Clock

CLOCK

The boy had not seen them for a long time. He missed them. And sometimes wishes do come true.

One winter evening, someone knocked on the door of the apartment where he lived with his parents and grandmother. When the door opened, he heard his grandfather's voice. He came from afar, from Donja Velešnja. His mother had been telling him for two years that they couldn't go there because there was a war. Serbs were fighting against Croats, fearing a repeat of what had happened to them not so long ago. That's how he understood his mother.

The embrace between the boy and his grandfather was firm and warm. He came for a short visit, just one day, to see them, buy something in town, bring them a little something, from his hand and heart. And to leave them a clock. A clock he got from a woman, a German, with whom he worked when he was in Germany as a prisoner of war.

He tells the boy that his uncle and grandmother send their regards and can't wait to see him. The boy is joyful, listening to his grandfather's stories for a long time. Even when he went to bed, excitement kept him from falling asleep.

The day awakens and quickly passes, the boy talks with his grandfather, plays chess, looks at the clock's case, opens it, and takes out a beautiful, silver watch with a long chain. The hands have stopped. But time still flows quickly. He smells a strong scent of hay and the barn that he loves so much.

The day passes, and evening falls. Father and grandfather, with the boy in the car, head to the train station. And there, the memory becomes blurry...

The boy has grown up, matured into a man. But he has never seen his grandfather again. From the beginning, now he understands, of the civil war in Croatia, the boy did not see his uncle, who died during the war, nor his grandmother. Grandfather and grandmother, who were captured by the Croatian army after "Operation Storm," interrogated, and lived a little longer, passed away in their home, far away from him.

Hundreds of thousands of his people fled from the Croats. Thousands of them did not...

The clock was never repaired. No one had parts for it. But it still stands neatly in its black case. Whenever the man wishes to feel the scent he loved and loves, the scent of distant times, the scent of the barn and hay, he opens the case and takes a deep breath to absorb the fragrance, the fragrance of the past, the fragrance of all those days and nights he was supposed to spend with his loved ones, stolen from him by war.

The clock has stopped, but its heart beats, and its soul preserves memories. It refuses to forget them and will never let them go.

Igor Tintor