The Watchmaker by Reema Cverty (universal ebook reader TXT) 📕

making me worried about being washed out to sea. My friend, Alonso, was strangely quiet and we concentrated our focus on the skinny bridge in front of us and trying not to think that the Adriatic sea was all around . I was soaking wet- my partner in misery was drenched and shivering too, his face as white as a sheet, with a ghostly gleam in his eyes, the charming , tanned Hispanic appearance and lovely smile now completely changed into a straight , expressionless face . Soon the atmosphere around became so phantasmal, that I avoided looking at my companion and tried to urge my tired legs to walk. I preferred not to think about the happenings back at the canal, specially the actions of the priest, who kept raising the cross and sprinkling us with holy water. Strange thoughts came to my mind and I kept thinking to myself, what the reason for this eldritch look on his face could be.
About two hours later, we had left most of the bridge behind and the mainland was in view. The rain continued to hit us like cold pebbles, though the storm had reduced to a breeze by now. Alonso had not exchanged a word yet. But suddenly, as if something inside had turned on a switch, his face brightened a little and he started yapping again. I was not able to understand this sudden change in him. However, I tried to appear unruffled by his dynamic demeanour. He proceeded to tell me the classic Italian story of Bertolo, in which Bertolo the court jester, managed to enrage his king and received a death penalty. However, his last wish was to choose the perfect tree on which to hang and he travelled far and wide in search of the tree at the king’s expense and of course, never found it. The way Alonso narrated this story was a full dress performance, blasted with fiery words and heartfelt facial expressions, which endeared me to him. Thereafter, I started referring to him as Bertolo and he never seemed to mind it.
I soon spotted the end of the bridge and Alonso exclaimed, “Ah! There is the mainland!” his words seemed to disguise a feeling of sadness on the thought that he would never see me again and the same feelings poked me somewhere inside my heart, so I took out a card with my name and address on it, from my bag and handed it to him. “I will stay in touch,” he promised. I saw Jack standing with an umbrella over his head and I felt and inexpressible joy on seeing him. I wanted him to meet Alonso and I ran to him immediately. The pained expression on his face slowly calmed and he returned my embrace while I kept apologizing for my defiance. Poor fellow had been standing there for a long time, waiting for me to return. I took him by his hand, in the same way that Alonso had dragged me to the station, to introduce him to Alonso, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was strange and unaccountable for him to have vanished into thin air like that, because the entrance to the bridge was almost empty and we would have seen him going. At a distance, all the lights on the bridge seemed to flicker again, the same way as it had done while we were approaching the mainland, but this time I noticed, that the order in which the lights were flickering was the opposite. A chill ran down my already cold spine.
By the time I returned to the hotel, my friends had already resumed packing our luggage and decided not to sleep, for it was already twelve and we would have to leave for the train station at one. We sat in the hall room of the hotel, surrounding an old waiter, who was always at our beck and call. We called him grandpa and he loved us too. Jack forced him to tell us of popular legends that people believed to this day. He looked up at the calendar and then at the rainy weather outside. The storm had commenced again and it provided a perfect eerie atmosphere to the room. “About two hundred years ago,” he began, “a watchmaker fell I love with a very beautiful girl, daughter of a very rich Venetian magnate. The two were terribly afraid that they would be separated if the father found out. So they eloped one night. Now this watchmaker had a Gondolier friend who used to row people across the Adriatic. He had promised to deliver them to the mainland. But in greed of some money, he turned over his friend to the girl’s father and they hammered an iron rod into his legs and hung him upside down in the watch tower by the hour hand, so that the whole clock had become red with his blood and it had stopped ticking. It was seven in the evening when that happened. All this happened in front of his beloved, and so she became unhinged and remained indoors all the time. Every year on that day, she kept returning to the canal, waiting for her lover, but he never came and so one day, after many years, she slit her throat at the canal and all the canal was drenched with her blood.” The story was interesting, or atleast the way he narrated it , made it sound good. “What happened to the gondolier?”I asked with growing interest. “Ah, the watchmaker took his soul with him one day. Every year, from then on, he would take a Gondolier’s soul along with him. Today is that day.”
