The Old Man And The Rolex
As NOT written by ChatGPT 😀
By god, if anyone’s gonna do a Hemingway watch article parody, it’s gonna be me, not some bot. Prompted by my attempt to get ChatGPT to write a Submariner story. Gonna die with my hammer in my hand 😀
The old man sat in the café on the Rue des Horlogers and watched the sun. The sun was going down and the glare was in the eyes of the old man, whose eyes burned and filled with tears but he would not look away. The old man remembered his youth, in the way of old men who remember, and he thought of the pines along the shores of the big river up in Michigan where he had been taught to fish by an old man.
The old man who taught the old man was old and a man, and had crippled bent fingers and was in constant pain but the old man who taught the old man the way of the fish in the big river, and how they would rise to take the hook, as if they rushed towards death like an old man rushing towards death, never spoke of how his hands had come to be twisted though of course it was arthritis which afflicts old men.
Now the old man watched as a horse yoked to a carriage at the curb shook its head. The horse was young but the man was old. The horse pissed and the old man thought of how it must be to piss so well and the horse turned back its head and showed its teeth to the setting sun and the old man thought of how it had been in his youth in Michigan where riding horses was not a matter for rich young girls with rich old fathers but rather for men, for men who had need of a horse and for whom therefore riding a horse was a matter for men who needed to ride a horse. He closed his eyes and the sun shone red through the thin flesh of his eyelids and the old man thought of the old man who had taught him that a fish who has taken a hook has taken its life into itself, like a man old or young who goes up above the top of a stinking trench which also reeks of piss, not the clean piss of a horse pissing but of piss stinking of fear, and goes out to face the guns of other men.
The old man thought of all the horses he had seen and how they had all firm haunches and each of the finest shell Cordovan, and a seeming willingness to leap bravely, for the joy of leaping, and he thought of how his own haunches had once been firm for leaping and then he thought of the old man who had taught him to love the fine bravery with which a horse leaps or pisses and a fish takes a hook, and how the old man who taught him what it means to take life leaping with full and final pride had also worn a watch.
And he saw the watch, against his closed eyes, a watch in steel, a fine watch made in a far country from Michigan, but where the mountains were the same and the fish also leapt with fine and final courage from mountain lakes, and where there were men who were old who taught younger men the meaning of being among those mountains, and among the cold streams where the fish leapt bravely as the young men he remembered or had read about or had seen in films marching bravely they knew not where, and the old man remembered that he had dined on steak frites and drunk a bottle of Pommard of the finest vintage, which is not a lunchtime wine.
Then he thought of the watch again, and how the old man had died. The old man had died one day and he had found him in the camp, the camp where they had always gone to fish and where there were many pages taken from fine magazines that showed the proper and the correct way to lure a fish or tie a knot or look into the eyes of a bear and see there what is right and true and brave.
The magazines were gone now and so was the old man and when he had been put into the pine-loam earth of Michigan, tears of women on his grave, young women and old and men too who had thought the old man who taught him to fish the most Interesting Man In The World, they had laid him on the wet earth with that watch on his wrist, that watch with its bulging cyclops eye and he had wished for it. He had wished for the watch though he knew it was not proper, nor was it right to wish to inherit a Rolex from the old man who had taught him to fish as it would not be right to wish the crown from a king laid to rest. He wanted it anyway and for years and years he had wanted to have it. It was wrong but he desired it and he would not sell it, he told himself.
Then he opened his eyes and the waiter, Jacques, whom he knew well and who was taking a degree in marketing but had the hustles of the side, but still wore the mustache of a dragoon, was looking at him and the look was of pity which he spurned but also of a man who knew what it was to want a fine wristwatch, such as a man who drew fish from a stream or ocean would want and then the old man felt it. He felt it though he wished not to, the pain of desiring a Rolex watch and for a moment he thought he could not bear it and then he remembered he had drunk a bottle of Pommard, which is not a lunchtime wine and before that he had had a drink of vodka cold and clean like the leaping into death of the fish the old man had taught him to catch. And then the old man looked at Jacques and knew Jacques saw him and the pain and the old man thought, The pain of not owning a Rolex Submariner is nothing like the pain from the heel spurs of the great DiMaggio.
And Jacques looked at him and the old man looked at Jacques and his dragoon’s mustache and Jacques saw that the old man suffered but did it bravely, like a fish who has taken a hook and leaps uncaring and very fine above the water. And Jacques said to him, “You think of owning a Rolex, one can own a Rolex. One can as one can own anything, one simply walks, bravely as a man walks to meet himself perhaps as the sun also sets, and goes in to that place shaded in green and asks for a Submariner. And the watch he wants is given to him and money is exchanged and the watch is now his, and to own a Rolex, this is a simple thing, a thing that any man can do who wants something truly fine and is a man.”
And the old man looked at Jacques, and his dragoon’s mustache, and thought of the emptiness, of places shaded in green, of windows lit but empty and of paying two or even three or sometimes even five times retail price, which would leave a hole in your bank account big enough to put your fist into it, if it was a small fist and you wanted to put it there. And he looked at Jacques who was a fool, though it was not for him to call any man a fool for saying something could be had which cannot be had for then all men are fools, fools for hoping, without which to live is unbearable but you have to bear it, thought the old man, as the great DiMaggio bears the pain of heel spurs.
“Yes,” said the old man. “I could just walk in and buy a Submariner. Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
The old man sat in front of the typewriter and knew he should use a computer. But the computer was clean and new and the typewriter was an old friend. He looked at his wrist with the pale stripe where a watch should be. Where did it go? Then he remembered, he had traded the watch for the last flight out of Havana before the revolution. How long before his wrist would tan like his arm? He did not know and did not care. He was old and had no reason to tell the time.
Lord, that was good... in the worst sort of way.