The Time Keeper

by Mitch Albom

  Dor picked up the hourglass.

  And he ran.

  At first, he ran as fast as he could,

  keeping his head down, hoping no one would notice him. But he was the only thing moving. The whole world had been paused. No wind blew. No tree branches swayed. People Dor saw appeared nearly frozen—a man walking a dog, a group of friends holding drinks outside a bar.

  Dor slowed. He looked around. By our standards, he was on the rural outskirts of a small Spanish village, but to him, there were more people and structures than he had seen in his lifetime.

  Herein lies every moment of the universe, the old man had said. Dor observed the sand in the hourglass. It, too, had slowed to a near stop, only a few grains dripping through, as if someone had choked the flow.

  Dor walked for miles, holding that hourglass. The sun barely moved in the sky.

  His shadow followed behind him, although all other shadows seemed to be painted on the ground. When he reached a more deserted area, he climbed a hillside and sat. Climbing made him think of Alli, and he longed for that old world—the empty plains, the mud-brick homes, even the quiet. In this world he heard a constant hum, as if a hundred sounds were being mashed into one note. He didn’t yet know this was the sound of a single slowed moment.

  Down below Dor saw a stretch of road, straight and charcoal-colored with a white stripe down its center. He wondered how many slaves were needed to build such a smooth surface.

  You sought to control time, the old man had said. For your penance, the wish is granted.

  Dor thought about his arrival on Earth, how he had fallen and dropped the hourglass. That was when everything changed.

  Perhaps …

  He turned the hourglass sharply to the side, then back again.

  The sand began to flow freely. The humming stopped. He heard a whoosh. Then another. He looked down and saw cars speeding along the road—only he had no concept of cars, so he could only imagine they were beasts of some unimaginable speed. He quickly snapped the hourglass back.

  The cars stopped in place.

  The hum returned.

  Dor’s eyes widened. Had he just done that? Brought the world to a near standstill? He felt a surge of power so great, it made him shiver.

  35

  The night started awkwardly, but the alcohol changed that.

  Ethan brought a bottle of vodka. Sarah acted nonchalant. Although she was in no way a drinker, she quickly took a sip. Even a girl ranked third in her class academically knows enough to pretend she’s had vodka before.

  They sat in his uncle’s warehouse—Ethan’s idea, since he didn’t really commit to the evening until 8:14 P.M., by texting, “Over at my uncle’s if u want 2 come”—and they drank from paper cups and mixed in orange juice that Ethan grabbed off the shelf. Sitting on the floor, they laughed about a dumb TV show they both confessed to watching. Ethan also liked action movies, especially the Men in Black series, where the actors wore suits and ties and sunglasses, and Sarah said she liked those movies, too, although truthfully she hadn’t seen them.

  She wore the same low-cut blouse she had worn the morning at the shelter, figuring he must have liked it, and he did seem attentive. At one point her phone rang (her mother, God!) and when she made a face, Ethan said, “Lemme see.” He took her phone and programmed a special ring tone, a shrill, heavy-metal music lick, that would signal whenever her mom was calling.

  “You hear her, you ignore her,” he said.

  Sarah laughed. “Oh, that is so great.”

  After that, things got blurry. He offered to rub her back and Sarah gladly accepted; his hands on her shoulders made her shiver then melt. She tried talking, nervously, about how she didn’t really have friends at school because they all seemed so immature, and he said yeah, a lot of those kids were losers, and she said she was stressed over getting into college, and he rubbed her shoulders deeper and said she was smart enough to get in anywhere, which made her feel good.

  And then the kiss. She would never forget that. She felt his breath on the nape of her neck and she turned to the left, but he edged onto her right, so she turned back that way and their faces nearly bumped—and it happened. It just happened. She closed her eyes and honestly, she almost fainted (her mother used to say the word “swoon,” and Sarah had a vague idea this was that), and he kissed her again, harder, and turned her toward him and grabbed her closer, and she remembered thinking Me, he’s kissing me, he wants me! But what started softly got a little rough, his hands moved quickly all over her, until she nervously pulled away and then, embarrassed, tried to laugh it off.

  He filled her cup with more vodka and orange juice, and she gulped it faster than she should have. The rest of the night she remembered laughing and pushing Ethan and him pulling and them kissing again, and Ethan getting more aggressive and her pulling away and drinking and repeating the pattern.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “I know,” she murmured. “I want to, but …”

  Ultimately, he backed away and drank more vodka, until he almost fell asleep against the wall. Not long after that, they each went home.

  But now she wondered,

  chewing the crust of her whole wheat toast on a Monday morning—7:23 A.M.—if she had done the right thing, the wrong thing, or the wrong thing by doing the right thing. She realized Ethan was a better-looking boy than she was a girl, and she pondered how much “gratitude” she was supposed to show him for that. They’d kissed—a lot—and he’d wanted her. Somebody wanted her. That was what mattered. She kept seeing his face. She pictured the next time they’d be together. Finally, something to look forward to in her drab and ordinary existence.

