Speaker 1: The village first appeared to me like a clockmaker's fantasy.
Speaker 1: It was late spring when I stepped off the bus,
Speaker 1: a retired school teacher in search of quiet order, the
Speaker 1: kind of peace one finds between the tick and tok
Speaker 1: of trivial days. I'd pictured, on my best days, a
Speaker 1: month of simple meals, lake air, and perhaps a good
Speaker 1: book finished beneath the near silence of Linden leaves. In
Speaker 1: the time since my old class rooms blackboard had been
Speaker 1: scrubbed clean behind me, I'd learned to find meaning in routines, predictable, sensible,
Speaker 1: regulated by bells or calendars. The village, by lackd'or ay,
Speaker 1: advertised as timeless, invited something else, the hope of contentment
Speaker 1: without surprise. From the start, everything ran with peculiar precision here,
Speaker 1: a quality I only half expected from the far edge
Speaker 1: of rural France. My pension overlooked the square, anchored by
Speaker 1: its improbable clock tower. Each morning's chime drew fishermen across
Speaker 1: the loose stones, and by the second bell heads appeared
Speaker 1: in bakery windows or on bicycles streaming toward the lake.
Speaker 1: My hostess M. M. E. Rue, arranged breakfast at seven
Speaker 1: sharp By my second morning, I could measure time by
Speaker 1: her footsteps on the stairs. Soon I adopted my own rituals.
Speaker 1: A stroll from the pension's creaking gait to the linden
Speaker 1: tree in the square. A second coffee on the porch
Speaker 1: as carts rolled through fog. A notebook at my elbow,
Speaker 1: listing the day's unhurried tasks. I liked this minor choreography.
Speaker 1: It seemed to me a village built for some one
Speaker 1: who understood, as I did, the satisfaction in living by
Speaker 1: a schedule tight enough to soothe, loose enough to breathe.
Speaker 1: I noticed, though, that schedules here held a strangely uniform gravity.
Speaker 1: People nodded greetings at precisely the corner where the postman's
Speaker 1: bicycle clicked past. The bells never more than a few
Speaker 1: minutes delayed, called shifts instead of hours. Baker's had it
Speaker 1: out loaves the minute the morning bell faded, and Butcher's
Speaker 1: wheeled out specials as soon as the second chime sounded.
Speaker 1: The market set up each Thursday with uncanny punctuality. Even
Speaker 1: the fishermen seemed to glide in from the lake at
Speaker 1: precisely the same moment each afternoon sun glancing off their
Speaker 1: nets as if in concert with invisible signals. It's a
Speaker 1: sort of choreography, I wrote home to my sister. Nothing
Speaker 1: out of place, no sense of rush or error, she replied,
Speaker 1: don't get spoiled. One particular morning, when the Linden leaves
Speaker 1: began to throw mottled shadows over my book, I found
Speaker 1: myself idly anticipating the noon bell. The plan was simple,
Speaker 1: closed the last page at the chime, they make my
Speaker 1: way to Fornia's Bakery, where I'd spied a tray of
Speaker 1: apricot tartlets waiting behind the glass counter. I had already
Speaker 1: begun to fold my page corner half way to the
Speaker 1: bakery in my mind. When the clock tour's long hand
Speaker 1: approached twelve, the square was as quiet as a painted scene.
Speaker 1: I waited for the music of the bells, expecting perhaps
Speaker 1: a long appeal to admit mid day's arrival. Instead, the
Speaker 1: clock performed an odd gestural trick. The minute hand hovered
Speaker 1: at the cusp, shivered delicately and swept across, but the
Speaker 1: hour hand pointed not to twelve, but to eleven, or
Speaker 1: so it seemed a heart beat later, it jumped again
Speaker 1: landing with conviction at one below on the street. No
Speaker 1: one looked up, no bell rang, no doors swung open,
Speaker 1: No laughter or foot traffic signaled a lunch hour. The
Speaker 1: light around me felt, though I cannot say how, sharper,
Speaker 1: somehow thinner, as if the sun were momentarily twice as
Speaker 1: high but less golden than before. The moment was everything
Speaker 1: and nothing a minor lapse. I checked my wrist watch,
Speaker 1: tapping the glass fretfully, it too had slipped to one o'clock,
Speaker 1: as if no noon had ever intervened. I made my
Speaker 1: way to Fawnia's bakery, tartlet plan intact but unsettled. The
Speaker 1: bell above his door tinkled. Fornia himself, a soft spoken,
Speaker 1: broad shouldered man, greeted me with his usual a laws.
Speaker 1: When I mentioned uncertainly that I must have lost track
Speaker 1: of time one already, I said, glancing at a second
Speaker 1: clock above his counter, which confirmed it. You must have
Speaker 1: lost yourself in the sun, madame, he said, smiling, happens here.
Speaker 1: The square is peaceful in the mornings. I tried to
Speaker 1: laugh it off. I was sure I heard the clock
Speaker 1: strike eleven. Then well, never mind, He only nodded, sliding
Speaker 1: a tartlet across the counter. It's good not to be
Speaker 1: too careful of ours. But the rest of the afternoon,
Speaker 1: a question quietly pulsed in the space between tasks. Had
Speaker 1: I really lost an hour nearly two to reading under
Speaker 1: a tree? Why did it feel in the marrow of
Speaker 1: memory that something had been neatly edited out? That evening
Speaker 1: in my small bedroom, I checked the travel alarm i'd
Speaker 1: packed it, claimed flatly that lunch time had already passed.
Speaker 1: My book, which I remembered closing just before the noon chime,
Speaker 1: was marked exactly where my morning reading had ended. The
Speaker 1: day's light stretched on, as if longing for a revelation
Speaker 1: that never came. I slept lightly, half hoping for a
Speaker 1: dream that would anchor the missing hour. But when morning
Speaker 1: returned only the shadow of curiosity remained, thinner, but growing
Speaker 1: brighter by the hour. The days in the village creased
Speaker 1: together with a familiar elegance, as if sown by an
Speaker 1: invisible hand. The lake, glassy as polished pewter in the mornings,
Speaker 1: mirrored every shift in sky. Chalets buttoned with overflowing flower
Speaker 1: boxes circled the central square lanes, the color of old
Speaker 1: parchment wrapped past ancient stone work, and occasionally left me
Speaker 1: doubting the century. The heart of the town, stubbornly loyal
Speaker 1: to its clock tower, thumped out the day in hourly parcels.
Speaker 1: Rhythm ruled everything. Bells were the bones of the village.
