The Clockmaker’s Apprentice

1Mr Abramov’s shop was so narrow that two customers could not pass each other without one stepping into the doorway. Every wall was covered in clocks: tall clocks, cuckoo clocks, clocks shaped like cats and ships and owls. They all ticked at slightly different speeds, so the shop was never silent, but full of a soft, uneven rain of sound.

2Lucia had been coming after school for six months, ever since Mr Abramov had caught her pressing her nose to the window and asked, without smiling, whether she intended to buy something or merely to fog up his glass. When she admitted she only wanted to see how the clocks worked, he had looked at her for a long moment. Then he had handed her a tiny screwdriver and an old alarm clock. “Take it apart,” he said. “If you can put it back together, you may come again tomorrow.”

3It had taken her four days. But it had ticked.

4Now she could clean a cuckoo clock, replace a broken spring and tell, just by listening, when a pendulum swung unevenly. Mr Abramov rarely praised her, but he never belittled her slow work either. When she did something well, he simply grunted and passed her the next job, which was, she had learnt, the highest compliment he gave.

5One rainy Thursday, a woman came in carrying a small gold watch wrapped in a handkerchief. Its glass was cracked and its hands had stopped at twenty past four. “It was my father’s,” she said quietly. “It stopped the day he died. I don’t care what it costs.”

6Mr Abramov opened the back with great care. Lucia leaned in. Inside, the parts were so small that the screws looked like grains of sand. He studied it for a long time. Then, to her astonishment, he slid the watch across the bench to her.

7“Your hands are steadier than mine now,” he said. “My eyes are not what they were.”

8Lucia worked on it for three afternoons, barely breathing, tweezers in one hand and a magnifying glass screwed into her eye. On the third day, as she fitted the last tiny wheel, the second hand gave a small shiver and began to move.

9When the woman returned, she held the watch to her ear and closed her eyes. For a while, nobody said anything. Then she turned to Lucia. “Thank you,” she said, “for giving me back his time.”

10After she had gone, Mr Abramov put a new watch on the bench in front of Lucia, a broken one, and grunted.