Speaker 1: Hollo, I moalken stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: When the train started winding its way up the Runeberg climb,
Speaker 2: the haze of the Lowland valleys receded, and I leaned
Speaker 2: toward the window for my first clear look at the
Speaker 2: little alpine village that for years had been a kind
Speaker 2: of private obsession. I had circled its name Great Bruck
Speaker 2: on travel maps more than once, drawn as much by
Speaker 2: the promise of untouristed trails as by something subtler, a
Speaker 2: wish for solitude, perhaps after a lifetime of lesson plans
Speaker 2: and school bells set to strict, inexorable hours. The locomotives
Speaker 2: shuddered and gasped into the station, a modest stone pavilion
Speaker 2: set at the edge of a constellated cluster of red
Speaker 2: roofed homes. There was a mild anticipation to my step,
Speaker 2: a kind I always felt in new places, as if
Speaker 2: the air itself were fresher and tinged with possibility. But
Speaker 2: on the platform I found the first trembling note of strangeness.
Speaker 2: Mounted atop the low ironwork arch was the station clock, generous,
Speaker 2: white faced, ornate with minor golden flourishes. At a glance,
Speaker 2: I saw the time five minutes to four, unremarkable except
Speaker 2: for the motion of the hands. I watched, frowning as
Speaker 2: the minute hands shunted smoothly, not upward around the dial,
Speaker 2: but downward, reversed, retracing its path. Each second ticked off,
Speaker 2: but in the wrong direction. I pressed my lips together,
Speaker 2: suspecting mechanical failure, a loose gear, nothing more. But as
Speaker 2: I hefted my rucksack and started toward the cobbled lane
Speaker 2: that led to the heart of the town, my eye
Speaker 2: was drawn upward the clock tower, its onion dome, crowned
Speaker 2: by a little iron stag marked the hasp of the
Speaker 2: village center. And there too, from my oblique angle, I
Speaker 2: could just make out the black hands lopping backward, steady
Speaker 2: and precise, like a mirrored dance. Between the buildings. Children
Speaker 2: darted by, laughing, while an old woman nodded politely at
Speaker 2: a shopkeeper, glancing at a pocket watch that I realized
Speaker 2: as she closed it must also display time in reverse.
Speaker 2: The rest felt almost ordinary, which only made it stranger.
Speaker 2: The bakery window shimmered with glazed loaves, its chalkboard menu
Speaker 2: listing opening times. I noticed, with small mirrored numbers the
Speaker 2: post offices door bore hours inscribed backward. I saw a
Speaker 2: young man, his hair netted by flower, sweep the street,
Speaker 2: then stop and consult a little brass gaced timepiece before
Speaker 2: stowing it in his apron. Trying to fix some anchor
Speaker 2: of normalcy. I wandered into a corner shop to buy
Speaker 2: a bottle of water. The proprietor, a tall woman with
Speaker 2: an arched brow and a quick, kindly smile, rang up
Speaker 2: my purchase. Excuse me, I ventured your clocks they seemed
Speaker 2: to be running. I trailed off, searching for words that
Speaker 2: wouldn't sound accusatory. She responded, without a trace of irony,
Speaker 2: as if I had remarked on the weather. All clocks
Speaker 2: here run backwards. Of course, this she said lightly, as
Speaker 2: if it was the only sensible thing in the world,
Speaker 2: then turned to help another customer, leaving me with my
Speaker 2: change and a growing heap of questions. There was no explanation,
Speaker 2: just that smiling shrug. I would come to recognize over
Speaker 2: the next hours, no one seemed to find their time odd.
Speaker 2: In the sunlit square, a girl skipped rope reciting numbers
Speaker 2: downward ten nine eight, before springing into laughter. Others went
Speaker 2: about their business, their internal metronomes, matching some rhythm I
Speaker 2: could not discern, but which felt increasingly not like error,
Speaker 2: but like a deliberate dance in which I had missed
Speaker 2: the opening steps. At the guest house, Frau Keller greeted
Speaker 2: me with a clap and a rush of warmth. Compact
Speaker 2: and brisk. She wore her snow white hair in a
Speaker 2: loose twist and bustled between kitchen and parlor, as though
Speaker 2: the two rooms might lose cohesion if left unattended. You
Speaker 2: are our new visitor, she announced, eyes twinkling as if
Speaker 2: to say she knew much more about than she let.
Speaker 2: On second floor window, good sunlight until the reverse morning,
Speaker 2: and the bakery below. You must try the plum bread
Speaker 2: before tomorrow, which is to day's yesterday. More or less.
Speaker 2: She led me along a creaking stair and opened a
Speaker 2: door on a room painted butter yellow and floored in
Speaker 2: wide scarred planks, a big bed, two plump chairs piled
Speaker 2: with knitted throes, and beside the window rhymed with geraniums,
Speaker 2: a little round table with a wind up clock. Its
Speaker 2: face was porcelain, its hands blue delicate, rotating steadily counterclockwise.
Speaker 2: I tested its winding key experimentally. The second hand shimmered
Speaker 2: in its reversed circuit, ticking as crisply as any ordinary device.
Speaker 2: Do your clocks always do that? I asked, not quite
Speaker 2: able to keep the curiosity from edging into my voice.
Speaker 2: Of course, frau Keller replied, as if to say, why
Speaker 2: else would we use them? It is proper village time.
Speaker 2: If the clocks began going the other way, not even
Speaker 2: the chickens would know when to sleep. Her humor hummed
Speaker 2: just below the surface. But I sensed a matter of
Speaker 2: fact pride in her tone. You will adjust, she continued,
Speaker 2: waving a hand, just as you'll become fond of our bread.
Speaker 2: There's nothing finer than ribruck time, except perhaps rebruck cake,
Speaker 2: she offered me. The big brass key delivered a hasty
Speaker 2: description of breakfast hours before six, but after the ten,
Speaker 2: if you count careful, with a wink, and vanished down
Speaker 2: the stairs, trailing the scent of yeast and alpine honey.
