The Portable Virgin by Anne Enright

Author:Anne Enright
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781409040927
Publisher: Random House

Men and Angels

THE WATCHMAKER AND his wife live in a small town in Germany and his eyesight is failing.

He is the inventor of the device which is called after him, namely ‘Huygens’ Endless Chain’, a system that allows the clock to keep ticking while it is being wound. It is not perfect, it does not work if the clock is striking. Even so Huygens is proud of his invention because in clocks all over Europe there is one small part that bears his name.

Two pulleys are looped by a continuous chain, on which are hung a large and a small weight. The clock is wound by pulling on the small weight, which causes the large weight to rise. Over the hours, the slow pull of its descent makes the clock tick.

The small weight is sometimes replaced by a ring, after the fact that when Huygens was building the original model, his impatience caused him to borrow his wife’s wedding ring to hang on the chain. The ring provided a perfect balance, and Huygens left it where it was. He placed the whole mechanism under a glass bell and put it on the mantelpiece, where his wife could see the ring slowly rise with the passing of the hours, and fall again when the clock was wound.

Despite the poetry of the ring’s motion, and despite the patent which kept them all in food and clothes, Huygens’ wife could not rid herself of the shame she felt for her bare hands. She sent the maid on errands that were more suited to the woman of the house, and became autocratic in the face of the girl’s growing pride. Her dress became more sombre and matronly, and she carried a bunch of keys at her belt.

Every night Huygens lifted the glass bell, tugged his wife’s ring down as far as it would go, and left the clock ticking over the hearth.

Like Eve, Huygens’ wife had been warned. The ring must not be pulled when the clock was striking the hour. At best, this would destroy the clock’s chimes, at worst, she would break the endless chain and the weights would fall.

Her mistake came five years on, one night when Huygens was away. At least she said that he was away, even though he was at that moment taking off his boots in the hall. He was welcomed at the door by the clock striking midnight, a sound that always filled him with both love and pride. It struck five times and stopped.

There are many reasons why Huygens’ wife pulled the ring at that moment. He put the action down to womanly foolishness. She was pregnant at the time and her mind was not entirely her own. It was because of her state and the tears that she shed that he left the ruined clock as it was and the remaining months of her lying-in were marked by the silence of the hours.

The boy was born and Huygens’ wife lay with childbed fever. In

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