Speaker 1: The deep triple peel at dawn signaled the baker's and
Speaker 1: me by osmosis. A single afternoon chime prompted a parade
Speaker 1: of dusky tractors. Sunset's slow toll emptied the streets for
Speaker 1: supper and evening rounds. Even the air seemed to walk
Speaker 1: in rhythm, cool and unhurried. After decades of training, I
Speaker 1: quickly learned the cast of key faces Thornia. The baker,
Speaker 1: with soot on his wrists and a thoughtful pause between sentences. M. M. E. Rue,
Speaker 1: sharp eyed and gently fussy, ruled my pension like a
Speaker 1: retired admiral. Sister Colette, brisk parish priest with an appetite
Speaker 1: for subtle gossip, walked her circuit through the alley's insensible
Speaker 1: shoes a lane. A pale, watchful schoolboy, forever sketching crows
Speaker 1: in his note book, kicked stones along my route to
Speaker 1: the square. Each afternoon, Doctor Cotton The town nurse wore
Speaker 1: a skepticism like a scarf, always slightly askew, dispensing advice
Speaker 1: and tea in equal parts. Life here was attentive. Meals
Speaker 1: arrived with punctuality, The market measured out its business towards
Speaker 1: the shuttered hours of siesta. And yet for all the regularity,
Speaker 1: the village lacked the headlong business that I'd known in
Speaker 1: the cities, a sort of patient anticipation even in its
Speaker 1: smallest routines. Missing, too was the rush one expects of
Speaker 1: hungry crowds. At midday lunches seemed to happen, but never
Speaker 1: alongside any visible rush. The square transitioned from late morning
Speaker 1: chatter to gentle, postprandial quiet, without the familiar violence of
Speaker 1: a noon bell. There were tourists, an English couple who
Speaker 1: claimed to know all the best Swiss chocolate stops and
Speaker 1: occasionally joined me for coffee. A young family from Lion,
Speaker 1: tireless in their pursuit of perfect vacation photographs, a solitary
Speaker 1: painter who obsessively sketched the squares changing colors. Most like me,
Speaker 1: drifted content to let the hours slip over us. Their
Speaker 1: watches oddly kept the same time as mine, accurate in
Speaker 1: the mores and evenings, but curiously imprecise as daytime reached
Speaker 1: its peak. The sun's path over the village presented an
Speaker 1: almost ceremonial sequence of light. I traced its angles with
Speaker 1: pleasure each day, making mental notes when the barn roofs
Speaker 1: caught fire at nine, when the lake began to throw
Speaker 1: sparks just before the market closed. Yet the threshold of
Speaker 1: noon always passed unherlded. Villagers themselves seemed unfazed if asked
Speaker 1: about the schedule for the day. Times were always before
Speaker 1: or after midday. We'll start as the bell's end, or
Speaker 1: after the lunch rest. Perhaps never never did any one
Speaker 1: reference twelve directly. The English couple, for whom punctuality was
Speaker 1: both a point of pride and private sport, found their
Speaker 1: election for a town lunch at noon sharp thwarted. We
Speaker 1: wandered in circles, didn't we, The husband told me, laughing
Speaker 1: at their confusion over mismatched clocks. But I must say,
Speaker 1: it's nice not to feel behind. For once I recognized
Speaker 1: their tone, but with a pinch of disquiet. For me,
Speaker 1: alert as I was to the comfort of routines, the
Speaker 1: village's sense of order was soothing and yet a steadily
Speaker 1: growing anomaly. How did a place so precise in everything
Speaker 1: else fail to mark its own midpoint? Why did my
Speaker 1: own sense of time begin to fray as mid day approached?
Speaker 1: And why was the missing hour, if it could be named,
Speaker 1: so completely accepted or unnoticed by all around me. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just absent. It seemed woven into the way the
Speaker 1: town regarded itself, a kind of private grammar in which
Speaker 1: one word had been quietly erased some time in my
Speaker 1: second week. With curiosity swelling in the absence of alarm,
Speaker 1: I resolved to approach the matter directly. It is an
Speaker 1: old teacher's habit to test, to schedule, to measure. I
Speaker 1: made a plan at the cafe on the north side
Speaker 1: of the square. I arranged to meet Elane's mother for lunch.
Speaker 1: I had tutored a Lane in a little French and mathematics.
Speaker 1: His mother kindly had promised to treat me to a
Speaker 1: rustic country meal just afternoon. I prepared for the day
Speaker 1: as if I were a detective in some gentle clockwork mystery,
Speaker 1: packing my wrist watch, a spare travel alarm, freshly wound
Speaker 1: the night before, and a small spiral notebook. I arrived
Speaker 1: early eleven fifty by the cafe's brass clock, which was
Speaker 1: visible from every seat on the terrace. The square bustled gently,
Speaker 1: pensioners read their papers with coffee. A pair of boys
Speaker 1: chased a ball near the bell tower steps. I ordered
Speaker 1: espresso for myself, scribbled down the time, and marked the
Speaker 1: cafe clock and both my own devices for reference. Elaine's
Speaker 1: mother arrived a few minutes later, and we chatted lightly.
Speaker 1: I found my focus flitting between our conversation and the
Speaker 1: three time keepers, my own small test to ensure that
Speaker 1: at least one of them would strike twelve, or stand
Speaker 1: as witness to what would happen next. Deftly, as the
Speaker 1: hands hovered at eleven fifty eight, I began to glow
Speaker 1: lance upward every few seconds, keen to catch the visible transition,
Speaker 1: the sound, the sudden logic of noon's arrival. Below us,
Speaker 1: A waiter cleared plates at the next table, Distant bells
Speaker 1: I thought would soon ring out. Instead, I lifted my
Speaker 1: cup half, watching the brass clock's minute hand tremble at
Speaker 1: the mark, expecting it to announce the hour. I remember
Speaker 1: blinking the moment held a hasty clarity, like stepping onto
Speaker 1: a mist stare. Somewhere, a single chime echoed. I snapped
Speaker 1: my gaze at the clock and found unreasonably that the
Speaker 1: hands had leapt. The clock read one zero two. My plate,
Speaker 1: startlingly clean, reflected the pale sky. My notebook lay closed,
Speaker 1: pen capped. I had no memory of lunch, of food
Speaker 1: being set on the table, of conversation, of anything at
Speaker 1: all bridging those two hours. Elaine's mother lifted her coffee cup,
Speaker 1: seemingly untouched by any confusion. Will you want deserters, usual,
Speaker 1: asked M M. E. Rue, who swept over with a
Speaker 1: tray of almond biscuits. Her tone was cheerful, ordinary. I faltered,
Speaker 1: Did we have lunch? M M. E. Rue smiled, glancing
Speaker 1: to Elaine's mother. Why, yes, I just cleared your plates.
Speaker 1: You always take your time. I hesitated, caught by the
Speaker 1: hazy conviction that something vital, some experience, some center, had
Speaker 1: siphoned off, leaving a seamless surface behind, as if my
Speaker 1: memory had skipped a stone instead of touching water. I
Speaker 1: paid careful to note the time on my receipt. It
Speaker 1: claimed my meal had ended a quarter past one. I
Speaker 1: searched Elaine's mother's expression for any ripple of confusion, but
Speaker 1: she seemed only content. That night, I recorded every detail
Speaker 1: I could recall, which was scant enough to write on
Speaker 1: a single page. I began to doubt my own senses.
