The Secret Keepers Page 5

  Reuben opened the case, hefted the glossy orb of the watch, and saw in its strange coppery metal his own distorted face gazing back at him. His reflection made him look goofy, he thought. But was it any wonder his face showed such wide-eyed admiration? He’d spent the morning watching other people tremble at the sight of this beautiful object in his hand.

  He was about to return the watch to its case when the door of a nearby building banged open and four men strode out. They were in mid-conversation, arguing in loud voices. Reuben had never seen them before. Yet he knew at once that they were Directions. One man in front, two walking abreast just behind him, the fourth bringing up the rear. Eyes everywhere.

  Reuben sat like a statue, watching them. It hadn’t occurred to him that he could be caught off guard like this. It should have—the Directions in this neighborhood were unfamiliar to him, their habits unknown. Yet here he was, sitting like the worst of fools with this exquisite pocket watch in his hand, right out in the open.

  He knew they would take it. He hadn’t the least doubt. Maybe if there were witnesses around, the men would show restraint. Maybe. But there were no witnesses; nor did Reuben have a good explanation for how he’d come to possess the watch. Even if he had one, it probably wouldn’t matter. A watch like this? The Directions would take it. They did not answer to the law.

  Reuben followed their movement with his eyes. So far no one had seen him. The men were skirting the park, keeping to the sidewalk some twenty paces to his right. They were arguing about something to do with the Counselor, some urgent inquiry making them delay their lunch. Maybe in their hurry they would be less careful, Reuben hoped, less thorough in their observation. He fought a desperate urge to hide the watch. He knew better than to move. Movement was the enemy. He imagined himself to be part of the bench, part of the shadows.

  The gaze of the leftmost man, sweeping across the park, drifted past Reuben. He looked elsewhere, not having noticed the boy on the bench. The Directions progressed farther along the sidewalk, and then the one in the rear glanced back over his shoulder. He, too, failed to spot Reuben sitting in the shadow of the plane tree. Or perhaps he did notice something without quite realizing it, and the afterimage gnawed at his brain, for when some moments later the man dutifully looked back again, his eyes went straight to that bench.

  The bench was empty, however. Nor was Reuben anywhere to be seen. He stood on the far side of the plane tree, his back pressed to the peeling bark, listening to the diminishing voices, the diminishing footsteps, and finally the blessed quiet.

  He was holding the open case in one hand, his backpack in the other. He’d made the decisions without thinking: put the watch into the case, grab the backpack, move around the tree. It had taken him three seconds.

  Reuben slowly felt the tension leaving his body. Even his jaw hurt—he’d been clenching his teeth. He opened and closed his mouth a few times like a gasping fish. He retrieved the canvas wrapping and the pouch, which he’d abandoned on the bench. They had gone unnoticed or else had been deemed insignificant, rubbish left over from a sad little picnic.

  Shaking his head at the close call, Reuben bundled everything up. He should go home and rethink his plan, he thought. His dream of selling the watch for a grand sum might have disappeared, just like that. He put on the backpack, relieved to know that now he just looked like a random kid again, nothing special or even interesting about him.

  He set out for the subway station, taking the backstreets, knowing otherwise.

  On his way to the subway station, using the less-traveled sidewalks south of Brighton Street, Reuben noticed a sign in a display window that read Clocks and Watches—Sales and Repairs. He stopped walking and stared at it. Now this was the kind of place he should visit, he thought—not some snooty store on Brighton Street but a simple little out-of-the-way shop. Repairs meant he would find an expert here, rather than some crafty sales broker with both eyes fixed on the day’s profit. Maybe that close call with the Directions had actually been a stroke of good luck. If not for them, he would have taken a different route and never have seen this sign. Reuben peered in through the window. The shop was small and looked empty. No one sat behind the counter, but a sign on the door had been flipped around to say Open. He took his usual steadying breath and went inside.

  A bell chimed as he entered. Then all was quiet, or what passed for quiet in a room whose walls were lined with shelves of clocks and watches, most of them ticking, ticking, ticking. He imagined an enormous army of insects marching through the room.