Speaker 2: I stood in the unfamiliar quiet, my suit case at
Speaker 2: my feet. It was only just past four, unless it
Speaker 2: was just before four, or perhaps by the town's measure
Speaker 2: some hour both near and far from noon. Entirely unsure
Speaker 2: which clock to consult, I set both my phone and
Speaker 2: my wrist watch on the table, resolved to record everything.
Speaker 2: For most of my life, times march forward had been
Speaker 2: both comfort and oppresser, each bell signaling a lesson, a recess,
Speaker 2: an ending. Now I was adrift, a little amused, a
Speaker 2: little unsettled, and more than determined to sort out Riftbruck's
Speaker 2: backwards hours. I left my luggage and set off into
Speaker 2: the village. Riff Bruck is nestled in an alpine bowl,
Speaker 2: buildings climbing only as far as the pitch of the
Speaker 2: mountain allows. Every surface bore the mark of care, fresh
Speaker 2: paint on carved trim, a sense of deliberate preservation that
Speaker 2: ran through even the clipped box hedges. Children's voices counterpointed
Speaker 2: the sow of afternoon wind descending the pass. The bakery's
Speaker 2: door hung ajar inside. Two bakers, dentical twins, both ruddy
Speaker 2: cheeked and flour dusted, sang along to a radio playing
Speaker 2: in a language I couldn't place. Timing each batch of
Speaker 2: loaves with wind up timers set, I noticed to count down,
Speaker 2: not up. Impossible to burn the bread, one proclaimed, catching
Speaker 2: my glance, if you forget it was already done. I
Speaker 2: drifted to the post office, where a clerk, hair Weiss,
Speaker 2: wore wire spectacles and a vest festooned with stamps of
Speaker 2: improbable animals. He sorted parcels by arranging the dates in
Speaker 2: a descending stack, muttering a little rhyme to himself. At
Speaker 2: the school, an airy, low building with painted wooden shutters,
Speaker 2: I lingered as children who been playing marbles were called inside,
Speaker 2: not by the usual clang of a bell's crescendo, but
Speaker 2: a mellow chime that struck twelve. As the minute hand
Speaker 2: loped backward to meet it, a tall, stooped man stood
Speaker 2: on the steps, ushering them inside. Hair Boorman, the retired
Speaker 2: head master, I would later learn. He nodded to me
Speaker 2: and adjusted an elegant silver timepiece that wouldn't have looked
Speaker 2: out of place a century ago. In the heart of
Speaker 2: the square, preparing chalk for the evening menu, was a
Speaker 2: figure even younger, a girl of perhaps ten, barefoot Despite
Speaker 2: the chill lot, she introduced herself, I am the reigning
Speaker 2: skipping champion of backward years. She drew a mathematical grid
Speaker 2: on the square stones, sums and sub actions labeled in
Speaker 2: reverse order, a puzzle for her friends. And not far
Speaker 2: from her, a boy just into manhood was repairing a
Speaker 2: sign whose hinges creaked. He had broad hands stained with
Speaker 2: ink or machine oil. An infectious laugh emmil apprentice clockmaker,
Speaker 2: spotting my confusion when I looked at the town clock,
Speaker 2: he called, if you think too hard about the hours,
Speaker 2: your head will spin the wrong way. But it all
Speaker 2: lines up. Seriously, he promised to show me a secret
Speaker 2: if I ever cared to see the inside of the
Speaker 2: clockmaker's shop, a promise I half dismissed as the gentle
Speaker 2: carousing of a young man. Still I tucked it away.
Speaker 2: Signs advertising the gross Um Carefist the time Keeping Festival
Speaker 2: were strung from window to lamp post, each date a
Speaker 2: careful palindrome, numerals footed and serifed like the loops of
Speaker 2: a treble clef the whole town. Frau Keller told me
Speaker 2: over supper will walk backward in the parade, and the
Speaker 2: clock will be reset. Reset in the proper way, of course,
Speaker 2: not your hurried city fashion. Her smile was conspiratorial. As
Speaker 2: I lay in bed that night, pocket notebook open, I
Speaker 2: cataloged the strangeness of the day. Every mechanical thing seemed
Speaker 2: to follow its own choreography. The people too, unhurried, precise
Speaker 2: entirely unmoved by what, to my mind must surely be
Speaker 2: an inconvenience at best, a persistent confusion at worst. I
Speaker 2: wondered if, after all I would adjust as smoothly as promised,
Speaker 2: or if my mind, trained so many years to order
Speaker 2: and rules, would revolt. Intent on making the most of
Speaker 2: my stay, I awoke the next morning to a chilly brilliance.
Speaker 2: Sunlight spilled through frost laced glass, catching motes in its beam.
Speaker 2: I set out again, notebook in one hand, the other
Speaker 2: clutching my phone set strictly to standard clockwise time. Frau
Speaker 2: Keller had suggested with a certain ryness that we meet
Speaker 2: at four that afternoon for a proper tour of the
Speaker 2: crucial hours of Rebruch. Eager not to miss my guide,
Speaker 2: I poured over my watch after lunch, triple checking its calibration.
Speaker 2: I reached the square precisely at four, by my measure,
Speaker 2: brushing a few errant crumbs from a plum scorone from
Speaker 2: my lapel frau Keller was there, holding her shawl against
Speaker 2: the alpine wind, but instead of greeting me, she cast
Speaker 2: a bemused glance at the church tower's clock and said,
Speaker 2: you are a thorough man. Only you are also late.
Speaker 2: We have just finished. Did you not see the time?
Speaker 2: I was baffled. But it's four now, I replied, showing
Speaker 2: her my phone. She laughed, a crisp, violet sound. Four. Yes,
Speaker 2: but only if you are living forward. Our tour began
Speaker 2: already and has had its history, as all good walks do.
Speaker 2: There was no edge to her voice, only the patient
Speaker 2: humor of some one explaining a joke to a child.
Speaker 2: But I felt myself flush. My confusion became a motif.
