Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  “I thought you only repaired clocks.”

  “I do, but one must love the thing one fixes or else one cannot do the job properly. A good doctor will love the mechanisms of the body; he will even love that which is flawed in it. A psychiatrist will be enamored of the processes of the brain and heart. I love the instruments that keep time and yet allow it also to escape. You think it is a mistake, Fräulein, that the part of the clock that allows us to read the time are called hands? It is our attempt to grasp and hold that which cannot be caught.” During this small monologue, he had shuffled about stacking mismatched pieces of china on a silver tray, filling a teapot and then placing the tray on a low spindly table between the two of them, discommoding an assortment of clock workings laid meticulously on an oily cloth.

  “You will excuse my untidiness, I am not used to having company and it hardly seems worth it to clean for myself. I had a lady who came and did such things but,” he handed her a cup of tea with a delicate almond cookie balanced precariously on its saucer, “she developed romantic ambitions and I’m afraid I had to let her go.”

  “Why time Herr Blumfeld?”

  His eyes narrowed slightly and he seemed to give her question due consideration before answering. “The practical answer, Fräulein, is that my father, and his father before him, going back many generations, were clockmakers. It is what I was born to, it is what I knew from the cradle and will take to the grave.”

  “And the impractical answer?”

  He smiled and nodded, “A romantic I see. The impractical answer is that time is what divides this earthly duration from eternity, the finite from the infinite. Without time there is a void, an unimaginable emptiness that would eat the very sun from the sky. Perhaps you are too young to know this Fräulein, but there is a comfort to be found in numbers, in mathematical equations, an ease not found in less rigorous disciplines.”

  “And yet,” she said setting her empty teacup down carefully amidst the miniature pendulums and pinions, “it is mathematics that opened the door to the universe and, some would say, there is not a great deal of comfort to be found in the heavens.”

  “There is often a conundrum at the heart of life’s great pleasures Fräulein and even you are not too young to know that. Come, we will speak of less weighty matters. I will show you my clocks.”

  He stood and shuffled to a cabinet behind her, unlocking its doors with a key that hung on a string about his neck. She turned about and peered over the top of the chair, trying to ignore the benign stare of a spider descending from the ceiling on a filament of web.

  “All clocks must have two basic components, Fräulein. The first is a regular, constant or repetitive process or action to mark off equal increments of time. The ancients used the movement of the sun across the sky, candles marked off in precise measurements, oil lamps with marked reservoirs, sandglasses and in the Orient incense that would burn at a certain pace. Our year came into being because of the movement of the star Sirius which rises next to our sun every three hundred and sixty-five days. The second component is a means of keeping track of time’s passage by the use of clock hands. Of course, hands are a more recent addition. The earliest clocks depended on more natural mechanisms. Take this for instance.”

  He reached into the cupboard and withdrew a small bowl with sloping sides and a tiny hole near its base.

  “It is what the Greeks called a ‘water thief’, a much smaller version granted than the working models, but accurate nonetheless. In the morning it would be filled with water and throughout the day the water would drip out at a nearly constant rate, when the bowl was empty it was night. Simple but effective. The Greeks and Romans elaborated on this humble timepiece and made mechanized water clocks that rang bells and gongs or opened doors and windows to display little people or moved dials or tiny models of the universe. Water however,” he placed the tiny bowl back in the cupboard, “is a contrary element, its flow is difficult to control with the precision needed by timekeepers.”

  The next item he withdrew was a series of four wasp-waisted glass vials, graduated from large to small in a heavy base of iron scrollwork.

  “Renaissance sand glass,” he said, “though more accurately the largest marks the hour, the next the three quarter, the third the half hour and the smallest the quarter hour. The problem of the hourglass is the problem one might say of life itself. The sand, much like time itself slips through the narrow funnel and wears it down, so that as time goes on it slips faster and faster through the neck thus outwearing its usefulness with the advancing of years.”

  “And this one?” she asked pointing to an elaborately carved clock set in three tiers topped by a brass dome with an open lotus on the base of the second tier.

  “Ah Fräulein you have an eye for the luxurious. It is said this clock was one of the six hundred that used to keep time in the hall of China’s Imperial Palace. I will show you its secret.” He took one finger and moved the long hand slowly across the face of the clock until it stood upon the hour. A tinny, mechanized melody began to play as the dome slowly opened into four quarters to reveal a perfect lotus unfolding its petals, while the lotus on the front of the clock curled its petals inward until it became a tightly packed bud. In the base a series of glass rods turned giving the impression of a tumbling waterfall.

  “It does the reverse upon the half hour,” Herr Blumfeld said, closing the glass door over the clock’s face, “as if to tell us that only one flower will be open at a time, as night must have day as its opposition, and joy must have pain, love hate and so forth.”

  He went on to show her clocks that depended on weights and pulleys, spring-powered clocks, clocks driven by the electric field of quartz, French bell clocks, the blue-by-blue Nuremburg clock with the pale color representing day and the dark representing night. Clocks based upon the canonical hours with chimes to call the faithful to prayer. And finally, a small wooden clock in the Swiss fashion with a cock who crowed and flapped his wings upon the hour.

