Someone has sought me out! Someone has tracked me down! I live so isolated, so outside the commotion of the world – yet someone is spying on me. And it is precisely because of Duration that this fact has revealed itself, a fact so tied-up with my ‘insane,’ as sensible people have stated, person. Most interesting!
On July 20th of the so-called ‘current year’ (I’m speaking here in their style), a significant article titled ‘The Evolution of Time’ appeared in one of the leading newspapers. The author signed it with the initials S.S. The treatise was written incisively, forcefully and with confidence, as befits someone who vigorously holds onto ‘life’ and immerses himself up to the neck in ‘reality.’ It has no value for me. The viewpoint is, of course, ‘realistic’ A panegyric praising human intellect and its creations.
But the article concerns me for other reasons. It is clearly directed against me and my convictions about so-called ‘time.’ The unknown author defends time, while endeavouring to shatter my charges, which he appears to know quite well. But how? At the moment, this is a mystery.
I haven’t exchanged even one word with anyone on the topic of time and its non-existence; I have not delivered one lecture; I have not put out the thinnest book or pamphlet. No one in the world has read my treatise ‘On the False Conception and Fictitiousness of Time.’ No one knows, no one can know, of the existence of such a work. Not one of my few acquaintances, who have eagerly withdrawn from me since my return from the asylum, even suspects that I ever occupied myself in any way with this problem. The fruit of many years of reflection and study rests quietly inside a black oilcloth portfolio here in my desk, in a secret hiding place on the right, to which no one has access without my knowledge. Absolutely no one. Yet this person definitely knows the content of the manuscript – and he knows it by heart, inside and out. And he’s attempting to shatter my ‘opinion,’ as he terms it. The idiot! – my certainty! Even the arrangement of thoughts is the same, even the counter-arguments are drawn from the same sources. My adversary seizes my expressions, my definitions; he alters to his style values and concepts discovered by me; he shamelessly distorts the laborious investigations of my entire life for his own use. This is peculiar, most, most peculiar!
Somehow he became aware of me. He read my thoughts from a distance and answered them like an adversary. Some mysterious connection must exist between us then, some spiritual link that makes something like this possible.
But I do not wish this upon myself at all. I do not like to be spied on, even if unconsciously, even if from afar. This person is a great inconvenience, and I will try to remove him at all cost.
At the moment I do not know anything about him. I was already at the editorial office of the newspaper which printed the article, and I demanded to know the name of the author. They replied that they did not know. The manuscript had arrived by mail from someone in the locality, but without a signature – just the initials S.S. The article was interesting, it touched on a topical subject, treated it in an excellent and learned fashion, and could not be faulted. Therefore, it was printed.
Maybe this is true, or maybe that secretive editorial office is lying. But he will not escape me! I will find him sooner or later – if not in the usual manner, then in my own way. I have behind me their help: mysterious, unseen by the eyes of the ‘healthy.’ They visit me almost every day and carry on long, private talks. Their access to me was made easier by my ‘insanity’ … .
How stupid are ‘healthy,’ ‘normal’ people! How I sincerely feel sorry for them! These morons do not know the wonderful other half of existence. They merely hold onto ‘reality’ with both hands, and they don’t see anything else beyond it. They live their entire lives this way until ‘death’ finally bars them from the other side.
I belong to a chosen few who are freely allowed to cross from one side to the other. Thanks to my ‘insanity’ I stand on the border between two worlds. Maybe it is precisely because of this that I am liberated from the superstitions and ‘reasonings’ of the mind. The mind’s prejudices are alien to me and put me under no obligation. The idea of time does not exist for me.
Yet I am still somewhat hampered. I cannot free myself from that strong, commanding voice which speaks to me, or from that mysterious power which pushes aside objects, contemptuous of their size; I am still wearied by endless, monotonous roads that lead nowhere. That is why I am not a perfect spirit, only an ‘insane person,’ someone who arouses in normal people pity, contempt or fear. But I do not complain. Even like this, I am better off than those of healthy mind.
Distant, misty lands unfold before me, enchanting precipices, unknown worlds with gloomy depths. I am visited by the dead, by processions of strange creatures and capricious elemental beings. One appears, the other leaves – ethereal, beautiful, dangerous … .
* * *
One of the waves of Duration has cast on the threshold of my home a new figure – as yet I do not know if he is ‘real’ or from that other side.
He comes in the evening; it is unknown how or from where. He stands close by and stares at me for hours without saying a word.
He has the look of antiquity about him. His face is Roman, shaved, without a trace of growth – a face swarthy, almost grey. His age is indeterminate: sometimes he looks fifty years old, sometimes a hundred or more; his features change most oddly. Yet I feel that he must be a very old man.
