The Best of Gerald Kersh

by Gerald Kersh

  ‘No, a Belgian artist made those: Honoré de Kock. We worked together.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Honoré de Kock. He died, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, Poor Honoré…. He was a very good fellow. I liked him very much. It was a pity.’

  ‘He died in an accident, I believe?’ I said.

  ‘He died on purpose,’ said the Count de Pommel.

  ‘You don’t mean to say he killed himself?’

  ‘No, far from it.’

  ‘Are you telling me that de Kock was murdered?’ I asked.

  ‘I would rather not talk about him just now, if you will excuse me.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Count,’ I said.

  He was troubled. ‘No,’ he insisted, ‘no, no, no! You have been very kind, very accommodating. I liked your face as soon as I saw you; and you were very good, too, charming! I should never have been so bold … only when I start playing, which is seldom, I am carried away. I take only a certain sum with me, and if I leave the table – then I lose the thread of the game. I can’t imagine what possessed me to … to … to … Will you dine with us tomorrow, sir?’

  ‘With pleasure,’ I said, and so we finished the bottle and parted; and I walked back to my hotel, thinking of incongruities. I remembered a temperamental plumber, a clumsy oaf with a soldering iron, who convinced everyone that he was a great craftsman because he was ferociously arrogant; and I thought of Pommel, the greatest living master of his craft, clock and watchmaker to King Nicolas himself – and singularly like a trapped mouse in his pitiful humbleness, in spite of his title of nobility.

  I wanted to know more about him. Among other things, I wondered what sort of woman he had married. Pommel must have been more than seventy years old. I imagined a bloated, faded woman of fifty or so, soured by cumulative marital discontent.

  I was wrong. She was fifty years old, and fat, but still attractive. Pommel called her Minna. Her hair was dull red, her eyes were blue and clear, and she had the warm, creamy, calm air of a woman who has achieved happiness, so that nothing can hurt or touch her. She was a Hungarian, and had been a needlewoman in King Nicolas’s palace – the kind of a girl that sings as she works and likes to sit still. She was well beloved, secure, healthy and contented – a woman who could grow festive over a crust, or dance to her own singing. Before an hour had passed I gathered that she had been poor Honoré de Kock’s mistress, not because she liked him but because he was so unhappy; that she loved Pommel because he was happy with her and because he was kind-hearted; and that there was a big, dark secret about which she had promised not to speak.

  This, of course, was the inside story of the death of Nicolas, the King who collected clocks. In the end I got that story.

  *

  When I was twelve years old (said Pommel, after dinner) I was apprenticed to Tancred Dicker, and I learned a lot from him. You have, perhaps, seen pictures of him – Tancred Dicker, the one that looked like a sheepdog. Soon he let me work for him as a journeyman; I had the knack. By the time I was twenty I worked with Dicker. I went with him when King Nicolas asked him to come and stay and work on clocks, more than forty-five years ago, when I was twenty-two. When Dicker and I arrived we had first to meet a gentleman named Kobalt, a distant relation of King Nicolas’s Queen, a very powerful man indeed. The King relied upon him: the poor King was getting old, and had rheumatoid arthritis. He no longer cared very much for affairs of state, you see. He liked best of all his pastime, his hobby, which was collecting clocks and watches. Oh, yes, yes, the King had had other hobbies in his day; but he had got old – more than seventy-three years old – and turned his mind to higher things, being more or less tired out.

  Before we saw the King we saw Kobalt, as I was saying, and Kobalt talked to us about what we had come for. You will have heard of Kobalt, no doubt – or it may be that he was a little before your time. It was Kobalt who ran away with Marli Martin, the wife of the Minister; your father, more likely, heard of that affair. Kobalt is probably no longer in the land of the living; he must have been fifty years old when I first saw him more than forty years ago, and he was still good-looking. He was wicked, and a pig, but all the same he was a nobleman and a gentleman – a dangerous beast, and cunning; very brave – a wild boar, as you might say. He had light hair and moustaches, light-coloured eyes, no eyelashes. As soon as I saw him I disliked him: there was badness all over him. He said to us:

  ‘I am very happy to meet you. His Majesty is very anxious to consult with you. He is … but listen!’