  Behind the counter, a door opened. An elderly woman in a light yellow summer cardigan appeared, holding a steaming teacup. She set the teacup on the counter and reached for her glasses, which were hidden in the mass of curly gray hair on her head. She blinked a few times, then fixed her gaze on Reuben. She had watery cornflower-blue eyes.

  “Yes?” she said simply.

  “Um, hello,” Reuben said, taking the pouch from his backpack. He gestured at the counter. “May I set this down? I’d like to ask your opinion on something.”

  With a little frown, the woman moved her teacup to the far end of the counter, careful not to spill it. “What is your name?” she asked. She spoke with an accent Reuben could not identify. His first thought was Swiss, but that was probably because he’d read that the Swiss were known for making clocks. It might just as easily have been Italian or Hungarian and he couldn’t have told the difference.

  Reuben gave her his name—his first name—and said, “It’s about an old pocket watch.”

  “And this is what is in your wallet?” the woman asked, pointing to the pouch. Her precisely manicured fingernails glistened with transparent polish. “This pocket watch? Yes, you may set it then on the counter.”

  Reuben removed the case from the pouch, unwrapped it, and opened it to reveal its contents. Watching the woman’s face for signs of the admiration he’d grown accustomed to, he was curious to note instead a look of mild alarm. But perhaps that was how she expressed admiration.

  “My uncle asked me to find out what I could about it,” he said. “How old it is, what it might be worth, that sort of thing. He found it in his attic with some other old stuff.”

  The woman gave no reply to this. Lifting a hand to hold her glasses in place, she bent to peer more closely at the case and its contents. She made no move to touch them, though, and presently she straightened and indicated with a subtle gesture that Reuben could put the things away.

  Feeling somehow as if he’d been unfairly dismissed, Reuben did as he was directed. The woman, meanwhile, pushed her glasses back into her hair and squinted at the opposite wall. Reuben followed her gaze and noticed, for the first time, that every clock in the shop was set to exactly the same hour and minute. That must take some doing.

  “Would you permit me to examine this pocket watch more closely?” the woman asked.

  Confused, Reuben said, “You want me to take it out again?”

  “Soon, yes. Not now. First I must meet briefly with the four men—you know whom I mean, the four men who go about? Looking always to different corners?”

  “Oh. Yes,” Reuben said, suddenly uneasy. “The Directions.”

  “If this is what you like to call them, yes,” the woman said, nodding. “Probably it is better. I use a less polite name, but that is not for you. Yes, I must meet with these Directions, Reuben. They will be here in two minutes, or no longer than three. It is the only thing that I respect about these men, that in this way they are like clockwork.” She frowned. “But this is rude of me. Perhaps your uncle is one of them.”

  “No, he isn’t,” said Reuben, smiling to reassure her. He was beginning to like this woman. “Shall I come back later, then?”

  “You may if you like.” The woman pointed at the door behind the counter. “Or, if you wish, you may wait in my rooms. I ask only that while the men are here, you do not enter.”

  Reuben chose to wait in the rooms behind the door. They turned out to be the woman’
s home: a sitting room, a workshop, her bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom—all of them tiny, all in perfect order and perfectly clean. Mrs. Genevieve, as she told him to call her, suggested he make himself comfortable on her sitting room sofa. But no sooner had she returned to the front than Reuben heard the chime of the doorbell, and without hesitation he jumped up from the sofa and put his ear to the shop door.

  Mrs. Genevieve’s greeting, though muted, was clear enough. “Good afternoon,” she said, and that was all.

  “Same to you,” said a man’s voice, gruff but casual. “What’s the news?”

  “No news,” Mrs. Genevieve replied, “unless one of you wishes to purchase something. That would be news indeed.”

  “You’ve made that joke before. It still isn’t funny.” Reuben heard floorboards creaking. He imagined four large men nosing about the little shop, most likely the same men he’d seen from the park bench. “So do you have our—? Oh, good, you do.”

  Reuben heard two brisk, businesslike taps. (He pictured the man receiving an envelope full of money, tapping it a couple of times on the counter, and sliding it into a pocket.)

