I sat tense, where she had indicated with a gesture, at the edge of the leather, heavy and cold, despite the season, armchair with the frayed seams, my gaze fixed on the cuckoo clock hanging on the wall behind her. Something seemed strange about it, even to my untrained eyes, but I was not able to pinpoint what. She was half-reclined diagonally opposite me on a chaise lounge, matching the armchair, in a posture that in my mind resembled a Renaissance painting, while her legs were covered by a knitted blanket that must once have seen better days. She didn’t seem to be looking at me, nor had she actually cast a glance my way, yet her reaction showed me that she observed everything.
“It hasn’t chimed here for years…” she said with her fragile, deep but so gentle voice that unconsciously reminded me, for some strange reason, of a cat’s velvet paws. “Its last chime was like a death rattle. It came out of its hiding place, as usual, made the first two particularly annoying sounds, as always, of the five it was supposed to make at that hour, and at the third it seemed to hesitate for a moment, to lose its thread, it seemed. By the fifth tone it was already ‘dead,’ only a dragging sound was heard and our cuckoo fell silent forever, there, outside its nest, exposed to everyone’s prying eyes…”
I was ashamed and immediately lowered my eyes. I didn’t want to seem intrusive, certainly not towards a wind-up bird that had performed its predetermined task for years, with second-to-second precision and enviable dedication. “I didn’t have the heart to throw it away after that, even though I had never liked it while it ‘lived,’” she continued, ignoring the blush on my cheeks, which appeared uninvited every time something disturbed me and I hated it as few things on me.