  He raised a finger, pulling out his watch with his free hand; smiled and said: ‘Exactly five o’clock.’ Almost before he had finished speaking, the place became full of music. Birds sang, bells rang, silver and golden gongs sounded – dozens and dozens of striking clocks chimed the hour. A German timepiece sent twelve lame-looking Apostles staggering out to strike a gold-headed Satan with bronze hammers. From a cheap wooden affair leapt a scraggy-looking little cuckoo with five hiccups, while a contraption under a glass dome let out five American-sounding twangs.

  ‘His Majesty the King has a collection of more than seven hundred clocks,’ said Kobalt, as soon as he could make his voice heard. ‘He has a sort of weakness for clocks – like Louis the Sixteenth. But never mention Louis the Sixteenth in His Majesty’s presence; the name of that unhappy monarch strikes a not-too-pleasant note in the King’s ears. We’ll see more of each other, I hope, my dear Monsieur Dicker. I am sure that we have much in common. Much!’

  Dicker bowed low, and so did I. But I was full of a new idea. If His Majesty liked clocks, he should have clocks – toys, novelties, nonsense – clocks with figures and contrivances. That was when I first conceived the Nicolas Clock. Tancred Dicker and I worked on it for four and a half years. Some of the technical innovations are his, but it was I who got the credit for the whole; and so I became Watchmaker to King Nicolas the Third.

  De Kock designed, modelled, and cast the case and the figures. He had talent – almost genius, the genius of the old Dutch Masters who could portray a man, an apple, a monkey, a grape, a bit of linen or a ray of sunshine, exactly as it appeared. He had a photographic hand; and it was this that made him unhappy – he wanted to make his own things, you see – it humiliated him merely to imitate the handiwork of the Lord God Almighty. He ate his heart out in his longing to create something with life of its own, but he never could. It is a sad thing when a man like de Kock becomes at last convinced that au fond he is a mediocrity; it breaks his heart.

  Although he was very popular and successful and made a great deal of money, poor Honoré was very unhappy. He had already taken to drinking. Personally, I liked him very much indeed, and had a great admiration for him. He was a craftsman rather than an artist, he could work in any medium. Bronze, ivory, wood, marble, glass, gold, iron – anything and everything. Yet, because he could not reconcile himself to the fact that God did not see fit to give him the divine spark, he was always deep in melancholy. So it may, after all, have been true that poor Honoré de Kock committed suicide in the end. But I am by no means sure of this.

  *

  But where was I? Ay, yes, Dicker and I were talking to Kobalt, that smooth, terribly dangerous nobleman. It was a marvellous thing to hear all those clocks striking at once, and afterwards, when the last chime had died away (there was one vulgar little beast of a clock that was always a little late, and arrived breathless after all the others had done) – it was marvellous, afterwards, to listen to the ticking of all those clocks. The whole Palace was full of it. At night, first of all, you could not sleep; you lay awake, listening, waiting for the concert that almost deafened you every quarter of an hour. There was one silly figurine of a dancing girl. Every hour she performed a little can-can, showing her underclothes, and kicking a tambourine which she held in her right hand. Another contraption – an old French novelty clock – was decorated with a dozen fantastic musicians. When their hour came they all went raving mad, throwing their limbs in all directions, while an extraordinaril
y strident musical box, concealed in their platform, played a lively jig. And there was a German clock – somehow a typically German clock – upon which there stood, in a painted farmyard, a farmer, his wife, his son, his daughter and a pig. Without fail, twenty-four times a day, the farmer beat his wife, the wife smacked the son, the son kicked his sister, she pulled the pig’s tail, and they all shrieked. A crazy clock! I could see that Dicker and I would have our hands pretty full, because these tricky toy clocks tend to be too sensitive, and sometimes have to be nursed like quarrelsome old invalids. What a business! His Majesty employed a staff of nine highly-skilled men who had nothing to do but wind up his clocks and see that they were set at the correct time. But he would not let them tamper with the works. That is what we had been employed for, at a salary that took even Dicker’s breath away; and Dicker was accustomed to eccentric millionaires to whom money was of no importance.