In his right hand he holds a scythe, in his left, an hourglass that he raises to the light from time to time, examining the position of the sand.
In the beginning he was stubbornly silent and did not answer any of my questions. Only after his tenth visit did he allow himself to be drawn into a conversation. From the start it went ploddingly and hard, for my guest is evidently taciturn and does not possess the appropriate verbal skills.
‘Put aside that scythe,’ I urged him by way of greeting. ‘You have carried it needlessly for so many years. Today it doesn’t make the right impression – it has become a lifeless reminder of the past.’
My visitor’s face twisted itself into a malicious grimace. For the first time a voice issued forth from his lips, a voice wooden, without resonance:
‘You think so? I think otherwise. I am Tempus.’
‘So I guessed. Greetings, Saturn! To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’
‘You have been looking for me for some time. So here I am.’
‘You … do not exist. You are an illusion.’
‘I have materialized, as you can see. For too long people have spoken of me – therefore I’ve assumed this body. I have been lured out of non-existence.’
‘Maybe. But this get-up? It’s a little old-fashioned. You’re out of date, my dear sir.’
‘No matter. A typical rigidity of a thrombotic allegory. Besides, mankind can clothe me in new garments. It’s even high time that they did. I am already sick of these rags. They make me look like an anachronism.’
He contemptuously tugged at the flaps of the heavily-frayed toga.
‘So you see, my friend, I was right.’
‘In part, yes, as far as the attire is concerned. But you apparently do not acknowledge my existence at all.’
‘Naturally. You are a fiction of the mind. If I concern myself with the question of your costume, then I act only from the point of view of the “healthy.” You have apparently passed through an evolution, eh? So, at least, I’ve read.’
Saturn’s mask brightened up in a triumphant smile:
‘Ah! So you read the article? Wasn’t it beautifully written? Yes, yes, I have developed. I am already not conceived of today as I once was in the ancient world. I’ve become a changed value, independent, which knowledge attempts to introduce everywhere. I have been divided into minutes, seconds; I influence every moment. I’ve become precise, refined … .’
‘Oh, certainly! You’ve become devilishly lean! To the dimensions of the hands of a clock. You’ve desecrated the sacred mystery of Duration, you’ve marred the wonderful fluidity of the waves – you despoiler of life!’ Crying this out, I sprang up from my seat.
My visitor was already at the threshold.
‘I am stronger than you,’ I heard his measured voice say, calm like the movement of a pendulum. ‘For behind me is reality and people who are healthy and practical. And I am indispensable. Farewell! You will find me in the city in a somewhat more modern form.’
I wanted to forcibly stop him, but he slipped away and disappeared beyond the door … .
In the sky, the sunset was dying out. I sat alone in an empty room … .
* * *
Since then, Tempus did not show up at my home anymore. Accomplishing some mission, he withdrew, never to return. But his words gave me no rest and rang in my ears with the intrusive refrain:
‘You will find me in the city.’
What did this mean? Was it a call to battle? Meanwhile, articles dealing with time were appearing in the newspapers, their pointed arguments apparently directed against me. All were signed with the mysterious initials S.S. They dwelled on the profoundness of the notion of time, and endlessly underlined time’s efficiency and its usefulness in regulating life. In a word, they were paeans of worship for my visitor.
Irritated by these sallies, I collected and studied them, while strengthening my treatise with new proofs and arguments. I was preparing myself, while I waited for my opponent to run out of ideas; at that point, I would publish my response.
Simultaneously, I was searching for my antagonist. I roamed about the city until the late evening hours, peeking into cafés, striking up conversations with acquaintances, drawing people into discourses on the subject of time. In this way I became introduced to several professors, to learned philosophers, and to some dozen or so various eccentrics and characters. But I always left dissatisfied from the debates with these gentlemen. Admittedly, the problem seemed to absorb them on a rather high level, but even so, one didn’t sense the same ardour which emerged from the newspaper columns. These were not opponents; not one person took the issue so personally, with so much passion and belief, as that unknown one.
Gradually I’m becoming convinced that I’ve fallen on a false trail, that the sphere in which one should look for him lies a little ‘lower’ … .
* * *
It seems that I’m finally on the right track. As of yesterday evening … .
After roaming about all day, I am returning home. I’m going by the old section of the city that stretches up from the river in a system of rough little streets. I cut across them, struggling up the incline. Above me, patches of evening sky, marred by chimney smoke, look over filthy tenements. Pale, consumptive faces and the unkempt heads of old hags lean out of windows; the stagnant, bleary eyes of the aged stare at me … .
