Afternoon had already begun to fall, behind the window peered the shadow of his thin body. The constant pecking and the rhythm that could be heard was almost unbearable. When the last ray of sun peeked on the horizon, the pecking stopped. It was almost six in the afternoon and it was already time to go to bed, tomorrow would be another day, tomorrow would be another hope the man thought. Very vaguely between dinnertime and the hour when the whole town went to bed, inside the house you could hear the creaking of a rocking chair. The children were told horrible stories about that old man who lived inside the house on the corner. According to the boys' parents, as well as their parents' parents, the pecking that could be heard was the noise of hammer and nails striking against ancient skeletons, according to the children's parents, that the old man dug up to perform black magic and satanic pacts. The town bishop had managed to see him once, while the malevolent old man at late hours of the night smoked a cigarette on the steps of the dilapidated gate that could be seen precisely from his house. He is not of this world “the parish priest concluded the next day. That was where the rumor began that the old man with white, black green beards, it all depended on who told the story, was more than three hundred years old thanks to having made a pact with the Devil who had granted him eternal life, as long as the old man turned to dust the corpses of those buried in cemetery ground, holy ground, and consequently snatch their souls from the divine dominion of God the omnipotent.
Never did anyone dare even to mention his last name in the town. It was difficult since the old man's last name was very peculiar in daily speech. People never took an interest in finding out the name of the investigated one, so they could only go by a sign that wept from old age outside the house on the corner, which read thus: “This is the honorable house of Mr. Time.” That's why the people of Josías used to sentence the misbehaved “time's gonna get you,” a thing more than funny because they knew that all of them, even all of us, time always gets us, what's more, if you'll allow me to say that our common goal would be to outrun time, that when it takes the inert matter of which we are made something always remains that no matter how many times time ends and begins again, that something always remains that not even the great Mr. Time can take away. That was how the story began and the multiple legends that enclosed the person of that unknown old man, never did anyone in the town approach him, he seemed so submerged in his mind, so intense, so “wasted time,” that Mr. Time was morally and physically repudiated by all of Josías. He in his zeal and his role as pariah opted to buy food in other towns neighboring Josías, but just as in this one, people always feared him, they thought him mad, they feared Mr. Time…
Until at last one day a boy whose name I don't remember managed to gather a bit of strength and courage and entered the house. It was almost five in the afternoon. His friends watched him scared from the other sidewalk. The boy of barely thirteen years of age, of medium height and thin build fit perfectly through a crack that had formed between the window and its sash. Once inside the house the boy began to follow the pecking. At his sides were stacked millions of books with innumerable bookmarks marking specific pages. In the living room on the dining table lay scattered a thousand sheets of paper with every subject under the sun. On entering the room from which the pecking came the boy pressed his thin body against the door and began to feel how his saliva had run out and his mouth began to produce an enormous bitter pasty taste. Gathering all the fear he had left he peeked and…
In a North American style swivel chair with wooden bars on the back sat a man of approximately sixty-nine years. In front of him a typewriter that by the way was older than his eyes and emitted the famous pecking. The man had hair almost completely white. His hands were completely full of wrinkles. Beside the desk, where the typewriter sat, on the floor lay thousands of sheets of paper, some torn and others simply crumpled. The individual's face was covered by a beard and his eyes by glasses that on the supports carried one of those straps to hold them at the nape when he took them off. His clothes were old and comfortable. I have never remembered how long I was there leaning against the wall. I began to feel my arms tired and wanted to shift. In doing so the wood of the floor creaked and the man at the desk turned suddenly. I felt an extremely powerful rush of blood to my head and at the same time my legs paralyzed, I couldn't move, all that occurred to me was to ask the man as fast as possible. “Who are you?!” I said with a broken voice. The man sketched a smile on his face and kindly answered “A writer.” A Writer?, I thought, where were all the bodies, where were the figures of Satan, the dwarves who watched over his person, his incandescent eyes that reflected the hell he carried within, where were all those stories my friends had told me millions of times, some with a defiant look and others with tears streaming down their cheeks, holding themselves up by pure wind by the pure impulse of finishing hearing one of the versions of the famous and terrifying Mr. Time, where?, I couldn't understand what a writer had to do with the devil or with eternal life or the three hundred years Mr. Time had been existing…in my astonishment I said to him. “And what do you write?”. To which the man answered. “I write about the little lack of fortune we some writers have, that we never have the privilege of someone reading what we write, but, you are here so, would you like to read something?”. I had recovered my color and I agreed. We spent more than an hour together and as the minutes advanced I was more astonished by everything the man knew, hell, I even began to feel a kind of affection for him.
At half past six the boy excused himself to the writer and told him he would come tomorrow. On leaving his friends ran toward him and hugged him. With thousands of questions at once they besieged him to which the boy answered. “Inside the house on the corner lives a writer and starting tomorrow we'll come to read and learn about what he writes. The sound you hear is that of a typewriter. He is a pleasant person and I think he feels lonely.”. and so after countless times the children began arriving at the house on the corner, each time more came. Sometimes they skipped class just to go hear the writer read them a scary story. On rainy afternoons the writer read them something romantic by any author, even by himself. The children began to write and began to like letters. The writer was happier than ever his dream had come true and his legacy of endless thoughts and stories would not have been lost, the children carried it inside. When the writer died the boys now men of career collected everything their beloved master of letters wrote and published it under the name of old time, the writings, stories, and the rest became famous, so every Wednesday and Monday afternoon they kept gathering to keep writing. The beautiful and rich legacy of love for books that their great friend the writer had given them wrapped in praise would remain inside their lives, forever of forever…
A few months ago my mother asked me: “Hey, son, you never told me what it was you did with all your friends, every time you disappeared for hours and hours on end, and if I remember right, we, all the mothers, scolded you and you always answered -we were at the corner- and on the corner lived that terrible old man about whom so many stories were told in the town, remember?, what were you doing?”. I looked at her for a few seconds and then I told her “Yes I remember, we spent hours and hours peeking into the house on the corner and you remember that sign that wept from old age that was on the gate of the house on the corner and that said -this is the honorable house of Mr. Time-…well it really was time Mommy, it really was time…