The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (9 page)

She’s wearing a thick jumper almost identical to mine.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to find a proper outfit for our date, but it looks like you had the same problem!’

I smile, even though I’ve pulled out all the sartorial stops. I can’t help staring at the way her lips move. I sense she picks up on this. As she listens to the noises produced by my clock, the silences between our words grow longer. It’s as if an angel is passing overhead, but then she goes and decapitates it:

‘You’re a hit on the Ghost Train, all the girls came out smiling.’

‘That’s not a good sign, I’m supposed
to survive by frightening others
 . . . I mean, that’s what I’ve got to do if I want to keep my job here.’

‘Does it really matter whether you make them laugh or cry, as long as you’re getting a reaction?’

‘That old bag Brigitte told me it wouldn’t do the Ghost Train’s image any good if people came out giggling. I think I’ll have to learn how to scare people if I want to keep on working there.’

‘Scaring is just another form of seduction . . . and as far as seducing people is concerned, it looks like you’re doing a pretty good job.’

I want to tell her I’ve got a prosthesis instead of a heart and I don’t know anything about love. I want her to understand that I’m feeling these emotions for the first time. Yes, I know I’ve had a few lessons in romantic magic with an illusionist, but that was just to help me find her. I want to seduce her without her mistaking me for a skirt-chaser. It’s a delicate balancing act. So all I say is:

‘I’d like to hold you in my arms.’

Silence, a new sulky doll pout, eyes shut.

‘We could keep talking about it afterwards, but can we hold each other first?’

Miss Acacia lets out an ‘all right’ so tiny it barely escapes her lips. A tender silence falls over our gestures. She teeters towards me. Close up, she’s even more beautiful than her shadow – and more intimidating too. I pray to some unknown deity to keep my clock from chiming.

Our arms interlace and become one. I’m embarrassed by my clock, and I don’t dare crush my chest against hers. I don’t want to scare her with my bric-à-brac heart. But how can I avoid frightening this little bird of a woman when my sharp clock hands jut out from my lungs? My clockwork panic whirrs into action again.

I’m avoiding her with my left side, as if I had a glass heart. This makes our dance more complicated, especially as she appears to be a tango champion. The volume of my ticktock rises from inside me; Madeleine’s warnings flash through my mind. What if I die before I’ve even kissed Miss Acacia? I feel like I’m jumping into the unknown: joy of flying, fear of going splat.

Her fingers are languid behind my neck and my own are pleasantly lost somewhere beneath her shoulder blades. I try to solder my dreams to reality, but I’m working without a protective mask. Our mouths draw closer. Time slows, until it has almost ground to a halt. Our lips take over, in the softest relay race in the world; they mingle, delicately and intensely. It feels as though her tongue is a sparrow gently landing on mine; curiously, she tastes of strawberries.

I watch as she hides her huge eyes under the parasols of her eyelids. I feel like a weightlifter, with the Himalayas on my left arm and the Rockies on my right; Atlas is a hard-working dwarf by comparison. A giant wave of joy engulfs me. The train’s ghosts echo with each of our gestures. We’re wrapped inside the sound made by her heels tapping against the floor.

‘Silence!’ shrieks a vinegary voice.

Brusquely, we pull apart. It seems we’ve woken the Loch Ness Monster. We don’t dare breathe.

‘Is that you, midget? What are you up to on the premises at this hour?’

‘I’m trying to find new ways of scaring people.’

‘Well, find them in silence. And don’t touch my brand new skulls!’

‘Yes, yes . . .’

Terrified, Miss Acacia buries herself deeper in my arms. Time has come to a standstill and I’ve got no desire for it to pick up its normal pace again. I even forget about keeping my heart at a distance. Laying her head against my chest, she suddenly makes a face.

‘What’s under there? It’s hurting me!’

I don’t answer, I just break out in a cold sweat. She’s found me out. I consider lying, making something up, faking it, but there’s so much sincerity in her question that I can’t bring myself to do that. I open my shirt slowly, button by button. The clock appears, and the tick-tock resounds more loudly. I await my sentencing. She brings her hand near, murmuring:

‘What is it?’