  “This I call the traitor’s clock,” Herr Blumfeld said as the tiny rooster flapped his wings for the third and final time before disappearing back into the clock.

  “The traitor’s clock?”

  “Yes. You will perhaps know Fräulein the origin of this mechanism? It was used in many early clocks. It derived from Christ’s warning to Peter that he should deny him thrice before the dawn, it is a reminder to all traitors that there will come an hour of reckoning.” He closed the cupboard abruptly and locked it as if somehow the little rooster had disturbed him. He seemed suddenly very weary.

  “My apologies Fräulein but I am an old man and it has been a long day, if you will leave an address with me I will see what may be done with your papers and return them to you in the mail. If it is not,” he coughed delicately, “inconvenient for you to have me do so. I will of course take care to disguise it in some way.”

  “That will be fine,” she said, feeling a sudden and profound sadness for the small man who lived his life out amongst dust and lifeless mechanisms.

  She collected her coat and bag, feeling somewhat relieved to be leaving the dark, dim shop. But in the doorway, light and fresh air but a knob’s turn away, she hesitated and turned back.

  “Herr Blumfeld, if I may ask a question?”

  “Of course,” he replied politely, already seated with a sharp, fine instrument in hand over the open back panel of a watch.

  “If I may say so Ireland seems a rather odd place for a German Jew to end up.”

  The old man blinked, considering this.

  “Perhaps it would seem so. But to me it seems that here all are Jews—Catholic Jews, Protestant Jews, but Jews nonetheless. The Irish understand persecution without reason. And Fräulein there is enough sorrow in the air here for an old Jew such as myself to breathe comfortably.”

  “But before,” she said softly, “you spoke the word Zion as if it were sacred.
You might have gone to Israel after the war, mightn’t you?”

  Herr Blumfeld was still bent intently over his work but his shoulders stiffened perceptibly at her words. A long silence stretched itself between them and she was about to apologize and take her leave of him when his words, hollow and toneless, broke the quiet.

  “Fräulein the Torah tells us that Israel is denied to those who are unclean. A man who touches a corpse is unclean for seven days and can only be cleansed by purifying waters. In my time Fräulein I have touched too many corpses. I worked on the burial detail at Belsen throughout the war, on some days we put a thousand bodies under the earth. Seven days times countless dead is more than the days of my life. Israel is forever denied to me.”

  “I am sorry,” she said.

  “Do not waste pity on the old; they have had their choices as well. Even under the Nazis, Fräulein there were choices.”

  “What other option could you have possibly had?”

  “I could have chosen my own death, but I did not. I live with the consequences of that.”

  In the narrow close outside the shop fog was crowding in, scuttling with silent feet into crooks and crannies, filling up the air and blotting out the light but before her she saw, instead of yellow creeping fog, a wrist, finely boned with the strongly etched tendons of one who works with their hand in precise, small movements. Upon it written a set of numbers, black and crude, an equation for sorrow and guilt and madness. And above it an extra number, two digits that identified him as someone set apart from even his own people. A traitor to his tribe.

  There were some numbers, Pamela thought, that regardless of order were not designed to give comfort. She walked away into the fog, contemplating the pleasures that awaited her at home, warm food, a warm bed and a warm body to keep out the horrors of the night. While behind her, in the dusty shop, an old man laid his head down and held his breath while a small, wooden rooster called out the hour.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  My Brother

  So altogether ye’d say it was a successful trip?” Seamus asked, watching Casey pore over bank documents and customs regulations in an effort to make some head or tail of the situation in which they found themselves.

  “Aye,” Casey said distractedly, “though it’ll take longer than I’d like for the money to come through the appropriate channels, we can only let it in a trickle at a time, so we’ll have to bide. Havin’ someone run back an’ forth from Switzerland on a regular basis is goin’ to get suspicions roused right quick. As for the weapons, well how I’m to get eight crates of guns through customs is above an’ beyond my powers of imagination.”

  “What’s it to be labeled as?”

  “Stoneware from Germany. They’ll weight the guns appropriately against the number of settings on the claims form an’ hope to heaven that no one has a hankering to view German china patterns. Do ye remember the story about Brendan O’Boyle an’ the time he’d nine cases of ammo comin’ in at Cobh, but he only picked up eight an’ the other case took a round the world voyage before comin’ back to Ireland an’ then when he went to pick it up his usual customs agent wasn’t on duty. I tell ye I’ve nightmares about that sort of scenario happenin’ to me.”

  He rustled through more papers, yawning and absently scratching his head.

  “An’ everythin’ here?”

  “Went smooth,” Seamus said quickly and looked swiftly towards the window.

  “How smooth?” Casey asked, alerted by Seamus’ deliberately casual tone.

  “Ye know there’s been nothin’ goin’ on about here. Will ye look at that wee bird on the window ledge, looks like an Australian kookaburra, imagine that.” He rose from his chair and went over to the window peering with apparent fascination at the bird sitting on the sill.

  “Seamus, would ye quit fakin’ an interest in ornithology. That’s a perfectly ordinary sparrow an’ ye know it. Now I think ye’d best tell me what went on here.”

