Haldimann H9
- Mark van Vuuren (2017)
I’m holding a wristwatch I’ve spent a great deal of time admiring, and it’s taken a great deal of sacrifice working, saving, scrimping in order to finally own one. It’s named the Haldimann H9, made by contemporary Swiss master watchmaker Beat Haldimann. It’s a manual-wind, triple-barrel flying tourbillion, in a solid platinum case. For me it’s the best movement ever made, and satisfies the dreams of early watch pioneers like Tompion, Harrison, and Breguet.
The watch glass is a totally
opaque, black sapphire crystal. Totally opaque.
It keeps time, but it doesn’t tell
time. Allow me to explain.
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When we were young we had it
hard. The world was different then; we lived in a shack on a plot, working the
land, and my father and oldest brother worked in the coal mine. I recall cold,
dark mornings, the warmth of the kitchen stove, inconstant meals, and hard work.
Always hard work.
Work meant money, and money meant
food. One had to work. So every night, as my feet got used to the icy bed sheets,
I would wind the old alarm clock, pull out the alarm pin, and then check again it
had been pulled out. And check again just before putting out the candle.
When the early morning came too
soon, my alarm clock rang, other alarm clocks rang and slowly the household ebbed
into life. At 5:30 my mother started the kitchen fire, and began preparing breakfast.
At 6:30 my father and oldest brother left for the mine, and at 7:00 my second oldest brother left for the
fields. Every second month my sister would leave for the main farmhouse at 5:00
to milk the cows. I was the youngest, the only one to go to school, so I was
the family’s Hope for the Future, and
also secretly resented since hard labour was not my lot, even though all my
free time was drowned in chores. The schoolbell rang at 8:00, and rang again at
2:00, the close of school. At 5:00 the family would start arriving home, and at
6:00 my father and oldest brother came home. I remember this time well because
the house mood would change: They were tired, dirty and angry, and needed their
solitude. We ate at 7:30, and at 8:30 started retiring. Sleep, labour, eat;
repeat.
On Friday evenings the pay-packets
for the week were lumped on the table and apportioned. We then ate supper after
which my father and my brothers would go to the local pub, which served the
last round at 10:00. Sunday mornings we’d sleep late, requiring to be seated in
the church only at 9:00.
When I was a young adult I was
fortunate to work in an office, where work started at 8:30; tea-time was at
10:30, lunch from 1:00 to 2:00. We left at 5:00. When there was overtime work
we grabbed it eagerly, limited to 5 hours a week, then home, relying on a
regular bus service.
When promotion came, more responsibilities
came my way, and time management became imperative. Staff meeting at 9:00,
manager meeting at 10:00, labour disputes at 2:00, production review at 3:00.
The day became a cacophony of time-controlled boxes, each with a different purpose and
demand, each with a different feeling.
I remember it quite clearly: It
was the first Saturday after payday. The dance was at 8:00; we met at 9:00. It
was serendipitous, she later explained, as she had intended to go to another
dance but the directions got mixed up. For the next few months I knew the bus
timetable to and from her house by heart, and I saw her as often and for as
long as I could, restricted by the last bus of the evening, restricted by
knowing I had 7 non-negotiable hours of sleep to respect, for work meant money,
and money meant food.
One night I missed the last bus
and walked home, and at midnight, stopping to catch my breath, it dawned on me:
I was in love like I had never been before, and the world was magnificent. We
married at 3:00 in the local church where my father and oldest brother were
buried, and a year later, just after 3:30 in the morning after a difficult
birth, my firstborn announced his arrival.
Promotion time again and I became
a consultant, offering various services across departments and divisions,
filling in a timesheet, getting paid according to the intellectual value I
transferred within a set time. Where time was not billed, money was lost.
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Homelife and a family was
something completely new to me. I had the responsibility of our baby son from
midnight to 6:00, welcoming the early hours with a sense of positive purpose
against the memory of my youth. My parents sacrificed their freedom when they
had children, and committed themselves to a life of slavery to support us. We,
the children, had a difficult upbringing balancing small pockets of gratitude
and humanity against a hard life and wanting love from exhausted parents. Now a
great deal of that was gone. The promise of a better life, a better humanity
was becoming evident. There was now time each day in which to purposefully create
joy. Times were set for rising, meals and bathing, but also for joy and
laughter, which was a pleasant change from a commitment to sleep or labour. If
only my parents were alive to see this.
