When he woke up, he found the house strangely quiet.
The lady of the house had gone out for a quick chore. No problem, he thought, he’d see what had to be done. He had felt so tired after his morning work that he had eaten his lunch and immediately fallen asleep.
There was nothing more to be done in the kitchen. This morning he had fixed some vessels and a kettle. The kettle had made such a clatter that he had to pull out the faulty piece and repair it. He sometimes wondered what they would do without him. They went on as if it was perfectly okay to live in a house with broken things.
He came out of the kitchen. The living room was a bit of a mess. He had already pulled out the picture frame and repaired it in the morning. He took a deep breath and looked around.
Fix everything in sight Yes. The calculator and the clock. He would have his hands full this afternoon. No one took any responsibility in this house. He had to see to everything. They called him Little Mechanic, probably because of his size. But he had shown them time and again that he wasn’t so little when it came to fixing things.
He needed some fresh air and light. He climbed up on the sofa and opened the window with some effort. One of these days he would have to get some grease and fix that too. The windows in this house were always getting stuck. Ah, he could see a bright green parrot with a dull red beak sitting on the branch of the tree. Everything was so green that it looked as if the bird was also part of the tree.
He knew where the tool box was kept. It was high up on a shelf, above the desk that belonged to the man of the house. He had to do a little circus before he could get to it, and even then his fingers couldn’t hold on to the box. It slipped from his hand and fell to the floor with a crash.
“No problem,” he said to himself, shaking his head philosophically. “These things happen.”
He was familiar with this tool box. Even though he couldn’t get his hands on it whenever he wanted, he had used it a couple of times before to fix things. In no time at all, he was seated on the carpet with the shiny instruments from the tool box spread all around him and the clock perched delicately on his lap. Like any other professional, he had first held it this way and that, shook it near his ear and listened carefully for what he could hear. And then he’d begun his task. He was soon deeply engrossed in the world of wonder that only serious mechanics like him can disappear into.
Fifteen minutes later, when his mother returned home, she found her five-year-old son on the carpet with the remains of her precious clock scattered all around him, his tongue sticking out of his mouth, and his hands working away. Hearing her angry scream, he looked up with a grin and said, “Mummy, see, almost finished repairing this.”