Speaker 1: But something in the day's gap itched at me a
Speaker 1: question no longer soluble by attention. What became of noon
Speaker 1: memory at fault? Or was the world, as it sometimes
Speaker 1: privately suggested, hosts a more industrious and elusive kind of
Speaker 1: strangeness than I had yet encountered when it comes to time,
Speaker 1: I am not unthinking. My life in the class room
Speaker 1: had run on bells and lessened blocks. I am not
Speaker 1: someone who carelessly loses an hour, not twice in a row.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I awoke with the distinct purpose of
Speaker 1: eliminating any suspicion that distraction or mere inattention could explain
Speaker 1: the vanishing hour. I selected the painter, a lonely careful
Speaker 1: woman named Isa Bel, as my next collaborator. Isa Bell,
Speaker 1: for her part, kept meticulous sketchbook records, each drawing dated,
Speaker 1: each cloud numbered with lazy precision. We arranged to meet
Speaker 1: at the Linden Tree at eleven forty five. I brought
Speaker 1: my travel alarm, now set with three alarms, one for noon,
Speaker 1: one for twelve ten, one for twelve twenty. She arrived
Speaker 1: with her sketch, water colors and a compact digital camera,
Speaker 1: still shiny with novelty. We settled on a bench. I
Speaker 1: set the alarm on the table where we could both
Speaker 1: see it, announced our intent to capture the elusive noon,
Speaker 1: and even made her promise to sketch the very instant
Speaker 1: the bell chimed. We waited, alternately chatting and glancing at
Speaker 1: our instruments, like two scientists at a field study. At
Speaker 1: eleven fifty seven, Isabelle snapped a photograph of the square
Speaker 1: children playing a woman bicycling past the war memorial. The
Speaker 1: painter dipped her brush, ready to render the subtle change
Speaker 1: in light. Somewhere in the fifth minute, I found myself
Speaker 1: frowning at the alarm. No bell. My phone vibrated. I glanced,
Speaker 1: and it was just after one. The painter's pencil hovered
Speaker 1: above an outline she did not remember tracing. She blinked
Speaker 1: and shook her hands, frowning. I must have drifted, but
Speaker 1: look my photo. We checked. Her last shot was time
Speaker 1: stamped to eleven fifty eight piatzare full of color and possibility.
Speaker 1: The next, taken reflexively after our awakening, read one zero
Speaker 1: three shadows stretched people wandering home the intervening space like
Speaker 1: the hour itself was gone. We compared notes, both embarrassed
Speaker 1: but honest. Isabel laughed too loudly, her sketch books suddenly
Speaker 1: less authoritative. The sun must be stronger than I thought,
Speaker 1: she said, but after a long pause she closed the
Speaker 1: page as though it bit her. My next attempt was
Speaker 1: in the company of Hugh and Miriam, the English couple.
Speaker 1: They installed their phones with atomic clock apps, set alarms,
Speaker 1: and took photographs with a giddiness bordering on rivalry. At
Speaker 1: half eleven, all was ready, alarms set, digital times displayed
Speaker 1: a self timed group photo. As before reality buckled. Where
Speaker 1: there should have been dozens of photos, there were only
Speaker 1: two eleven fifty eight. The group grinning one zero one
Speaker 1: three faces suddenly flushed ice cream, half melted. My own
Speaker 1: heirline damp as if I had run no memory of
Speaker 1: the intervening time. Alarms had failed to sound. Time, it seemed,
Speaker 1: had politely erased itself from beneath our attention. Bemused, Hugh shrugged.
Speaker 1: It's the mountain air, I suppose forgives all lapses. Miriam laughed,
Speaker 1: but neither checked their devices again that day. The gap
Speaker 1: for them became a vocation oddity, a triviality in a
Speaker 1: list of minor inconveniences. By then, my bewilderment felt lonely.
Speaker 1: I took to the church square with my tools, a
Speaker 1: note book, my alarm, and my own sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: I sat beneath the stone sun dial by the chapel,
Speaker 1: waiting for the sun's zenith, pen poised to document every minute.
Speaker 1: The dial, ancient with Roman numerals carved along the edge,
Speaker 1: presented a new contradiction. After EXI came I a seamless
Speaker 1: stretch of stone, where at XII there was only the
Speaker 1: bare suggestion of an unbroken curve. Now I approached Sister Colette,
Speaker 1: hoping for a gentle explanation. Seated on a bench, her
Speaker 1: silver hair catching son, she closed her prayer book and
Speaker 1: listened as I described the phenomenon. Some hours are made
Speaker 1: for silence, she said, her plain face untroubled. Perhaps noon
Speaker 1: is one of them. I pressed gently, But the clock,
Speaker 1: the sun dial, no record, no memory. Surely there's a
Speaker 1: story she nodded, considering the stories we keep are like hours,
Speaker 1: some vanish, some are retold. Our lives are made in
Speaker 1: the before and after. I wasn't sure whether to feel
Speaker 1: comforted or dismissed. I noted, however, the ease with which
Speaker 1: she sidestepped the directness of my inquiry. Seeking more concrete evidence,
Speaker 1: I visited the public notice board, market schedules, church mass notices,
Speaker 1: bus listings. Not one referenced noon mass before midday, buses
Speaker 1: departing after twelve. I checked every posted event for a week,
Speaker 1: always the same. Not a single appointment claimed the heart
Speaker 1: of the day. I tried doctor Cotton next, approaching her
Speaker 1: in her corner office. She was measuring blood pressure for
Speaker 1: an elderly farmer, but paused to entertain my question. You
Speaker 1: know I have a theory, she said, half smiling. If
Speaker 1: you seek an hour too keenly, you lose two. I laughed,
Speaker 1: but she handed me a cup of tea and winked,
Speaker 1: maybe this is simply how it is here, you Parisian types,
Speaker 1: always chasing lost minutes. WI I thanked her, took my tea,
Speaker 1: and left, feeling no wiser. Children, too, reflected the custom
Speaker 1: Elaine Forever sprinting past the pension with a doggyed workbook
Speaker 1: told me one evening we don't have noon. We eat,
Speaker 1: then lessons begin. Sometimes I nap. His voice held no confusion,
Speaker 1: only the practiced patience of local tradition. By the end
Speaker 1: of my second week, my curiosity was compounded resolved. Each
Speaker 1: time I pressed through experiment, conversation, written, record, technology. The
Speaker 1: result was the same. Noon slid through my grasp, taking
Speaker 1: memory and anticipation with it. The town's rhythm held fast,
Speaker 1: paradoxically precise, and yet gently incomplete. Most telling of all
Speaker 1: was the collective response. A gentle, persistent discouragement of my
Speaker 1: line of questioning. Life is for living, not counting clocks,
Speaker 1: said mmy Rue, pressing a tartlet into my palm with finality.
