He owed his reputation
to the enormous wall clock he constantly carried under his arm. At first, those
who saw him thought he was joking, or at least that he was simply moving the
clock from one place to another. But as the days passed, it became clear that
things were not at all as they appeared. Every morning he left his house with
the clock under his arm, walked to every corner of the school with it, entered
classrooms with it, placed it on the table before meetings and occasionally
pretended to clean it, navigated the cafeteria with difficulty but confidently
— a clock in one hand, a food tray in the other — and he never parted with his
clock even when going to the bathroom. In the evenings, he would tuck the clock
back under his arm and head home, books in one hand, dinner in the other.
Students had no
trouble getting used to this surprising sight, because the clock-carrying
teacher posed no threat to them. On the contrary, the whole thing could be
considered a source of entertainment. In the early days, whenever students saw
the teacher, they would pester him with remarks like "Sir, what time is
it?" or "Excuse me, your hour hand has fallen off,"
but in time they grew accustomed to the normalcy of the situation. Besides, the
teacher who walked around with a clock had no other particularly noteworthy
qualities. The clock's effect — spreading like a contagious disease — had not
changed the fact that the teacher was a beloved and respected person.
At first, the other
teachers could do nothing but laugh helplessly. Because no one could bring
themselves to ask this teacher why he constantly carried such a large clock.
Eventually, when students couldn't remember the teacher's name, they would
describe him as "You know — the one with the clock!" The name
suited him so well that the other teachers and school administrators quickly
adopted "the clock teacher" as well. Since the teacher also attended
district-wide meetings with his clock, he soon began attracting attention
beyond the school. On the day the district governor came to visit the school
and stepped into his classroom for an inspection, he was met with the following
unusual scene: when a student arrived late to class, the clock teacher first
asked for the time. Upon determining that the student's watch was behind his
own large clock, he set the student's watch forward to match his. Without
asking any further questions, without allowing the student to
fabricate excuses to defend himself, without even bothering to warn him not to
be late again, he simply continued the lesson from where he had left off.
The governor watched
all of this in astonishment, and at the end of class called the teacher over
and asked the meaning of what he had witnessed. The teacher replied with two
simple sentences: "The student's watch was running behind, so I
corrected it. Isn’t it our duty as teachers to correct what is wrong?"
And he said no more.
From that day on, no
one asked questions about the clock, nor made jokes about it. The clock had
become a part of the school. Perhaps because students now faced the same
question every time they arrived late after the clock teacher appeared, —
whether out of a little shame or a desire to flee the image of a "great
witness" that the sheer size of the clock conjured — they began arriving
to class exactly on time. The school principal, who had never started a single
meeting on time in his life, now felt ashamed under the gaze of the great clock
— a gaze that seemed to say "You're late again, sir!" — and
had begun making efforts to start meetings on time and finish them as close to
the promised hour as possible. The cooks and other staff who worked at the
school became unable to work without a clock as their guide. Meals were not
served before their time; the cafeteria was thus occupied only during set
hours. The maintenance workers began driving hard bargains over the phone for
supplies and equipment to be brought in from outside. If purchased materials
were not delivered exactly on time, they resorted to threatening the supplier
companies with paying as little as half the agreed price. Among those who
benefited most from all this were the teachers responsible for discipline.
Complaints had decreased visibly compared to the start of the school year, dropping
to a level that could almost be considered nonexistent. Everyone at school was
debating punctuality; those who used to arrive late to their appointments were
now exactly where they needed to be, on time. The presence of the clock was
spreading through every corner of the school — slowly, but with lasting force,
like tea diffusing through hot water. People had suddenly found an impartial
witness to the disputes among themselves. No one any longer recalled that,
before the clock had entered their lives, mutual tardiness had been met with
tolerance. In the past, even when someone arrived half an hour late to a
meeting, people would consider it trivial and carry on as though nothing had
happened. While people had once worn their watches merely as flashy
accessories, now that the great clock had become a part of their lives, the
colorful and showy bracelets on their wrists had transformed into small bosses
who held sway over them, taking orders only from one great authority. All the
other clocks in the school began falling under the dominion of this great
clock, and every clock that adjusted its hour and minute hands to match it
declared its submission to this irresistible force through the language of its
posture.
