The departure board changed while Viktor was standing beneath it. Eleven minutes late became fourteen. A platform number disappeared. Passengers shifted their weight, looked at their phones, and began negotiating with the idea of being somewhere else.
Viktor folded the newspaper he had not been reading. “There,” he told the woman beside him, “is the problem with calendars. They encourage the belief that the future has already agreed to our plans.”
She stared at him. He returned to his notebook.
The man with the leather case
They met beside a vending machine after midnight. The second man wore a pale raincoat and carried a narrow brown leather case containing three watch movements, each carefully wrapped. He had not brought the dial, hands, or case for any of them. Viktor did not inquire about the omission until he had inspected the movements.
They were neither rare nor valuable. What interested him was the workmanship: one bridge bore the marks of a competent repair, another a screw whose slot had suffered at the hands of a careless enthusiast, and the third a tiny penciled reference on its envelope. Someone had catalogued these parts with more attention than the market would ever reward.
“You know where they came from?” Viktor asked.
“From a drawer.”
“That is not provenance.”
“It is the truth.”
A ledger with missing pages
The case also contained a small ledger. Each line recorded a date, a watch reference, and an abbreviated note about the repair. Several pages had been torn out neatly, not hurriedly. Viktor read the entries without touching the paper more than necessary. Somewhere between servicing and inheritance, the ledger had become the only reliable account of a modest workshop's labor.
He offered to photograph and return it. The man refused money. He wanted the parts identified, nothing more. They agreed to meet again when the train schedule became less imaginative.
What followed was not a secret operation. There were no disguises, no suspicious envelopes dropped beneath park benches. There was simply an old craft and an unfinished record. If one insists on glamour, most honest work will disappoint.
Time of departure
The delayed train finally arrived under a canopy of cold electric light. Viktor watched the doors open. He preferred rail travel for practical reasons: stations were legible, city centers were close, and one could read for hours without being asked to fasten a seat belt. He also appreciated the democratic nature of the timetable. Everyone was late together.
Before boarding he checked the station clock against his wristwatch. The two disagreed by seventeen seconds. He changed neither.
In the carriage, the little ledger rested beside his coffee. He turned one page, studied the handwriting, and wrote at the bottom: Not everything worth preserving is made of metal.
The train moved. The city receded. For the first time that night, there was no discussion about when he would arrive.