Speaker 1: Elaine's mother warned, don't make yourself ill with schedules, ise
Speaker 1: bel now wary, simply changed the subject. Yet it was
Speaker 1: not a conspiracy, nor did I feel I was the
Speaker 1: butt of an elaborate joke. Rather, I sensed a communal
Speaker 1: habit of silence, a secret not actively defended but diffused,
Speaker 1: spread so evenly across generations, records and routine that even
Speaker 1: the tools brought by outsiders were politely neutralized. I could
Speaker 1: not shed the conviction that the village, its people, documents,
Speaker 1: even the careful whirring of wrist watches collaborated knowingly or not,
Speaker 1: in sheltering an hour from existence. My long standing patients
Speaker 1: began to fray. I grew furtive, testing yet more methods
Speaker 1: to force noon into substance. I would rise early, station
Speaker 1: myself with all possible instruments, the travel alarm phone set
Speaker 1: with world clocks, multiple watches. I tried staking out likely
Speaker 1: locations square, bakery, cafe, chapel, sometimes alone, sometimes with others.
Speaker 1: Always the shift occurred the same, a period of focus
Speaker 1: inclosing an experience that in retrospect comprised only two edges,
Speaker 1: never a middle. One day, I walked the perimeter of
Speaker 1: the square, recording my voice into a borrowed dictaphone. It
Speaker 1: is now eleven forty five, I stated. In five minutes,
Speaker 1: I should see the hour of noon. I recorded street sounds,
Speaker 1: bellringer returning to his rounds, the distant whir of bicycles.
Speaker 1: I continued speaking, pretending I could anchor myself through sound playback, however,
Speaker 1: offered immutable proof. The file time stamped eleven fifty nine,
Speaker 1: with my last words trailing off, then an abrupt cut.
Speaker 1: My next utterance recorded at one O three. The surrounding
Speaker 1: audio changed, different voices, lengthened shadows, the bells distant again.
Speaker 1: My own speech sounded dazed, as if emerging from a dream.
Speaker 1: The situation defied every plausible explanation I held. Could this
Speaker 1: be mass distraction of Foley Applucia's But no. Each planned intervention,
Speaker 1: every effort to circumvent, ended the same. Even memory, my
Speaker 1: seasoned teacher's memory, which had survived decades of double lessons
Speaker 1: and lost Jim's shoes, proved obedient to the skip watchful.
Speaker 1: I caught myself describing my activities as before lunch and
Speaker 1: after rest, never mid day itself. At last, driven to
Speaker 1: seek historical grounding, I wrangled admit to the village's record room,
Speaker 1: housed in a chilly annex behind the Mary, led by
Speaker 1: M m Ru, whose pride in a custodianship was only
Speaker 1: rivaled by her suspicion of unnecessary novelty. I poured over
Speaker 1: stacked ledgers yellow with age births, marriages, deaths, crop yields,
Speaker 1: where the tallies commemorative notes about the arrival of new mares,
Speaker 1: and the opening of bridges. Each was anchored painstakingly in time,
Speaker 1: but always before mid day, or more rarely after the
Speaker 1: sun's height. Not a single entry marked the hour of twelve.
Speaker 1: I pressed the question with M. M. E. Ru, who
Speaker 1: replied with a shrug and a faint philosophical smile. This
Speaker 1: is how it's always been. Try to enjoy the days
Speaker 1: as they come. I left with a dozen jotted dates
Speaker 1: and an uneasy sense that the puzzle was older and
Speaker 1: more stubborn than any one living could remember. Determined to
Speaker 1: test the boundaries of my own aptitude, I begged a
Speaker 1: favor from a young tourist who possessed a video camera,
Speaker 1: one of those compact high definition gadgets that could record
Speaker 1: endlessly on to a memory card. I set it on
Speaker 1: a tripod in the square, framing the clock tower as
Speaker 1: back drop. Certain this would be the experiment to end
Speaker 1: all doubts, I paced, ordered coffee, even instructed a lane
Speaker 1: to wave to the camera. As the hour approached at
Speaker 1: eleven fifty seven, all was recorded, people shifting in conversation,
Speaker 1: the bell ringer uncoiling, the ropes, birds flitting past. Later,
Speaker 1: in my rented room, I watched the footage eagerly. At
Speaker 1: the crucial minute, the recording fuzzed a single stilled frame,
Speaker 1: then the image jerked. The square reinhabited, people recast in
Speaker 1: subtly altered positions, shadows grown longer, cafe tables in new configuration.
Speaker 1: The time code on the device had committed the skip
Speaker 1: eleven fifty nine to one zero one, with not a
Speaker 1: frame in between. The results left my old certainties in ruins.
Speaker 1: I sat with the camera on my knees, staring at
Speaker 1: the small, bright screen as if looking for a mechanical soul.
Speaker 1: The universe, the experiment appeared to say, had conspired with
Speaker 1: the village too gently, imperceptibly prune. An hour from the world,
Speaker 1: I returned outside, scanning the clouds, scrutinizing every stone and
Speaker 1: leaf as if they held the imprint of what had
Speaker 1: gone missing. But the square greeted me with the serene
Speaker 1: incompleteness of dreams, aware perhaps of my scrutiny, but committed
Speaker 1: to its lacuna. That evening, I walked out toward the
Speaker 1: edge of town and watched the last pink thread fade
Speaker 1: from the lake. In my bones, I understood the phenomenon
Speaker 1: was not of etiquette, nor lapses of attention, nor mechanical error.
Speaker 1: The missing hour was not something to be recovered, but
Speaker 1: something this place had lived without for longer than memory.
Speaker 1: It was a kind of weather, both everywhere and nowhere,
Speaker 1: a secret so old it had become simply the way
Speaker 1: things were. When I mentioned my little study to Isa
Speaker 1: bel the painter, she said, you always look at things
Speaker 1: more carefully than they want you to, my dear, and
Speaker 1: then offered to lend me her spare set of pencils,
Speaker 1: as if to propose another friendly a way to understand
Speaker 1: the landscape. Time, the unbroken, unquestioned sequence, was, I realized,
Speaker 1: not an absolute here. It was a conversation, or perhaps
Speaker 1: a compact. The village, I had come to believe, did
Speaker 1: not forget noon. Rather, noon had never arrived. There was
Speaker 1: one more path to follow, the slow, ceremonial one. If
Speaker 1: this place had always lived with absence stitched into its heart,
Speaker 1: perhaps its own chroniclers, its keepers of the past, had
Speaker 1: noticed and embraced it long before me. It took several
Speaker 1: quiet conversations, a promise not to handle the pages without gloves,
Speaker 1: and three separate cups of strong tea to persuade the
Speaker 1: council to admit me to the mayor's private archive, kept
Speaker 1: on a glass behind the mary. The artifact, a thick,
Speaker 1: leather bound journal from the nineteenth century, almost luminous with
Speaker 1: the oils of thousands of careful touches, was both precious and,
Speaker 1: strangely to locals, almost ornamental. Very few living in the
Speaker 1: village could remember the last time it was opened. M M. E.