  She put her plate in the sink and flipped open her laptop. She was going to be late for school—Sarah was never late for school—but Christmas was coming and she had a sudden urge to buy Ethan a present. He’d said the actors in Men in Black wore these special, cool-shaped watches. Maybe she could buy him one. He would like that, wouldn’t he? Something only she would think of?

  She told herself she was just being thoughtful. Christmas was Christmas. But deep in her heart, the equation was simple.

  She would buy a present for the boy she loved.

  And he would love her back.

  36

  Can you imagine having endless time to learn?

  If you could freeze a moving car and study it for hours? Wander through a museum touching every artifact, the security guards never knowing you were there?

  That is how Dor explored our world. Using the power of the hourglass, he slowed time to suit his needs. Although he could never stop it completely—a train might move an inch in the hours he spent investigating it—he could easily hold people in place while he circulated through them, touching their coats or their shoes, trying on their eyeglasses, rubbing the clean-shaven faces of men, so different from his time, when long beards were common. These people would remember nothing of his presence, only the quickest flicker across their field of vision.

  Dor wandered the Spanish countryside this way, living days inside a moment, exploring neighborhoods, cafes, stores. He found clothes that fit his frame (he preferred the type you pulled on, as buttons and zippers perplexed him), and at one point he wandered into a low-level brick building marked PELUQUERÍA, a hair salon. He looked into a long mirror and yelled out loud.

  Only then did he realize he was seeing his reflection.

  Dor had not seen himself in six thousand years.

  He moved closer to the mirror, alongside a businessman in a high, spinning chair and a female stylist with her hands in a drawer. Dor observed the man’s reflection—blue suit, maroon tie, hair short, dark, and wet—and then he looked at his own unruly image. Despite his massive beard and flowing hair, he appeared to be younger than the businessman next to him.

  In this cave, you will not age a moment.

  I deserve no such gift.

  It is not a gift.

  He stepped back, crouched behind a count
er, and tilted the hourglass.

  Life resumed. The stylist removed scissors from the drawer and said something that made the businessman laugh. She lifted his hair and began to cut.

  Dor peeked over the counter, fascinated. She moved so adeptly, the scissors snipping, the locks of hair falling. Suddenly, someone turned on a stereo and music blasted, a thumping beat. Dor clamped his hands over his ears. He had never heard anything so loud.

  He looked up to see a fat, middle-aged woman, with her hair in plastic curlers, standing over him, staring.

  “¿Qué quiere?” she yelled.

  Dor grabbed his hourglass and she—and everyone else—slowed to a near-freeze.

  He rose, walked around the woman (her mouth still open), and went to the stylist. He took the scissors from her hand, put the blades near the bottom of his beard, and began to cut away six thousand years of hair.

  37

  “I asked you here because I want to change the rules.”

  Victor poured Jed a glass of ice water. They sat across a long table. Victor was reluctantly using the wheelchair now (his walking had grown too unsteady), and the office furniture had been rearranged for clear maneuvering.

  “Under the law, I must be legally dead before the freezing process can begin, correct?”

  “That’s right,” Jed answered.

  “But you agree—science agrees—that if the freezing could start before the heart and brain gave out, the chances of preservation would be that much better.”

  “In theory … yes.” Jed palmed the glass. He seemed leery.

  “I want to test that theory,” Victor said.

  “Mr. Delamonte—”

  “Hear me out.”

  Victor explained his plan. Dialysis was the only thing keeping him alive. The big machine that washed his blood and removed the toxins. If he stopped treatment, he would die in a short time. Days, perhaps. A week or two at most.

  “The moment I died, a doctor would confirm system failure, a coroner would confirm death, and the freezing would begin, right?”

  “Yes,” Jed said, “but—”

  “I know. We would all have to be at your site when it happened.”

  “Right.”

  “Or before it happened.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Before it happened …” He let the words sink in. “To say it already had happened.”

  “But to do that, they would have to …”

  Jed stopped. Victor jiggled his jaw. He believed the man was beginning to understand.

  “When you have a lot of money,” Victor said, “you can get people to do things.” He crossed his hands. “Nobody has to know.”

  Jed stayed quiet.

  “I’ve seen your facility. It’s pretty—don’t take this the wrong way—bare bones?”

  Jed shrugged.

  “You could use a few million dollars, no? A bequeathal from a satisfied customer?” Jed swallowed.

  “Look,” Victor said, lowering his voice to a friendlier tone. “I’ll already be near death. What difference could a few hours make?

  “And let’s be honest.” He leaned in. “Wouldn’t you like to see your chances of success improve?”

  Jed nodded.

  “So would I.”

  Victor steered his wheelchair over to his desk. He opened a drawer.

  “I’ve had my legal guys draw something up,” he said, lifting an envelope. “I’m hoping this helps you make up your mind.”

  38

  With his trimmed hair and modern clothes, Dor looked more like he belonged in this century,

  and as he studied the world, he manipulated the hourglass to allow short bursts of real-time interaction. He used these mostly for essential stepping stones—like learning the alphabet, which he accomplished in the back of an adult education language class. The alphabet led to spelling, the spelling to words, and since Father Time could already understand any tongue on Earth, his mind did the rest.

