The Cock's Egg (1994)

Rosemary Nixon's collection of linked stories, published by NeWest Press of Edmonton in 1994, is set in Zaire, among Canadians living in a foreign landscape and the Zairians around them, with the witchcraft of the cock's egg running through it. Several of the stories had appeared in Canadian literary magazines; "The Thief" was first published in The Dinosaur Review in 1988. (Open Library)

Watches

Seiko (unidentified model): In "The Thief", a young man breaks into the house of Paul, a physics teacher, and Rita during a February rainstorm, squats in their bedroom admiring the watch while they sleep, and slips it into his trouser folds. In the morning Paul counts what is gone: Rita's bicycle, his umbrella, the Nikon camera, the shortwave radio, his Seiko watch. The next evening the thief is brought back bound in a truck, and a visitor returns the watch in French with the news that the thief has been bayoneted on the bridge. Paul holds the Seiko in the dusk, straps it on angrily and takes it off again. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: The Seiko ticked its time into the gloom. Paul held it in his hands (it smelled of sweat and pili-pili) and watched the moist black curtain blotting out the shimmering leaves of the acacia tree. (Rosemary Nixon, The Cock's Egg, scan cataloged as NeWest Press, 1994, p. 59, in "The Thief", which begins on p. 47; the theft is on p. 46 and the list of losses on p. 51; Internet Archive scan OCR)

Seiko (unidentified model): In the title story Citoyen Mwanza, a hungry schoolteacher on a mission compound, wins the favour of Mademoiselle Emma, one of three British Baptist women, and marries her. Three years on he lives on her salary in Kinshasa, and outside her classroom at TASOK International School he looks at his watch at tea break and still cannot believe he owns one: a Seiko, and not one from a tray at Kimpese market. A watch was on the list he made after the wedding of what a man of his status needs, with a penknife, a bicycle and a tape recorder. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: Citoyen Mwanza looks at his watch. Tea break. He can hardly believe, even after three years, that he owns a watch. A Seiko. And his watch wasn’t bought from a tray of watches at Kimpese market either. (Rosemary Nixon, The Cock's Egg, scan cataloged as NeWest Press, 1994, p. 100, in "The Cock's Egg", which begins on p. 92; Internet Archive scan OCR)