Shortly thereafter,
the lion emblem on the school's crest was removed and replaced with the image
of a clock. The school's official seal had taken the form of a simple figure —
its hands made of two pen strokes — with the inscription beneath it reading: "Punctuality
is respect for humanity." Many teachers began using the date the Great Clock had appeared as a historical reference point when speaking of the past.
Phrases like "My first son was born six months after the clock
appeared" or "In the first quarter of our second year with the
clock, he walked around school with his arm in a cast the whole time"
became common phrases and were eventually standardized by the school
principal. After a rule was introduced requiring a single clock to be used in
all sporting competitions, the clock became a referee who could validate a goal
scored in the final minute of a football match, or an inspector who could prove
that the principal's tennis matches did not last more than three hours, as he
himself claimed. These changes at the school were naturally observed from the
outside with a mixture of wonder and satisfaction. So much so that at the end
of the second year with the clock, the school was named the most punctual
school in the province. Everyone knew that such an award category had been
created solely for them, and yet this did not stop the wild celebrations that
took place — within the limits the great clock permitted, of course. Fires were
lit in the school courtyard; a photograph of the great clock taken at ten to
two was hung everywhere. When the celebrations were brought to a close near ten
o'clock in the evening at the clock's insistence, people rubbed their
alcohol-blurred eyes, set their wrist watches one final time, and went home. No
one yet knew of the miracle that would take place the following morning.
That day, classes began
as usual and ended as usual. Students, with the habit two years had ingrained
in them, were in their classrooms exactly on time; the teacher had ended the
lesson at the moment his clock told him it was time to go. No one would have
noticed that, just as the clock teacher was leaving the classroom, a
repairman's apprentice — who had clearly never heard of the great clock — had
suddenly burst in while fleeing a giant hornet chasing him, and collided with
the teacher, had they not heard the crash that followed the clock's fall to the
floor and its shattering. Yes, the clock had fallen and broken. Shards of
glass, pieces of spring, and tiny gears now littered the floor. The hour and
minute hands had parted for the first time in a long while and scattered to
different parts of the classroom, at a distance where they could not see each
other. A great silence filled the room — a silence more disturbing, more
maddening, more garrulous than even the most violent noise. It was clear this
silence would not last long. The clock teacher was seen inside the school
without his clock for the very first time. As if concealing the anger on his
face, he immediately picked up a broom and began sweeping. The students rushed
to help when they saw their teacher holding a broom. Within a few minutes, all
the pieces of the clock had been consigned to the wastebasket. The teacher left
the classroom in quick strides. Without the clock, the students were at a loss
for a while as to what to do. So, what would happen now? The clock was broken —
would there no longer be a "Mister Time" roaming the school
with his enormous clock? Or would he go down to town today and buy a new one?
The teacher came to
school the next day without a clock — and late. And not just him. The whole
school was late. The principal moved the morning meeting to the evening without
giving any reason, and announced this change of plan after the original meeting
time had already passed. In the cafeteria, food began being served half an hour
early. The cleaners swept and mopped at random hours. Students either didn't
come to school that day or arrived late. And those who did arrive late, not
knowing what to do in a place without a clock, first tampered with the settings
of their own wristwatches, then wandered aimlessly around the school grounds —
up and down, left and right — like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. It was
as though everyone had woken from a long sleep. What kind of dream was this that had lasted a full two years? How could a school that had been ruled by a
strange order for two full years change so suddenly, so quickly? The clock had
broken, and everything had at once been condemned to clocklessness. For all
this time, the people who had never asked what the clock meant now spent not a
single second reflecting on this sudden change either. The chaos lasted a few
days, but in the end gave way to an equilibrium that was worse than what had been
before. A few people brought up the old days and dared to mention the
"great clock," but were accused by the others of bringing back
memories of those terrible times — even of being reactionary. Life drifted on
as it had two years prior. At the end of that period, the clock teacher — his
name had not changed after the clock broke — requested a transfer and left for
another school in the north. The clock on the school's emblem remained just as
it was. But in a school full of people who asked no questions and considered
examining the past unnecessary or even a betrayal, one year later no one could
remember why the image of a clock had been placed on the emblem at all.
Ali Riza Arican - August,
2001 / Klaeng, Thailand
