In the dim, dignified air of the auction room, leaving behind the stormy story of the Mongol steppe, the grandfather and Leo went on walking slowly between the vitrines. Among the whispers of the collectors in the room, Leo’s attention was caught by another watch in a platinum case, throwing off a cold and magnificent gleam. On the dial of this rare object, entered in the catalogue as "Lot 46", silvery figures rose from a real stone ground with a grey-black texture.
Leo paused as he studied the dial in astonishment:
“Why would anyone put an elephant on a watch, grandfather?”
The grandfather came to his grandson’s side, drew a deep breath and looked at the silvery figure on the dial:
“Because he wanted to cross the mountains with elephants.”
Leo turned to his grandfather with his eyes wide open:
“Cross the mountains with elephants? What for?”
“Ambition.”
Adjusting his spectacles, the grandfather leaned towards the dial, took his grandson by the hand and fell into a deep silence. Then he began to tell it, word by word:
“Ambition, hatred and revenge. They are the most dangerous three that blind a human being to his own kind, Leo. Look, the man you see on this dial is the Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca. The story began when he was still a small boy of nine. His father Hamilcar took him before the altar in the temple. Pressing his hand into the blood of the sacrifice, he made him swear an oath: you will remain an enemy of Rome for as long as you live! That day the seed of hatred sown in the mind of an innocent child grew, over the years, into a poisonous tree. Hatred rots a person from the inside; it splits the world into nothing but friend and enemy.”
“Which one is Hannibal, grandfather? The one on the elephant?”
“No, the one on the elephant is one of his soldiers. Hannibal is the horseman on the left; look at the crest on his helmet and at his armour. Each of the four figures on the dial is carved separately by hand in white gold. On the left Hannibal on his horse, just below him a foot soldier with his shield raised, in the middle the armoured war elephant with a spear-bearing man on its back, and on the right a warrior with his spear held high. Do you see that jagged relief at the upper left? That is not a figure, it is a mountain range. So the dial does not carry only an army; it carries the mountain standing against the army as well.”
The grandfather smiled at the auction attendant. When the attendant gently pulled the slide on the left side of the watch, the silvery Westminster carillon melody rang through the room. The white gold automata on the dial began to make their sword and spear strokes in time with the chimes.
“How many bells are inside it, grandfather?”
“Four. An ordinary minute repeater has two gongs: a low one for the hours and a high one for the minutes. Here there are four steel gongs tuned to four separate notes and four hammers. The quarters are built from three different arrangements of those four notes; that is also why the tower in London says a different sentence on every quarter. And the figures do not stir only once: they act separately on the hours, on the quarters and on the minutes. So even without hearing the sound you can read the time off the dial.”
“And what did the hatred give birth to, grandfather?” asked Leo, watching the moving figures on the dial.
“It gave birth to revenge,” answered the grandfather. “Hannibal spent his life on the idea of bringing Rome to its knees and taking his father’s revenge. By 218 BC that fire of revenge in his mind had reached such a pitch that his eye saw no obstacle at all. Rome held the seas. So Hannibal made a plan nobody would have dared, a plan beyond reason: to cross the snowbound Alps in the middle of winter with 50,000 soldiers, 9,000 horsemen and 37 enormous armoured war elephants! And here is the answer to the question you asked, Leo: ambition is a person forcing the impossible; but blind ambition cruelly defies even the laws of nature. To drag those enormous elephants and those soldiers through freezing cold, through avalanches, blizzards and precipices is the work of a tremendous passion that devours the person who carries it.”
format_quote"Ambition, hatred and revenge. They are the most dangerous three that blind a human being to his own kind. Hatred rots a person from the inside; it splits the world into nothing but friend and enemy."
Hasan Bekmezci
The grandfather pointed with his finger at the rough, matt ground of the watch:
“Look very closely at the dial of this watch. Ulysse Nardin did not make it from an ordinary stone. They cut and worked this dial from genuine Alpine granite, brought from those same Alps that Hannibal and his army climbed at the cost of thousands of men and animals. Hannibal opened roads through those enormous granite rocks that would not let him pass by melting them with vinegar and fire. Revenge and ambition make a person bore through mountains and melt granite. But for the sake of what?”
“Is it hard to make a dial out of stone, grandfather?”
“Very hard. Granite is as brittle as it is hard; the mineral grains inside it split in different directions and it resents heat and pressure. And a dial cannot tolerate half a millimetre of movement. What is more, this is not a full circle but a dial cut to three quarters: the lower part has been taken away and you can look down through it. To cut and thin the stone and then remove a piece of it is to defy the material a second time. That is why the polished surface of this dial is not a finish, it is a record of patience.”
format_quote"Ambition is a person forcing the impossible; but blind ambition cruelly defies even the laws of nature."
Hasan Bekmezci
Leo looked sadly at the elephant on the dial:
“And were those elephants able to cross the mountains, grandfather? Did he destroy Rome?”