Speaker 1: Rue brought the key, accompanied by her own sense of ceremony.
Speaker 1: We unlocked the glass. She hovered as I carefully flipped
Speaker 1: the first brittle pages. The ink had browned into sepia,
Speaker 1: but the entries were meticulously kept the mare of a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years ago. Jean Blowitt was an able chronicler, and,
Speaker 1: if the rumors were to be believed, a man as
Speaker 1: given to obsession as any earnest investigator. Blauett I read
Speaker 1: had centered his municipal tenure on the problem of noon.
Speaker 1: His earliest entries tracked the familiar details of daily life,
Speaker 1: market hours, crop plantings, church festivals. Then a shift his tone,
Speaker 1: sharpening entries tightening. Noon is lost, no chime, no market cry,
Speaker 1: no bell, he writes. Over weeks, his notes fill with
Speaker 1: attempts to force the town to hold the hour, extra bells, meetings,
Speaker 1: even scheduled congregational silence. Each effort blow It records leads
Speaker 1: to confusion, then blankness. Each time we meet with a
Speaker 1: silence deeper than Olive Groves in August. Not forgetting, but
Speaker 1: something stranger. The moment cannot be found nor recalled after Later,
Speaker 1: he describes a council gathering on a day he calls
Speaker 1: the meeting of merging shadows. No minutes survive, only a
Speaker 1: cryptic resolution from that year. None in our village speaks
Speaker 1: of noon, and none who tries can name it or
Speaker 1: record it. The journal closes around the time of Blowitt's retirement,
Speaker 1: his final entries growing less forceful, more resigned. I have watched,
Speaker 1: I have waited, Noon never comes. It is neither scourge
Speaker 1: nor blessing, but a cleaving. The village goes on the air,
Speaker 1: and the archive hummed with quiet history. I half expected
Speaker 1: Emmie Rue to add something to explain. She only said,
Speaker 1: we have our ways. Madame blow It tried to change it,
Speaker 1: but life here sometimes it is best not to mind
Speaker 1: the shapes we inherit. The phrase filled me with a
Speaker 1: strange sense of kinship with blow, it with the village,
Speaker 1: an inheritance of not simply history, but the boldness to
Speaker 1: confront impossibility, at least for a while. I left the
Speaker 1: mary as the light began to lower, the square, already
Speaker 1: casting elongated shadows. I stood for a long minute by
Speaker 1: the old sun dial, the missing numeral seeming to wink
Speaker 1: from the stone, as if aware of my new knowledge.
Speaker 1: The sense of puzzle was not resolved. If anything, it
Speaker 1: had grown more acute, more essential. If the absence of
Speaker 1: noon persisted, regardless of technology, memory, record, or ritual, If
Speaker 1: even a determined Mare had failed and abandoned his quest,
Speaker 1: then surely the missing hour was neither accident nor easily banished. Specter.
Speaker 1: It was perhaps a law written invisibly above the roofs,
Speaker 1: or a quiet treaty between place and experience, a truth
Speaker 1: not merely passively endured, but deeply woven, a feature, not
Speaker 1: a failure, and yet a feature for whom, for the land,
Speaker 1: the people, or for those like me who yearned to
Speaker 1: name the unnameable, as the evening bell called the fishermen in.
Speaker 1: Once more, I felt the full weight of the question
Speaker 1: rise and settle beneath my ribs, sharp as the slice
Speaker 1: of lake wind and richer by far. For the first
Speaker 1: time in years, I was more than curious. I was enthralled.
Speaker 1: There was something disconcertingly gentle in what I had uncovered
Speaker 1: at the Mary, the hush that rose around Jean Blowitt's
Speaker 1: old journal, a hush almost as absorbing as the void
Speaker 1: it described. If knowing more had once promised to fill
Speaker 1: the gap, now it seemed only to shape its mentions.
Speaker 1: A cleaving Blowitt called it. He had chosen to surrender,
Speaker 1: faithfully accounting for the lost hour even as he admitted defeat.
Speaker 1: I left the archive unsure whether I joined him in
Speaker 1: resignation or merely found a richer riddle. I read over
Speaker 1: my notes in the late light, their margins filled with
Speaker 1: cross reference times, behavioral oddities, lists of non events, evidence
Speaker 1: so consistently seamless that I felt the tautness of an
Speaker 1: old habit fray. I made myself reread Blowitt's final entry,
Speaker 1: letting the simplicity of his words anchor me. Noon never
Speaker 1: comes in the belly of the archive, with the village
Speaker 1: unbothered above ground and the lake reflecting only what sky existed,
Speaker 1: I had felt briefly outside time, the truth was not hidden, exactly,
Speaker 1: simply unkept. The following morning, I drank coffee, with the
Speaker 1: square already bright and ordinary. The town seemed a little
Speaker 1: more solid and a little more elusive at once, as
Speaker 1: though my new knowledge changed my vantage, but not the
Speaker 1: phenomenon itself. For the first time, it occurred to me
Speaker 1: that the skip might run deeper than custom, practice or
Speaker 1: even intention, that it was a structural not knowing, a
Speaker 1: conditioned absence that no one, not even an outsider, could pierce.
Speaker 1: I wanted to test this new hypothesis. If the missing
Speaker 1: hour originated neither in machinery nor shared forgetfulness, then perhaps
Speaker 1: it was bound to the shape of living here, its
Speaker 1: rhythm so deep that to try to pull noon back
Speaker 1: into consciousness was to invite confusion rather than memory. By chance,
Speaker 1: I encountered Sister Colette again outside the church, her straw
Speaker 1: hat brushing the lavender as she tidied a stone pot
Speaker 1: by the entryway. We exchanged pleasantries, and then I asked her,
Speaker 1: without preamble, now that I had blow its words in mind,
Speaker 1: if she remembered mid day as a child. She smiled thoughtfully,
Speaker 1: not dismissive, but as if considering a taste on her tongue.
Speaker 1: The bells were always faithful, she said, but some hours
Speaker 1: they rest. Even as a girl, I remember the square
Speaker 1: being empty. When the sun was high, we would play
Speaker 1: in the alleys, and then suddenly it was time for lessons. Again.
Speaker 1: She seemed untroubled, but I pressed, do you remember a
Speaker 1: single day, a moment, any detail from noon? Sister Colette blinked,
Speaker 1: gazing up as if searching the churches carved lintl for inspiration.
Speaker 1: I remember the before, I remember the after. Everything in
Speaker 1: between is a sort of soft breath. She grinned. You
Speaker 1: can teach children history, but you cannot teach them everything
Speaker 1: they miss by napping. The day grows shorter, but we manage.
