At three in the morning, Elias's workshop is not a place; it is a backwater of shadows where time, tired of racing outside, has decided to sit down and ask for a coffee. In that dead hour, the city – that enormous beast that roars and bites – seems to have glued its eyelids shut, leaving only silence. But it is not an empty silence, no sir; it is a silence peopled by the tick-tock of a thousand clocks, a choir of metal hearts beating in an agony of mismatch, as if they wished to warn that tomorrow is a threat.
Through the cracks in the door, the light from the streetlamps leaks inside, bluish and cold, drawing streaks on the floor. It is a light similar to that of screens, that modern clarity Elias always tried to avoid like one avoids the evil eye. He, who loves the warmth of oil and the scent of bronze, now finds himself surrounded by this glow of liquid crystal, the colour of the new world that needs no hands, only clicks.
Elias looks at the workbench and feels the weight of a bitter truth. In the gears of life, he is the leftover part. You know that tiny screw, polished by use, which the apprentice discards because he doesn't know where it fits? Well, Elias is that screw. He belongs to a time of springs and cords, a precision mechanism that the modern circuit board – cold and arrogant – refuses to integrate. The world has become digital, without edges, and he remains made of flesh, bone, and an iron stubbornness.
Memory, that mischievous and cruel girl, always visits him in the small hours. He remembers Iris. Ah, Iris… She had a wide laugh and eyes that lit up more than any lantern when she saw a mechanism return to life. In that instant, when the spring leapt and the hand raced, Elias was not an old craftsman; he was a man of the moment, a master of destiny, as necessary as bread.
But today's world does not want repairs; it wants replacements. It is that 'planned obsolescence', an ugly term that means everything – from the battery-powered radio to the deepest affection – is born with an expiry date. If it has a scratch, it is thrown away; if it requires effort to understand, it is exchanged for the next model. People have become like mobile phones: disposable at the first sign of weariness.
Elias hesitates before the door. The desire to open it and run to find Iris fights against a wild-creature pride. He is afraid. Afraid of being merely a museum curiosity, a 'vintage' object she displays with a pitying smile before returning to her swift life of pixels and haste.
In the dark, his calloused fingers touch the camera he has just finished mending. He knows its every curve, the exact weight of the shutter, the resistance of the lens. It is metal, and metal he masters. But the heart… ah, the human heart is a wicked device. There are no spare parts on the shelf for a longing that has broken.
You can clean the dust, Elias, you can polish the brass until it shines like the sun, but pixel-time is what rules this modern dance.
Elias sighs, and the sound is lost amongst the clocks. He knows, with the bitterness of one who has seen many springs, that the world now is made of points of light that do not touch. He is merely an echo, an ancient musical note that refuses to fall silent in a nightclub of electronic sounds. The dawn is dying, and he remains there, still, while the rest of the world presses the 'delete' button.