“He left half his army and almost all of his elephants in the freezing precipices of those mountains, but he crossed the Alps, Leo. At the Battle of Cannae he brought the Roman armies to their knees with the greatest military genius in history. But do you know what came of it in the end? That fire of hatred and revenge solved nothing. After years of destruction Rome gathered itself, turned back and wiped Hannibal’s own homeland of Carthage off the map. The city was burned and torn down; salt was scattered over its soil so that no civilisation would grow there again. And Hannibal ended his own life in exile in his last years, in loneliness, by drinking poison. So the seed of hatred sown at the age of nine, the ambition that grew from it and the revenge that was taken destroyed in the end both that commander and an entire civilisation.”
Leo looked at the tourbillon cage turning at six o’clock in its unbroken, elegant way:
“And grandfather, why would watchmakers work such a bitter story into this enchanting mechanism?”
“Look at that tourbillon at six o’clock, Leo,” said the grandfather, his voice deepening. “The cage makes one full turn every minute. When the watch stands upright, gravity always pulls the balance wheel from the same direction and the watch drifts; when the cage turns, that pull is spread in every direction, so the error is not eliminated, it is averaged out, it is balanced. Notice that there is a shaped bridge above it; the cage is not suspended in the air, it is carried beneath that bridge and it turns on a blue jewel. The ambition, the hatred and the desire for revenge inside a person are exactly like that gravity; they pull him down, they darken his mind and they drag him to disaster. With this watch Ulysse Nardin whispers the final truth to us: will and ambition can bring mountains down; but if there is no balance in your soul, you end up buried under the mountains you conquered.”
“And all of this is inside a single movement?”
“Inside a single movement. It is called UN-78, it is hand-wound, it has thirty-six jewels and fully wound it runs for seventy hours. The case back is sapphire; the ring is engraved with the words Westminster, Jaquemarts and Tourbillon and with the reference 789-00. Thirty were made, and in the year it appeared the price was seven hundred and twenty-five thousand Swiss francs. So everything you see on this dial has been fitted into a space a little larger than a thumbnail.”
format_quote"Will and ambition can bring mountains down; but if there is no balance in your soul, you end up buried under the mountains you conquered."
Hasan Bekmezci
The grandfather squeezed his grandson’s shoulder and, looking into his eyes, finished what he had to say:
“War has no good side at all, Leo, none whatsoever. No victory won with a sword, an elephant or a missile lasts. The only thing that will keep humanity alive is not weapons or cries of victory; it is dialogue, tolerance and the virtue of being able to listen to the other. Every moment that two people or two societies do not sit side by side and talk, we are condemned to be left under the feet of those war elephants on the dial. Real greatness is not in annihilating your enemy; it is in defeating that destructive hatred inside you and being able to shake the other’s hand. Goodness and dialogue have to prevail, because when dialogue ends war begins, and when war begins the balance of time and of humanity is broken.”
format_quote"Real greatness is not in annihilating your enemy; it is in defeating that destructive hatred inside you and being able to shake the other’s hand. Because when dialogue ends war begins, and when war begins the balance of time and of humanity is broken."
Hasan Bekmezci
When the Westminster melody sounded its last bell and fell quiet, the elephant and the warriors on the dial stopped. Inside the platinum case, above the Alpine granite, only the bright tourbillon at six o’clock went on turning, as though guarding the balance of time, of peace and of dialogue.
The Craft and the Technical Detail
Genuine Alpine granite dial: in tribute to Hannibal Barca’s crossing of the Alps, the dial ground is cut and polished from real granite quarried in the Alps. It is not a full circle but a dial cut to three quarters, the lower section opened up to leave the tourbillon visible. Granite is as brittle as it is hard, so thinning it and then removing a section of it are two separate risks.
Carthaginian automata: four moving figures carved by hand in white gold. Hannibal on his horse at the left, a foot soldier with a shield below him, the armoured war elephant with a spear-bearing man on its back in the middle, and a warrior with his spear raised on the right. The relief at the upper left of the dial is the Alpine range. The figures do not act once only; they move separately on the hours, the quarters and the minutes.
Westminster carillon minute repeater: instead of the standard two gongs it uses four steel gongs tuned to four separate notes and four micro hammers, and the quarters are built from three different arrangements of those four notes. The case also works as a resonator, which is why platinum, a heavy metal, gives a darker and deeper voice than the gold versions.
Tourbillon: at six o’clock, in the area where the granite dial has been cut away and beneath a shaped bridge, making one full turn a minute. It does not eliminate the positional errors gravity causes; it spreads them in every direction, averaging and balancing them.
Calibre UN-78: hand-wound, 36 jewels, around 70 hours of power reserve. It drives the automata, the four-gong Westminster arrangement and the tourbillon regulator from a single centre. The case back is sapphire crystal.
Case and edition: reference 789-00, a 44 mm case in platinum 950, water resistant to 30 metres. Thirty were made worldwide; in the year it was introduced the price was 725,000 Swiss francs.