Speaker 2: The bus to the next village was posted to leave
Speaker 2: at eight fifty, but rumbled away from the square at
Speaker 2: a moment my own watch recorded eight forty. Cafe hours
Speaker 2: posted on the wall insisted breakfast was served until nine
Speaker 2: zero zero, but on entering at what I thought was
Speaker 2: eight thirty, I found the staff clearing tables for lunch.
Speaker 2: Each time locals pointed out my error with the mild
Speaker 2: patience of those accustomed to such slips. Don't worry emmil
Speaker 2: told me as we nursed coffees one morning. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: is hard at first. Your clocks they are not so
Speaker 2: clever as ours. But you will see. Even the sun
Speaker 2: goes backward here if you are friendly to it. They
Speaker 2: seemed genuinely unbothered by my blunders. I wrote copious notes,
Speaker 2: a little defensive, wondering if there was a deliberate effort
Speaker 2: to keep outsiders on their toes, a private communal joke
Speaker 2: kept alive by gentle corrections. But as I watched the
Speaker 2: street sweepers, the bakers, the school children all move in
Speaker 2: perfect synchrony, I realized there was method beneath the surface.
Speaker 2: On the third day, I realized my own phone, left
Speaker 2: charging over an night, showed an hour precisely reversed from
Speaker 2: the tower's clock face, a trick perhaps of daylight savings.
Speaker 2: I cross referenced arrivals and departures my own appointments with
Speaker 2: posted notices. It was a kind of inverted arithmetic. If
Speaker 2: the bus left at eight fifty and my watch said
Speaker 2: eight forty, then by backward reckoning, I was always arriving
Speaker 2: ten minutes late. Curiosity eclipsed my frustration. I decided to
Speaker 2: systematically record the differences. I set alarms on both my
Speaker 2: phone and my mechanical wristwatch, compared them every hour to
Speaker 2: the big station clock, and tallied the cumulative losses or
Speaker 2: gains as the hours passed. Breakfast, lunch, shop, closing. All
Speaker 2: events in the village shifted subtly against my anchor clocks,
Speaker 2: sometimes earlier, sometimes later, but always in a rhythm consistent
Speaker 2: with the revers dials. The train's schedule befuddled me for
Speaker 2: several days. Departures announced at the next ten correspond to
Speaker 2: a time ten minutes earlier than I expected. Yet no
Speaker 2: one missed the train, no one ran, cursed or seemed disoriented.
Speaker 2: That evening, at the bakery, I found Emmel again, elbows
Speaker 2: deep in dough, surrounded by an arsenal of battered egg timers,
Speaker 2: all ticking with calm certainty from high numbers downward. He
Speaker 2: spotted my confusion and grinned Mercht and say ein Jehaimney's
Speaker 2: Learnin' want to learn a secret. He wiped his hands, then,
Speaker 2: on a scrap of butcher paper, drew two clock faces,
Speaker 2: one with hands moving clockwise, the other reversed regular people,
Speaker 2: he said, tapping the first. They wait for time to
Speaker 2: go round. Here we use the same clock, but see
Speaker 2: it together in its mirror. He wrote tiny numbers by
Speaker 2: each hour marker, mapping backwards hours against the standard. So
Speaker 2: if here it is four, he pointed, for you, it
Speaker 2: is eight, but for us it is just as much four,
Speaker 2: only the other way round. Easy, he laughed. You get
Speaker 2: used to it, he shrugged. When I asked why they
Speaker 2: had adopted this method. This is how it always was.
Speaker 2: The clocks we build are strong. They like going this
Speaker 2: way better. I remained unconvinced. At the schoolyard, the bell
Speaker 2: rang out twelve strokes, but the students collected their bags
Speaker 2: and burst from the doors, as if by some implicit
Speaker 2: signal outside what I thought must be normal dismissal time.
Speaker 2: There was no bluff or trickery in these routines. Everyone
Speaker 2: seemed at ease. I began to note other peculiarities. Visitors
Speaker 2: to the village families in hiking gear. Photographers bumbled for
Speaker 2: a day or two, consulting their phones or watches, but
Speaker 2: soon matched their behavior to the public clocks, unconsciously shifting
Speaker 2: their expectations as if drawn into some communal current. Children
Speaker 2: played games counting down bakers and clockmakers alike set their
Speaker 2: dials to match the reversals. There was structure, consistency, and
Speaker 2: yet the system made no immediate sense when viewed through
Speaker 2: the logic I had spent a lot lifetime teaching. One
Speaker 2: night by lamplight, I tried to codify what I had learned.
Speaker 2: I listed what I knew. The mechanical clocks ran backward.
Speaker 2: All public schedules were coordinated to the reverse time. Whenever
Speaker 2: I attempted to impose my own order, I was corrected,
Speaker 2: not just politely, but consistently and without irony. The system
Speaker 2: was not arbitrary, nor an accident. But why was there
Speaker 2: an older tradition at play, a deeper logic behind the spectacle.
Speaker 2: I began to wonder if the phenomenon was more than
Speaker 2: a custom, if through sheer collective adherents, the village had
Speaker 2: created not so much a quirk but an alternative standard,
Speaker 2: running parallel in a sense to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: I thought of metric time in revolutionary France, the half
Speaker 2: hour time zones of Newfoundland. Daylight savings clung to by
Speaker 2: stubborn states, but none felt as absolute as this new
Speaker 2: questions sprouted. Was Rebruck, an isolated oddity or the living
Speaker 2: remnant of a wider lost practice. Did backward time change
Speaker 2: the perception of time itself? At breakfast next morning, over
Speaker 2: boiled eggs and crisp dark bread, I asked Fraukeller if
Speaker 2: she ever found herself confused when leaving the village when
Speaker 2: visiting Lucerne, for example. She set down her knife, considering
Speaker 2: for a day or two perhaps, But you see, time
Speaker 2: is a garment you wear what fits Riffbruck. Time keeps
Speaker 2: us together. When we go out, we put on new hours,
Speaker 2: and nobody notices. But here in our walls it would
Speaker 2: be most odd to let your hours leak in. Her
Speaker 2: tone was neither defensive nor evasive, but that of someone
Speaker 2: for whom the question itself bordered on the nonsensical. Emmil
Speaker 2: listening at the next table, offered, if you stay long enough,
Speaker 2: you find the backward way easier. It is less anxious.