Stumbling over the holes and bumps in the pavement, I turn into a narrow street and glance down to its end. There, far in the distance, the river bleeds under the agony of the sunset, its water glittering with melancholic waves. Somewhere overhead, from some crumbling ruin, a flock of crows takes flight and, forming a heavily patterned arch, disappears beyond the roofs of the buildings. I lower my gaze and my weary eyes survey forlorn windows. My glance stops on some sign – on the black letters of someone’s name set against a faded green background. I look blankly, unable to combine the words. Suddenly I formulate them: Saturnin Sektor, Watchmaker.
Most certainly! It is he! I’ve found him at last!
A great peace fills my soul, and slowly I start to return home … .
A strange thing! I live close by.
It even seems that here, next door – only I’ve come up to my home from a different direction than I usually take, a direction I haven’t ever taken until now. After thirty years of residence in the city! Remarkable! And yet it happens at times that a person returns home one way for many years, walking continually the same route day after day, until finding himself on a different path at a certain moment, he discovers with amazement that it also leads to his home – the amazement of a person who has been dreaming for many long years, until one day he awakens on an unknown road leading to his own interior … .
So this is the name of my opponent, and he is a watchmaker. Of course it is he, only he and no one else. I only wonder why I haven’t come upon him before. The name is known to me from somewhere; it is so familiar. I cannot, admittedly, recall from where – but this doesn’t in any way affect my deep, firm conviction that I know this person. I realized immediately that he is my oppressor, the mysterious stranger whom I’ve been seeking for so long.
The very name is significant! It says so much about itself! Let us first analyse his forename. Saturnin! Doesn’t it strike a clear connection with Saturn-Time? Doesn’t this name immediately cast a vision of the old man with the scythe and hourglass? So the name is obviously symbolic.
And the surname Sektor – it’s odd, isn’t it? No, it’s exquisitely chosen! Sektor – in actuality Sector – that’s something cut up, shredded into sections, segments, divisions. How much hidden self-irony is in this nickname! But does it not perfectly suit his work? Indeed, he has deformed the wonder of Duration into mathematical abstractions; he has chopped up the flowing, undivided wave of life into a multitude of dead divisions. Sektor – a symbol of years, months, days, minutes, seconds. He has enclosed in two words the essence of his untruthful, negative activity. A dangerous person – a symbol! As long as he lives, mankind will not shake off the fallacy of time and follow me. That’s why one should erase this name from the memory of the living and replace it with mine. Mine?! … What a remarkable thought! My name! … My name … . What is my name? … I cannot remember … . This is funny, this is very funny! This is humiliating! … I’ve forgotten, completely forgotten my name. I am anonymous – yes – anonymous – as a wave in the ocean – a wave that is eternally flowing into another wave – and another wave – and another … .
* * *
After a long, sleepless night, I am on my way to meet him. Rotting, squeaky stairs, their boards full of holes, lead me on. I open the door and enter.
The snug old room murmurs with the voices of clocks. And there are an endless number of them: black ebonies creeping along the walls like large scarabaei, round antiques on ivory columns, French baroques under glass bells, playful, loudly ticking alarms. In a niche covered with green fabric whisper the half-century prayers of small ‘pocket-watches,’ golden, marvellously enamelled ‘turnips,’ silver, inlaid ‘repeaters,’ expensive miniatures adorned in ruby and emerald.
In the middle of the room is a small table with a watchmaker’s tools: a chisel, pincers, a group of screws, springs as thin as hairs, ringlets, metal plates. On a patch of green woollen cloth lie a pair of damaged watchcases, several newly-extracted diamonds … .
On a stool, leaning over some clock, he sits – the master of time. Through the dust whirling in the shaft of sunlight falling through the window, I can make out his face. It is somehow well known to me. I’ve seen it somewhere, where – I can’t remember. Maybe in a mirror. A grey, old head with ginger side-whiskers and sharp, vulture-like features.
He raises his bright, piercing eyes, and he smiles at me. A strange, strange smile.
‘I would like to have a watch repaired.’
‘You are lying, my friend – you haven’t used a watch for ten years. Why these subterfuges?’
His voice pierces me to the core; I’ve heard it somewhere, and I know it well – the voice is very familiar.
‘I know why you have come. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.’
Now, I smile.
‘If so, then the matter is greatly simplified.’
‘Naturally. Before you fulfil your purpose – sit down. We’ll have a talk. Why, we have plenty of time.’
‘Of course. I’m in no hurry.’
I sit down and listen intently to the conversation of the clocks. They run uniformly to the minute, to the second.
‘You’ve regulated time perfectly here,’ I remark casually.
Sektor is silent, his eyes fixed on me.
I take up the thread of the conversation with difficulty. ‘So you are prepared for everything?’
‘Yes. I will not defend myself.’
‘Why? You have a right to, as does every person.’
‘It would be pointless. I feel that shortly your era will arrive, no matter what. As an ideal symbol of an age about to pass, I yield before inevitability. An unpicked fruit eventually falls off a tree by itself.’
