Tours of the Black Clock

1

THERE WAS ALWAYS A moment, sailing between the boat-house on shore and Davenhall Island, when neither was in sight. There was nothing in this moment but his boat in the fog on the water; there might as well have been no sun in the sky or anything that called itself a country. He didn’t notice it when he first got the job working for the old man, transporting the tourists from the mainland to the island and back three times a day. Old Zeno died seven weeks later. The young man’s name was Marc. Marc took over the business and sailed into that moment his first trip out, when there on deck in the fog he almost said out loud, among the unsuspecting tourists, Where in the universe am I? Finally the outline of Davenhall Island emerged in the gray. In the days to come the moment might arrive at any point of the journey, halfway or when arrival was imminent, with the island appearing so suddenly Marc thought he might run the boat right up the banks of the river. Sometimes it happened so near the last moment he thought the moment wouldn’t come at all. There was never once he didn’t feel its fear and desolation. He’d look around the boat at the tourists poring over their itineraries, at this moment when no itinerary made any more sense than a scroll from the Dead Sea of some other hour, stolen from the clock of some other place. Perhaps the place that preceded this moment or the place of the moment to come; but not this particular moment anyway. Not this one.