Mathias Ardizzone - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

‘I don’t suppose you’ve crossed half of Europe to say you’re sorry.’

‘No, you’re right. We still have a few scores to settle. Didn’t you ever wonder why I gave you such a hard time?’

‘Yes, at the beginning . . . I even tried talking to you, but you were a brick wall. I was living in that house, remember, the one belonging to the “ witch who delivers children from prostitutes’ bellies ”. And, as you never stopped reminding me, I probably “ came out of a prostitute’s belly too ” . . . I was new, the smallest kid in the class, and my heart made odd noises. It was easy to make fun of me, to tower above me physically. I was your ideal victim. Until that dreadful day when you took it too far.’

‘Yes, that’s part of the story. But the main reason I picked on you was that on the first day of school, you asked me if I knew somebody you referred to as ‘the little singer’. As far as I was concerned, you’d just signed your own death warrant. I was head over heels in love. I’d spent the whole school year before you turned up trying to get close to Miss Acacia, without success. But one spring day, while she was skating on the frozen river and practising her singing as she liked to do, the ice cracked under her feet. I managed to rescue her with my long legs and big arms. She could have died. I can still picture her shivering as I held her. We were inseparable from that day on until the beginning of summer. I’d never felt so happy. But on the first day of the autumn term, after dreaming all holidays about being reunited with her, I found out that she’d stayed in Granada, and nobody knew when she’d be back.’

Coming from Joe’s mouth, the word ‘dreaming’ sounds as incongruous as an Alsatian dog being careful not to get any crumbs on his coat while he eats a croissant.

‘And that same day you show up like a leprechaun with a satchel, and tell me you want to meet her so you can give her a pair of spectacles! Missing her was bad enough, but you made me feel even more jealous by revealing the terrible thing we had in common. It’s what still links us today: our boundless love for Miss Acacia. I remember the noise your heart used to make when you were talking about her. I despised you on the spot. That tick-tock measured the time slipping away without her. Your clock was a torture instrument filled with your own dreams of love for my Miss Acacia.’

‘That doesn’t justify the way you humiliated me every single day. How could I know what had gone on before?’

‘Fine. But just because I humiliated you, it didn’t warrant THIS!’

He lifts his bandage abruptly. His eye is a sort of egg-white, sullied by blood and worm-eaten with grey-blue varicose veins.

‘I told you,’ he goes on, ‘this handicap taught me a great deal about myself and about life in general. As far as you and I are concerned, I agree, we’re quits.’

He finds it insanely difficult to get this last sentence out. And I find it insanely difficult to listen.

‘We were quits,’ I answer. ‘But by coming here, you’re picking on me again.’

‘I haven’t come here to get my revenge, I’ve told you that. I’ve come to take Miss Acacia back to Edinburgh. I’ve been chewing this moment over for years. Even while I was kissing other girls. Your bloody tick-tock has been so loud inside my head, you as good as infected me with your disease the day you poked my eye out. If she doesn’t want me, I’ll leave. But if it’s the other way around, you’ll have to disappear. I don’t hold a grudge against you any more, but I’m still in love with her.’

‘I’ve still got plenty of grudges against you.’

‘Well, get used to it, because I’m worthy of Miss Acacia too. It’ll be an old-fashioned contest, and she’s the only judge. May the best man win, Little Jack.’

He smiles that smug smile I’m all too familiar with as he extends his long fingers. I hand over my bedroom keys. I have the sickening feeling that I’m offering him the keys to Miss Acacia’s heart. And I realise that the magical entertainment with my bespectacled fire-girl is over.

What about our dream of a beach-front cabin where we’d be able to walk in peace night and day? Her skin, her smile, her repartee, her sparkling character all made me want to have children with her. But that was yesterday. Now Joe has come to fetch her. I’m foundering in the haze of my oldest demons. My clock arrows shrivel inside their fragile dial. I’m not done yet, but I’m frightened, very frightened.

Instead of watching Miss Acacia’s belly grow, like a happy gardener taking stock, I have to get the armour out of the wardrobe and face Joe one more time.

That evening, Miss Acacia shows up at my bedroom door, her eyes flashing angrily. I’m trying to close my messily packed suitcase, and sense that the next few minutes are going to be stormy.

‘Watch out, mountain weather ahead!’ I joke, trying to calm things down between us.

If her balmy sweetness knows no match, this evening my little singer is the opposite. She spits lightning.

‘So, just like that, you poke someone’s eye out! Who on earth have I fallen in love with?’

‘I . . .’

‘How could you have done anything so hideous? Youpok-ed-his-eye-out!’

Baptism by fire, a flamenco tornado with gunpowder castanets and stilettos digging into my nerves. I wasn’t expecting this. I’m searching for something to say, but she doesn’t give me time.

‘Who are you really ? And if you hid something as serious as that from me, what else will I find out about?’

Her eyes are dilated with anger, but even more unbearable is the genuine sadness that frames them.

‘How could you have hidden something so monstrous from me?’ she says again and again.

That bastard Joe has just lit the darkest fuse by digging up my past. I don’t want to lie to my little singer. But I don’t want to tell her everything either, which I guess amounts to a half-lie.

‘All right, so I poked one of his eyes out. Of course I’d much rather it’d never come to that, but what he didn’t tell you was how he made my life miserable for years; and, more importantly, why . . . Thanks to Joe, I experienced the blackest hours of my life. At school, I was his favourite victim. Picture it. A new boy, a pipsqueak, whose heart makes strange noises . . . Joe spent his time humiliating me, making me feel how different I was from everyone else. I was a toy for him. One day he smashed an egg on my head, the next day he dented my clock, every day something new, and always in public.’

‘I know he likes to brag. He craves attention. But he’s never really cruel. I’m sure he didn’t give you any reason to behave like a criminal.’

‘I didn’t poke his eye out because he was bragging. The problem goes back much further than that.’

My memories come through in waves and my words are having a hard time riding them. I’m ashamed and saddened. I do my best to express myself calmly.

‘It all started the day before my tenth birthday. It was my first time in town, I can remember it like it was yesterday. I heard you singing, then I saw you. My clock hands pointed towards you, as if attracted to a magnetic field. My cuckoo started singing. Madeleine was restraining me. I escaped her grip to go and stand right in front of you. The way I sang the response, you’d think we were in some outlandish musical comedy. You sang, I answered, we were communicating in a language I didn’t know, but we understood each other perfectly. You danced and I danced with you, even though I had no idea how to dance. Anything felt possible.’

‘I remember, right from the very beginning I remembered. The moment I found you in my dressing room, I knew it was you.’ The sadness doesn’t leave her voice. ‘That strange little boy from when I was ten years old, the one who slumbered at the back of my memories. I was sure it was you . . .’