The Clocks

This story happened when I bought a new apartment in the city center. A young guy, fresh out of university, searching for his path in life, and suddenly an apartment in the center of town practically for free. Now that’s what I call luck. Overjoyed, I invited my girlfriend—now my wife—to move in with me, grabbed all our belongings, and rushed off, exhilarated, to my new home.

The apartment was located in a decent neighborhood inhabited mostly by elderly people and young families. Nearby there was a small front garden with a children’s playground, fenced with a low colorful railing, swings and merry-go-rounds, benches with elderly folks sitting on them watching the younger generation. In short—bliss! I was pleased that I was finally arranging my life and more or less settling down on my own, and I was pleasantly surprised when the former owners kindly gave me a good portion of the furniture. There were armchairs with carved armrests, a matching sofa, a shelving unit (without books, though), and a kitchen table. I wouldn’t have given away such things to anyone. Genuine antiques. And the owners, serious people as they seemed to me, practically forced that furniture onto my back. At first I refused, saying the price was already low and the neighborhood was good, but they insisted: you’re young, you haven’t accumulated much yet, so take it. I said nothing more, signed a couple of papers, and soon was sitting in my kitchen, sipping tea from a new kettle.

Everything went well for the first three days—we celebrated the housewarming, then cleaned up the apartment after the party, and then there was the afterparty with my girlfriend on the sofa. In short, I was satisfied with life until it began to seem to me that time in the apartment was somehow strange, moving very slowly.

I was sitting there reading a book, glanced at my phone—two in the afternoon. Plenty of time, a day off, I’m content. I read about three fairly large chapters, looked at the time again and discovered that only fifteen minutes had passed. I’ve never considered myself some kind of speed-reading machine or robot capable of reading chapters that quickly. I read lazily, sometimes getting distracted and having to reread lines. Then it turned out I wasn’t the only one who noticed that time stretched like chewing gum—my girlfriend said she would wake up at night well-rested and alert and, looking at the time on her phone, be genuinely surprised that it was only around two in the morning. Meanwhile, I would be drooling into my pillow, pleased that I’d finally gotten some sleep—until I encountered the incident with the book.

A strange pattern pursued us: for an hour, between two and three o’clock, it didn’t matter whether day or night, time dragged and dragged until it barely crawled past three. After that, everything was normal.

We constantly checked the time on our phones since we didn’t have wall clocks—we hadn’t gotten around to buying any. The previous owners hadn’t had any either. At first, I even liked feeling so energetic and content, like a house cat, watching my sleep-deprived colleagues at work. But then it became downright unsettling when you could feel with every cell of your body that that long hour was approaching. It became creepy, and often my girlfriend and I would just sit hugging each other, talking, sometimes turning on the TV.

One night, waking up, I heard the ticking of a clock and, reassuring myself that it was just our clock being loud, closed my eyes again and buried my face in the pillow—then suddenly sat up and smacked my forehead. We didn’t have a wall clock! The sound was loud and distinct, coming from the living room, so I decided to go check. As soon as I stepped into the room, the sound stopped, as if someone had flipped a switch. Blaming it on fatigue, I went back to the bedroom and by morning had forgotten about the incident. But the next night it happened again. I grew nervous and irritable, while my girlfriend heard nothing at night.

Once we had a serious argument, and she left to stay with her mother. I sat alone in the apartment at my computer, again feverishly wondering when that damned hour of melted ice cream would finally end. The next day I called the sellers of the apartment—the woman kindly invited me to her home. That same evening I, angry as hell, disheveled and irritated, sat in her kitchen listening to her story.

There had been a man in their family, her grandfather’s brother. He worked as a watchmaker—repaired clocks, built his own, had excellent eyesight, and would have made a fine surgeon if he had gone into medicine. His hands didn’t tremble, he didn’t drink, but there was one problem—he couldn’t find himself a wife. His brother had long since married, had children, dreamed of a happy old age, while this one fussed over his clocks. He didn’t look at women at all. Wouldn’t listen to anyone, and, naturally, before long he started, pardon the expression, losing his mind. When relatives came to visit, he shut the door in their faces and, no matter how persistently they knocked or rang the bell, he wouldn’t open. Eventually everyone took offense at him—they thought he’d come to his senses when he felt that everyone had turned away from him, but it seemed that suited him just fine.

One day, his brother decided to visit him anyway. He knocked, but the man didn’t open the door. The brother became worried—what if something had happened? He knocked harder, then called the fire department. They broke down the door and went inside. There, in an armchair, sat the brother’s lifeless body. Livor mortis had already set in, and when they moved him to put him on a stretcher, a foul stench of death spread through the room. (At that point I was furious—how dare they dump furniture on me that a dead man had once sat in—but the woman calmed me down and said that particular armchair had been thrown away, and only its two companions remained, which were still standing in that living room.)

I didn’t understand: the man died, it happens—but what did that have to do with the ticking that was about to turn me into a madman with a nervous tic? The woman said that none of the man’s creations were ever found, though he used to have countless clocks. Her grandfather had said that his brother must have hidden all his works somewhere. Maybe he had bricked them up inside the walls or something else—but they were never found. They tore up the linoleum—nothing there. I felt uneasy—could those clocks still be ticking somewhere inside the walls? Were they still counting down the hours bringing us closer to the hour of death? I told her about the nights when I heard the ticking—during the day it was silent, but at night it manifested in all its glory. The woman admitted bitterly that she, her husband, and her son had heard it too, which was why they decided to sell the apartment.

I was ready to dance a furious meerkat dance just to have them take the apartment back and return the money, no matter how. But then the woman’s husband came in, saw me—angry, eyes blazing—and asked me to leave before I got punched in the face. I’m not a timid guy, tall and solidly built, so I threatened to rearrange his face, too, and left in long strides.

I didn’t want to return to my apartment, but I had to stay there a couple more days. I posted an ad; the price was laughably low, so buyers appeared quickly.

I’m very sorry I had to do that, but I had no choice—I would soon have turned into Uncle Oleg from that sewer manhole over there. I bought a small private house on the outskirts, reconciled with my girlfriend, and soon married her. Sometimes we recall that story—she laughs, I pull a sour face. I didn’t tell her the truth; I said I decided to sell the apartment so as not to think about our quarrels and blah-blah-blah… I was considered a romantic, showered with kisses, and once again satisfied with life. True, I developed a phobia—I can’t stand looking at the time. Even when I’m in a hurry or late for a meeting, I try not to check it. Only rarely do I glance carelessly at my phone display and then get back to business. That sinister hour stopped—and thank God. I still refuse to buy wall clocks, no matter how much my wife insists.