There was a strange silence in the room after that. A sudden bolt of lightning made us look at the clock. All of us, secretly heaved a sigh of relief to see it was ticking and fine. No wonder the priest had told me that no gondolas were coming. ‘It is time’ finally made sense to me. The old waiter soon left us and while we decided to pick up our bags and head towards the station, one of the Esposito twins remarked, “Old thief! He copied parts from ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’, a Tennyson poem.” We broke out into laughter. I needed to wear my watch and so I asked a friend Sarah, to take my watch out of my bag and hand it to me. As she was doing this, a look of horror passed her face. She handed the watch to me and I looked at it. As soon as I did so, my head started reeling and all the walls seemed to close in. My eyes dimmed and I started to feel faint, for the dial of my watch, which was originally white, now had a hint of red and there were drops of blood on the watch. The watch was stuck at seven. I do not remember what happened after that.
When my eyes opened, I was at the Rome airport, with a bunch of medics hovering around me. I announced I would not need their help, though I was not really fine. I was running a high fever and was in shock. Eight hours later, I reached home to a very worried mother, for Jack had been wise enough to inform her I was not well but he had taken care not to inform her why. When I felt better, she sat down by my bed and I narrated to her my experience with the ghost. As I said it, I broke out into a cold sweat and started to shiver. Mother, however, reacted rather differently. She actually broke out into laughter. “Well,” she said, “I have heard of haunting and ghosts who can kill, but I have never heard of a ghost who holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics!” I was shocked. Her laughter suddenly sounded sinister; in her eyes was a look so unearthly, that I shrank back to the headboard of my bed, pulling the quilt tight around myself. She must have taken notice of the sudden change in my behavior and stopped laughing. Heading close to me she caressed my forehead. “ Fi , my darling, u need not be scared of anything.” Then looking at the watch, she answered, “Dear, I have to head to an important meeting, I have no time to explain, but if you read this letter, it will do you some good.” She kissed my forehead and went out, closing the door behind her. I took the letter in my hands and started shaking vigorously, for the letter was from the ghost himself, from Alonso. My fingers were white and I broke out into a cold sweat. Yet I seemed to be unable to stop myself from tearing open the letter and when I did, it read something like this -:
“Cara Fiona,
You see, it was rude of me to leave you without a good bye, but I had some important business to attend to. I just had to make up for it and since there was no correspondence address in Mestre, I was compelled to write to your home. I also placed a phone call to your kind mother before I wrote this. Well, we could have shared so much, if I wasn’t so afraid. You see, Venetians have an old legend which says that a wandering spirit of a woman waits for her lover by the steps of the canal to head to the mainland. Those that have seen her and been afraid have been faced with bad luck. But those who have helped her get to the mainland, despite the bad weather which generally accompanies her arrival, are faced with luck, love and money. So now you know why I helped you across! Let me confess, that I was a trifle scared when the weather worsened halfway on the bridge and I didn’t want to even look at you! However, my doubts subsided when you gave me your name and address.
Now for the real purpose of this letter. Luck has already confronted me, for I now will be holding a job in one of the most prestigious colleges of the world as a junior lecturer of aeronautical sciences; money of course comes gratis. And love? I do not know but it may come along. Well, just if you would like to know, I am going to work in your college. I have left my correspondence address with your lovely mother, do write to me if you wish to.
Love,
Bertolo”
It was funny how he had remembered to sign his name exactly the way I had liked it. And it was funny the way I picked up a pen and wrote back. Letters moved back and forth and when Bert took up a job in the university, the letters changed to lengthy walks in the park and occasional luncheons in each other’s homes. About two years later, Bert and I were happily married.
It was when I was expecting our first son, that we moved into a bigger home right next door to his parents’ home in my country. While he was busy sorting out things to be moved into the attic, his eyes seemed to catch hold of something rare and interesting, but he gave me one of his ‘trying to appear calm’ looks and went about his work. I decided not to question him anyway.
A week later, on our wedding anniversary morning, he handed me a white box with ribbons on it. I was ecstatic, wondering what the gift could be. All it had was an old purse that I had discarded years ago, however, I remembered that I had it with me during my trip to Italy. “Look what is inside it Cara!” and I opened it to receive the shock of