‘Therefore you acknowledge me?’
‘No. This is different. Even you will one day have to yield to a new symbol. Let us not forget about the relativity of ideas. Everything depends on one’s point of view.’
‘Exactly. Even so, where do you get that certainty that runs through your articles?’
‘It springs from a deep conviction about the usefulness of what I proclaim.’
‘Ah, that’s true. You belong to that generation whose ideal is practical reality.’
‘Yes, yes. You, on the other hand, reach beyond it; at least it appears so to you. And you fall into a hazy mare tenebrarum. For people of flesh and blood this is not enough; they need reality and everything that confirms it.’
‘You are mistaken. I only wish the deepening of life. Life flows in wide, dense waves, in occurrences tied together so compactly that their division into years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds is absurd. Your notion of time is simply a fanciful concoction drawn from imaginary theories.’
‘Isn’t time a beautiful idea? Have you read The Time Machine by that famous English author?’
‘Certainly. In fact, I had it on my mind. It is the best example as to where the imagination can lead. The very idea of a “time machine,” doesn’t it offend life’s virginity with its abundance of constant surprises? These are the results of the vivisection you perform on it. This is an example of how one mechanizes life.’
‘A fabulous story. The quintessence of the mind and its majestic might.’
‘You are the fool, my dear sir. Rest assured – no one will ever travel into the past or the future in a machine.’
‘We will never understand each other. A peculiar circumstance! Even though our beings are so intertwined.’
At that moment a terrible chill ran through my body. The watchmaker’s words came to me as if from my own self.
‘Hmm, indeed. At times I feel this too.’
‘If it weren’t for the fact,’ continued the old man in a crestfallen voice, ‘that your thoughts are like new seedlings planted in a barren field, if I didn’t have a presentiment of their blossoming in the immediate future … .’
‘Then what?’
‘I would kill you,’ he coldly replied. ‘With this instrument.’
He extracted from a plush box of wonderful workmanship an ivory-handled dagger.
I smiled triumphantly:
‘Meanwhile the roles are reversed.’
The old man lowered his head in resignation:
‘Because you’ve overcome me in yourself. .. . Now go. I still want to write my last will. Come back in the evening. Take this as a memento.’
He handed me the dagger.
I mechanically took the glittering, cool steel, and without a word of farewell, I left. As I walked down the stairs, I heard a cackling sound coming from the workshop. The old man was laughing … .
- - -
The evening papers of W. gave the following information in their columns:
Murder or Suicide?
A mysterious incident occurred last night at 10 Water Street. This morning Rozalia Witkowska, a widow of a private official, discovered the dead body of a watchmaker, Saturnin Sektor, when she entered his workshop. The body, seated by a window, was covered with blood. An antique dagger of delicate workmanship was buried in the victim’s chest.
At Mrs. Witkowska’s screams the neighbours rushed in, then the police. The medical examiner, Dr. Obminski, confirmed the death, which most probably occurred during the night as a result of blood loss. There were no signs of robbery. Instead, on a table near the body, Policeman Tulejko found the dead man’s will and a sheet of paper on which the watchmaker maker had apparently jotted down the following words:
‘Do not look for any assailants. I die by my own hand.’
The incident exhibits many mysterious and unclear features. Already various rumours are circulating about the deceased. Apparently Sektor spent a few years in an asylum, from which he was only recently released. The director of the institution, a Dr. Tumin, was summoned as a witness in this puzzling matter and stated that the watchmaker had long been suffering from periodic bouts of madness, which grew stronger at every recurrence. This statement is supported by the testimony of Sektor’s neighbours and co-tenants in the apartment house. He had the reputation of being insane. None the less, at periods of lucida intervalla he devoted himself to his professional activities, fulfilling a watchmaker’s function excellently. His acquaintances even considered him a brilliant watchmaker.
An interesting light is thrown on the matter by the deceased’s will. Sektor bequeaths all of his substantial fortune for the endowment of an educational fund, with the special stipulation that it be used exclusively by those researching the problem of space and time, as well as any related issues.
Simultaneously with the mysterious incident at Water Street, a couple of sensational facts were reported to police headquarters and the municipal clerk. Strange placards and announcements have been found on the walls of the city in the form of obituary notices, bearing the following message:
The Death Of Time
On the night of November 29th of the current year, Tempus Saturn died, never to return, yielding his place to perpetual Duration.
The second, equally puzzling aspect is that all the tower clocks of our town have stopped for no apparent reason. The hands halted last night at eleven.
A general agitation and some peculiar, superstitious fear reign in the town. Frightened crowds gather in the public squares; voices are heard connecting strange manifestations with the death of the watchmaker.