The luxury of suspending time

Time held still between two heartbeats of the world

At the Watches and Wonders fair in Geneva last April, Hermès unveiled a new version of its model Le temps suspendu, this time housed in a Hermès Cut case. That was all it took for me to imagine a story around this singular watch, one endowed with a rare function: the luxury of suspending time itself, of inviting us to live wholly in the present. Isabelle Cerboneschi

I often dream of a secret day. A phantom date that slips between the pages of the calendar, a February 29th no one else can see. A day for nothing. A bonus of life.

Since I became the curator of Monsieur H.’s private collection, I have lived at the mercy of other people’s clocks. He is larger than life: tall, boisterous, with a laugh that fills a room and a passion for motorcycles as unruly as his appetite for art. His townhouse, pressed against the Russian church in Geneva, overflows with canvases and sculptures. I grew up in beauty, dazzled by the finesse of a Saint-Louis crystal glass or the grace of sunlight playing across a field of sunflowers. But under his roof, at first I felt intoxicated, as though drowning in too much beauty.

My role is not only to manage, but to guard: the vigilant inspector who ensures no stolen painting finds its way into his kingdom. The Art Loss Register is my nightly reading. When a work is offered to Monsieur H., I perform the first verifications, then he dispatches me to see whether the painting merits his attention. Some months, I live entirely from a suitcase.

Before one of these countless trips, my secretary gave me a book: Les 5 Portes by Fabrice Midal. I opened it out of idle curiosity. I prefer detective novels. The philosopher spoke there of the “living present”, not the brittle injunction to be in the moment, but the idea of a present alive with memory and possibility, expansive enough to hold both past and future. I mentioned it to my husband over the phone one night, cocooned in a hotel duvet. He only listened.

When I returned, he took me to dinner. No reason, no occasion. Just a small orange box, slid across the table. Inside, a watch. Rose gold, deep red dial, its weight both delicate and sure. And with it, a note in blue ink: “So you never forget to be amazed.”

Within the case lay a watch of tender yet taut lines, its round case beveled with sharp edges. Rose gold, with a dial the color of deep red wine. A pure object of design. I fastened it to my wrist, and loved its weight, its texture, its quiet elegance. At first glance, it appears to be an ordinary timepiece, obediently marking hours and minutes. But it holds a secret. With a press of the pusher at 8:30 the hands spun into nonsense: the hour hand settles just before twelve, the minute hand just after. An hour that does not exist. Time itself suspended, waiting. Another press, and the order of minutes and hours resumed as if nothing had happened.

This singular function allows one to still the flight of hours, to carve out a fragment of living present, unthreatened by the tyranny of two despotic hands. Hence the name of this watch: Hermès Cut Le temps suspendu (Time on hold).

The first time I tried it, the world outside went on turning. But within me, a silence opened—a breach in the urgency. I do not know how long it lasted. It did not matter. I had suspended time, and in that space, something long forgotten began to stir. I had found my phantom day.

Now I press that hidden button whenever I need to breathe. My watch became the keeper of secret rituals. I let time wash over me like cool water. I lie in the grass and cloud-dream as I did as a child, finding castles and angels in the sky. I taste again the wild blackberries that once stained my hands, hear the muffled summer laughter beneath clean sheets, the hush of winter mornings when the snow bleached the world.

My Hermès watch is a wondrous proof of love. It has taught me to return to myself, to simply be. It does more than tell time. It offers a passage. A secret instant of truth, suspended between two heartbeats of the world.