The compassion in her voice is enough to make me want to be an invalid for the rest of my days, just to have her as a nurse by my side. The cuckoo begins to sing. She jumps. Turning the key, I whisper:

‘I’m sorry. It’s my secret. I wanted to tell you about it sooner, but I was scared of frightening you for good.’

I explain to her that this clock has functioned as my heart since the day I was born. I don’t say anything about love – along with anger – being strictly off limits. She asks if my feelings would alter if the clock were changed, or whether this would simply be a mechanical operation. There’s something malicious in her voice; she seems to find it all rather amusing. I explain that my clockwork heart can’t function without emotions, but I don’t venture any further into that slippery terrain.

She smiles, as if I’m explaining the rules of a fabulous game. No cries of horror, no laughter. Until now, Arthur, Anna, Luna and Méliès are the only people who haven’t been shocked by my clockwork heart. I take it as an important love token, the way she seems to be saying:
So you’ve got a cuckoo between your bones? AND?
Simple, so simple . . .

But I mustn’t get too carried away. Perhaps it’s just that the clock looks less repulsive through her defective eyes.

‘That’s very handy. If you grow weary of love as all men do, I could try replacing your heart before you replace me with another woman.’

‘According to the clock in my heart, we kissed for the first time exactly thirty-seven minutes ago, so I think we’ve still got a bit of time ahead of us before we need to think about that sort of thing.’

Even when she’s telling me that she’s no pushover, there’s something gracious about the way she does it.

I accompany Miss Acacia on tiptoe back home, stealthy as a wolf. I embrace her like a wolf, and like a wolf I disappear into the night.

I’ve just kissed the girl with the voice of a nightingale and nothing will ever be the same again. My clock is pulsing like an impetuous volcano. But nothing hurts. Apart from a stitch in my side which is a small price to pay, though, for being drunk on such joy. Tonight, I’m going to climb to the moon and make myself comfortable in its crescent, as if I were slung in a hammock. And when I dream it won’t be because I’m asleep.

C
HAPTER EIGHT

The next day, Brigitte Heim wakes me with her witch’s voice devoid of charm.

‘Get up, midget! Today you’d better start frightening people, or I’m kicking you out on no pay.’

First thing in the morning, her vinegary voice makes me feel sick. I’ve got a lover’s hangover; and waking up is a shock to the system.

Perhaps I got dreams and reality muddled up last night? Next time, will I still be able to feel that fizz of excitement? Just thinking about it makes my clock tingle. I know I’m blatantly disregarding Madeleine’s advice. I’ve never felt so happy, or so distraught.

I go to see Méliès to get my clock checked.

‘Your heart has never worked better, my boy,’ he reassures me. ‘If you could only see yourself in the mirror as you talked about what happened last night, you’d know from your eyes that your heart’s barometer is showing fair weather.’

All day long I drift about the Ghost Train, thinking about how I’ll play alchemist again this evening, transforming my dream into reality.

We only see each other at night. Miss Acacia’s proud coquettishness gives her away, because she always bumps into something. It’s her way of knocking on the door of the Ghost Train.

We love each other like two matches in the dark. We don’t talk, we just catch fire instead. Our kisses are an inferno as an earthquake registers across my entire body, all one metre sixty-six and a half centimetres of it. My heart escapes its prison. It flies away through the arteries, settling in my head. My heart is in every muscle, all the way through to my fingertips. A savage sun, everywhere. It’s a romantic disease with reddish glints.

I can’t survive without her; the scent of her skin, the sound of her voice, the mannerisms that make her the strongest and most fragile girl in the world. Take her obsession with not wearing glasses, so she only gets to look at the world through the smokescreen of her damaged sight; perhaps it’s a form of self-protection? That way she can see without really seeing and, more importantly, without knowing when she’s being watched.

I learn about the strange mechanics of her heart: a protective outer shell hides her mysterious lack of confidence, whereby low self-esteem is constantly vying with the sheer force of her determination. The sparks that fly when Miss Acacia sings are fiery splinters of the soul. She can project this confidence on stage, but as soon as the music stops the balance tilts the other way. I haven’t yet found the broken gear inside her.