  I am sorry. I am boring you with all this talk of clocks, clocks, clocks. But clocks, you see, are my whole life: I know nothing else. Also, if I am to tell you the really remarkable part of this story, I cannot avoid reference to clocks. His Majesty Nicolas III, in his old age, thought of nothing but his collection. You might have thought that a man, even a king, so old and broken (or, I should say, especially a king) would not like to be reminded of the passing of time. But no, his love of clocks was stronger even than his fear of death.

  We were hurried to his presence. You might have thought that we were doctors and he was dying. Oh, dear me, how very old His Majesty was! He was sitting stiffly in a great velvet chair, wrapped from neck to ankles in a wonderful dressing-gown; and even with this, in spite of the fact that the windows were sealed and a fire was blazing, he seemed to be blue with cold. He was dried up, so to speak. There was no moisture left in him. Even his poor old eyes looked dry and he kept blinking as if he was trying to moisten them. The King was suffering from a sort of paralysis which, it was said, was the price he had to pay for certain youthful indiscretions. Also he had arthritis and moved with great difficulty, dragging his feet. I shall never forget how shocked I was when I first saw him. I had had some silly childish idea that a king in real life looks like a king. And there was this little, corpse-like man, old as the hills and weary of the world, quivering to the finger-tips, shuddering and sighing and groaning, swaying his tired old head from side to side like a turtle. Only his beard was magnificent; it was like floss-silk, and covered most of his face and part of his chest.

  But when he saw Dicker and me he came to life. He brushed aside the formalities and came straight to business. Oh, that awful voice! It was like a death-rattle, punctuated with groans. From time to time, forgetting his afflictions in his excitement, he started to make a gesture; but his arthritis stopped him with a painful jerk and he let out a moan of pain. He said that we were welcome, very welcome. We could have anything we liked, all we had to do was ask; even for money. We were to live in the Palace, where a workshop had been fitted up. His clocks had been neglected. His beautiful collection of seven hundred rare clocks was going to the devil. We were to go to work at once. First and foremost, there was a job to be done on a unique Swiss clock. It had stopped. It was all the fault of one Fritz Harlin, who had poked his clumsy fingers into the works, pretending to repair it. This was to be put right at once, and he would watch while we worked. It was his only pleasure, that poor old King – watching workmen tinkering with clocks. He has sat and watched me for eight hours on end in my workshop; even taking his meals out of a vessel like a teapot – he could digest nothing but milk – on the spot.

  We were conducted to this workshop, which was a workshop out of a dream. Upon the bench stood a silent clock upon which stood a bronze Father Time about two feet high, and a dozen other figures about four inches high. There was a King encrusted with jewels and wearing a golden crown; an enamelled Cardinal in a red robe; a Knight in silver armour; a Merchant carved out of lapis lazuli; a Surgeon with a knife in one hand and a human heart made of a spinel ruby in the other; a Nun of silver and ivory; an Infanta of ivory and red gold; a painted Harlot hung with oddments of jewellery; a Peasant, all sinews, in old ivory and bronze; and an aged Beggar made of bone and studded with sores which were little rubies. The idea was, at the striking of the hour, Time mowed these figures down, one by one, finishing with the King, who came under the scythe on the last stroke of midnight. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, and we approached it with reverence.

  Soon the King came in between two attendants. One of these was an old doctor and the other was a sturdy young man with a nondescript face; they supported him under the arms and led him to another red velvet chair. When Dicker and I began to bow the King said: ‘No, no, no need, no need. Get on with the work.’ Then, trying to make an imperious gesture with his hand, he cried out in agony and groaned with terrible oaths and curses. Dicker and I went to work. This Fritz must have been a fool. I will not try your patience with technical details; but he had not seen one dazzlingly simple thing – one steel wire, less than half an inch long, bent at an angle of about sixty-five degrees, upon which the movement of the main figures, and therefore the movement of the whole mechanism, ultimately depended. Wear and tear and tiredness – for even steel gets tired – had reduced this angle by half a degree. I adjusted it in thirty seconds with a pair of pliers, wound and set the clock, and then – swish went the scythe, down went peasant, soldier, priest and king while the clock was still solemnly chiming (it had little golden bells like church bells). His Majesty uttered a cry of delight, a groan of anguish, half a dozen shocking words and a gracious compliment. We explained that it was nothing; that we would make a new angle-pin of the finest tempered steel, and Time would cut down Men for another hundred years.