Speaker 2: No one here ever misses what is coming or what
Speaker 2: has already passed. Doesn't that mean you're always late? I asked,
Speaker 2: but he just laughed and shook his head head. Deciding
Speaker 2: my note book could take no more theorizing, I resolved
Speaker 2: to go to the source. True to his earlier offer.
Speaker 2: Emil invited me that afternoon, after as he put it,
Speaker 2: the hand passes twelve for the second time, not the
Speaker 2: first to visit the clockmakers gild at the edge of
Speaker 2: the village. The guild house was a marvel old as
Speaker 2: any cathedral, if smaller, with centuries of dark oak beams
Speaker 2: curving over a warren of work benches. Inside, the sweet,
Speaker 2: ghostly tang of lubricating oil mixed with dust, and the faint,
Speaker 2: persistent ticking of a hundred clocks, all out of step
Speaker 2: with my internal rhythm. At the heart of the room,
Speaker 2: Master Umacher sat, a stately man with a sweep of
Speaker 2: silvered hair and the posture of a conductor. Around him,
Speaker 2: young apprentices, some still in school, others Groan debated the
Speaker 2: adjustment of a grandfather clock, whose hands traced their path
Speaker 2: backwards across the dial, never faltering. The Master offered me
Speaker 2: a seat and a cup of heated berry cordial. You
Speaker 2: wish to understand, hair Lerer, He began with more gravity
Speaker 2: than I expected. Then let us show you the bones
Speaker 2: of our hours. From shelf to shelf. He produced clocks
Speaker 2: by the dozen, carriage clocks, wrist watches, barock mantel pieces,
Speaker 2: all their gears ingeniously reversed so that their hands swept
Speaker 2: counter to the rightful direction. Some even bore two faces
Speaker 2: standard and reverse back to back. The apprentices maintained the
Speaker 2: mechanisms with a reverence befitting delicate surgery. Nothing here was haphazard.
Speaker 2: Umaca positioned a schematic before me. See here, every clock
Speaker 2: is in negotiation. Once, long ago it was all confusion.
Speaker 2: Hair Borman perhaps remembers better than I. The retired head
Speaker 2: master stepped in, smiling, grand eyebrows arched. There was a
Speaker 2: time when the miller's watches and the notary's clocks quarreled
Speaker 2: over the proper hour, ecclesiastic time, market time feuds. Even
Speaker 2: some would rush about others linger endlessly correcting each other.
Speaker 2: So the council declared, we make a fresh start. His
Speaker 2: voice dropped to a hush. The solution reversed the direction.
Speaker 2: If no one could claim the hour as right, it
Speaker 2: would belong equally to every one and equally to none.
Speaker 2: Umarca nodded. The system had to be rigorous. We apprenticed
Speaker 2: our children to the new way. Clocks built to withstand
Speaker 2: outside interference. Apprentices made to master both directions so that
Speaker 2: no one could claim confusion. We do our arithmetic in
Speaker 2: both directions. He beckoned Emil to demonstrate. Emil, on a
Speaker 2: small chalkboard, demonstrated reverse edition, counting downward to reach a sum,
Speaker 2: an elegant, if baffling logic, which the apprentices corrected comfortingly
Speaker 2: when I stumbled. More impressive were the blueprints they laid out,
Speaker 2: showing not just clocks, but rolling calendars, ingenious devices that
Speaker 2: ticked down the days to festival observances, with codices illuminated
Speaker 2: in mirrored ink. When I asked about outside a confusion,
Speaker 2: Umarca held up a battered ledger. Visitors always think it strange,
Speaker 2: but after some days most are just children, especially they
Speaker 2: have less to unlearn. There are rules for both clocks
Speaker 2: and people. The carefulness of it all struck me. This
Speaker 2: was no accident or folly. Rebruc's clocks ran backwards because
Speaker 2: the people willed them so, and had maintained, with passion
Speaker 2: and effort, a parallel order that belonged solely here. I
Speaker 2: pressed them on advantages. Was there something gained by backward time?
Speaker 2: Something scientific? Perhaps Emmil grinned, Maybe we just like being
Speaker 2: the only ones who know what's coming. It teaches you
Speaker 2: to see the world not by deadlines, but by what
Speaker 2: you remember later. Umacha smiled with an ambiguous pride. Perhaps time,
Speaker 2: like a story, is best remembered from its end toward
Speaker 2: its beginning. The other apprentices nodded, half in jest, half
Speaker 2: in earnest. I emerged from the workshop with my head
Speaker 2: whirring like a freshly wound mechanism, the knowledge, both demystifying
Speaker 2: and destabilizing. What I'd taken for a charming error was
Speaker 2: in fact a finely built, universally agreed upon structure, one
Speaker 2: that required collective precision and brought the village not confusion,
Speaker 2: but paradoxically order. The days curled by the festival approached,
Speaker 2: and the village's metabolism quickened. Banners appeared on balconies, colored streamers,
Speaker 2: reversed in their lettering so that only a mirror could
Speaker 2: read them aright. In the square, children practiced walking backward
Speaker 2: in lines, giggling as they tried not to look over
Speaker 2: their shoulders. Led by Lot, the undisputed expert flower Cellars
Speaker 2: arranged bouquets upside down so they will look their best
Speaker 2: from the end of the parade. Even the weather, it
Speaker 2: seemed conspired morning fog warming to late afternoon sun in
Speaker 2: an order that felt somehow retrieved from the day's conclusion
Speaker 2: rather than its start. One evening, Master Umacher sought me out,
Speaker 2: inviting me to observe the innermost ceremony, the secret resetting
Speaker 2: of the town's clocks. That night, after the square had emptied,
Speaker 2: I followed the clockmakers through shadowed alleys to the base
Speaker 2: of the tower. Inside amid thick beams and ancient stones,
Speaker 2: the guild assembled at a great mahogany table. Master Uermacher
Speaker 2: said a battered leather bound folio, its pages cramped with
Speaker 2: mirroring numbers pennied in fading script. The older apprentices turned
Speaker 2: the heavy pages with gloved hands. Each record noted the
Speaker 2: moment of reset, public and private, running back through decades.
