Robert Ausura Writing

Once upon a time, in a town that loved clocks, in the heart of a country that loved clocks, there lived two men who loved being clock makers. Jon Grueschen was famous. His spectacular clocks gleamed like jewels in clock towers, large and small, for two hundred miles around. Mayors and governors and the King himself commissioned them, and the unveiling of every new one was marked by a festival where crowds gathered and speeches were made and Jon Grueschen himself set in motion the great swinging pendulum and polished gears that in turn set in motion the huge hands and the life-sized, hand-carved animated figures, and the great bells that from that moment would mark each hour for everyone within reach of their bold cry. The name of Jon Grueschen brought a special pride, and every town aspired to have one of the master's great works for its own.

Few knew the name of Reinhardt Usher, though his watches ticked quietly in the vest pockets of gentlemen and on the dainty neck chains of ladies and in the aprons of shopkeepers and laborers across the land. A dozen hundred times a day school teachers and bankers and police officers and ship captains glanced at his little masterpieces as they hurried through their busy lives. Politicians and businessman and young scholars were on time for their appointments because someone in each of their lives—a parent, a lover, a friend—had given them as a remembrance one of Reinhardt Usher's unsigned little machines. The Queen, it is said, wore one on a pearl necklace that was always on her breast and consulted it at the beginning and the end of every meeting of her minsters.

It is noon where I sit. Through my open window I hear the throaty bells of Jon Grueschen's nearest clock, in the tower in the valley. In reflex I pluck from my pocket one of Reinhardt Usher's little marvels. There is no more than a few seconds difference between the times they keep.