Speaker 1: I turned the conversation gently toward language. Was there ever
Speaker 1: a word for noon in the old prayers or songs?
Speaker 1: She considered, In the oldest services there is a rest
Speaker 1: amidst shadows, not a mid day prayer. I used to
Speaker 1: think it a poetic quirk, now less so. After a pause,
Speaker 1: she told me about the hymns sung by school children.
Speaker 1: They had verses for morning, vespers midnight, but at noon,
Speaker 1: a hummed refrain that trailed into silence. Perhaps we are
Speaker 1: obedient to the song more than the clock, she suggested,
Speaker 1: not quite revealing whether she saw this as loss or wisdom.
Speaker 1: Spurred by this, I resolved to probe the town's unconscious
Speaker 1: boundaries further. The previous days, I'd watched as events, meals,
Speaker 1: even market stalls curved neatly around the null space of noon.
Speaker 1: But now I saw the continuity as almost purposeful. No
Speaker 1: one scheduled, no one remembered, yet no one was discomfited
Speaker 1: by what failed to occur. Armed with stubborn curiosity, I
Speaker 1: approached Paul, the local school history teacher who maintained the small,
Speaker 1: vanished schoolhouse now used for holiday programs. He accepted my
Speaker 1: interest with tolerant amusement. After the children were dismissed to
Speaker 1: their parents, we sat among the stubby desks and I
Speaker 1: confessed my project. Tell me, I began, Do you ever
Speaker 1: plan anything at precisely noon? Paul laughed, precisely noon? Not?
Speaker 1: Since I started here. Schedules are before or after. The
Speaker 1: children would arrive late or not at all. If you
Speaker 1: tried otherwise, Frankly, so would I. I pressed harder, testing
Speaker 1: the shape of the blind spot, What if, I wondered aloud?
Speaker 1: I gathered a group at the square, a picnic, a lesson,
Speaker 1: an event scheduled sharply for twelve. Paul's brow creased in
Speaker 1: a smile. If you do, let me know how it
Speaker 1: works out, he said, But don't hold your breath for attendants.
Speaker 1: People prefer to arrive on their own time. Encouraged, I
Speaker 1: set the challenge a picnic in the square at noon
Speaker 1: sharp with the school children and their teacher, inviting parents
Speaker 1: as well. The children took the invitation with delight but
Speaker 1: a fundamental misapprehension. Some arrived, eyes bright at eleven thirty,
Speaker 1: hands full of sandwiches and wild flowers. Others drifted in
Speaker 1: at twelve forty five, apologetic, declaring they must have misunderstood.
Speaker 1: As the bell for one o'clock sounded, a mother said,
Speaker 1: we thought it was after the rest. It always is.
Speaker 1: No amount of explanation or prodding could fix the idea
Speaker 1: of twelve o'clock directly in any one's plans. For the children,
Speaker 1: the hour represented either the long tale of morning or
Speaker 1: the first stretch of afternoon, never a center in itself.
Speaker 1: Any attempt to plant a flag in that interval found
Speaker 1: the ground soft, uncertain, gently elusive. I tried to organize
Speaker 1: a game, a simple round of hide and seek. When
Speaker 1: the clock strikes twelve, the children scattered, giggling, But the
Speaker 1: game began before I called it, and when I tried
Speaker 1: to anchor it again, the moment had slipped past. With
Speaker 1: each failed experiment, my perspective shifted. This was not mere
Speaker 1: social custom, nor distraction, nor a superstitious avoidance. It was,
Speaker 1: at some level deeper than habit, a blind spot written
Speaker 1: into the common in her mind. Not a conspiracy, not
Speaker 1: an active forgetting, but a yawning blank that no effort
Speaker 1: of intention could close. I tested the schedules once more
Speaker 1: in the post office, on bus time tables, on menus
Speaker 1: and receipts, and market posters newly printed for the season.
Speaker 1: Each confirmed the gap. No events at twelve, no appointments set.
Speaker 1: Even the bus from the next village advertised at twelve
Speaker 1: o'clock stop, but when it ran the route that entered
Speaker 1: our village, the schedule listed only before noon and afternoon arrival.
Speaker 1: I watched it come and go, and noted, in detached
Speaker 1: amusement that the driver s on board clock was equally
Speaker 1: resistant resetting between the neighboring village and the lakeside square
Speaker 1: I wondered if I might catch some one in contradiction.
Speaker 1: The bell ringer, a tall Saturnine man named Philip, kept
Speaker 1: his own meticulous log coiled rope and all. I approached
Speaker 1: him beside the bell tower, armed with my questions. Philip,
Speaker 1: you must keep to time more than any one. What
Speaker 1: do you do at noon? I watched him closely, hoping
Speaker 1: for flicker of mischief or suspicion. He propped one hand
Speaker 1: on the bell tower's limestone balustrade, regarding me with an
Speaker 1: unhurried seriousness. At noon the bell skips always has not
Speaker 1: even the mechanic from Geneva could adjust it. The chime
Speaker 1: at eleven is the last before lunch. The next is
Speaker 1: always for one. And have you never wondered, never tried
Speaker 1: to fix it? I asked? He shook his head. If
Speaker 1: the bell doesn't wish to speak, let it rest. There
Speaker 1: was no edge to his tone, only a kind of
Speaker 1: rye acceptance. I grew up with it, so did my father.
Speaker 1: May be our children will too. Everywhere I looked, and
Speaker 1: now I began to look everywhere. The pattern repeated an
Speaker 1: unconscious shunt around the skipped hour, ingrained with more care
Speaker 1: than neglect, plans moved around the interval, but never threw it.
Speaker 1: The village's day at heart was an ellipse, with one
Speaker 1: axis quietly missing. I turned inward, aligning the body's own
Speaker 1: way of marking time. Was it possible that the village itself,
Speaker 1: generation by generation, had grown around the gap, as a
Speaker 1: tree might lengthen to shade an invisible scar. I watched
Speaker 1: in the weeks that followed for evidence in the land itself.
Speaker 1: The sun presented itself as the surest witness, old, impartial,
Speaker 1: beyond human schemes. I borrowed a lane school, protractor and
Speaker 1: notebook in hand, set myself to observe the movement of shadows.
Speaker 1: Hour by hour. Each day, I would take up a
Speaker 1: place at the center of the square, plotting the shaft
Speaker 1: of shadow throne by the clock tower. Through the hours
Speaker 1: of late morning, the shadows slid closer, converging as the
Speaker 1: sun climbed. I marked the minutes. At eleven fifty the
Speaker 1: tower's shadow pointed toward the bakery, lengthening as if in anticipation.