Speaker 2: The hands of the tower clock were uncoupled by a gentle,
Speaker 2: almost ceremonial movement at a precisely calculated reverse. Midnight, the
Speaker 2: hands were drawn to overlap. Then each clock in the
Speaker 2: village was synchronized, winding hub minute by minute back to
Speaker 2: the newly defined starting point. I watched, awestruck as the
Speaker 2: apprentices consulted brass compasses, checking alignments against blue glass lanterns
Speaker 2: and mirrored hour glasses. Emil explained, sotto voch, every clock
Speaker 2: must run together or the village falls out of time.
Speaker 2: After I was shown the earliest official chronicle the moment
Speaker 2: the Umkia the reversal was decreed, a council of elders,
Speaker 2: faces painted in brown sepia, their signatures mirrored as if
Speaker 2: seen in water, had ordered the change in the early
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. The reasons fairness, peace, a closing of old
Speaker 2: wounds so profound that time itself was adjusted to support
Speaker 2: the new concord by the hearth. The apprentices spoke in
Speaker 2: low conspiratorial tones. It isn't just custom, one explained. The
Speaker 2: year after the clocks turned, the harvest was greater than ever.
Speaker 2: My own great grandfather never once missed a birth or
Speaker 2: a wedding by the new time, And they say our
Speaker 2: elders live longer than in the valley below. Another added,
Speaker 2: visitors when they stay blend in. When they leave, they
Speaker 2: forget they ever had trouble, like a fever that lifts
Speaker 2: her Bormann leaning clothes. Added a stirring anecdote. Once a
Speaker 2: stranger from Zurich arrived for a week by the festival,
Speaker 2: he could recall all appointments in reverse, and found he
Speaker 2: anticipated the return train's time before it departed. He remembered
Speaker 2: the end before the beginning. He wrote a long letter
Speaker 2: about the piece it brought him, but then, away from Redbruck,
Speaker 2: remembered none of it. Over mulled cider, I listened to
Speaker 2: more stories of mist trains miraculously caught of children whose
Speaker 2: recitations improved after the clocks reversal, of old women who
Speaker 2: grew younger in spirit by counting years back, Whether tall
Speaker 2: Tale or tenet. The stories pulsed with an easy pride
Speaker 2: and an affection for a code that bound rather than
Speaker 2: isolated its keepers. Night deepened, and as I prepared to
Speaker 2: return to the guest house, I realized that my internal
Speaker 2: sense of fatigue harmonized with the reversed routine. I did
Speaker 2: not check my wristwatch. When I did later, the hour
Speaker 2: seemed plausible both forward and backward. I scribbled a final
Speaker 2: note in my diary. Is village time a code, a
Speaker 2: metaphor a mask? Does it matter? Or is it simply
Speaker 2: a sign of what people can accomplish when they agree
Speaker 2: to make a world together? No matter how implausible its rules.
Speaker 2: The answer was not at hand, nor would it, I
Speaker 2: now suspected, come quickly. But as I watched the towers
Speaker 2: hands reach their mirrored apex, and heard the faint laughter
Speaker 2: echoing up from the square, I felt something shifting, not
Speaker 2: just in my understanding, but in the deeper geometry of
Speaker 2: my days. I had come in pursuit of peace, of constancy,
Speaker 2: of the reliable forward movement of hours. Instead I found
Speaker 2: a community in loving revolt against the tyranny of one
Speaker 2: way time, a place where ritual habit and compact made
Speaker 2: the impossible seem not just normal but essential. And as
Speaker 2: I closed my notebook for the night, I could not
Speaker 2: shake the suspicion, equal parts delight and quiet unease, that
Speaker 2: I was already imperceptibly slipping into the rhythm of backward hours.
Speaker 2: Emmel had said the backward way was easier, and now,
Speaker 2: sitting in the soft lamp light by my guest house window,
Speaker 2: I was inclined to believe him. The festival banners outside
Speaker 2: rubbed ambush shadows on the street, and faint voices drifted up.
Speaker 2: The village carried itself as if rehearsing for an event
Speaker 2: whose climax it already remembered. In place of certainty, I
Speaker 2: nursed a restless, expanding curiosity. I had grasped the mechanics
Speaker 2: of the system, yes, the clocks, the schedules, the mirrored arithmetic.
Speaker 2: But that comprehension only made the daily world more enigmatic.
Speaker 2: What had I truly learned, except that a community could
Speaker 2: declare time's direction and together make it so. I decided
Speaker 2: that night to test the limits of my own adjustment.
Speaker 2: First an experiment, I keyed in an alarm on my
Speaker 2: smartphone to morrow morning, seven thirty sharp. I set my
Speaker 2: wrist watch too, the reliable old kind, winding its spring
Speaker 2: in the accepted forward fashion. Then on a notepad, I wrote,
Speaker 2: intend to wake early village time or city time. I
Speaker 2: set both devices on the bedside table and turned out
Speaker 2: the light. Determined to hold tight to my own measure
Speaker 2: of hours, I woke late, according to both devices, later,
Speaker 2: still by the hands of the bedside clock. The alarm
Speaker 2: when I checked it had failed to sound, or perhaps
Speaker 2: it had rung, and I dismissed it in my sleep.
Speaker 2: But there was no evidence, no mistnotification, no stray buzzing.
Speaker 2: My body felt well rested, but there was a subtle,
Speaker 2: off kilter sense that I had not really skipped anything urgent.
Speaker 2: Glancing out the window, I saw the bakery opening, frau
Speaker 2: Keller setting out tables for what she by her idiom
Speaker 2: called the late before morning. I tried to reconstruct my night,
Speaker 2: skimming backward through the haze just before waking. Already the
Speaker 2: sequencing seemed muddled. Had I turned once or twice to
Speaker 2: consult the lamp, had dawn arrived first? Or my dreams?
