Chapter 27: The Letter

The letter came in February, in a plain white envelope with a Portland, Oregon, postmark, and Henry opened it at the counter with the brass letter opener that was shaped like a sword, the miniature sword, and the letter was handwritten, which surprised him, because handwritten letters in 2027 were as rare as fusee clocks, were artifacts of a practice that most people had abandoned the way most people had abandoned mechanical watches — not because the practice was bad but because something faster had come along, something easier, something that required less effort and less thought and less of the particular human investment that a handwritten letter demands, the investment of choosing the paper and uncapping the pen and forming the letters with your hand, each word a physical act, each sentence a series of movements, the hand traveling across the page the way a balance wheel travels across its arc, back and forth, making marks.

Dear Mr. Osgood,

I received your letter about my mother's cuckoo clock. I apologize for the delay in responding. Your letter was forwarded several times before it reached me — I have moved since you sent it, from Portland to Bend, Oregon — and it sat in a pile of mail for some weeks before I opened it.

I was surprised to learn that the clock was still at your shop. I was more surprised to learn that you had repaired it. My mother brought that clock in for repair in 2010, which is seventeen years ago, and I had assumed it was lost or discarded long ago. When she died in 2014, my sister Mary and I settled her estate, and neither of us thought about the clock. We did not know it was at your shop. We did not know your shop existed. Our mother never mentioned it.

She mentioned the clock, though. Often. The cuckoo clock was the first thing my sister and I heard every morning when we were children. It hung in the kitchen and it called at seven o'clock and we woke up. My sister believed that all birds said cuckoo. She was confused when she first heard a robin. She was four years old and she asked our mother why the robin was broken.

Henry set the letter on the counter. He looked at the cuckoo clock on the wall, the carved Black Forest case, the little door closed, the bird inside, waiting for the next hour, waiting to emerge and call, and the clock had been calling on the hour every hour since Henry had repaired it in October, had been calling in the empty shop and in the occupied shop, had been calling at seven in the morning when Henry was upstairs and at midnight when Henry was asleep and at three in the afternoon when Marion was sitting with her tea, and the calling was the clock's purpose, was the bird's function, was the small mechanical performance that Agnes Firth's children had mistaken for nature.

He continued reading.

I would like the clock. I know this is an imposition. I know you have kept it for seventeen years and repaired it and cared for it. But the clock was my mother's and my mother is dead and my father is dead and my sister lives in Charlotte and we do not have many things from our parents' house — the house was sold, the furniture was donated, the books were given away — and the cuckoo clock is one of the few things that survived, that is still in the world, that still exists, and I would like to have it.

I will pay for the repair and for the years of storage. I will pay whatever you think is fair. And I will pay for shipping, if you are willing to ship it. I cannot easily travel to Vermont.

My mother bought the clock in Germany in 1962, on her honeymoon. My father carried it home on the plane, in his lap, from Frankfurt to Boston. This is a story my mother told many times. My father was not a man who carried things in his lap. He was a practical man, an engineer, and he would have checked the clock as luggage if my mother had not insisted. She said the clock was alive, that you cannot check a living thing as luggage, and my father carried it in his lap for eight hours and he never complained, which my mother said was the most romantic thing he ever did.

Thank you for taking care of it.

Sincerely, Leonard Firth

Henry read the letter twice. He folded it and set it on the bench and looked at the cuckoo clock and the cuckoo clock looked back with its carved wooden face and its closed door and its silent bird, and the clock was ticking, was keeping time, was doing the thing it had been made to do in the Black Forest in 1962, and the bird was inside, was waiting, was patient, was ready.

He would send the clock. He would pack it carefully, in a box within a box, with padding and protection and the particular attentiveness that you give to a thing that has traveled from the Black Forest to Boston in a man's lap and from Boston to Montpelier in a woman's arms and from Montpelier to a shelf to a wall to a box and now from Montpelier to Bend, Oregon, where a man named Leonard Firth would receive it and hang it in his kitchen and the bird would emerge at seven in the morning and call and the calling would be the same calling that had woken Leonard and his sister when they were children, the same two notes, the same descending minor third, the same small mechanical translation of a bird's voice into wood and air.

