I have kept my promise to him that I would help him write his story. I have searched through time and found him and, in the process, his family and mine. I can make connections between my children and those who came before. I can see traits of a generation that disappeared in a generation that will never forget. My children share Hans’s relationship with time.
“It is nine o’clock,” I once said to my youngest daughter, then five. “Time to go to bed.”
“It is nine-oh-four.” She frowned predictably, though it was not my sending her to sleep that irked her, it was my lack of precision. Still today she corrects me.
My middle daughter keeps a brass clock pendulum, as a memento, by her bedside. She steadfastly spins it eight times before falling asleep every night. I have repeatedly asked her why she does this. Once when she was much younger, she proferred: “It’s to ward off the nightmares.” Now, if I insist, she replies: “Because I have to do it, maybe it’s for luck. I just have to, I don’t know why.”
My eldest must have a clock by his bedside or he simply will not sleep. He has always maintained that he needs to know the time. Even without an alarm and regardless of where he is, he wakes up every morning at six-thirty. Everyone assured me that this would change, that all teenagers sleep in. He never has, though he is almost an adult.
My children never met their grandfather, the watch repairer. They have heard me speak of him often. Yet, until recently, I had never told them of his watches or the obsessive timekeeping. Some say that trauma is, to some extent, inherited, no matter how distanced or sheltered the environment into which you are born. My children and I have heated debates on the issue. They firmly believe that we each decide and shape who we are, that we learn from our own experiences and from observing others, that unspoken traumas and lessons are not somehow imprinted in our cells. How we behave and who we become is up to us. I do not entirely agree with them. Of course we have control over our identity, but it is not absolute.
I like to believe that life lessons are etched into us and passed on. We choose who we are, but our choices are always molded by where we come from, even when we do not know where that is. The past is intrinsic to the present, despite any attempts to dismiss it. It is a part of the mechanism that pivots who we choose to be. I look at my three children as they chatter and laugh and I pray that, in addition to the timekeeping and tenacity, they also have my father’s boldness, his poetry, and his strength. And hopefully too a little of his luck.
My father’s collection of clocks and watches includes one of which I have no childhood memory. I checked with my mother, who confirmed that it held a special place for him. I still love all the others, with their complexities, ornamental engravings, and colors, and yet this timepiece has become my favorite. It resembles a book. It tells the time, but it makes no sound. It is actually not a watch at all.
It is an astronomical device called an ivory diptych that was manufactured in the German city of Nuremberg. Most similar pieces were produced by members of six families between the sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. This particular one was probably crafted by Paul Reinmann in the early 1600s.
It is minute, just a few centimeters across, and fits neatly in my palm. It is composed of two panels of ivory. On one side, it has a carved spine that is hinged and decorated with gilt brass. On the other, it has two tiny, elaborate brass latches that hold these panels closed.
The book opens to reveal two perfectly symmetrical circles, one on either leaf. Each is marked with numbers that are framed within patterns of finely engraved garlands and flowers, pigmented in burgundy and black. A tiny brass lever near the hinges can be adjusted to keep it open.
On the left panel is a sundial, to tell the time. On the other is a compass for direction. The sundial has a face on it that, depending on the angle at which you look at it, seems angry or content.
When I press it between my hands, when I open it, I feel a connection to my father. It is simple. There is no complex mechanism to wind, maintain, or repair. There is no case to prise, no moving wheels to ascertain if time is indeed going by.
For direction, you just need to hold it steady. To tell the time, you have to tilt it carefully. Time will be marked by the position of the shadow. All you need is patience to capture the fallen light.
Sometimes I lose my bearings. I forget that time has passed. And for that briefest moment, I want to rush again to my father. I want to tear along the checkered floor of the hall to the long windowless room and, as he raises his visor and looks up from his watches, explain that I finally solved the puzzle. I have to let him know that I found the boy he was, the unfortunate boy, and that I love him. I love that boy just as much as I respect the man he became. I long to tell my father that I strolled around the garden of his house in Libčice and wrote our book on a desk crafted by the person who now lives there. I need to reassure him that there are no more questions. I want to wrap my arms around him, place my head on his heart, and, as the sounds of the mechanisms fade, in the stillness, whisper that I understand.