Speaker 2: I dressed and went down for breakfast, pencil in hand,
Speaker 2: determined to maintain the discipline of record. The bakery thrummed
Speaker 2: with people, locals, a few hiking tourists, all chit chatting
Speaker 2: as though on a string pulled from somewhere behind them.
Speaker 2: Lot was there, perched on a stool, spinning a coin
Speaker 2: between her fingers. She brightened when she saw me. Did
Speaker 2: you have interesting dreams? She asked, Without waiting for an answer,
Speaker 2: she rattled on, sometimes I remember what will happen yesterday
Speaker 2: if I think hard enough. Her borman says, that is
Speaker 2: because we practice both times at school. You should come today.
Speaker 2: We do subtraction that leads to the beginning. Her friends giggled,
Speaker 2: Lot beamed There was nothing calculated in her claim, but
Speaker 2: it spun a question in my mind. Was memory here
Speaker 2: too subject to customs of reversal? I spent that morning
Speaker 2: trailing the edge of the festival preparations. The square was
Speaker 2: a living laboratory. Children walked backward with layers of deliberate clumsiness,
Speaker 2: the older ones correcting the little ones with gentle tugs.
Speaker 2: Shopkeepers chalked menus and schedules on sandwich boards, the reversed
Speaker 2: numbers growing more ornate as the festival approached. Even the tourists.
Speaker 2: Two young couples with city windbreakers and day packs, looked
Speaker 2: over their shoulders at an arriving bus, unsure if it
Speaker 2: was departing or arriving. Their faces a mix of amusement
Speaker 2: and surrender. My diary entries became a source of confusion.
Speaker 2: I started to note things as they appeared to happen,
Speaker 2: but I found myself uncertain whether a meal, a conversation
Speaker 2: with Emmil, or a walk through the Linden Woods belonged
Speaker 2: to one day or the next. Before. I attempted to
Speaker 2: keep my notes linear, but the pages filled with corrections
Speaker 2: and cross outs, arrows pointing backward as often as forward.
Speaker 2: Was this simple suggestion or was the collective rhythm beginning
Speaker 2: to rewire something fundamental. I drifted to the school just
Speaker 2: before the noon bell. Hair Bormann stood in the sun,
Speaker 2: herding a line of children into a bright class room
Speaker 2: pinched with chalk dust and raucous laughter. Through the open window,
Speaker 2: I heard the lesson unfolding. This week's problem, intoned hair
Speaker 2: Boorman is due the week before next. If you finish early,
Speaker 2: you can hand it in after last Tuesday. Does everyone understand? Nods,
Speaker 2: exasperated sighs. And then if you remember the answer before
Speaker 2: hearing the question, keep it safe. We may use it again.
Speaker 2: The room was full of an energy I recognized from
Speaker 2: my own years as a teacher, but the logic here
Speaker 2: was deliciously inverted. The children seemed not just unfazed, but
Speaker 2: quietly competitive. Who could internalize the leap most elegantly, Who
Speaker 2: might spot the clever twist. The head master saw me
Speaker 2: at the edge of the courtyard and beckoned, as he
Speaker 2: sent the children off for recess. You find us at
Speaker 2: our arithmetic. I see the tourists in town. Do they
Speaker 2: ask you for directions? I tell them whatever hour they
Speaker 2: hope for, it has already passed, and so is certain
Speaker 2: to be free. I smiled, admitting my own confusion. I
Speaker 2: don't think my mind works in both directions, I said,
Speaker 2: not entirely joking. He considered eyes narrowing in practiced amusement.
Speaker 2: Your brain perhaps not yet, but your habits they drift
Speaker 2: as the sun does subtly. But with persistence you will
Speaker 2: see hear. Time is not an imposition. It is a
Speaker 2: habit made together. When you leave, you'll wonder why the
Speaker 2: other way feels so stern. He invited me to tea,
Speaker 2: promising a conversation after now, but before long I agreed. Later,
Speaker 2: wandering the square, I overheard a conversation between emmyl and
Speaker 2: two villagers at a cafe table. They bantered over mist appointments,
Speaker 2: each trying to outwit the other with stories of remembering
Speaker 2: to be early by being late. The laughter was infectious,
Speaker 2: but I sensed, beyond the levity something practiced in the
Speaker 2: way they held to backward rhythms, like dancers marking time
Speaker 2: to a melody only they could hear. I returned to
Speaker 2: the guest house that afternoon to find frau Keller winding
Speaker 2: all the clocks at once. On the counter lay a
Speaker 2: stack of mail. The envelopes were stamped with dates in
Speaker 2: descending order, the only place I'd ever seen a calendar
Speaker 2: counting down instead of up. You're noticing, yes, she quipped
Speaker 2: in Bruck. We are closer to the past than the future.
Speaker 2: That is why there's less to worry about. I hesitated.
Speaker 2: But isn't that just an elaborate performance. Surely people slip,
Speaker 2: she shrugged, nestling a clock against her hip. When your
Speaker 2: neighbors turn their clocks this way, you have a choice
Speaker 2: fight or join over time joining is easier. Emmil poked
Speaker 2: his head in, flower dusted and beaming. Want to help
Speaker 2: set the parade flags? Lot says you need to walk
Speaker 2: backward at least once, or you'll miss the proper hour.
Speaker 2: And so I found myself arm in arm with Lot
Speaker 2: and a gaggle of children practicing a reverse promenade through
Speaker 2: the cobbled lanes. It was as disorienting as one might expect,
Speaker 2: made bearable only by the children's laughter and the muscular
Speaker 2: jollity of Emmil, who counted backward aloud seven six five
Speaker 2: with operatic gusto, steering our little procession past amused onlookers
Speaker 2: along the route. The festival preparations thickened, shop windows filled
Speaker 2: with upturned bouquets. Someone had hung an enormous mirror on
Speaker 2: the western wall of the square, distorting the parade's reflection
Speaker 2: into a tangle of reversed movement. That evening, as dusk
Speaker 2: pressed along the eaves, the festivals rhythms seeped into every conversation.
