I cursed loudly when I realised my $4000 Chopard Mille Miglia watch had stopped. The passers-by looked at me in disgust, but I didn’t care.
In my professional world, a lot of emphasis is placed on appearance and luxury. Arriving at a business meeting with a broken watch resembled dressing like a bum. I had to decide whether to show up without jewellery like the watch or quickly find someone who could repair it.
To my amazement, just at that moment, I saw a shop with a large antique watch on display. I thought how lucky I must be and went straight to the shop.
The shop looked as antique as the clock displayed above its door. The windows were covered with old newspapers, their yellowed pages discoloured by time. Oddly, the headlines seemed to span decades. Some were too faded to read, others more recent. A strange sense of timelessness crept over me as if I had stepped out of my world and into a place where the passage of time was not as it seemed.
I opened the door and stepped into a dark and misty room. The bell above the door rang, reminiscent of old Hollywood films. I had to get used to the gloomy surroundings. The shop consisted of two rooms. The entrance room was empty except for a counter, and the walls were hung with watches of all kinds and shapes.
Without the dim light from the second room, the place would be as dark as night. Cigarette smoke stung my nose unpleasantly. I heard a man coughing from the next room. A smoky but pleasant voice brought life to the otherwise silent rooms: “Come in.”
I went into the other room, where there was an equally ancient but beautiful solid table. “Could be mahogany wood. Looks quite expensive,” was my first thought. At the table, in the fog of smoke under a beam of light coming from the ceiling, sat an older man bent over the innards of a clock. To my amazement, the man wore sunglasses, which didn’t fit my idea of typical watchmaking. I coughed again and wondered why anyone would wear sunglasses in a dark room.
“Ah, I’ve been waiting for you,” said the old watchmaker, not lifting his head. My heart skipped a beat, a mixture of confusion and an inexplicable fear tightening in my chest. ‘Waiting for me?’ My voice faltered, betraying my astonishment. The shadows of the shop seemed to creep closer as if listening in. ‘I don’t believe we’ve ever crossed paths before,’ I added, struggling to maintain composure, the eerie feeling of predestination wrapping around me like a cold shroud.
My mind struggled to grasp the strangeness of the moment. A chill prickled at the back of my neck as if I’d stumbled into a legend come to life. Everything about the man and this shop felt heavy with meaning, ancient... familiar somehow, yet impossible to place.
Finally, the man lifted his head and smiled broadly. His smile looked partly good-natured, but something unsettling lurked behind it: a hunger.
“No, Mr Greene, we’ve never met before. But I knew you would come,” his smile widened. “Because the time had…” he paused significantly, “…for you to come to me,” he added with a wave. He laughed, and it sounded like an old, out-of-tune tune from a pocket watch.
Slowly, this man and his shop began to creep me out, and I forgot why I had come here in the first place.
“How do you know my name?” I asked, genuinely puzzled, feeling myself getting nervous and impatient simultaneously.
The old man, still smiling, slowly removed his glasses. What I saw made me freeze, and my jaw slackened in shock. I was unable to form any words in response to the horror before me.
Where people have their eyeballs, the man had two clocks whose hands moved in synchronisation. The room swayed as if the floor beneath me had become unstable, my vision blurring around the edges. My stomach churned violently, a cold sweat breaking out along my back.
“You know, Mr Greene, it’s in my nature to know what was, what is and what is yet to come. I knew you would come before you were born.” The one clock in his right eye began to turn very quickly against the hand of the clock.
“Ah yes, I see your birth. Your poor mother, God rest her soul, had to suffer a lot."
The clock in his right eye moved faster again in a clockwise direction. “So much happened in your life, and yet so much emptiness, so much secret regret,” he said in a low voice as if he were talking to himself.
Now, the pointer in his left eye was moving back and forth at breakneck speed, and the sight of it made me dizzy. “But unfortunately, I don’t see any more of them in the future — nothing of value. No offspring, no love, no time,” he said sadly, almost sympathetically.