  “Well on the business side it all went quiet as I’ve said, but on the personal side...” he trailed off, not liking at all the look that had come over Casey’s face.

  “What do ye mean? Did Pat do somethin’? What sort of trouble has the little bugger gotten himself into now? Was there more to the car accident than he let on?”

  “It’s not Pat,” Seamus said quietly, “it’s the girl.”

  “What about her?” Casey said in a flat, hard tone that warned Seamus to tread lightly.

  “Casey,” Seamus swallowed over the sick feeling in his stomach, “we have to talk.”

  On the table there was a small parcel, addressed to her in a careful, painstaking hand, wrapped in crumpled brown paper. She untied the string on her way up the stairs and the paper fell away to reveal a small book, lilac hued, that bore the eyebrow-lifting title of ‘Confessions of a Bodleian Boy, A Tale in Two Parts Concerning many Erotic Adventures’ by Archibald Swansea, Esq. Her eyes flicked hastily upwards to the top left-hand corner—there was no return address.

  She shut the bedroom door behind her, heart beating a little harder than it had only a moment before. She sat down on the foot of the bed, laid the book in her lap and opened the front cover. At first glance, it seemed an ordinary book, though the paper it was printed on was of a weight and quality that wasn’t generally used for erotica. She thumbed the pages over, one at a time and then thumbed them back, finally fanning them upside down in an effort to reveal their secret. Other than releasing the slightly moldy smell of old paper they gave out nothing. She then tried reading it, eliminating every other word, then every fifth word, then every other letter. From this endeavor she gleaned no useful information, unless one counted the sensual adventures of a Victorian libertine as useful contents in the storehouse of one’s knowledge.

  She turned back to the beginning and with a sigh of frustration began reading from the opening line.

  ‘In which we meet our hero of tender years and accompany him on the first of many am’rous dalliances and are treated to Philosophick digressions upon the Fickle Nature of Love.’

  ‘A September day, if you will, and myself in the tenderness of youth that allows for a certain innocence, or what the French call—’ It was at this point in the proceedings that the door flew open in an explosion of air and light, causing her to jump in shock, the book tumbling to the floor. She blinked rapidly, the sudden infusion of light from the landing effectively blinding her.

  “Casey?” she asked, sensing him by mere presence and size, even in the taking up of space there was no mistaking him for his brother.

  “Aye, it’s me.”

  The three simple words were enough to make her stiffen and to cause her heart to skip a beat or two. Her hands, traitorously shaken, clutched at her blouse which she’d absentmindedly unbuttoned during her reading.

  “Modesty is a bit late in coming, I’d say,” his voice was rough, sharp and without preamble.

  “What?” she asked blankly, fighting off the mindtwirling combination of surprise and the huge surge of adrenaline pumping through her body.

  “Don’t play with me Pamela, I’m hardly in the mood fer it. I want ye out of here.”

  Her eyes adjusted suddenly to the influx of light and she saw that he was not as she had thought, drunk, but instead terribly angry and very, very sober.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, though she was afraid she did.

  “It’s simple, ye pack yer things, ye get out an’ we with luck fergit ye ever were here.”

  “Why?” she cried, “why are you doing this?” For he had entered the room and begun throwing things out of the drawers, with the obvious intent of banishing her with as much haste as possible.

  “Ye know why,” he replied coldly.

  “Casey,” she laid a hand on his forearm, trying through her touch to infuse some calm into the situation. He flung her hand off as though he’d just bee
n hit with scalding water.

  “Do not,” he said coldly, “make the mistake of touchin’ me again.”

  “Where am I to go?” she asked quietly, questioning herself more than seeking any answer from Casey.

  “I don’t care, go ask yer lover, he’s the money te put ye up in style somewhere.”

  Relief crashed in on her, replaced just as quickly with an icy trickle that told her in order to correct this misunderstanding she would have to break her own solemn vow and set in motion all the forces of destruction she’d so carefully dodged these last weeks.

  “Casey, you don’t understand—” she began but then stopped short as he turned and looked at her, what afterall was she going to say? The truth was an impossibility and he would smell a lie for exactly what it was.

  “What is it that I don’t understand? Hm—uneducated as I am, I know a whore when I see one.”

  She flinched visibly from the word as though he had struck her full across the face. It was a confirmation of her own fears, that somehow the hours that had passed on that train had made her something less, something dark and ugly and twisted that deserved this.

  “Casey, please, I...” she held her hands up in a helpless gesture, her whole body beginning to shake violently in the effort not to lose control and scream out to him all the darkness harnessed within her.

  He kept on, throwing out clothes onto the bed, the floor, all her scant personal items becoming spills, reams of talc, a smashed bottle of scent no more than an acrid burn up her nostrils, a gag to her lungs. He reached then onto the bookshelf Pat had built her, reached for the fine soft pages that Jamie had given her and she screamed then, screamed with all the force of the sickness within her.

  It was enough to halt him, enough to make him stop and stare at her as she wailed in a high, keening assault on the air. They stood thus for endless moments, he staring in fascination at the spectacle she created, half-naked and insane with howling, until when it seemed she would vomit from the pain and the throbbing behind her eyes, someone began to pound on the outside door.