Speaker 2: Even the newest visitors spoke of tomorrow's yesterday and joked
Speaker 2: about their watches running away from them. I caught sight
Speaker 2: of the tourists from earlier now consulting a local time
Speaker 2: table and following it without protest, their smartphones abandoned. I
Speaker 2: remembered something Frau Keller had said, Time is a garment,
Speaker 2: you wear what fits. I began reluctantly to fit the
Speaker 2: village's hours to my own body, my rest and hunger,
Speaker 2: waking at odd times meals falling with the sun rising
Speaker 2: or setting, in a symmetry that I had never before
Speaker 2: noticed or needed. True to his word, her Borman invited
Speaker 2: me to his house, a compact cotton at the edge
Speaker 2: of the village, tunneled beneath archways of ancient vines. We
Speaker 2: sat in a window seat as the last sunlight curled
Speaker 2: around the hills, a tray of tea and apple cake
Speaker 2: between us. He spoke with the deliberate cadence of a teacher,
Speaker 2: weighing words, as if each bore a subtle charge. The
Speaker 2: children learn to remember backward early. It helps them in maths,
Speaker 2: in language, in stories. You be surprised at their memory games.
Speaker 2: They find it easier to recall a list from the
Speaker 2: last item to the first. It carries into age two.
Speaker 2: You'll see most of the elders here remember not just
Speaker 2: what happened, but how to say this the way it unwound.
Speaker 2: For them. The shape of things is always opening, not closing,
Speaker 2: he paused, sipping. We keep diaries in reverse. If you
Speaker 2: go to the library, you'll find the ledgers written backward
Speaker 2: from the recent to the ancient, as if each new
Speaker 2: entry erases a little of what preceded. It. Is it
Speaker 2: just language? Then I asked a kind of mnemonic, a trick,
Speaker 2: he smiled, perhaps at first, but after a while, habit
Speaker 2: reorders thoughts. Memory becomes a kind of prediction. In the village,
Speaker 2: you plan by picturing the outcome. Then let the steps
Speaker 2: reveal themselves as you walk backwards through them. That sense
Speaker 2: of living in anticipatory retrospection gave me pause. Does it
Speaker 2: not make you anxious? Not knowing oddly? No, it's not uncertainty,
Speaker 2: but relief. You know what mattered once you arrive, the
Speaker 2: way a story clarifies only after it's told. Here we
Speaker 2: try to live always with that clarity in mind. I
Speaker 2: found myself thinking of my years of teaching, recalling times
Speaker 2: i'd feared losing track, students bewildered by deadlines, the stress
Speaker 2: of assembling futures from an endless march of days. What
Speaker 2: if instead we could live as though every day was
Speaker 2: unlacing gently back toward its route. The library became my crucible.
Speaker 2: It was a flashing, honey colored room, shelves bode under
Speaker 2: ancient volumes. The librarian, a distant cousin of Emil's, greeted
Speaker 2: me and directed me to the town records. Rows of
Speaker 2: heavy ledgers, bearing two dates for every entry, are before
Speaker 2: and after, both racing in opposite directions. I paged through
Speaker 2: an account of the first reversal, written in mirror script
Speaker 2: by a deft, unhurried hand. The decree was signed as
Speaker 2: I'd seen, for peace, for fairness, for time owed, and forgiven.
Speaker 2: The local idioms scattered throughout evoked a vision of time
Speaker 2: as unfolding toward origins, not endings. We meet next sooner
Speaker 2: on the before after Eve, bring bread baked for return
Speaker 2: and milk for forgetting. I was even shown a few
Speaker 2: letters left behind by outsiders, each with confused apologies and
Speaker 2: misplaced recollections, their timelinds telescoped or scattering, like beads on
Speaker 2: a floor. One missive, never mail declared. Days here are
Speaker 2: easier thought backward. I find myself forgiving old regrets, planning
Speaker 2: as memory not anticipation, The future weighs less. A creeping
Speaker 2: suspicion grew. Was this merely a clever group mnemonic, or
Speaker 2: had the generations of living this way tilted cognition shaped
Speaker 2: new neural paths made ease of what elsewhere was rare?
Speaker 2: I wondered a little hungrily if a study, a careful
Speaker 2: battery of tests, might show that children here could remember
Speaker 2: sequences better In reverse, elder's less anxious about to morrow,
Speaker 2: minds more at peace with unfinished business. That evening, walking
Speaker 2: back to the guest house, I met Master Uermacher tending
Speaker 2: a small garden behind his workshop. The old man wielded
Speaker 2: a trowel with slow, precise scuffs, unearthing bulbs as if
Speaker 2: they were keep saves hidden for a future. Remembering, he
Speaker 2: motioned for me to join him. You've seen our clocks
Speaker 2: and our rituals, he said, straightening. But you wonder still,
Speaker 2: I think what this all amounts to I do, I admitted.
Speaker 2: Is it a charm, a joke grown serious? Or are
Speaker 2: you guarding something deeper, something that rewires how people live together?
Speaker 2: He dusted his hands and pondered, eyes fixed on the
Speaker 2: distant shimmer of the mountain snows. Perhaps it is all
Speaker 2: three time. Here is a pact. We agree on the
Speaker 2: story we want to remember. You saw the festival ceremony,
Speaker 2: the clocks drawn to a single point, not because the
Speaker 2: hour matters, but because if we start together, we unravel
Speaker 2: the fear of being left behind. He looked at me, softening.
Speaker 2: We are old this place, and I in my childhood,
Speaker 2: my father's father told me every tradition is a rehearsal
Speaker 2: for forgiveness. If we agree on the direction of our days,
Speaker 2: we can heal old wounds because we rewrite what matters together.
