“Do not go gentle into that good night…
…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
His words pressed against my ear in bed that night, but the words were formless, a hum that wasn’t intended for me. His hand was on me, his arm cradled between my ribs and my hip, and he stroked my breast as he spoke. But while his touch aroused my skin, brought my nipple to full attention, I knew it wasn’t me he felt under his fingers.
He felt a clock. He was winding it, pulling on a chain, twisting a key, tenderly adjusting a fragile filigree arm to the correct time. And in his voice, instead of my name, I heard the chiming of the hour. A tenor chime, sounding out into the night for anyone who heard it, but no one in particular. Certainly not for me.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas wrote, and I thought about that, thought about raging and shrieking, stamping my feet, smacking James’ face, bringing his full attention back to me, to me, the one who lay in his bed. Not the clocks that stood in the hallway or hung on the wall or sat and squatted and crouched on tables and shelves in every room. I thought about raging against the dying of the light, our light, the light that fell on James and me these three years.
But this was James. And even as I raged inside, waged a war of words tipped with bayonets, I knew I would go gentle. There was no other way to be with James. There was no other way for James to be but gentle. My skin knew that. Every cell in my body knew his touch and even his voice was soft.
I would go gentle. But I would go.
“James,” I whispered. “James, it’s getting late. Time for sleep.”
His hum stopped for a moment, his thumb and forefinger gripping my nipple, arrested in the movement of pushing time forward. He relaxed, his hand opening and settling onto the curve of my breast, and he curled into me for the night. “I love you,” he said.
Those words always got through. Several times a day, they seemed to work their way up through his distraction and obsession, rolling off his tongue, breaking out between his teeth, and each time, it made my belly go soft. But I had to start thinking about all those other times, those long minutes and hours when he was away from me, even within the walls of our home. Moving from clock to clock, adjusting and winding.
I knew he said those same words to them. But I liked to think that the timbre of his voice changed, just a bit, when he turned his attention to me. I liked to think that.
Eventually that night, I rolled out from under his heavy arm and went to sit on the rocker across the room. I wrapped myself in a blanket and stared at James in the grainy gray half-light created by a sliver of moon against white snow outside. A nightlight glowed from the bathroom and I went to turn it off, not wanting the gold halo to reach James, wanting to see him for who he was. I reminded myself to turn it back on before I left. Without a nightlight, James was terrified of the dark.
So I sat and studied him sleeping unawares, his arm resting quietly on the bed where my body used to be, where only my heat remained and was surely dissipating. He didn’t seem to notice that I was gone. His posture didn’t change and his face remained relaxed and calm, his lips curved in a sweet half-smile.
I thought about our weekend. We’d just gotten home from a trip to Rockford, Illinois, where we visited the tiny Time Museum, a museum devoted completely to clocks. It sat squat in the middle of a hotel complex, the Clock Tower Resort. James and I checked in on Friday afternoon and stayed until the museum closed at four on Sunday. He spent almost the whole weekend with the clocks. I spent some time there too, it was fascinating, but I also swam in the pool, looked around Rockford, and ate at restaurants while staring at the blank setting across from me as time and time again, James was late or forgot to show up entirely. I lounged in our bed part of Saturday afternoon, stretching out in the luxury of king size, and experimented with different styles of masturbation when he didn’t join me. Later, at the hotel gift shop, I bought a silk nightgown with clocks all over it and he delightedly identified each clock before pulling it over my head and identifying me. But Sunday morning, even though I slid the nightgown back on and struck a seductive pose, he waved at me and headed for the museum. I packed our things in the car and then went to join him.
By then, I knew exactly where to find James. Although he spent some time admiring all the clocks, he always gravitated to the center of the museum and then he stood there, frozen, his hands in his pockets as he took in the Gebhard Astronomical and World Clock. Every now and then, he whispered something and after the first couple times, I didn’t need to hear him to know what he was saying. He whispered, “Look at it. Just look at it.”
But I stood in the archway and looked at James instead, dwarfed in front of this massive clock. It resembled a pipe organ, something that belonged in a cathedral somewhere, bellowing out hymns in a voice that vibrated the floor. The oak case glowed and climbed upwards in three distinct columns, each housing instruments shiny with purpose. The clock was as intimidating as it was beautiful and when I saw it for the first time in Friday afternoon’s sifted sunlight, I took a step backwards. James grabbed my arm and explained all the different functions. His voice was low and reverent and again I felt like I was in a cathedral.
There were dials and faces that showed Mean Time, Solar Time, Star Time and Decimal Time. On the right side of the clock was a globe, presenting the exact position of the earth at that particular moment in space, and a band ran along the equator, showing what time it was at any point on the planet. On the left side was another globe, but this one bristled with stars and the white lines of constellations. A perpetual calendar sat square in the clock’s belly, a little notch that reminded me of a bellybutton. In a window near the top of the clock, a mustard sun moved in a graceful arc, replaced with a glowing moon at night. There was a barometer and below that, a planetary system showing the sun and six planets, the only ones known at the clock’s creation. They all moved in a cautious and painfully correct revolution around the sun.
“And all of it,” whispered James in my ear, “all of it built in thirty years, from 1865 to 1895. No computers, no calculators, all by hand and by thought. Just look at it.”
It was the animated figures that grabbed my attention, and James’ too. Our first night there, we stayed until six so we could see the clock set off. Because it was so old, the clock was only run a few times during the day, so as to keep it in working condition, giving it less chance to break down. We sat on a bench and watched as a museum employee started the figures on their rounds. He let the clock run from six to seven, so we could see it in its natural form. The clock’s hands were set at eleven and we were told to pretend that we were on our way to midnight.
