After explaining the problem, I stood at the door, just as I did months earlier, and watched this watch repairman raise his head just slightly and look at the watch as if for the first time. He shook his head and told me to come back at the beginning of next week.
“Hey, do you have a business card?” I asked. “I, uh, I was talking with a guy from work and he has a watch . . .” My little lie trailed off and I did not finish my sentence.
He looked around and gave me a postcard, yellowed but, otherwise, in mint condition:
Not exactly a business card, but it gave me my first bit of insight into this little man who repaired watches in a tiny suite among the gold and silver and diamond shops. A man who repaired all makes of defective watches, and complicated watches were his specialty.
When I picked up my watch four days later, I greeted him with a smile. “How are you? I asked.
“Oh I am alright,” he responded with a slight head tilt.
“Well, you look great.”
“Ah. But how do I feel?” He scrunched up his face. “I have no choice.”
He reached down to a shelf below his bench and took out a small worn box, upside down with the opening facing up, the cardboard edges worn to tapered curves. I watched as Adolph Adler held my watch between this thumb and forefinger and then delicately placed it in my hand. I tried to grab it with the same care in which it had been handed me.
“That watch,” he said, pointing his eyes. “I remember that watch.”
“Yeah. It seems to like you. I tried to stay away but it keeps wanting to come back,” I laughed. “It must really love your tender loving care. Who am I to stand in its way?”
“No, that watch, that Bulova. I remember that Bulova. It was one of the first watches I ever fixed, one of the first wristwatches I ever touched.”
I raised my eyebrows and listened. “When? How? You remember this kind of watch?”
“Yeah.
“Just like this one?”
“I had just opened my shop. It was nineteen hundred and fifty-three, so the watch must have been brand new then. I had learned to fix pocket watches but hadn’t really worked on wristwatches yet. I don’t recall if it was the first or just one of the first wristwatches I had ever seen, but I marveled at the way it looked when I held it in my hand. I had never seen something so fine, and I watched the light dance off the face. It was very beautiful.”
“Wow, you remember that watch, this watch? That is unbelievable. And what a coincidence that I come to you with the same kind of watch.”
“I was still very young then, thirty years old, but I did not feel like that. I remember that I felt like an old man. Only then I did not know what that meant. The watch tired me out, it made me feel very tired. And I just wanted to rest. I just wanted to hide, to disappear behind a sea of watches, with all the wheels and bridges. I stood in my shop, this shop, and I knew how important it was that I would fix watches. I wanted to be in control. I did not want to feel old too soon, I wanted to hold time, to fix it. I wanted to be with watches and always know what the time would be.”
At that point, Adolph Adler looked up to me and smiled. It was a slight smile but he held his gaze and his lips parted, to reveal yellow teeth, slightly pushed together and overlapping, like dominoes in a line, reacting to the previous and affecting those that followed. I wasn’t sure if the smile accentuated that which he just revealed or if it implied it was a precursor to a budding friendship.
“Do you remember who brought the watch in? Do you remember the man?”
Adolph turned away. He reached for the papers on a desk that stood at the back of the wall, an old wooden desk, the top obliterated by a mass of letters and receipts and torn open envelopes.
“Yes, I remember that man very well. I have thought about that man every day of my life.”
“Wow, that watch must hold a special place in your life. For you to remember it after so many years and to even remember the guy who owned it. That is pretty incredible.”
“Yes, it is a beautiful watch. It is hard to forget such beauty. Some things so beautiful touch you and you can remember it as long as you want to. And sometimes you have no choice, you cannot forget some things. You have a beautiful watch, young man, just like that first watch that I saw.”
“You must have some great stories. All those years,” I said, but I could see he did not hear me. He shuffled slowly back to his workbench and rested his hands on the counter.
“But the man I remember too. That man is a dog.”
