The Baron turned and made for the cottage door in noisy fury; then he paused, waiting for Ula to plead with him not to leave. As no words came, he stomped back into the room. “What I have to do here with you is a matter of great secrecy. I propose a splendid gift for my daughter—” He stopped again, looking expectant.
Old Ula said, “A beautiful girl, Mein Herr.” He did not mind saying this, even though the Baron expected him to, because Britt, the Baron’s daughter, was indeed a beautiful girl. Just about Erich’s age, thought Ula. Ten. Ten years, for her, of being made to feel the center of the world. Ten years, for Erich, of wondering where in the world he had come from, where in it he belonged.
Under such difficult, very different, circumstances, they were both nice children. Old Ula found this wonderful to contemplate.
“I think that Erich and I,” he said, “will be able to keep your secret.”
“Oh, very well then,” said the Baron with bad grace. “This is what I want. You are to make for me, by Christmas, the finest, largest, most intricate and imposing cuckoo clock that ever has been. This is how I wish the decorations to be…write down what I say!”
“I can remember.”
“How can I be sure of that? You are an old man. You might forget some detail.”
Brangi, who had begun to dislike the sound of the Baron’s voice, got to his feet with a low snarl. Old Ula put a hand on the dog’s head, fondled his ears. “Herr Baron, I have a suggestion.”
“And what may that be?”
“There is Fritz, the young clockmaker, at the other end of the village. I am sure that he would write down everything you say, and would make you a fine clock. He is going to be—that is to say, he is—a fine workman. But I could not possibly finish a clock for you, even of the simplest, by Christmas. To make a clock takes time.”
Again the Baron started for the door, again wheeled and stomped back into the room. Fritz was a good clockmaker, but everyone knew that Old Ula was the best anywhere. And for the Baron’s daughter, even the best would scarcely serve. He would give it to her for her birthday, in April. Surely even this stubborn old man could get the fanciest clock done by then.
Breathing heavily, the Baron said, “You are to make this clock precisely as I say, forgetting nothing. Do you understand?”
“I understand what you have said.”
The Baron, taking this for agreement, continued. “The entire face of the house is to be decorated, every inch. And, mind you, the sides!” He looked triumphantly at Old Ula. “What do you think of that, eh? Never thought of decorating the sides, have you?”
“In fact, I have, upon occasion, done this.”
“Old man, you are deliberately trying to annoy me!”
“No, no, no…not at all. I should never dream of trying to annoy a Baron.”
Baron Balloon looked at the clockmaker suspiciously, but saw only an open, frank, friendly, wrinkled face. Were the eyes a shade merry?
“For two pfennigs I’d go to Munich over this business,” he growled. The clockmaker remained silent. The Baron scowled. Erich looked at the floor. Brangi yawned.
“Very well,” the Baron resumed. “I shall wait until April. My daughter’s birthday is on the eighteenth of April. The clock must be ready by then. Understood? Now, to the decorations…a stag’s head, with five-branched antlers to surmount the whole, with a large bow and arrow just beneath. It was with a bow and arrow that I brought down my finest beast. You may come up to the castle and sketch his head. Down one side I wish a brace of geese to hang by their feet, and on the other a brace of hare. Fowling pieces on each side, fit them how you will. At the bottom, stretched at length, a wild boar—”
“Dead?”
“Of course, dead. With large tusks. Hunting rifles to each side of him. And, old man, just see here—I have brought you the skull of a little doe to be used for the pendulum bob. Is it not beautiful?”
The clockmaker thought the slender skull was indeed a pretty thing, but he lifted a hand to prevent Baron Balloon from putting it on the workbench.
“Effective, hah?” said the Baron, tossing the little skull from one hand to the other. “As to the rest of the clock case, fill it in with more hunting gear, also doves, geese, rabbits. These can look as if they had not yet been killed. A few vines, some leaves. You’ll know what I mean, but make sure every inch is carved in some manner. I want this to be such a clock as has never been seen before, anywhere.”
“Herr Baron—”
Being interrupted one moment and not replied to the next was beginning to get on the Baron’s nerves. How he longed for the old days—distant, but still current in his family’s stories—the feudal days, when a man like this Ula would scarcely dare lift his eyes to a Baron’s.
“Well, what is it?” he snapped. “Get on with it. I am in a vast hurry.”
Old Ula, who was not in a hurry, looked about his little cottage for a few moments longer.
“It is this way, Baron Balloon,” he said at length. “I am, as you have observed several times, an old man. But mark you, Mein Herr, an old person has one great advantage over a young one who is still pressing forward, striving to do, to be, to get, to grow rich or grow famous, to command and to possess. I have no interest in these matters. And—I come to the point—I have decided to make a clock for myself.”
In fact, this notion, which had only come upon him since the Baron’s arrival, now seized his imagination, and he marveled that he had not thought of it before. It would be, of course, his last clock. Already his hands were beginning to stiffen, his fingers to ache. But he felt they would do this last piece of work for him. A clock made by himself, to his own order!
So enchanted was he by the idea that he turned from the Baron to the boy at the table and said, “Look here, Erich, we have no time to lose. We must work hard to repair these two clocks in short, but good, order. And then, my son, why, then—”
“Ula!”
The clockmaker turned. “Ah, Herr Baron, excuse me. I forget my manners. May I bid you good day,” he said hastily.
The Baron sputtered. Sputtered!
“Do you mean to imply—are you meaning to say—is it possible that you are refusing to make my clock? The one I came all the way down the mountain to order from you? How dare you refuse me anything? I am the Baron Balloon, and from my castle I look down on the entire village!”
Oh, how he yearned to say, I own this village! as his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather would have said.
Old Ula stroked his beard in silence for a while and then said, “That is how it seems to be.”
“You refuse?”
“I refuse.”
“But this is not possible!”
“Let me explain. I have decided to make a clock for myself, to my own order. I have never done this in all my years of clockmaking. Yes, I shall begin to make my very own clock as soon as these two on the table are set right.”
Baron Balloon was beside himself with rage, with outrage, with sheer blistering fury. People did not decline to do what he, the Baron Balloon, wished done! Yet here was this poor, witless, aged, annoying man—refusing!
What