged from the clock was the most natural-seeming automaton I had ever seen. Yet it was also the most unnatural, for no matter how realistic it appeared, how lifelike the glimmer in its eyes, the sinuous curling of its barbed tail, the ripple of tiny muscles under sleek scales, there are no such things as dragons. They are, are they not, no more than superstitions, myths, the stuff of dreams. As the little fellow vented its finger-length of flame, I recalled my own dream of the immense one-eyed dragon and how it had swivelled its grizzled head towards me and opened wide its jaws. I remembered the dark flickerings in its throat, as of a vast colony of bats stirring in the depths of a cave. A wave of dizziness swept over me, and I clung to the bar like a drowning man to a piece of wreckage.
Then the minute hand jerked forward, and the dragon retreated into its sanctuary, the tiny door snapping shut behind it. There was a last, fading whir, then a silence broken only by the regular knocking of the pendulum. The longing that pierced me at that instant was so pure that it was physically painful. I knew then that my assurances to Herr Doppler and Inge were meaningless.
I would do whatever it took to get inside that clock.
I spent the next hours calling on townsfolk in their homes and places of business. The blizzard was still in full force. Narrow pathways had been shovelled along the streets, with side passages leading to individual buildings to allow for ingress and egress. To prevent these paths from filling up again, they had been lined with wooden frames that joined together to form covered corridors, lit by lamps at regular intervals. The mazelike passages thus formed were narrow, cold and draughty but preferable to being exposed to the elements. While I slept, the town must have been hard at work