The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (15 page)

I catch my reflection in the glazed workshop door. Three years. And Dr Madeleine no longer of this world. Three years. I’m one of the living dead. What have you done with these three years, Miss Acacia?

‘Am I really alive, is this a dream, a nightmare, or am I dead?’

‘You’re very much alive; different, but alive.’

Once I’ve got rid of those horrible tubes pinching the hairs on my arms, I try to gather my wits and emotions as I eat my first proper meal.

Miss Acacia has taken over my thoughts. So I can’t be doing too badly. I’m as obsessed by her as I was on my tenth birthday. I’ve got to find her. I can’t be sure about anything any more, except the one thing that matters: I still love her. Just thinking about her being apart from me stokes my fiery nausea. Nothing makes any sense if I don’t try to find her.

It’s not even a choice. I have to go back to the Extraordinarium.

‘You can’t go there like that!’

But I set off in the direction of town without finishing my meal. I’ve never run so slowly. The fresh air in my lungs feels like gusts of steel. I could be a hundred years old.

On the outskirts of Granada, great cauldrons of ochre dust are whipped up so that the whitewashed houses seem to blur into the sky. I see my own shadow in a small street but I don’t recognise it; nor do I recognise the new reflection that bounces off a window pane. With my shaggy locks and beard, I look like Father Christmas before he got a big belly and white hair. But that’s not all. My aching bones have changed the way I walk. My shoulders seem to have expanded, and these shoes hurt my feet, as if they’re too small for me now. Children hide under their mothers’ skirts when they see me.

At a bend in the street, I happen upon a poster starring Miss Acacia. I stare at it for a long time, trembling with melancholic desire. Her gaze has grown more self-assured, although she still doesn’t wear glasses. Her nails are longer, and she paints them now. Miss Acacia is more ravishing than ever, while I’ve turned into a caveman in pyjamas.

When I get to the Extraordinarium I head straight for the Ghost Train. My favourite memories rush up at me, finding their place again inside my head. Unhappy memories don’t waste any time in joining them.

I’m taking a seat in one of the carriages when, all of a sudden, I notice Joe. He’s sitting on the landing, smoking a cigarette. The ride appears to have been extended. Suddenly . . . I can see Miss Acacia, sitting a few rows behind me. Be quiet, my heart. She doesn’t recognise me. Be quiet, my heart. Nobody recognises me. Quite frankly, I’m having a hard time recognising myself. Joe tries to frighten me the way he does the other passengers. He won’t succeed. That said, when I see him kiss Miss Acacia at the exit to the Ghost Train, I know his talents for trampling on other people’s dreams are alive and kicking. But I won’t be discouraged, not this time. Because now I’m the one who’s the Outsider
.

Miss Acacia takes a puff of Joe’s cigarette. The intimacy this implies makes me feel as sick as seeing them kiss. They’re only a few metres away. I hold my breath.

He kisses her again; the way you might roll up your sleeves and do the washing-up. How can you kiss a girl like that without thinking about it? I don’t say anything. Give her back to me! You’ll see how much heart I’ll put into it, whatever that heart might be made of. I’m all shaken up, and it takes every bit of strength I’ve got to hold my emotions in check.

Her sparkling voice, like strawberry-flavoured tear gas, stings my eyes. Will she ever recognise me?

Am I strong enough to tell her the truth this time, and if it goes wrong, am I strong enough to hide it from her?

Joe goes back inside the Ghost Train. Miss Acacia walks past me. The wreaths of her perfume are as familiar as an old bedcover full of dreams. I could almost forget she’s the lover of my bitter enemy.

‘Hello,’ she says, noticing me. My shoulders sink under the dead weight of her non-recognition. I notice a bruise on her left knee.

I dive straight in, without really knowing what I’m doing.

‘Still not wearing your glasses, then?’

‘No, but I don’t like people teasing me about it,’ she says with a relieved smile.

‘I know . . .’

‘What do you mean, you know?’

I know we fought because of Joe and jealousy, I know I threw my heart away because I loved you crookedly, but I want to learn everything afresh because I love you more than all the world.
There you go, that’s what I should have said. The words flit across my mind and head for my mouth, but they don’t come out. I just cough instead.