On the quarter hour, an infant in diapers crawled out and dinged a bell once. On the half hour, a child ran out and rang the bell twice. Three quarters, and an adult appeared and the bell sang three times. And on the hour, an old man seemed to stagger while he struck the bell four times. With the first three, a guardian angel appeared over the figures, her hand outstretched and protective. But she stayed away from the old man and instead, another angel appeared and turned an hourglass over while a hooded creature, carrying a scythe, rang a deeper bell the correct chimes for the hour. Every hour, that old man died, and every hour, a new baby was born.
At midnight, more of the clock spun to life as Jesus’ twelve disciples started a march in a circle. Jesus stood above, smiling, his face solemn and sweet, his hands spread, palms turned up. All the disciples bowed to Jesus, except for Judas, who quickly turned his back. Then, as Judas skulked after the eleven, slipping back into their homes inside the clock, a raven popped out of a different archway, above and to the right. I felt James shiver as the raven opened his beak and crowed three times, a raucous sound in the softly ticking museum. Jesus’ room darkened.
We sat, silent and amazed, and then the employee pointed out the matching archway on the left, where a bugler dressed in blue stood, his trumpet resting at his side. On New Year’s Eve at midnight, the employee explained, the bugler raised his trumpet to his lips and blew in the start of a new year, a new chance. Another year of telling time in every possible way, through numbers on the face of a clock, through stars, through planets. Another year of old men dying and babies being born, of Jesus smiling at his disciples, even as one turns away, and then that cold sharp rasp of a raven’s call.
“Please,” James said on that first night. He dropped my arm and moved toward the employee, who looked startled. “Can I just touch it? Can I feel the ticking before you shut it down for the night?”
The man started to say no, but he must have seen something in James’ face. The same thing I saw when James first woke every morning, when he opened his eyes and looked out and for a moment, didn’t recognize a thing. For that moment, he looked scared and his eyes shimmered and his mouth opened as if to call for someone. In the Time Museum, he seemed to call for that clock and after hesitating, the employee nodded.
I watched James walk past the velvet barriers holding the public at bay. He moved to the center of the clock and I suddenly pictured it folding in, catching James up in an embrace. He held out his hand and touched the clock, just above its bellybutton. Then he lay his face against it and closed his eyes.
It happened so fast, but I saw it. He smiled. The smile that you see on a child’s face when he curls up in his mother’s lap and nestles between her breasts.
When the employee cleared his throat, James straightened, then came right back to me. He walked with me out of the museum and to our room. “I connected with it, Diana,” he said. “That clock has a soul, they all have souls, and I connected. I felt its pulse.”
He made love to me that night, in that hotel bed, even before I bought the clock nightgown. And I shuddered beneath him, feeling his strength all around me, feeling that connection, knowing he was there with me in that moment, in that bed, his eyes looked into mine and we were together in the way I’d grown to cherish over three year’s time.
But when he curled into me later, talking and stroking my breast in the usual way, the familiar way that used to blanket me but now left me lonely, I knew he was away again. His voice, his thoughts, were with that clock, locked into the immensity of its heart.
I wished that night, as I wished a million times before, that he could tell me more of his past. More than a story about a father who left and then died, a mother who, he said, wasn’t “all there,” but he would never explain what was missing. I wondered if he could tell anyone. I wondered if he could tell a clock. I wondered why he couldn’t tell me.
I loved James.
And the whole weekend was like that. I came upon him there too many times to count, in the clock museum, standing before the Gebhard clock. “James,” I said. “Let’s go eat.”
“Just look,” he whispered.
“Let’s go shopping, let’s go swimming,” I said. And once, I looked around quickly, then licked his ear while running one finger down the zipper of his pants. “Come to bed with me, James,” I said.
“Just look at it.”
And then I said it, just loud enough so he could hear, and just to see if the shock of it would work its way through, if the hard sound of the word would bring him back to me. “Come fuck me, James,” I said. “Let’s go fuck like dogs.”
For a moment, he trembled and I thought I had him. He started to turn toward me, but then he stopped. “A raven at every midnight,” he whispered. “Just look.”
I grabbed his hand then and squeezed it as hard as I could. “I love you, James,” I said. I said it loud. I told the whole museum and every clock heard me.
He looked at me then, looked at me clear like he did during lovemaking. And there was that smile, the smile I saw as he pressed his cheek against the heart of the clock. “I love you too, Diana,” he said and those words were mine alone.
But then, he turned back. He turned full away and his back was to me and I could barely hear his voice, I wasn’t even sure if it was me he was talking to. “Just look,” he said and began again to name off all the functions, listing the dials and faces as lovingly as if he recited a poem.
He didn’t notice when I walked out of the room.
On that Sunday morning, car loaded and ready to go, I moved out of the archway and found a nearby bench. I sat and watched him watch the Gebhard clock until the museum closed at four. I didn’t leave to eat and neither did he. When I saw one of the employees moving toward the closed sign, I took James’ hand and led him away. During the drive home, he kept talking about the Gebhard clock, as if it was still there, still looming in his vision.
Now, as the grainy gray light brightened into a pale rose, I began to pack. I didn’t have much, mostly just clothes, and I could fit them all in our suitcase, left out from our final weekend. I closed it and set it by the bedroom door, then stood before James.
Carefully, I tucked the clock nightgown into James’ arms, so it lay where I should be in the bed. I took one sleeve and placed it on top of James’ hand, like the touch of my own fingers against his skin. As he stirred, I kissed him once on the lips and felt his warm response. “I love you, James,” I said and he settled more deeply into sleep, pulling the nightgown closer to his naked body. He had an erection and I thought of the raven, appearing every night at midnight. I draped my nightgown so it covered this most vulnerable part. Covered him and kept him warm.
I turned on the nightlight before I left, gently. I left without raging at the dying of our light. I left in tears. But I left.