I.
“I can’t
pay you with money, you can choose one of those two watches.”
He had just
closed the accounting books for the watchmaker. After a short hesitation, he
picked up gold watch from the black cloth on the table and then looked at the
smaller one, lady’s golden watch of the Swiss watchmaker.
A moment
of hesitation. He then put the man’s watch on his wrist.
“Good
luck Izzy. Stay safe”
They
hugged and my grandfather left Izzy’s house and never saw him again. A few days
later, all the Jews they were able to capture were made to board the trains at central
train station.
II.
“I regret
now, that I did not pick the lady’s watch and I did not give it to your grandma…
“
I left his
last phrase hanging there in the quiet afternoon. He was smiling. This was the
moment of his grief that I witnessed and… a moment of relief.
After fourthly
tree years of marriage, the last seven spent fighting together with her the
cancer inside of her, she was now resting and he was sitting alone in the small
room where he passed away fifteen years later.
III.
“Are you
interested in the history of Freemasonry?”, the ad read.
I entered
the Grand hall of my Alma mater in my black suite, wearing a black tie. The
university professor who was delivering the speech and a small group of men in
the front row were all dressed exactly like me. The only difference was that
they all had black bow-ties instead of a tie.
Man, and
women surrounded a short large, bald, elderly man after the speech. He was
talking to them politely and competently with a slight accent. I waited patiently
until he was alone. I approached him, extended my hand introduced myself.
“Hiram…
Harry Eschua.”
“Please
call me Harry.” the man smiled to me.
“I want
to be one”, I said.
He nodded.
IV.
Harry was
one of the Holocaust survivors who was able to escape and to reach Switzerland
when he was fourteen. At fifteen, he arrived in Paris.
He worked
at the slaughterhouse Grande
Halle aux Boeufs in Paris as a boy and during his school and university years.
He sold his small antiquities shop
on The Avenue des Champs-Élysées
when he retired and, as a former Grand master of the Grand Orient of France,
took on himself “the obligation and the privilege to re-light the light of The Lodge
of Grand Orient” as he told me once, in our country of birth.
The Communist party outlawed Freemasonry and forty-five years
later, Harry returned to his home country and he re-lit the light of the Lodge and
I was one of the seven sitting on his South when this had happened.
V.
In his eighties and me in my thirties, we were saying good
bye one day in September of 2000. I was immigrating and leaving my country of
birth as he left it many years ago without knowing if he will ever come back.
Harry fished out of his pocket a something glimmering and opened
his hand. It was an old pocket watch. He held it on his big hand and looked at it
for a while.
“I sold almost everything that I had in my shop.”
“Here, I bought this Elgin many years ago.”, It was heavy and
I could feel and hear it ticking.
I left his
last phrase hanging there in the quiet afternoon. He was smiling. This was the
moment of his grief that I witnessed. We hugged and I never saw him again.
IV.
A year
ago, my daughter was tall enough to climb to a high shelf where I was keeping
the Elgin. Sometimes, I would wind it up and hold it in my hand to feel and to
listen listen to it clicking…
The shiny,
gold pocket watch got dropped one day as little hands are clumsy.
When I wind it
up the next time, the Elgin was not clicking any more. I thought of Harry and, I
said good bye to him again.