‘Why are you wearing your pyjamas outside? You haven’t run away from hospital, have you?’

She talks to me gently, as if I were an old man.

‘I didn’t run away . . . I’ve come back from a very serious illness . . .’

‘Well, Señor, you’re going to need some clothes now!’

We smile at each other, the way we used to. For a moment, I think she’s worked out who I am, or at least that’s what I secretly wish for. ‘See you soon’, we say, and I head back to Méliès’ workshop with a sort of twisted hope.

‘Don’t put off revealing your true identity,’ the nurse insists.

‘I need a bit longer, the time to get used to her again.’

‘Well, don’t take too long about it . . . You’ve already lost her once by hiding your past. Otherwise she’ll bury her head in your chest, only to discover there’s another clock in place of the old one. Speaking of which, why don’t I get rid of it once and for all?’

‘Look, we will get rid of it, but I need more time. It was Dr Madeleine’s masterpiece, after all. Let’s just wait until I’m feeling a bit better, all right?’

‘You’re feeling better already . . . How about I cut your hair and shave off that prehistoric beard of yours?’

‘No, not yet. By the way, you don’t happen to have one of Méliès’ old suits still hanging around?’

Every now and then, I position myself in a key spot, not far from the Ghost Train. That way, we can run into each other, as if by chance. The rapport we strike up resembles what we used to have so closely that I don’t know if I’m laughing or crying. Sometimes, during our silences, I tell myself that she knows but isn’t saying anything. Except that’s not her style.

I’m careful not to harass Miss Acacia. I’ve learned my lesson from my first accident in love. Instinctively, I still want to push things, but the pain slows me down; or at any rate stops me being in such a rush.

I’m starting to manipulate the truth again. But I’m enjoying nibbling the crumbs of her presence from the safety of my new identity, and the thought of ending all this makes my stomach lurch.

This game has been going on for more than two months and Joe doesn’t seem to have noticed anything. Méliès’ shoes are starting to hurt my feet now. As for his suit, I look like I’m going fishing disguised as a magician. Jehanne, my nurse, thinks this metamorphosis is a result of my long coma. My bones are trying to make up for lost time after being compacted like springs for three years. As a result, I’ve got curvature of the spine which affects my whole body. Even my face is changing. My jaw is more thickset, and my cheekbones more prominent.

‘Here comes Mr Neander-Cute dressed up in his brand new suit,’ Miss Acacia calls out when she sees me coming. ‘All you need is a trip to the hairdresser’s and we’ll have you back to being a fully civilised man,’ she tells me today.

‘If you call me Mr Neander-Cute, I’ll never shave my beard off again.’

It came out just like that,
dragando piano
, as Méliès might whisper.

‘You could shave it off, and I’d still call you Mr Neander-Cute, if you’d like . . .’

So we’re back to these deliciously confused emotions. I can’t savour them fully but it’s already a lot better than being apart from her.

‘You remind me of an old lover I once had.’

‘More of the “old” or the “lover”?’

‘Both.’

‘Did he have a beard?’

‘No, but he was a mysterious figure like you. He believed in his lies, or rather his dreams. I thought it was just to impress me, but he really did believe in them.’

‘Perhaps he believed in them and wanted to impress you at the same time.’

‘Perhaps . . . I don’t know. He died a few years back.’

‘Died?’

‘Yes, I laid flowers on his grave again this morning.’

‘And what if he only died to impress you, to get you to believe in him?’

‘Oh, he’d have been perfectly capable of something like that, but he wouldn’t have waited three years to come back.’

‘What did he die of?’

‘That’s a mystery. Some people saw him struggling with a horse, others say that he died in a fire which he accidentally started. As for me, I’m afraid he died in a fit of anger after our final argument. It was a terrible row. All I know for sure is that he’s dead, because they buried him. And anyway if he was alive, he’d be
here.
With me.’

A ghost hiding behind his beard, that’s what I’ve become.

‘Did he love you too much?’

‘You can never love someone too much.’

‘Did he love you badly?’

