Beyond the Pendulum

Lao Zhou had been sitting in this watch shop in the south of the city for thirty-nine years. In three hours, he would hand over the key.

The shop was small, maybe fifteen square meters, every wall covered in clocks. Each one kept perfect time, because the first thing he did every morning at seven-forty was calibrate every single one against the radio signal. He had done it again today. Eleven wall clocks, marching in lockstep, their second hands sweeping across the dials in unison like a silent honor guard. When no customers were around, he sat behind the counter and listened to them. The sound wasn't quiet--it was dense, granular, a thousand tiny ticks stacked on top of each other. But to Lao Zhou, that density felt quieter than silence.

At ten-thirty the glass door swung open.

The man who walked in was around thirty, black-rimmed glasses, damp patches on his shoulders. It wasn't raining outside. Lao Zhou figured he must have come from the subway station; there was a pipe near the exit that had been leaking for years.

"Can you fix a watch?" The young man pulled one from his pocket and set it on the counter.

Lao Zhou looked down. He had seen thousands of watches. This one was nothing special--an old Citizen automatic, the dial yellowed with age, the strap replaced at least three times, the latest replacement not even an original. But what caught his attention wasn't the watch itself. It was the time it showed.

Three twenty. The second hand was moving.

Lao Zhou picked it up and turned it over to look at the movement. Through the transparent case back, the gears were indeed turning. He raised it to his ear. Yes--steady, even. He glanced at the dial again. Three twenty.

"What needs fixing?"

"It doesn't go," the young man said.

"The second hand is moving."

"Yes, the second hand is moving. The hour hand, the minute hand too." He tucked both hands into his jacket pockets. "But it doesn't go."

Lao Zhou didn't reply. He placed the watch on the workbench, switched on the lamp, and brought the five-power loupe to his eye. The movement was cleaner than he'd expected; the last service couldn't have been more than two years ago. He found the problem quickly--a screw had worked loose and was wedged between the escape wheel and the balance wheel. Minor. Nothing complicated.

But he didn't fix it right away. He left the screw where it was, set the loupe on his forehead, and looked up at the young man.

"What do you mean by 'it doesn't go'?"

The young man considered the question. "Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is check it. The second hand is always moving. But I have this feeling that the time on this watch is wrong. Not fast or slow--wrong. As in, it's not running on my time at all. I'll be at my desk, glance at the watch, ten-fifteen. I keep working, and a long time later I check again. Still ten-fifteen. But I know for a fact at least forty minutes have passed."

"All three hands are moving, and you're telling me it's stuck at ten-fifteen?"

"It's not about the hands." The young man took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. "It's about the way the watch goes. It's like someone walking--their legs are moving, but they're not going anywhere."

Lao Zhou was quiet for a moment.

"When did you get this watch?"

"I didn't buy it. It was my father's. He left it to me. Said it had never gone slow, not once, in twenty years. He wore it for twenty years. I've worn it for five."

"This ten-fifteen you mentioned--what time of day is that ten-fifteen?"

The young man stared at Lao Zhou for a few seconds, then smiled. Not the kind of smile that means something is funny. The kind that means someone has finally understood.

"Nighttime," he said. "On nights I work late. Usually the office empties out after seven. I walk over to the window, the streetlights are on, I check the watch. Every time, it's ten-fifteen. No matter when you check. Once I ran an experiment--started at seven in the evening, checked every fifteen minutes. Seven o'clock: ten-fifteen. Seven-fifteen: ten-fifteen. Seven-thirty: ten-fifteen. By eight-forty I couldn't take it anymore. I took the watch off and put it in my desk drawer. The next morning, it was normal again. But when it was normal, I felt worse."

Lao Zhou pushed the loupe up onto his forehead and leaned back. The shop was very quiet, the second hands of all eleven clocks still sweeping in formation.

"What do you think this watch is trying to tell you?" he asked.

The young man didn't answer right away. He reached across the counter, picked the watch up from the workbench, and turned it over to look at the case back. Two letters were engraved there: W.L. His father's initials.

"I don't know what it's trying to tell me. But I know my father wore it for twenty years and it never had a problem." He set the watch back on the counter and then did something Lao Zhou wasn't expecting--he flipped it face down, the dial against the glass. "Can you make it stop?"

"Stop?"

"I mean stop completely. Second hand too. Dead."

In nearly forty years, Lao Zhou had heard every kind of request. Someone asked him to set a watch five minutes fast because his girlfriend complained he was always late--the girlfriend had actually moved out three months earlier. Someone asked him to replace the dial, Roman numerals to Arabic, because he said the Roman ones were too sinister, the IV looking like a dagger. Someone once brought in a Rolex and asked him to dismantle every last part, said it was from a divorce settlement and he'd rather see it in pieces than intact.

But no one had ever asked him to kill a perfectly good watch.

"The screw is loose, it's stuck. I can just tighten it. No need to stop it."

"I know you can tighten it." The young man's voice was even. "But I don't want it to go anymore."

Lao Zhou picked up the watch. Three twenty. The second hand ticked, the minute hand inched forward almost imperceptibly. And then something struck him--ever since this watch had come into the shop, he hadn't once checked his own clocks. He looked up at the wall. Ten-forty. He had walked in at ten-thirty, and fixing this watch couldn't have taken more than five minutes. But it felt like at least twenty had passed.

"Alright," Lao Zhou said.

He didn't tighten the screw. He opened the case back, found the hacking lever, and nudged it into stop position. The second hand twitched and froze at the nineteen-second mark.

"Done."

The young man stared at the watch for a long time. The dial still showed three twenty. The second hand was motionless. The whole world seemed to pause for one beat.

"How much?"

"No charge."

The young man pocketed the watch and stood up. At the door he turned back.

"You ever feel it yourself, shifu? That sometimes, time--it doesn't move?"

Lao Zhou didn't answer. The young man pushed through the door. When the glass swung back, it wobbled twice, and at that exact moment the pendulums of two wall clocks happened to reach the same side of their arcs and hang there for an instant--not broken, just the natural pause at the limit of a swing. But Lao Zhou counted. About a second.

Maybe longer.

He stood up and began clearing the workbench. Put the screwdrivers in the drawer, switched off the lamp, tucked the loupe back into its case. Then he took the clocks off the wall one by one, wound them, and hung them back. When he lifted the last one down, he found a sticky note taped to the back of the case. It was in Xiao Chen's handwriting, his apprentice:

"Master Zhou, this clock runs two seconds fast. I've tried adjusting it several times but I can never get it right. But it's never more than two seconds off. Lately I've been thinking--maybe it's not this one that's fast. Maybe all the others are two seconds slow."

Lao Zhou stared at the note for a long while. The shop was empty now, only the clocks. He turned the note over. On the back was another line, in smaller script:

"When I first started, you told me fixing watches is fixing time. I didn't understand. I think maybe I'm starting to."

Lao Zhou folded the note and put it in his pocket. He didn't adjust the clock. He let it keep its two seconds.

At eleven sharp, he set the key on the counter and locked the door behind him. Outside, the sun was sharp and clean. And then he remembered something: when he had nudged the hacking lever into place on that Citizen, the second hand hadn't stopped immediately. It had crept forward one more tick, covering maybe five seconds' worth of distance, before going completely still. Which meant that at the moment the watch stopped, the actual time was three twenty-five. Not three twenty.

He stopped walking.

A few seconds later he continued, right hand in his pocket, fingers wrapped around the key to the clock that ran two seconds fast. The key was still warm.