“Who… who the hell are you? What do you want from me?” I cried out.
“Oh, I have many names!” He smiled again, and his watch stopped turning. "Chronos, Saturn, Kāla... or Sandman," the old man whispered each name slowly, letting them hang in the air, heavy with meaning.
“In the boundless dance of the cosmos, where stars are born and fade into the silence of the void, I am the ceaseless whisper in the shadow of eternity.
I am Chronos, the ancient embodiment of time itself, weaving the fate of gods and men within the tapestry of the universe.
As Saturn, I preside over the cycles of harvest and decay, a reminder of the impermanence that governs all.
In the East, I am Kāla, the dark lord of time and death, who commands the end of all things and guides the cycle of creation and destruction that maintains the balance of the cosmos.
To the echoes of the Western myths, I am Father Time, the aged keeper of the hourglass whose sands measure the lives of mortals, and the Sandman, who brings the gift of dreams, escorting souls to the realm of sleep and beyond, to the afterlife.
Each tick of the cosmic clock is a note in the symphony of the ages, composed by my hand, played at the behest of my will.
I am the guardian at the threshold, the keeper of the final gate where all journeys converge, the silent ferryman who guides souls across the river that divides the realms of the living and the departed.
I am the architect of fate, the curator of time’s infinite gallery, where every moment is preserved in its perfect place.
I am the last face you will see before stepping into the unknown, the final whisper that ushers you into the realm beyond. All the moments that have been and will be reflected in my eyes.
I am the eternal, the timeless, the end and the beginning. In the grand tapestry of existence, I am both the thread and the loom, the creator and the destroyer.
I am the one who waits at the end of all things, where time itself surrenders to the silence of eternity.
Across cultures, my essence remains the same: I am the embodiment of time, creation and death, a universal constant in an ever-changing universe.”.
My head was spinning. The room spun around me as if I were being pulled into some dark void. I knew he wasn’t lying.
“What do you want from me?” I asked this time, agonised, “Kill me?”
“Kill you? But no, I am not usually the one that handles that. But your watch has stopped, Mr Greene. That’s exactly why you came to see me."
I glanced at my watch. Dust clung to its face as if hours or years had passed unnoticed. I looked at the man with incomprehension. He seemed to understand my silent question.
“Look out of the window,” he said quietly.
I didn’t dare move immediately but knew I had to look out. I approached the window and moved the corner of the newspaper stuck to the window to the side.
Outside, on the street, my lifeless body lay with my arms stretched out wide. Passers-by were standing around me, and paramedics were doing CPR.
I wanted to run out, escape all this. It just couldn’t be true. Desperation clawed at my chest, a wild urge to flee from the undeniable truth before me. My mind rebelled against the reality of my lifeless body outside.
“This cannot be my end,” I thought, panic and disbelief waging a tumultuous battle within me.
The old man suddenly stood next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. To my astonishment, I felt calmer.
I looked out again at myself lying outside and asked myself what I would lose if I didn’t exist. All the memories came rushing past me like the clock hands of the old man: the arguments between my parents when I was a child, the unfulfilled love in my youth, all the missed opportunities to say something, and saying the right goodbye to my father when he was dying.
What would I leave behind, apart from regrets, if I left this life?
With a heavy heart, I turned back to face him, the weight of my unspent life pressing down on my shoulders.
‘So, this is it,’ I whispered, more to myself than to him. ‘Chronos, Saturn, Kāla, or Sandman — whatever name you bear, I surrender to the inevitable.’
It was a surrender not just to death but to the acceptance of my life’s choices and regrets. At that moment, I felt a peace I had never known, an understanding that my time was a drop in the vast ocean of eternity.
Outside on the street, arms outstretched, lay my shell with a slight smile on my lips and my eyes fixed on the sky. And my Chopard was running perfectly.