Speaker 2: I felt, for a moment, the bottom dropping out of
Speaker 2: my preconceptions. The Backward clocks weren't just an eccentricity, nor
Speaker 2: even a grand mnemonic. They were a social engine, a
Speaker 2: means of engineering. Communal mes memory, a way to ensure
Speaker 2: that every moment, every mistake, could be lessened by collective agreement.
Speaker 2: Were written in the story as it was lived. Backward
Speaker 2: Emil arriving behind us with a lantern chimed in half serious,
Speaker 2: half sunlight. The best part Herleira life is easier when
Speaker 2: you remember it from the finish. You have no dread,
Speaker 2: just gratitude, like savoring the end of a book before
Speaker 2: returning to its first page. A festival rehearsal called the
Speaker 2: apprentices away, and the old man left me By the
Speaker 2: garden's boundary. The mountain air grew thin and blue. I
Speaker 2: stood there, caught inside a realization so gentle and complete
Speaker 2: it seemed to move my very breath. Time here was
Speaker 2: not a fixed arrow, but a dialogue endlessly reinterpreted, ultimately
Speaker 2: forgiving because it was shared. It was not about mechanical oddity,
Speaker 2: nor even communal trickery or collective myth. The clock's backward
Speaker 2: movement was the visible surface of a social contract to
Speaker 2: hold past and future as neighboring rooms to let memory
Speaker 2: interlace freely with longing and regret, so the pain of missing,
Speaker 2: the anxiety of anticipation could be softened, dissipated, perhaps even averted.
Speaker 2: The festival, the school lessons, the reversed ledgers, all were
Speaker 2: tools for living more lightly in the world. I walked
Speaker 2: back to my room with a piece I had not
Speaker 2: known in years. For the first time since arrival, I
Speaker 2: did not bother to check my phone. I wound the
Speaker 2: little clock on my bedside table, and with a deliberate pleasure,
Speaker 2: watched the hands slip backward. When I tried to write
Speaker 2: in my diary that night, I found myself beginning with
Speaker 2: the outcome, working in reverse to explain the steps that
Speaker 2: had brought me there. I described the contentment of the
Speaker 2: evening before mentioning the encounter with Umarka, and then noted
Speaker 2: my breakfast last, as if arranging experience not by sequence,
Speaker 2: but by the importance revealed only in reflection. It felt
Speaker 2: more natural than I could have imagined only days before.
Speaker 2: I realized, with an odd surge of humility, that I
Speaker 2: had spent decades valuing order, punctuality, causes before effects, rewarding
Speaker 2: students for logical stepwise progress. Yet here the grace was
Speaker 2: in assembling the meaning afterward, in shared arrival rather than
Speaker 2: private striving. On the day of the festival, the village
Speaker 2: gathered in the square, everyone from infants balanced on their
Speaker 2: mothers hips to the oldest window watchers pressed together in
Speaker 2: a murmuring ring. The tower bells began to toll, low, resonant,
Speaker 2: seeming to spiral inward. As night fell, the clockmakers ascended
Speaker 2: the tower to begin the reset. This time, masters and
Speaker 2: apprentices beckoned me to join. We filed up the narrow,
Speaker 2: circular stair, each step oddly liberating, as if climbing down
Speaker 2: into dawn. At the summit, caught in shadows and flickering
Speaker 2: lantern light, I watched as the mechanism halted in its
Speaker 2: reversed sweep. Hands poised together at the mirrored midnight, exactly
Speaker 2: as recorded in the ancient ledgers. A hush. Then as
Speaker 2: a single apprentice lot solemn as I'd never seen her,
Speaker 2: placed her palm to the cool glass, and whispered a
Speaker 2: string of numbers backwards, a prayer or a wish sent
Speaker 2: spiraling into the old wood an iron in that instant,
Speaker 2: as the hands ticked down in synchrony with a hundred
Speaker 2: clocks across the village. The air in the tower vibrated
Speaker 2: with a presence I could not name a shared heartbeat,
Speaker 2: a suspension, as if for one moment everyone agreed on
Speaker 2: the shape of what had just ended and thus could
Speaker 2: begin again. Down below, villagers cheered, lot turned beaming and
Speaker 2: offered me a hand. Now you will always know what
Speaker 2: happened before, she said, and I realized she meant both
Speaker 2: the hour and the reason we descended together. In the square,
Speaker 2: children tossed petals backward over the crowd as the festival
Speaker 2: lights shivered in their mirrored lanterns. Strangers and friends greeted
Speaker 2: each other with phrases only half comprehensible to an outsider.
Speaker 2: Yet somehow I understood their rhythm to the next, before day,
Speaker 2: to the last. First, I slipped my own wristwatch from
Speaker 2: my sleeve, uncertain for the first time whether to wind
Speaker 2: it forward or back. The urge was not to correct,
Speaker 2: but to let it rest. The hands would find their
Speaker 2: way in time, as would I. Walking among the villagers
Speaker 2: shoulder to shoulder in a celebration conceived not as anticipation
Speaker 2: of what might come, but as gratitude for all already shared.
Speaker 2: I felt something unfasten. I sensed the power in this
Speaker 2: common volition, this gentle conspiracy against the tyranny of an
Speaker 2: indifferent arrow. As the crowd thinned the square, echoing only
Speaker 2: with the last notes of laughter, I turned to the
Speaker 2: tower and watched its hands sweep together, backward and forward,
Speaker 2: meeting at zero. It occurred to me, with quiet awe
Speaker 2: that if this whole village could agree to make time
Speaker 2: run backward and it were was lived and remembered and loved,
Speaker 2: not just performed, there might be far more in the
Speaker 2: world that could be changed by mutual choice than I
Speaker 2: had ever let myself imagine. Perhaps I thought, the reality
Speaker 2: we share is always a matter of such agreements, a
Speaker 2: masterpiece of collective imagination, in which we set the rules
Speaker 2: for forgiveness, belonging, memory, and hope. I stepped out into
Speaker 2: the snowlit street, uncertain if it was very late or
Speaker 2: beautifully early, and found myself smiling at the wonder of
Speaker 2: not needing to descide.
Speaker 1: And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one.