The Stopwatch

A short story by Martin Christen

I no longer remember exactly when it happened. Sometime in fourth or fifth grade, when Mr Miller was my teacher and I was nine or ten years old. The year is blurry, but the feeling from back then is crystal clear, as if it were yesterday.

In those years, my parents liked to go hiking in the autumn. The Binntal in the canton of Valais was a wonderfully wild region, where I found beautifully formed stones: simple quartz, fist-sized pieces of white sugar dolomite coated with golden pyrite, and black, foot-sized chunks whose surface was covered all over with gleaming, elongated crystal cylinders – probably jordanite. To a mineralogist, they would have been unremarkable specimens. To me, they were treasures, each one with a story that only I knew.

The following spring, I built myself a small wooden hut at the back of the garden, right next to the sandpit, and played «shop» in it. My display consisted of the Binntal stones, carefully arranged like genuine valuables.

One afternoon, Ronny turned up. He lived a few houses away, in the parallel street – an only occasional playmate. Rumours surrounded him: his parents were divorced, his stepfather strict, perhaps even too strict. For us children, this was a flaw we didn’t understand, but parroted nonetheless. Still, I was glad he came.

Ronny looked at the stones and asked questions that flattered me. And at some point, he pulled a stopwatch from his pocket. A mechanical model with a flip cover and two buttons, which when pressed made the hand run or stop. I was fascinated by the thing. We quickly came to an agreement: two of my finest stones in exchange for his stopwatch. I spent the rest of the afternoon timing everything that came to mind.

After about an hour, my mother came out onto the terrace to offer me an afternoon snack. Almost in passing, she asked where I had got the stopwatch. I told her truthfully about the trade. She frowned, said that couldn’t be right, took the watch from me without a word, and went inside. I shrugged and went back to tending my shop.

At dinner, she announced that she had been making phone calls. Two stopwatches had gone missing from the Bärenmatte gymnasium – one in Ronny’s possession, one in mine. Mr Miller had confirmed they were missing from there. My objection that I had simply made a legitimate trade was brushed aside with a tight smile: «You can claim all sorts of things.» She would hand the watches over to Mr Miller that same evening.

The next day, Mr Miller likewise refused to hear my version of events. The punishment: Ronny and I were to spend the spring holidays «planting saplings» for the village forester. My parents thought this was a splendid idea. Resistance was futile.

So on the first day of the holidays, I turned up at the forester’s at seven in the morning. He was surprised to see such a young worker, but had been informed and gave me light tasks. For two weeks, I worked from seven until five, with a generous lunch break, but I wasn’t used to such physical labour and came home exhausted each evening. Ronny never showed up. Not once.

On the last day of work, the forester bid me a warm farewell. He hadn’t had such a hardworking young man for a long time, he said. He knew it had been a punishment – but because I had worked so hard without complaining, he would pay me the usual wage. However, since I was a minor, he would send the money to my parents with a letter. My heart leapt. Perhaps the undeserved drudgery had been worth it after all.

A few days later, when I came home from school, my father and mother were sitting at the dining table and asked me to sit down. Mother had an envelope in her hand. The forester had praised my work highly, she said – and was paying me a wage of around 170 francs. But now they had a problem. It simply could not be that I should profit from a punishment. Besides, I would have no use for so much money. They had decided to donate it to a good cause.

I swallowed hard and went to my room. That felt bloody awful. Not only had my mother refused to believe the truth about the trade – I had also been the only one who was punished, and now I wasn’t even allowed to keep the wages I had honestly earned.

It was a second verdict. Harder than the first, because it came from those who should have protected me.