The entry code to her heart changes every evening. Sometimes, the shell is as hard as a rock. I might try a thousand combinations in the form of caresses and comforting words, but I’m stuck at the door. What a treat when I do eventually crack the combination. To hear her tiny sigh of surrender, I gently blow and her outer shell flies off in a thousand pieces.

‘
How to tame a shooting star
. That’s the instruction manual I need,’ I tell Méliès.

‘A handbook of pure alchemy, you mean . . . Ha! Shooting stars can never be tamed, my boy. Could you see yourself comfortably settled at home with a shooting star in a cage? Its blinding heat would set fire to the cage and burn you with it, you wouldn’t even get close to the bars.’

‘I don’t want to put her in a cage. I just want to give her more confidence.’

‘Pure alchemy, that’s right.’

‘Put it this way, I was dreaming of a love as great as Arthur’s Seat, and now I find that my bones are growing into a mountain range.’

‘You’re exceptionally lucky, you know, few people ever get near to that feeling.’

‘Perhaps, but now that I’ve tasted it, I can’t do without it. And when she holds back, I feel so empty.’

‘Just enjoy the fact that you’re experiencing so many emotions. I knew a shooting star once as well, and I can tell you those girls are like mountain weather: unpredictable. Even if Miss Acacia loves you, you’ll never be able to master her.’

We love each other secretly. Our combined age is no more than thirty. She’s the little singing girl, famous since childhood. I’m the outsider who works in the Ghost Train.

The Extraordinarium is like a village, where everybody knows everyone else and gossip travels fast. You get all types of people: jealous, affectionate, moralising, small-minded, brave, well-intentioned but intrusive.

I’d like to think I’m not the type to worry about
what-people-might-say
, especially if it means I get to kiss her for a little longer. Miss Acacia, on the other hand, can’t abide the idea of anybody finding out about our secret.

This state of affairs suited us rather well to begin with. We felt like pirates, and what kept us going was the magic of stowing away. But when love becomes something greater than its first intense moments, it sets off like a steamboat in a bath. We need space, more and more space . . . Much as we enjoy the moon, we want the sun too.

‘I’m going to kiss you in front of everybody,’ I tell her. ‘Nothing will happen to us.’

‘I’d like to kiss you in broad daylight too, and do the things everybody else does. But as long as people can’t see us, we’re safe from gossip. We’ll never live in peace again if someone like Brigitte discovers our secret.’

Of course, her sweet words are delicious; I’d happily slip them under my tongue. But I’m finding it harder and harder to watch her disappear into the chinks of the night, as dawn approaches. Her stilettos are like clock hands, beating out a rhythm as she heads off into the distance, triggering my insomnia. When day breaks, my back aches and the birds let me know how short a time I have left to sleep.

In a few months, our love has grown still more. The night is not enough for us. Send us sunlight and fresh air; we need calcium for our growing bones. I don’t want to wear the mask of a romantic bat! I want to laugh in the light of day.

Almost a year after we first caught fire, our situation hasn’t changed. Nothing more, nothing less. I can’t assuage Miss Acacia’s fears of what might happen if people find out about us. Méliès tells me to be patient with her. I study the mechanics of her heart passionately. I try opening jammed locks with affectionate keys. But certain places seem closed for ever.

Her reputation as an ardent singer has travelled beyond the confines of the Extraordinarium. I enjoy visiting the cabarets in nearby towns to hear her sing; to feel the movement of her flamenco steps. I always arrive after the show has begun, and vanish before it ends, so nobody notices I’m a regular.

After the concerts, crowds of well-dressed men wait in the rain to offer her bouquets of flowers as tall as she is. They court her under my nose. They marvel at the talents of the great little singer, but I have no right to show myself. Here I am on the fringes of her public life, witnessing the eyes of strong-hearted men sparkling in adoration. All this only fans the flames of my passion – and jealousy. The underside of love’s medal glints darkly.

This evening, I’ve decided to try out an experiment to keep her in my bed. I’m going to block my clock hands and stop time. I’ll only start the world again if she asks me to. Madeleine forbade me to touch my clock hands but I’m sure it’s because she was afraid I would meddle with the passage of time. If Cinderella had owned a clockwork heart, she’d have stopped time at one minute to midnight and stayed at the ball for the rest of her life.