Mathias Ardizzone - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

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.

While Miss Acacia slips on her court shoes with one hand and fixes her hair with the other, I block the minute hand. It has been 4.37 a.m. for a good quarter of an hour, according to my clockwork heart, when I let it go. Meanwhile, Miss Acacia has disappeared into the silent labyrinth of the Extraordinarium, and the first birds of dawn accompany her footsteps.

I wish I had more time to watch her birdlike ankles, to move on up to her streamlined calves, as far as the amber pebbles she has for knees. Then I’d follow her gently open thighs to land on the tenderest of landing strips. There, I’d practise becoming the greatest kisser-caresser in the world. Each time she wanted to go back home, I’d perform my trick. Stopping time, followed by a lesson in languages not foreign. Then, I’d set the world off again, and she’d feel so alive she wouldn’t be able to resist spending a few more light-filled minutes in the haven of my bed. For those moments stolen from time, she’d be all mine.

But as perfectly as my old heart measures time, ticktocking its way through my sleeplessness, it refuses to help me when it comes to magic. I’m sitting here alone on my bed, trying to relieve my aching clock by squeezing the gears between my fingers. Madeleine, how furious you’d be . . .

The next morning, I decide to pay Méliès a visit. He’s built himself a workshop where he labours at his dream: photography in motion. I drop by to see him nearly every afternoon, before going on to the Ghost Train. I often walk in on him with his belles . One day it might be a long-haired brunette, the next a little redhead. But he’s still working on his famous voyage to the moon that he wanted to give to the woman of his life.

‘As a cure for my own failed love, I indulge in small doses of comfort. It’s a gentle medicine that stings a bit sometimes, but it helps me put myself back together again. The magic has turned against me; I told you nothing’s guaranteed to work every time. I need to make a full recovery before throwing myself into full-scale emotions again. But don’t use me as an example. Carry on soldering your dreams to reality, without forgetting the most important thing: today, Miss Acacia is in love with you .’

CHAPTER NINE

In which a couple of vampires go on a supermarket trip, and fleshy ghosts hang around . . .

Each day, Brigitte Heim threatens to throw me out if I go on making her Ghost Train look comical; but she never makes good her threat, because the customers keep coming in their droves. I do my best to frighten them but I can’t help it if I make them laugh instead. No matter how much energy I put into singing ‘Oh When the Saints’ as I limp along like Arthur, or silently smash eggs on my heart under the glow of the candelabra, or playing the violin on my gears to produce creaking melodies, or leaping from carriage to carriage and even on to people’s knees for the finale, it’s just hopeless: they all burst out laughing. Every single time, I mess up my surprise effects because my ticktock rings out loud and clear. So the customers know exactly when I’m supposed to scare them, and some regulars even laugh ahead of time. Méliès thinks I’m far too much in love to frighten people properly.

Occasionally, Miss Acacia comes for a ride on the Ghost Train. My clock always tick-tocks more loudly when I see her settling her bird’s bottom into a carriage. I slip her a few intimations of ardour, as a precursor to our nocturnal encounters.

Come, my blossoming tree, this evening we’ll turn out the light and I’ll lay your spectacles to rest on two swelling buds that promise to bring forth leaves. You’ll score the celestial vault with the tips of your branches, and shake your invisible trunk as it props up the moon. New dreams will fall back down like warm snow at our feet. You’ll plant your high-heeled roots firmly in the earth. Let me climb over your bamboo heart, I want to sleep by your side.

Midnight chimes. I notice a few wood shavings on my bed; my clock is crumbling. Miss Acacia arrives without her glasses, but her eyes look focused as if we were due to have a business meeting.

‘You were behaving oddly yesterday evening,’ she says. ‘You even let me go without saying goodbye – no kiss, nothing. You were tinkering with your clock, hypnotised. I was frightened you’d cut yourself on those pointy arrows.’

‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to try out an experiment to make you stay a little longer, but it didn’t work.’

‘No, it didn’t. Don’t play that game with me. I love you, but you know I can’t stay until morning.’

‘I know, I know . . . that’s why I was trying to . . .’

‘And while we’re on the subject, why don’t you take off your clock when we’re together? I get bruises from our making—’

‘Take off my clock? But I can’t!’

‘Of course you can! I don’t keep my stage make-up on to join you under the sheets, do I?’

‘Yes, you do sometimes! And you’re very beautiful when you’re naked with painted eyes.’

A gentle twinkle flashes beneath her eyelashes.

‘The point is I could never remove my clock. It’s not an accessory.’

Her luscious lips pout, as if to say: I don’t even believe seventy per cent of what you’re saying.

‘You know what, it’s great that you believe in your dreams, but you’ve got to come down off your cloud every once in a while and grow up. You can’t go through life with your clock hands sticking out of your coat,’ she says, sounding like a teacher.

I may be in the same room as her, but not since our first encounter have I been so far away from her embrace.

‘Sorry,’ I tell her, ‘but yes I can. That really is how I function. This clock is a vital part of me. It’s what makes my heart beat. There’s no getting away from it. I draw on who I am to overcome my situation, to feel alive. It’s just like you on stage; when you sing, it’s the same thing.’

‘It’s not the same thing, you naughty boy!’ she says, sliding her fingernails over my dial.

That she could even think my clock might just be an ‘accessory’ makes my blood run cold. I couldn’t love her if I thought her heart was a fake, whether it was made of glass or flesh or eggshell.

‘Well, keep it on if you like, but be careful with your clock hands . . .’

‘Do you believe in me one hundred per cent?’

‘I’d say seventy per cent, for the time being. It’s up to you to get me all the way to a hundred per cent, Little Jack . . .’

‘Why am I thirty per cent short?’

‘Because I know what men are like.’

‘I’m not like the others.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘You’re a born cheat! Even your heart is a cheat.’

‘The only real thing I have is my heart.’

‘You see, you always land on your feet. But that’s what I love about you.’

‘I don’t want there to be things you “love about me”, I want you to love “all of me”.’

Her eyelids are like black parasols, blinking in time to the tick-tock of my heart. Her lips, which I haven’t kissed for too long, betray amusement and doubt. The palpitations speed up under my dial. A familiar tingling.

She starts the drum roll as a hint of a dimple lights up her cheeks.