On the first Monday of April, Vera wanted the large cuckoo clock above the counter to run before the bakery opened. Her uncle had repaired clocks in the village of Wiesenfeld for forty years, and the clock had marked every hour in his shop. Vera had taken over two weeks earlier, with his workbench, his brass tools, and a notebook full of very small handwriting.
At eight, Frau Keller from the bakery came in with a paper bag of warm rolls. She looked up at the clock, which showed eight minutes past seven and made no sound. “It stopped yesterday evening,” she said. Vera put down the receipt book and climbed onto the wooden stool.
The clock was famous locally because its cuckoo called loudly enough to be heard at the bus stop. Vera opened the back panel, checked the weights, and found one chain twisted around its wheel. She freed the chain, wound the clock, and waited. The cuckoo came out once, gave a weak call, and disappeared.
Frau Keller nodded as if she had expected this. At nine, while Vera was tightening a screw, the clock stopped again. Two customers buying watch straps watched it stop. Vera removed the clock from the wall and carried it to the workbench.
For her second repair, Vera cleaned the gears with a soft brush and replaced a worn leather strip that lifted the cuckoo’s door. She set the clock on its stand and let the weights fall. For almost an hour, the pendulum moved with a serious little tick. Then it slowed, leaned to one side, and stopped.
Frau Keller returned at noon for an alarm clock. “Perhaps it dislikes a new clockmaker,” she said. “It has not met enough new clockmakers to form an opinion,” Vera said. Frau Keller bought the alarm clock and left two rolls on the counter.
Vera took the famous clock apart for the third time. She lifted out the bellows, the small wooden bird, and the brass movement. Behind the left bellows, where no screw or wheel should have been, something gave a dull metallic tap. She turned the clock upside down and shook it once.
An old coin fell onto the workbench. It was a dull silver five-mark coin, wrapped in a strip of yellowed paper. The paper had no writing on it. The coin had been wedged between the bellows and the moving lever, where it could catch the mechanism whenever the clock called.
Vera set the coin beside her uncle’s notebook, put the parts back, and hung the clock on the wall. Frau Keller came in just before one, carrying an empty bread basket. The pendulum swung. At one o’clock, the little door opened, and the cuckoo called once, twice, three times, then continued until it had called thirteen times.
Frau Keller looked at Vera, then at the clock. “That is too many,” she said. “The clock was delayed,” Vera said. Frau Keller laughed, and the clock kept running.