Speaker 1: At eleven fifty five it curved towards the cafe. Ever, sharper,
Speaker 1: I tracked the slow merging of light, watching for the
Speaker 1: moment the sun crowned the town, expecting a brief, pure
Speaker 1: moment of stasis. Instead, just before I could catch the
Speaker 1: line snapping to the perfect zenith, the sunlight seemed to
Speaker 1: flick once, like a skipped frame in old film. On
Speaker 1: my page, the trail of measured marks broke. The next
Speaker 1: longer shadow was suddenly reaching toward the Linden tree twelves
Speaker 1: mark never transcribed, repeated for three days, both in calm
Speaker 1: and mild winds. The result was the same. There was
Speaker 1: no moment captured at the apex. The village's noon was
Speaker 1: not only unremembered by people, it was unrecorded by shadow.
Speaker 1: It was, if I followed this line, an omission that
Speaker 1: extended beyond the social The world bent to match the void.
Speaker 1: Even the local plants seemed to split their behavior around
Speaker 1: this pivot. The sunflowers in Fawnia's window boxes tracked the
Speaker 1: early sun with precision and drooped visibly by afternoon, But
Speaker 1: at the point where noon should pass, there was an
Speaker 1: odd sluggishness. Their faces skipped from upward to sidelong, as
Speaker 1: if time itself had stuttered. I compared the guides I
Speaker 1: found in the village shop leaflets printed for hiking and sightseeing,
Speaker 1: while pamphlets of neighboring towns boasted balmy midday in the valley.
Speaker 1: Here the narrative ran coffee on the lake in the morning,
Speaker 1: then return after the heat. Subsides for afternoon promenades. Morning
Speaker 1: and afternoon pressed flushed together, as if the span at
Speaker 1: the center was not a passage but a seam. Was
Speaker 1: it possible? I wondered that even fauna and crops harmonized
Speaker 1: themselves to the rhythm. I questioned Fawnia absently about the
Speaker 1: baking schedule, and he replied, you must catch the breads
Speaker 1: before the rest. After that there's only biscuits until the
Speaker 1: afternoon batch. The cycles, it seemed, had adapted till neither
Speaker 1: nature nor neighbor could be found between the counterweights of
Speaker 1: before and after. One blue skied afternoon. I took a
Speaker 1: note book to the cafe, copying phrases overheard from villagers.
Speaker 1: Circumlocutions around the missing hour instead of noon, I heard
Speaker 1: as the sun climbs when the light is highest, after
Speaker 1: the baker rests when the square empties. The language curved, ever,
Speaker 1: careful to preserve the center, as unsaid with sister Colette's help,
Speaker 1: I arranged to visit the small church's archive, a collection
Speaker 1: of ancient hymnals, ledgers, and prayer books. These, too betrayed
Speaker 1: the absence. Service schedules listed the Angelus at sunrise or
Speaker 1: at Vesper's, but at mid day a prayer for peace
Speaker 1: in the stillness replaced the liturgy used everywhere else I
Speaker 1: had ever lived or traveled. Curious now about folklore, I
Speaker 1: asked several older townspeople over supper in mme e Ruse
Speaker 1: dining room if as children they had heard stories about
Speaker 1: happenings or tales at noon. No. No, said one, The
Speaker 1: ogres sleep before the sky tips. Another grandmother said, never
Speaker 1: work when the is highest, it brings no good harvest.
Speaker 1: Each story looped, the danger or drama, always ending as
Speaker 1: the sun passed over, Never at noon itself. There were
Speaker 1: no tales of the hour as a moment of revelation
Speaker 1: or crisis. Instead, it hovered as a non place, the
Speaker 1: action always before or after the hero waking up or departing.
Speaker 1: The harvest begun only when the sun lowers. Rereading some
Speaker 1: of the folk lyrics Elaine had copied in school, I
Speaker 1: saw the same verses for dawn verses for dusk, verses
Speaker 1: for the shimmering hour, but none for the crest, No
Speaker 1: lullabies for the heart of the day. The only related
Speaker 1: custom recalled by the baker's wife was her grandmother, essaying,
Speaker 1: noon never finds us working. Why would it. The deeper
Speaker 1: I looked, the more I saw how language and culture
Speaker 1: become a vessel for the fold, a seamless collective accommodation
Speaker 1: of the anomaly. Generations had shaped themselves around it, parenting children,
Speaker 1: crating routine and writing stories, always on the edge, but
Speaker 1: never in the absent hour. Even newcomers, myself included, were
Speaker 1: drawn gently under its influence. Our words bent, our expectations erased,
Speaker 1: our experiences prone to fit the available hours. Each new
Speaker 1: detail did not so much answer as recontextualize. The missing
Speaker 1: hour was not a whole. It was a subtle, persistent structure,
Speaker 1: a fold in societal fabric so complete that everything from
Speaker 1: sun dials and bells to memory and ritual had adapted.
Speaker 1: The shape of omission was not resistance, but a kind
Speaker 1: of elegant choreography. If there had once been a cause,
Speaker 1: or even a wound, the village had long since grown
Speaker 1: comfortable living with the scar not forgetting, but ceasing to
Speaker 1: need to explain. Now perched at the cusp of understanding,
Speaker 1: I wanted to test one final boundary. What if the
Speaker 1: phenomenon was tied to geography. If one left the village,
Speaker 1: would noon return. I packed a satchel and took the
Speaker 1: footpath e following the curve of the lake to the
Speaker 1: next hamlet, a brisk hour's walk, the route lined with
Speaker 1: chestnut and beach. I checked my watch along the way,
Speaker 1: compared time with the digital clock on my phone, and
Speaker 1: at each killometer mark with the sun's position. As the
Speaker 1: spire of our village receded, I felt the rhythm of
Speaker 1: time loosen, as if a pressure were easing from my shoulders.
Speaker 1: In the next village, I settled at a cafe and
Speaker 1: ordered a coffee, placing my phone and watch on the table.
Speaker 1: As the hour approached twelve, both time pieces carefully counted
Speaker 1: up the digital numbers, ticking through eleven fifty nine to
Speaker 1: twelve zero zero to twelve zero one, unremarkable ordinary. The
Speaker 1: world continued, Waiters hustled, children played, the noon bell rang clear.
Speaker 1: I welcomed the arrival as though greeting a lost acquaintance.
Speaker 1: If there was any strangeness. It belonged purely to habit.
Speaker 1: On the walk back, as the road bent to reveal
Speaker 1: the shore of Lacdorray, I watched my watch's hands advanced
Speaker 1: past eleven and fifty six. Eleven fifty seven, the last
Speaker 1: view of the lake, silvietopate Gleam appeared as familiar as ever.
Speaker 1: As I followed the path down the hill, entering the
Speaker 1: invisible border, the place where wild roses gave way to
Speaker 1: the first neat flower boxes, the experience changed. Stepping into
Speaker 1: the village, time snapped forward one zero three. The lunch
Speaker 1: crowd was dispersing, the sun's warmth now softened. My memories
Speaker 1: of the walk felt curiously segmented. The final minutes precisely
Speaker 1: as in the village, vanished into a seamless transition. The
Speaker 1: test confirmed the intuition the skip was local, a boundary
Speaker 1: set as much by collective perception as by stone and wood.
