"Have you found a Rolex?"
Dozens of posters ask it on the 31 de Diciembre street in Palma.
"I reward your return. No questions asked," promises the owner of the lost watch, attaching a contact telephone number.
One call later, we are talking with Nicholas Wood
, a New York artist based in Mallorca who sadly explains how he has reached the streetlights of the neighborhood with this desperate warning.
"On the afternoon of September 11, my three-year-old son dropped it off the balcony.
I went to shower, took off my watch, and when I came out of the bathroom it was no longer on the table
, where I had left it. I saw that the balcony door was open and the child was playing, "says Wood, putting together the last clues to the disappearance.
The history of this stainless steel Rolex of the Date model - the simplest - and with a gray dial goes back 40 years when it came to the hands of Kevin Woods, Nicholas' father.
It was given to him by a well-known Mallorcan lawyer
, a very good friend of his father's, and he always wore it on his left wrist until four years ago when, on his deathbed, he gave it to Nicholas as a family legacy.
"The day he died he told me: 'I want you to keep my watch,'.
Since then I wore it like an amulet," laments Wood, who admits that he had not realized how important it was to him until he lost it.
"
I went crazy looking
for
him
around the house."
Their young son, who curiously was born the same day as Nicholas's father, is unable to solve the mystery.
"Sometimes he tells me that he fell off the balcony, other times he says no
. He is confused because he knows that he has done something wrong."
Since the clock jumped out the window, neither of us has been sleeping well.
The father is the lightest sleeper, and the child has nightmares in which he repeats: "I couldn't get it back, I couldn't get it back."
Nicholas offers 2,500 euros to whoever returns his
amulet
.
He thinks someone may have grabbed him off the sidewalk right after his son dropped him from the deck
.
He does not know what state it will be in, having fallen from a third floor, but he hopes to recover it and be able to repair it.
He says his reward is more generous than what a pawn shop would give.
"It would be difficult to get so much money," says Wood, who admits that he increased the initial reward because his priority is to get it back.
"No questions".
Laughs.
"This is a very American thing. No questions ask."
If the Rolex returns to the Woods, it already has a
future heir
.
It will be the little one who got rid of him, since he shares his date of birth with Grandpa Kevin: "that's a sign."
Kevin Woods was a professor of Hispanic Literature at the University of Virginia, and he lived his last days in Mallorca.
His father, Daniel - Nicholas' grandfather - was a New York archaeologist who led an American foundation that did archaeological excavations in Spain.
"Hence our family's love for this island," says his grandson Nicholas.
Every summer, his father Kevin traveled to Mallorca with
his grandfather Daniel, who directed the excavations at Pollentia
, in Alcúdia.
There was a manor house in the town that served as a museum and a research center for the excavations- "American students came and my father spent here every summer with my grandfather."
"Until my grandfather arrived, there had only been some superficial excavation in Pollentia.
With him the amphitheater and the Roman forum were discovered
, in a methodical way with the latest archaeological advances of that time. In addition, the educational work was done with teachers Spaniards from the peninsula who came to Alcúdia to work on these excavations ", recalls Nicholas, who assures that previously they did rather" treasure hunts, roughly and not by layers, as it happens. "
"At that time, in Franco's Spain there was very little money dedicated to archeology but my grandfather managed a fund dedicated to
charitable work focused on archeology,
which was owned by a North American industrialist in love with Spain and had money from a company of tools, "he proudly recalls his family, waiting for his mobile in case someone who returns his Rolex calls.
But 626128944 is silent.
"
No one has called
. We still have no leads. Perhaps he will hang more posters in other neighborhoods of the city."
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