It was at 3:00 when the phone
rang, and that same night at 10:00 he was pronounced dead. The funeral service
was at 9:00.
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On reflection, my son’s early
death hit me rather hard. I had hoped for, anticipated, a fulfilling childhood
for him, one I never had, and wanted to enjoy his fuller life with him. I had
plans, savings, ideas for adventures and experiences that culminated into
something worthy, something contrary to a labour-filled existence that had
filled so much of my own life. From living memory, my grandfather and father
had worked in a mine; this was the first generation in our family to afford
free time; this death felt wrongful. I wondered aloud, “Was his death a
punishment, or did this slip through cruel fate’s fingers?”
I stared at the mantle clock,
specifically at the 10, and felt that that hour would always represent tragedy
for me. Actually, every hour, every minute on the clock held a life experience
for me: I was born at 4:00 in the morning; my sister went to work at 5:00, the
kitchen fire started each morning at 5:30, at 6:30 my father and oldest brother
left for the mine. At 8:00 the schoolbell rang; it was at 9:00 when the mine
caved in. At 10:10 my mother aborted the twins. At 2:00 the schoolbell rang
again, at 2:35 my second-oldest brother died in a wheat harvester accident. At
2:45 my father and oldest brother were buried. At 3:00 I married my wife, at
3:30 my mother drowned, her body never to be recovered. At 5:00 office hours
ended, we ate at 7:30 and started retiring at 8:30. At 10:00 that evening he
was pronounced dead.
There it was, my entire life,
summarized, on a circular dial. I imagined streaks of light, of various colours
and intensities, representing my life experiences hurtle towards the clock face, directed specifically to the hour and
minute of its experience. The room filled with light lines travelling to the dial, and as I recalled more
of my life the room lit up even brighter.
Then, I recalled my wife’s
experiences. These, too, became light beams of various colours and intensities
heading to the clock face to be represented. Two overly bright red beams stood
out from the rest, heading to the 8 and the 9. The dance was at 8:00, we met at
9:00. This was our meeting place, and our hearts’ meeting; sweet, wonderful
serendipity … Wait! She didn’t have to be there, she said she got the addresses
mixed up.
The room went dark, and the
bright cacophony of light beams was replaced with a cold silence and then a
cruel message came to me: Time was present at all the elating, mundane, and
destructive moments that defined each moment of our lives. Thousands upon
thousands of variables randomly clashed each day, each moment, and we
interpreted and reacted randomly to each. It was mere chance that I was born, in that moment, into a serf
household, mere chance I had that job, and went to that dance. The room was
dark; I could hardly make out the clock face, when suddenly a white light beam
shot from the 4 into the room. I was born at 4:00; then another light
beam shot from the 5, then the 6, and continued round the face, emanating from
each hour, and once it returned to the 4 it continued, now coming out at each
passing minute. These were my multiple lives, each filled with diverse values, each
subject to chance.
“But I love her!” I cried
out, and a golden beam shot from the 12; it was midnight when I
recognised I had fallen in love, and slowly additional golden beams of light
traversed the clock face, for each moment I would fall in love in each of the
other lives I could have lived.
“I loved my son!” I
shouted in anger. Just after 3:30 on the clock face a green light shone forth,
and again, steadily, other points of green light shone into the room, each the
first-born child of each life that chance offered. Again it was dark, a cold silent
darkness, and the cruel message concluded: From the time of your birth, each
life experience that shapes your multiple lives, each is real, serendipitous,
each insignificant.
In defiance I held the whisky tumbler
high in the air and drunkenly shouted, “I am not insignificant! We are not
insignificant!” The glass cracked in my hand, the cold whisky mixed with a
small trail of blood ran down my wrist, down my arm. I felt my strength
returning. I brought my arm down, smashed it through the glass side-table and
roared even louder, “We are not insignificant!” I half lay, half sat in
the chair, crazy-eyed, sobbing. Only 3 grey lights emanated from the dial now,
when my son died, when the mine caved in, and when my mother drowned. Then
other grey lights popped up and started filling the room, each from a point in
time my other lives would suffer death, and I knew it to be true.
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When that happens, well, some of
us recover and try, try again, to create order of the universe. I couldn’t; I
didn’t. It was a few months later that I returned home, then back to the
office. The bosses were nice about it, and all the wall clocks and desk clocks
were removed from the department. It’s hard going.
I sit here now, at peace, whisky
in one shaky hand, in the other I hold my Haldimann. It keeps time, but it
doesn’t tell time.
-End-
