CHAPTER 27There it was again, the chime of the hour, the chime of the near future, the chime of the never-ending story. Aunt Frieda's clock was striking without mercy, reaching out to strike his eardrum, the five hundred billion dendrites, the gray matter, the corpus callosum, the convoluted lobes of his brain. Hubert contemplated his misfortune, scribbling:
The first clocks, centuries ago, were portents of astronomy; they revolved in synchrony with the planet; they brought a touch of eternal order to the castles and mansions of the aristocracy. Later, in many forms, the timepiece invaded the homes of the burghers; it came to stand for constancy and order. Out of this divine instrument, the Swiss made a pedantic contraption, a little cathedral of monotony.
Aunt Frieda's clock had a littl