  And after that, I can assure you, Dicker and I were established, under King Nicolas III. We could do no wrong. I really believe that even if Dicker and I had committed murder it would somehow have been hushed up and we could have got away with it. Poor Dicker – this went to his head. Once, for example, when the Chamberlain at the Palace, a terribly proud man with a very hasty temper, told Dicker to remember his place, Dicker threatened to go home. The Chamberlain was dismissed with ignominy.

  This man, whose name was Tancredy, then conceived a frightful hate for the King, and secretly gave his support to the Liberal-Democrat Party. I dare say you will have read something about the political situation in that country in King Nicolas’s time, especially towards the end of his reign when there was a great deal of discontent. King Nicolas, like his fathers before him, was an absolute monarch. In effect he was the Law.

  After his father, King Vindex II, had been assassinated by a woman who threw a seven-pound bomb into his carriage, Nicolas, influenced by a wise old Minister, had brought about certain reforms in the country. He had started a system of free education, free medical services, sanitation, the encouragement of the fine arts and of heavy industry, the development of an export trade – all this and much more was associated with Nicolas III. Nevertheless, the ordinary man of the people was subject to restrictions which horrified me. I am Swiss, you see.

  There was no real freedom of speech or of the Press. The average man had to glance over his shoulder before he felt that it was safe to say what he wanted to say. There was frightful corruption in the highest places – especially when the King had grown too old and feeble and sick to care about anything but his seven hundred fantastic clocks. Consequently discontent was driven out of sight as an acorn is driven into the ground by your foot when you tread on it. This acorn, if I may put it that way, sent out all sorts of underground roots and pushed up unforeseen shoots. There were the Anarcho-Liberals, the Terrorists of the Brutus Party; the Democratic-Socialists, the Independent-Anarchists; the Republicans; the Labour-Royalists; and a dozen others. But the most subtle and formidable force working against the King was that of the Liberal-Democrat Party, led by an ex-lawyer named Martin. This was a Party to be reckoned with. Its methods were unquestionably constituti
onal and its policy was not to dethrone the King but to take away his power – which meant that the King would become a mere puppet; a King in name only. The Monarchists, who kept a great deal of personal power mainly because the King was a proper King, hated these Liberal-Democrats; and had indeed, my dear sir, very good reason to hate them. They were afraid of the Liberal-Democrats and of Martin, whose Party was growing stronger and stronger. He was suspected of encouraging, and even of financing and inspiring, all kinds of anti-Nicolas propaganda – mysterious little newspapers, scurrilous and filthy books and pamphlets and cartoons printed abroad; riots, acts of terror, and sometimes strikes. But nothing could be proved. Martin was too clever.

  It was believed that only the personality of King Nicolas III kept the System in one piece. And poor King Nicolas was senile, paralytic, crippled with arthritis, and not far from death. After he died – and he was expected to die fairly soon – all the quiet, pale things underground would rush out and overwhelm the country.

  As long as the old King lived, the Monarchists had something to stand on. You see, nobody was allowed to forget that old King Nicolas had been a much better man than his ancestors; that he was a humane, kind-hearted Father of his People, and meant to make everyone happy as soon as he could afford to do so. Also, he was the King; as such, he inspired the People with an almost superstitious veneration.

  But he had no issue. There had been only one son, a pitiful, sickly boy, who was dead of anæmia.

  It took me many months to learn all this, and, having learned it, I began to feel that, after all, Dicker and I were not as well provided for as we had thought.

  By then I was working on the Great Clock of Nicolas. The old King came every day to watch while we worked. It is a strange thing: although I like a clock to be a clock and not a silly mechanical toy, I developed a kind of weakness for these ingenious little bits of machinery. It was very pleasant working in the Palace: everything was to hand. His Majesty had a passion for exclusiveness: he insisted that the inner workings of the clock we were making should be seen by himself, Dicker, and (of course) me. Honoré de Kock worked with us later, because he, as the sculptor and caster of the figures, had to know what made them work. There was not a great deal for de Kock to do in the beginning. He was a bored, melancholy man, as I have said; and he could not keep his hands still; he was always playing with something.