Speaker 1: Outside the village, time ran with ordinary sequence. Inside, the
Speaker 1: fold reasserted itself unbroken. I marveled at the quiet completeness
Speaker 1: of it. How entirely the town and everyone who lived
Speaker 1: or sojourned here had built their days. Not around noon
Speaker 1: but around its impossibility. Centuries of habit, language, schedule, and myth,
Speaker 1: all arranged in elliptical orbit around what could not be
Speaker 1: named or touched. I returned to the Mayor's journal with
Speaker 1: new eyes. Blowitt, who had tried and failed to root
Speaker 1: out the gap, did not seem a figure of defeat,
Speaker 1: but of transition, a caretaker who had witnessed the final,
Speaker 1: silent acceptance. Perhaps, over time, the initial strangeness of the
Speaker 1: fold had given way to so habitual an embrace that
Speaker 1: forgetting itself had become a gentle civic act. The absence
Speaker 1: had nature, permanence, and perhaps even purpose. Out of respect
Speaker 1: for the village, and perhaps for my own need to
Speaker 1: participate rather than merely analyze, I abandoned further attempts at experiment.
Speaker 1: Each new approach only confirmed the structure of omission. I
Speaker 1: found myself echoing the language of before and after in conversation,
Speaker 1: coordinating with the baker on deliveries as the bell ends,
Speaker 1: and joining a Leg and his classmates for afternoon studies
Speaker 1: without ever referencing the absent hour. But intellectual restlessness lingered.
Speaker 1: I drew back, examining the sum of all I had learned,
Speaker 1: all the evidence, historical, behavioral, technological, material, and linguistic suggested
Speaker 1: that this village uniquely had sidestepped a portion of time.
Speaker 1: The passage of noon did not simply fail, It rewrote itself,
Speaker 1: turning experience, recollection, and public record into a smooth, unbroken
Speaker 1: surface joining morning and afternoon. And for what The original cause,
Speaker 1: if such ever existed, remained accluded myth invisible. There was
Speaker 1: no trauma in the town's collective conscience, no legend, no
Speaker 1: shadow of catastrophe. There was only the serene efficiency of accommodation,
Speaker 1: living with and not against the blank. What astonished me
Speaker 1: was the ease with which the village preserved, not ignorance
Speaker 1: but tranquility. No one was troubled, no one felt cheated,
Speaker 1: even in Blouit's time. Even now, there was no martyr,
Speaker 1: no evidence of ruined peace, just a gap, cradled and decorated,
Speaker 1: perhaps cherished for the rhythm it offered. I returned to
Speaker 1: Sister Colette, needing to voice my grown wonder. We sat
Speaker 1: together by the linden tree, our conversation accompanied by bees
Speaker 1: and the distant hum of a fisherman's outboard motor. Sister
Speaker 1: I said, do you ever wish to remember what happened
Speaker 1: at noon. She thought for a moment, Noon is like
Speaker 1: a star just behind the sun, too bright to see.
Speaker 1: You must accept its warmth. Instead, we live by the
Speaker 1: hours we have been given. I looked at her, squinting
Speaker 1: against the bright, diffuse light. But do you think it
Speaker 1: is a loss. Not every silence is a loss, she replied.
Speaker 1: Some are the shape of living together in a world
Speaker 1: where all moments clamor for memory, Perhaps it is a
Speaker 1: blessing to share a peaceful gap. I sat with her
Speaker 1: in companionable quiet, and the realization, when it came, was
Speaker 1: without bitness. The fold in time was not a violence.
Speaker 1: It was a border, natural and absolute that had given
Speaker 1: the village a particular gentleness in its days. Its strangers,
Speaker 1: too quickly adopted the omission, as if the terms of
Speaker 1: belonging required a little humility in the face of the unknown.
Speaker 1: Time in the village was a conversation, a RESTful rhythm,
Speaker 1: and the absence at noon was a part of belonging.
Speaker 1: For all my careful testing, the greatest evidence was the
Speaker 1: peace with which the village accepted the missing hour, a
Speaker 1: kind of collective permission to let one interval fall unmeasured
Speaker 1: to be released from the tyranny of marking every moment.
Speaker 1: With the end of my month's stay approaching, I found
Speaker 1: myself loosening as well, measuring my mornings by the taste
Speaker 1: of coffee and bird song, my afternoons by the long
Speaker 1: light on the lake, my evenings by the bell and
Speaker 1: the soft sound of children's laughter. In closing alleys. On
Speaker 1: my last morning, I packed my bags with an odd reluctance,
Speaker 1: cross checking every pocket for nothing more than the comfort
Speaker 1: of schedule. M m e Rue fussed over my breakfast,
Speaker 1: pressing a sweet roll into my hand for the journey,
Speaker 1: and I thanked her with awkward earnestness, conscious that our
Speaker 1: shared time belonged neither before nor after the thing I
Speaker 1: had come seeking. As I wheeled my suit case out
Speaker 1: through the square, a Lane ran up with a folded
Speaker 1: sheet of paper, one of his drawings, a map of
Speaker 1: the village, the lake, and a clock tower whose hands
Speaker 1: pointed to one, never twelve. For you, he said, so
Speaker 1: you remember which hours are best? I laughed, thanked him,
Speaker 1: and felt the ordinary ache of parting. Sister Colette caught
Speaker 1: me by the church steps. We hope you found what
Speaker 1: you were looking for. She said, choosing each word with
Speaker 1: her usual care. I considered, for the first time sincerely,
Speaker 1: that perhaps I had At the villa edge, I paused
Speaker 1: by the wild rose bushes and checked my wrist watch.
Speaker 1: The minute hands shifted, and for the first time in
Speaker 1: a month, as I crossed the invisible border, the watch
Speaker 1: ticked twelve zero zero, crystal and unresistant. The sun, already
Speaker 1: passing its peak, seemed unchanged. A bus rumbled in the
Speaker 1: next village, a dog barked, and life proceeded in the
Speaker 1: pattern I had always known. But noon felt to me
Speaker 1: less absolute than before, not a summit but one possibility
Speaker 1: among many. As I walked away, turning the folded map
Speaker 1: in my hand, I found myself wondering, not with frustration,
Speaker 1: but with a quiet owe. How many other moments in
Speaker 1: the world passed quietly, unfelt essential only for their absence.
Speaker 1: What other intervals in other towns might be folded away, small,
Speaker 1: beautiful impossibilities, sustaining lives without ever being named. The more
Speaker 1: I tried to define what I'd learned, the more gently
Speaker 1: it eluded me. It was not for forgetting, nor for explanation,
Speaker 1: but for living among the shapes that mystery leaves behind.
Speaker 1: And the village, calm and unhurried in my wake, continued
Speaker 1: without its noon, whole, particular and serenely miraculous as before.
Speaker 1: And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one.