  “And just a glance at your books… Very good. Anything unusual to report, Mrs. Genevieve? Right. A shrug. That’s all we ever get from you. Fine, you can get back to your tea. Though I don’t know how you can drink that stuff—tastes like dirty water to me. Only coffee for yours truly, and gallons of it. Fact, that reminds me: I need to use your bathroom.”

  Reuben recoiled from the door but could still hear Mrs. Genevieve telling the man that this wouldn’t be possible. “It is out of order,” she said, which was surely a lie. She hadn’t mentioned any such thing to Reuben.

  “Is that so?” the man retorted roughly. “And you never have any need of a bathroom yourself? Maybe I should have a look at it for you.”

  Reuben snatched up his backpack and cast about the sitting room for a good place to hide. There was none. He could hear a tone of protest in Mrs. Genevieve’s voice, though he could no longer make out her words over the pounding in his ears. The man responded in a tone of rising anger.

  Then Reuben had an idea and hurried into the bathroom. Moving fast, he removed the porcelain top from the toilet tank and lowered it noiselessly onto the bath rug. He reached inside the tank and jerked loose the flush chain just as he heard the shop door open.

  Reuben stepped into the bathtub, retreating behind the bath curtain until the backs of his knees pressed against the faucet handles. He hugged his backpack and held his breath. The man’s heavy footsteps came in from the sitting room.

  The man grunted, then muttered, “Well, what do you know?” Reuben heard him jiggle the lever, cursing under his breath. The footsteps clumped out of the bathroom again. A moment later the shop door closed.

  Reuben sat down on the edge of the tub. He felt a little faint, perhaps from holding his breath while his heart was pounding away. He put his head between his knees and breathed slowly until he felt better. When he heard the chime of the doorbell—that would be the Directions leaving the shop—he went back into Mrs. Genevieve’s sitting room and took a seat on the miniature sofa to wait.

  Mrs. Genevieve came in, closing the door behind her. She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “You heard this that I said about the toilet?”

  Reuben nodded.

  “And you thought to save me by breaking the chain? That was a quick idea. Almost too quick. I was making ready a different explanation when he returned and told me it was only a broken chain. He said, ‘Surely someone like you must be able to repair a flush chain? Or is this more difficult than watchmaking?’”

  “I don’t blame you for not wanting to let him in,” Reuben observed. “He was rude.”

  “He is the worst of them,” Mrs. Genevieve said. “We dislike each other, he and I. But how is it that he did not see you?”

  “I hid behind the bath curtain.”

  She frowned. “Very risky.”

  “I’m a good hider,” Reuben said, somewhat defensively.

  “So it would seem,” said Mrs. Genevieve, and her eyes betrayed a twinkle of amusement. “But this was a risky act nonetheless, and I thank you for it, Reuben. Now then, let us examine this pocket watch of yours,” she added, and without waiting for a reply, she opened the door to her workshop and went in.

  The workshop was essentially a very deep closet. Its walls were taken up with cubbies and shelves, all perfectly organized, and dozens of tiny labeled drawers. On a narrow counter that ran the length of the left wall lay a single, partially disassembled watch under what resembled a transparent cake cover.

  “Set it over there,” said Mrs. Genevieve, indicating a clear stretch of counter. She laid out a few small tools and a soft cloth, then tugged on a pair of white gloves. “You may stand nearby, but you must keep your shadow away, okay?”

  Mrs. Genevieve settled herself onto a stool. With careful, meticulous fingers, like a gentle nurse removing a bandage from a wound, the watchmaker took the case from the pouch and unbundled it. She studied the case a moment, then opened it. Her expression upon seeing the pocket watch this time was not one of alarm but something else altogether. Her eyes grew heavy-lidded; her head swayed ever so slightly, as if to music. Reuben was reminded of when he and his mom used to go to the bakery—of the look on his mom’s face when she first smelled the delicious aromas.