‘I don’t know . . . But let me tell you this: encouraging me to talk about my first love, who died three years ago, isn’t the best way of flirting with me.’

‘What is the best way of flirting with you, then?’

‘Not to flirt with me.’

‘I knew it. That’s exactly why I haven’t been flirting with you!’

She smiled.

I nearly, so nearly, told her everything. With my old heart, it would have popped out all by itself . . . but now, everything’s different.

I went back to the workshop just as a vampire reclaims his coffin – ashamed of having bitten a magnificent neck.

You’ll never be the same again,
Méliès told me before the operation. Regrets and remorse press against a stormy gulf. Only a few months have gone by and I’m already fed up with my life in its muted version. I’ve finished convalescing now, and want to return to the heat of the fire without this mask of a beard and bushy hair. I don’t mind growing up a bit, and I’ve got to turn this false reunion around.

Tonight, when I go to bed, I’m eager to rummage among the memories and dreams that lie in passion’s dustbin. I want to see what’s left of my old heart, the one that let me fall in love last time.

My new clock hardly makes any noise, but I’m no less of an insomniac. The old one is tidied away on a shelf, in a cardboard box. Perhaps if I repaired it, everything would be just as it was before. No Joe, no knife between the clock hands. To travel back in time to that period when I loved guilelessly, when I forged my way, head down, without worrying about bumping into my dreams. Bring back those days when I wasn’t afraid of anything; when I could climb on board love’s rose-tinted rocket without fastening my safety belt. I’m older, today, and more sensible too; but as a result, I no longer dare leap towards the woman who’ll always make me feel like I’m ten years old. My old heart will continue to make me dream more than the new one, even though it’s battered and outside my body now. It’s the ‘real thing’; it’s mine. And like a fool, I went and smashed it. What have I become? My own impostor? A see-through shadow?

I grab the cardboard box and carefully take out the clock, putting it down on my bed. Curls of dust rise up. I slide my fingers inside my former gears. Pain, or the memory of that pain, is instantly revived; followed by a surprisingly comforting feeling.

After a few seconds, the clock goes clickety-clack, like a skeleton learning to walk again, then it stops. My rapture transports me from the top of Arthur’s Seat into the tender arms of Miss Acacia. I tie the clock hands back in position with two pieces of string; it’s not a very sturdy arrangement.

I spend the night trying to repair my old wooden heart; but being the pathetic tinkerer I am, I don’t have any luck. If only Madeleine were here, to flash that twitch of a smile before expertly manipulating my clock gears. Or Méliès, with all his sound advice. But by dawn, I’ve made up my own mind. I’m going to find Miss Acacia to tell her the whole truth. I’ve put my old clock back in the box. It’s a present for someone who has become a great singer. I won’t just give her the key this time, I’ll give her the whole heart too, in the hope that she might once again decide to tinker at love with me.

I walk down the main avenue in the Extraordinarium, like someone condemned to die. I cross paths with Joe, and our eyes meet as if we’re fighting a duel in a western, in slow motion.

But I’m not afraid any more. For the first time in my life, I imagine what it must be like to be in his shoes. Today I’m in a position to win back Miss Acacia, just as he was when he took on the job at the Ghost Train. I think about how much he must have hated me at school when I couldn’t stop talking about her, not realising that he was in agony because she’d gone away and never come back. This great tall fellow and I almost have something in common. I watch him stride off until he disappears out of sight.

Up on the Ghost Train walkway, Brigitte Heim appears. When I catch sight of her hairstyle, identical to the bristles on a broom, I turn back. She’s like a sallow witch who reeks of loneliness; and as unhappy as those piles of old stones she collects. I could have tried talking calmly to her, now that she no longer recognises me. But just the idea of her spitting spiteful remarks makes me feel tired.

Miss Acacia, or the gift of ensuring things never work out quite as they were planned . . .

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Me too.’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to carry on . . . Oh, you’ve got a present for me? What’s inside the box?’

‘A heart in a thousand pieces. Mine . . .’

‘You’re pretty single-minded, for somebody who’s not meant to be flirting with me.’

‘Forget about the impostor you saw yesterday. I want to tell you the whole truth now.’