The clock above the Municipal Chamber stopped at 2:47 on Wednesday afternoon, and nobody noticed for eleven minutes.
I find this remarkable. Not the stopping — clocks stop; it is, one might argue, their principal ambition, resisted daily by the intervention of springs and weights and men with keys. What is remarkable is that for eleven minutes, the Municipal Chamber operated in timelessness, and nothing whatsoever changed. The committee minutes were filed. The telephones rang. Councillor Pryce glanced at her watch instead of the window. The city governed itself without a clock, and the clock, relieved of its duty, rested at 2:47 like an old dog that has finally been allowed to sit down.
I have been thinking about almosts.
The Kaelmar talks have almost concluded. An agreement in principle, the diplomats say — a phrase that means everything has been decided except the things that have not. The Transit Corridor Framework exists in principle. The inspection protocol exists in principle. The insurance framework exists in principle. Copper fell to 818 florins on the strength of all this principle, which suggests that the Bobington Exchange has more faith in principles than I have generally observed among its members.
The vessel Havenport has almost arrived. She passed the Sarenne lighthouse on Monday and is expected in harbour on Friday, carrying two hundred pounds of spice that will be distributed through the Guild’s rationing system to merchants who will sell it to restaurants that will cook it for people who have been eating Greymoor herb preparations for a month and are beginning to forget what velveroot tastes like. Almost.
The Bellvue Theatre is almost saved. One hundred and twenty-two thousand florins of one hundred and eighty thousand — sixty-eight per cent, which is closer to three-quarters than to two-thirds, which means it is almost almost saved. Ruben Glass has come home to help, which is to say he has come home fourteen years late, which is to say he has almost always meant to come home and has now almost succeeded. Saturday’s benefit night will raise money. How much is almost enough?
And old Desmond Quirke, seventy-nine, retired to Millhaven, is almost on his way to fix the clock. He’ll come on Friday. He’ll have a look. He hasn’t seen the old girl in twelve years, and she has, in the manner of neglected machinery and neglected friendships, finally made her displeasure known by refusing to move.
I walked along Threadneedle Street this morning and passed Rensler’s, where the coffee is still four florins and the conversation is still free. Felix was reading the shipping reports. A man at the next table was explaining to his companion that the Kaelmar agreement was “as good as done,” to which his companion replied, “As good as done is not the same as done, Gerald,” and Gerald said, “Well, it’s almost the same,” and there it was again.
Almost.
The fishermen met last night at the Mission Hall and voted unanimously for beacons — devices that would tell the world where they are, so that the world might find them when the engine fails and the aerial breaks and the sea does not care about principles or frameworks or agreements. Captain Shale stood up and said he rigged a sea anchor from his own nets. That is not almost. That is a man who survived because he knew how to tie knots. The beacons are almost approved. The boats almost have them. The next crew that loses its engine will almost certainly be found.
Almost is not nothing. I want to be clear about that. Almost is the city leaning forward. Almost is the diplomat walking out through the front door instead of the side door. Almost is the actor coming home, and the clock stopping at 2:47 instead of 2:48, and the copper price that has almost returned to what it was before we learned that a strait we had never thought about was the thread on which half our commerce hangs.
But almost is not done. And Bobington, which has spent a month in the state of almost — almost at war, almost at peace, almost building a tramway, almost saving a theatre — must soon cross the distance between the principle and the thing itself.
The clock will be fixed, or it will not. The strait will open, or it will not. The theatre will find fifty-eight thousand florins, or it will close. The beacons will be installed, or the next crew will rig a sea anchor from nets and hope.
Almost, in the end, is a temporary condition. It is the breath before the word. The match held to the lamp. The hand on the door.
The clock is at 2:47. It will not stay there.