But not yet. Not today. Today Henry would sit with the letter and the clock and the morning and the knowledge that the cuckoo clock had a home, had a destination, had a person who wanted it, and the wanting was enough for now, was the promise of the sending, was the winding of the mainspring that would power the departure.

---

He told Marion at three o'clock.

"Leonard Firth wrote," he said. "He wants the cuckoo clock."

Marion looked at the wall where the cuckoo clock hung beside the schoolhouse regulator. The two clocks that had hung there since October, the austere regulator and the whimsical cuckoo, side by side, the institutional and the domestic, and Marion had grown accustomed to them, had incorporated them into her understanding of the shop the way you incorporate the furniture of a room you visit daily, the chairs and the tables and the pictures on the wall becoming part of the room's identity, and the cuckoo clock was part of the shop's identity now.

"You'll send it," she said.

"I'll send it."

"The shop will be quieter."

"The shop will still have the other clocks."

"But not the cuckoo. Not the bird. The bird was — the bird was the personality. The other clocks tick and strike and chime. The bird performs. The bird is the one that makes people smile."

Henry thought about this. Marion was right. The cuckoo clock was the clock that visitors noticed first, the clock that drew the eye and the ear, the clock that children pointed at and adults watched with the slight embarrassment of adults who are delighted by a thing they think they should have outgrown, and the bird was the performer, the entertainer, the clock that did not just tell the time but staged it, presented it, made a small theater of the hour.

"Agnes Firth's children grew up hearing it," Henry said. "Leonard's sister thought all birds said cuckoo."

"She was confused by robins."

"She was confused by robins."

Marion sipped her tea. She set the cup down. She folded her hands in her lap. She looked at her hands, and the looking was the looking of a person who is about to say something and is preparing, is organizing, is arranging the words the way a clockmaker arranges parts on a cloth, in order, in sequence.

"Henry," she said. "I'm closing the bookshop."

Henry set down his tea.

"I'm seventy-three," she said. "I've been here thirty-one years. Since 1996. I opened six months after you left for New York. Your father helped me — he helped me move the shelves in, he cut the connecting door, he told me where to put the cash register. He said the cash register should face the street so the customer sees the transaction happening and knows the shop is honest. He said transparency was the foundation of commerce, which is the most English thing anyone has ever said about a cash register."

"You're closing."

"I'm closing. Not immediately. In the spring. April, maybe. May. When the weather is warm enough to move the books out. I have — the inventory has to go somewhere. Thirty-one years of books. The ones I can sell, I'll sell. The ones I can't sell, I'll give to the library. The ones the library doesn't want, I'll — I don't know. I'll find them homes. Like your clocks."

Henry looked at the connecting door. The door that Alistair and Marion had cut in the shared wall in 1996, without permits, the door that connected the clock shop and the bookshop, the door that Marion walked through every afternoon at three with two cups of tea, the door that was the physical manifestation of the friendship between a clockmaker and a bookseller, and the door would remain — the door was in the wall, was part of the building, would be there whether Marion was on the other side or not — but the bookshop would not remain, would become something else, a different shop or an empty space or whatever the building's owner decided to do with it.

"What will you do?" Henry said.

"I'll rest. I'll read. I'll sit in my garden and drink tea and not sell anything to anyone and not talk to anyone about first editions or rare bindings or whether they have this in paperback. I'll be a retired person. A person who used to do something and now does nothing, which is the natural progression, which is the mainspring unwinding."

"You'll still come at three."

Marion looked at him. Her eyes were bright, were the eyes of a seventy-three-year-old woman who had made a decision and was at peace with it, the way a clock is at peace with its tick, not choosing it but doing it, the mechanism expressing its nature.

"I'll still come at three," she said. "If you'll have me."

"I'll have you."

"Two cups."

"Two cups."

"Through the door."

"Through the door."

She finished her tea. She picked up her cup and Alistair's cup. At the door she stopped.

"The door will still be here," she said. "Even after the bookshop is gone. The door will still be here. You can brick it up or you can leave it. I hope you leave it."

"I'll leave it."

