The Museum of Extraordinary Things(41)

“Yours?”

“Inherited,” I told him. I suppose that’s the way I thought of the watch, not as a stolen object but as a reward I deserved. From the skeptical look on the watchmaker’s face I could tell he thought it was much too good for the likes of me.

He picked it up, turned it over in his hand, and read the inscription. “ ‘To my dear son.’ ”

“I have a father,” I said, embarrassed by the sort of son I’d become, for I was dear to no one. I thought of Isaac spitting on the ground so he could let me know what he thought of me. The day after I’d stolen the watch I’d gone to sit beside him under a long table, where we did piecework, stitching pockets onto women’s shirts. We were only boys, but boys who knew too much of the world. When I opened my hand to reveal my take, his eyes had widened. “The owner’s son,” I’d whispered, not needing to say more. “Good,” Isaac had whispered back. “It’s what he deserves.”

The watchmaker removed his glasses and used an eyepiece to examine the watch further. “Made in London.” He showed me a hallmark I hadn’t noticed before, a leopard’s head. “That marks the city of origin.” Then beneath that mark, a crown with the number 22. “Pure gold. Excellent quality. Your father gave this to you? He must be quite wealthy.”

“You don’t need wealth to appreciate something beautiful.” I now feared this fellow Kelly might call the police on me, and therefore manage to keep the watch for himself. Over the years I had grown attached to it, as men grow attached to their miseries and their burdens.

The repairman took a tiny set of tweezers and opened the back of the watch, then went deeper into the cogs, fishing around. He came upon a cog that was stuck in place, which he removed and cleaned, then reinserted. Immediately the works began again. The sudden sound startled me, and I took a step away from the counter. Kelly nodded, fully understanding my reaction. “It’s alive,” he said. “A watch is like a man. You have to know how to approach it, and each one is unique. This one, for instance, has its own fingerprint.” Kelly tapped upon the back with just the right amount of pressure. A small circular panel slipped up to reveal a single blue stone. “Sapphire,” he informed me. “Your father truly does appreciate beauty. And of course there is your name in print for all eternity,” he said with a mocking tone.

A hidden inscription had been revealed, there below the stone.

“To Harry Block, on the occasion of his eleventh birthday.”

“It’s a fine watch, Harry.” The watchmaker smirked as he congratulated me. He had already guessed that wasn’t my name. In truth, I startled at the sound of it. “If you ever want to sell this watch, I’m an interested party. Or any other watch your father presents to you. Just bring it here and I’ll give you a fair price.”

I paid the fee for the repair with all the money I had at the time, and slipped the watch inside my pocket. Walking down Houston Street I remembered that Harry Block had told me his age, the same as mine, as if that had mattered and had somehow made us colleagues. He’d only had the watch for a brief time before I’d relieved him of it. At that point I had already been in possession of the timepiece for so long perhaps it did belong to me.

All the same, I began to look for the original owner. I did so without thinking, since finding people came easily to me. It was what I’d been trained for, and searching for the lost had become part of my soul. I couldn’t let things go, even when I should. I did as Hochman had always instructed, looked into my subject’s past. He insisted to the press that he used numerology and herbs to divine a man’s future and his dreams, but he told me that a man always revealed his own inner story in his actions and expressions. A man’s past deeds foretold his future, and allowed anyone with half a brain to divine the path he would take.

I discovered which factories Block’s family owned and made a list that I carried with me. I stood outside each one, including the loft where my father and Isaac Rosenfeld’s father had worked years ago. For several years Block disappeared. I found out later he had gone to Harvard College, then to law school. When he moved back into his family’s house after his residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was still around. Sometimes I stationed myself across from his family’s home. In the half-light I gazed through the tall arched windows. It was a brownstone mansion on Sixty-second Street, built by the architects Hunt and Hunt with beautiful cornice pieces and elaborate stone carvings. Surely, it could not compare to Mrs. Vanderbilt’s block-long monstrosity of red bricks and limestone, built in 1882 across from the Plaza Hotel, inspired by a chateau in the Loire Valley. All the same, the Block mansion was grand enough. I felt even more like a criminal when I lurked there. I felt trouble course through me. I had photographed some gang members in the Tombs prison before their hangings, moments before they crossed from the courthouse to their incarceration and death over a connecting bridge that prisoners called the Bridge of Sighs. I’d wondered if these men had always known they would murder and rob and that their fates would lead them to ruin. As for me, I had no idea what I was capable of. Was the future set, or could a man change his destiny and make his own decisions as to what came next? Perhaps it was as Hochman had once said to me, that a man had many lives. Each day we chose the path we would take by our own actions.

And yet I did not feel that way whenever I turned onto Sixty-second Street. I felt pulled there by something far beyond my control.