  Once he could read, all knowledge was within reach.

  He immersed himself in a library in Madrid, reading more than a third of the volumes. He read history and literature, studied maps and oversized photo books. With the hourglass turned, this took mere minutes, although in real time, decades would have passed.

  When he emerged from the library, Dor turned the hourglass again to see the night fall. He watched in awe at how electricity—which he had read about—elongated man’s waking hours. Dor had only known lighting from oil lamps or fire. Now streetlights kept towns awash in illumination, and Dor walked beneath them in their pools of yellowish-white. He stayed up all night, staring at the bulbs in utter fascination.

  In the morning, he paused the sun once again

  and wandered across the Spanish plains, along the largest river in France, and through the forests of Belgium and Germany. He saw ancient ruins and modern stadiums, explored skyscrapers, churches, shopping centers.

  Wherever he went, Dor sought out timepieces. The old man had been right. Dor may have been the world’s first time keeper, but humanity had taken his simple stick and bowl concepts and developed them into an endless array of devices.

  Dor familiarized himself with all of them. In a Düsseldorf museum on the Hutterstrasse, he took apart every antique clock in the exhibit, studying the springs and coils while the frozen security guard stood a few feet away. In a Frankfurt flea market, he found a clock radio that, when you held down buttons, allowed time to flip forward or back. Dor pressed the backward button, watching time diminish, Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday, thinking how nice it would be if he could just hold it down until he landed back home.

  You are the father of earthly time.

  Could he really be responsible for all this? Dor thought about the centuries he had been made to suffer in the cave. He wondered if every clock watcher pays some kind of price.

  Finally, Dor reached the coast.

  He came upon a lighthouse in Westerhever, Germany. He had read about lighthouses and the great North Sea. He turned his hourglass to watch the waves break. Then he turned it back.

  His education concerning the modern world was complete. Dor had spent one hundred years observing a single day.

  He listened to the wind. He heard what he needed to hear.

  “Another lifetime.”

  “Make it stop.”

  He waded into the still water.

  And began to swim.

  39

  Dor swam the Atlantic Ocean. He did it in a minute.

  When he left Germany, it was 7:02 P.M. When he reached Manhattan, it was 1:03 P.M. He had technically, on our clocks, swum back in time.

  As he churned through the water—unaffected by cold or fatigue—he let his mind wander through all he had seen and the people from his life to whom he had never said good-bye, people now gone for thousands of years. His father. His mother. His children. His beloved wife.

  Finish your journey and you will know.

  He wondered when that would be. He wondered what he had to learn. Mostly he wondered, as he crossed the ocean one stroke at a time, when he would get to die like everyone else.

  Upon reaching land, Dor pulled himself up the side of a shipping dock.

  A dockworker with a cap and thick stubble spotted him. “Hey, pal, what the hell—”

  He got no further.

  Dor turned the hourglass. He gazed up at a massive skyline and realized he was in the strangest place yet.

  New York City loomed as an unimaginable metropolis,

  even after all Dor had seen in his one hundred years of study in Europe. The buildings were taller, with barely a breathing space between them. And the people. The sheer number of them! Bunched at street corners. Spilling out of storefronts. Even with the entire city slowed by his power, Dor had trouble weaving through the bodies.

  He needed clothes, so he took pants and a black turtleneck from a shop named Bravo! He found a coat that suited him on a hanger in a Japanese restaurant.

  As he walke
d between the massive skyscrapers, he was reminded of Nim’s tower. He wondered if there were no end to man’s ambitions.

  CITY

  40

  The hands of a clock will find their way home.

  This was true the moment Dor marked his first sun shadow.

  As a child sitting in the sand, he had predicted that tomorrow would contain a moment like today, and the next day a moment like tomorrow. Every generation after Dor was determined to sharpen his concept, counting ever more precisely the measure of their lives.

  Sundials were placed in doorways. Giant water clocks were constructed in city squares. The move to mechanical designs—weight-driven, verge and foliot models—led to tower clocks and grandfather clocks and eventually clocks that fit on a shelf.

  Then a French mathematician tied a string to a timepiece, put it around his wrist, and man began to wear time on his body.

  Accuracy improved at a startling rate. Although it took until the sixteenth century for the minute hand to be invented, by the seventeenth century, the pendulum clock was accurate to within a minute a day. Less than one hundred years later, it was within a second.

  Time became an industry. Man divided the world into zones so that transportation could be accurately scheduled. Trains pulled away at precise moments; ships pushed their engines to ensure on-time arrivals.

  People awoke to clanging alarms. Businesses adhered to “hours of operation.” Every factory had a whistle. Every classroom had a clock.

  “What time is it?” became one of the world’s most common questions, found on page one of every foreign-language instruction book. What time is it? ¿Qué hora es? Skol’ko syejchas vryemyeni?

  No surprise then that when Dor, the first man to truly ask that question, reached the city of his destiny—where the voices behind “Another lifetime” and “Make it stop” wafted in the wind—he used his knowledge to secure work in the one place time would always be around him.