  “It is beautiful,” Mrs. Genevieve said softly, and for some time she sat gazing at the watch and key as if that were all she ever intended to do. “I do not know this metal,” she murmured presently.

  “Me either,” Reuben said. “Do you know what the case is made of?”

  “The case?” Mrs. Genevieve said, pointing to the pocket watch still resting snugly in its compartment. “It clearly is the same metal as the key. Oh! But you mean this box—which of course is wood—I do not know what kind. ” She pointed again to the watch’s gleaming coppery sphere. “This exterior of the watch, you see, we call also its case—the watchcase. And the key and the watchcase are of metals I have never seen, though I know metals very well. It is… surprising.”

  Mrs. Genevieve returned the key to its compartment and lifted out the pocket watch. She turned it slowly in her hands until it had made a full revolution. Then she opened it, and with a quick intake of breath, she glanced at Reuben. “It seems impossible,” she whispered, “the condition of this piece. How can it be so perfect?”

  “It’s pretty great,” Reuben agreed with a grin. “The minute hand broke off, I guess, so maybe not perfect, but still—”

  “It never had a minute hand!” Mrs. Genevieve snipped. “The pocket watches of this time told only the hour!” She pushed her glasses up into her wiry gray hair, then reached for her watchmaker’s loupe and put it to her eye. She appeared to be scowling furiously. Reuben, abashed, hoped this was just how she looked when she peered through her loupe, which she held in place using the muscles around her eye.

  “So no minute hands,” he ventured after a pause. “That seems odd.”

  Mrs. Genevieve had set the pocket watch onto the cloth, still open to reveal its dial, and was turning it slightly this way and that. She let Reuben’s comment go unanswered for a long minute before interrupting her examination to look at him. To his relief, when she removed the loupe from her eye, her scowl seemed to fade.

  “In the early days of clocks there was no use for a minute hand,” Mrs. Genevieve said, clearly making an effort to sound patient, and almost succeeding. “Such precision was impossible at the time. Even with the hour hand there was much inaccuracy.”

  “The early days,” Reuben repeated. “When are we talking about, exactly?”

  Mrs. Genevieve shrugged her thin shoulders. “There is no ‘exactly.’ But I would tell you that this pocket watch was made in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. It is for this reason that I am so amazed at its fine condition.”

  “Because it’s five hundred years old!” Reuben cried, and Mrs. Genevieve flinched. “Sor
ry,” he said, lowering his voice, “I guess I’m just excited. I never thought it could be that old. How can you tell? Because of the minute hand?”

  “This, yes, and also the shape,” said Mrs. Genevieve. “Such watches of this time, they were called ‘clock watches’—not ‘pocket watches,’ do you see, for they were not always kept in pockets. They were a fine decoration, to be worn by wealthy persons about the neck or hung from a chain, though sometimes, yes, they were carried in pockets. And many were in the shapes of little barrels, or sometimes of eggs, or of spheres like this one.” She shook her head wonderingly. “But I have never seen another such as this.”

  Mrs. Genevieve returned then to her examination of the watch, and Reuben excitedly pondered the significance of her words. The fact that she was so struck by the piece’s beauty and rarity suggested that he might truly be in possession of an extraordinarily valuable artifact—perhaps even a priceless one. Mrs. Genevieve was an expert, and she seemed to think the watch was one of a kind. Was it possible, he wondered, that he was on the verge of becoming rich? He was suddenly finding it difficult to hold still.

  At last Mrs. Genevieve put down her loupe. She turned to him with a troubled expression. “Very well,” she said, “I know some things, and some things I do not know, and both for the same reason.” She pursed her lips, thinking, then went on. “I cannot examine the movement of this watch—the movement is what we call its inner workings, its mechanism, do you see?—because there seems to be no way to open the watchcase. There are no visible screws and no visible seam. Because I cannot examine the movement, I cannot determine its condition, or whether the movement is unusual, different from those of other clock watches. But because of this I know also that the watchmaker was a genius. No ordinary craftsman, no, not even a remarkable one, could have fashioned such a watch. Before now I would have said this was not possible. And yet here before our eyes is proof of its possibility.”