"It's a good door. Your father and I cut it together. He held the saw and I held the chalk line. We measured three times. He said you should measure three times for a door because a door is a permanent decision and permanent decisions deserve extra measurement. And then he cut it and the plaster fell and the lath splintered and there was a hole in the wall and we could see through from one shop to the other, and he looked through the hole and I looked through the hole and he said, 'Well, that's done. Now we'll have to talk to each other every day.' And I said, 'Was that not the intention?' And he said, 'The intention was tea. The talking is a complication.'"

She smiled. Henry smiled. The two smiles were the same smile, the smile of people who are remembering a man who was funny without trying to be, who was dry and precise and English and who said things like the talking is a complication and meant it and also did not mean it, the way all the best things are meant and not meant at the same time.

Marion left. The door closed. Henry sat at the bench and looked at the connecting door and through the connecting door he could see Marion in the bookshop, moving between the shelves, touching the spines of the books, her hand trailing along the shelves the way a hand trails along a railing, the contact not for support but for connection, for the feel of the thing, for the last months of feeling the books under her fingers.

He would miss the bookshop. Not because he used it — he did not buy many books, was not a reader in the way that Marion was a reader, was a reader only of Britten's and the other horological texts and the occasional novel that Frances pressed on him — but because the bookshop was the other half of the building, was the other chamber of the heart, was the space on the other side of the door, and the space had been filled with books and with Marion and with the sound of Marion shelving and the smell of old paper and the particular quiet that exists in a room full of books, the quiet that is not empty but full, full of all the words on all the pages, the accumulated voices of every author on every shelf, speaking silently, waiting to be heard.

The door would remain. The door was the thing. The door was the connection, was the opening, was the passage between this and that, between the clock shop and whatever came next, between Alistair's friend and Henry's friend, between the past and the future, and the door was in the wall and the wall was in the building and the building was on Main Street and Main Street was in Montpelier and Montpelier was in Vermont and Vermont was in the world and the door was open and would stay open and the tea would come through it at three o'clock and the two cups would sit on the two benches and the ritual would continue because the ritual was not about the bookshop, was not about the books, was about the door and the walking through it and the carrying of the cups and the sitting and the drinking and the not-drinking and the silence and the speaking and the friendship that had survived the death of the man who had cut the hole in the wall.

Henry looked at the cuckoo clock. At the hour — four o'clock — the bird would emerge and call four times and retreat. And in the spring, the clock would be packed and sent to Bend, Oregon, and the bird would call in a different kitchen, in a different state, for a different family, and the shop would be quieter and the wall would have an empty space and the empty space would be filled, eventually, by another clock or by nothing, and both were acceptable, because the space was not the thing, the bird was not the thing, the ticking and the calling and the mechanical performance were not the thing — the thing was the keeping, the caring, the custodianship, and the custodianship could be transferred, could be shipped in a box from Vermont to Oregon, could travel the way the original clock had traveled from Germany to Boston in a man's lap, because care is portable, is not fixed to a place but attached to a person, and Leonard Firth was a person and the care was going to him.

The cuckoo called four. The bird emerged. The two notes descended. The bird retreated. The door closed.

Henry sat at the bench. He picked up his pen. He wrote:

Dear Mr. Firth,

I will send the clock. There is no charge for the repair or the storage. Your mother's clock has been part of this shop for seventeen years, and it has been a pleasure to hear it. The bird calls on the hour and it is the first thing I hear every morning at seven and the last thing I hear before I go upstairs at night.

I am packing it carefully. Please hang it in the kitchen, if you can. That is where your mother hung it, according to Marion, the woman who owned the bookshop next door. Marion remembers your mother bringing the clock to the shop. She remembers the bird.

When you wind it, use the left chain for the timekeeping and the right chain for the cuckoo. Pull each chain until you feel resistance, then stop. Wind it every day, or every other day. The bird will tell you when it needs winding — the call will become sluggish, the notes slower, and you will hear the difference, the way you hear the difference when a person is tired.

Your mother's clock is alive. She was right about that. You cannot check a living thing as luggage.

Sincerely, Henry Osgood Osgood & Son