Mathias Ardizzone - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In which Little Jack has a change of heart and a gigantic hangover

It takes Méliès two days to drag my carcass from Marbella back to Granada. When we finally reach the city’s outskirts, the Alhambra looms like an elephants’ graveyard. Its fortifications glint in the darkness, ready to butcher me.

‘Get up! Get up!’ whispers Méliès, ‘don’t give in, don’t leave me!’

Everything’s coming apart inside me. I squint over the stumps of my clock hands. It’s a terrifying sight that reminds me of when I was born.

Nothing makes sense any more. As a newly fledged adult, I used to want to look after my clock, so I would last long enough to realise my dream of having a family of my own: but all that has dissolved like snowflakes in the flames. What rose-tinted nonsense love is! Madeleine had warned me, of course, but I wanted to follow my heart.

I’m dragging myself along with painstaking slowness. A huge fire rages inside my chest, but I feel anaesthetized. I wouldn’t notice if an aeroplane flew straight between my eyes.

I’d give anything to see Arthur’s Seat rise up before me. Oh Madeleine, if only! I’d dive straight into my bed. There must be a few childhood dreams still hidden under my pillow. I’d do my best not to crush them, heavy though my head is with grown-up worries. I’d go to sleep thinking I’d never wake up again; which is a strangely comforting idea. The next morning I’d have a hard time coming to, knocked out like a failed boxer. But Madeleine would lavish her attentions on me, restoring me to how I was before. Just because the post never came doesn’t stop me from talking to my midwife-mother in my head . . .

Back in his workshop, Méliès tucks me up in his bed. Blood spreads across the white sheets. Snow-roses reappearing, twirling. Bloody hell, I’m staining the sheets , I think in a flash of consciousness. My head weighs a ton, and my brain is as tired of being trapped inside my head as my heart is under my clock dial.

‘I want to change my heart. Make me different, I don’t want to be me any more. Don’t you see, I’ve had enough of this wooden heart; it’s like a dead weight that keeps cracking all the time.’

Méliès watches over me, concerned.

‘Your problem goes much deeper than your wooden clock, you know.’

‘I feel as if a giant Acacia tree is growing between my lungs. This evening, I saw Joe carrying Miss Acacia in his arms and it was like being stabbed. I’d never have believed it could be so hard. And when she slammed the door and left, it was harder still.’

‘You knew the risks, my boy, when you gave a shooting star the keys to your heart.’

‘I want you to fit me with a new heart and set the counter back to zero. I never want to fall in love again.’

Noticing the mad suicidal glimmer in my eyes, Méliès realises there’s no point in arguing. He lays me out on the workbench, the way Madeleine used to in the old days, and gets me to wait.

‘Hold on, I’m going to find something for you.’

I can’t relax. My gears are making atrocious grating noises.

‘I must have a few spare parts somewhere . . .’ he adds.

‘I’m fed up with being mended. I want something strong enough to withstand powerful emotions, like everybody else. Haven’t you got a spare clock?’

‘That won’t solve anything. We need to mend your flesh-and-blood heart. And you don’t need a doctor or a clockmaker for that. You just need love, or time – but lots of time.’

‘I don’t want to wait! I don’t have any love left, so please, just change this clock for me.’

Méliès heads into town to find me a new heart.

‘Try to rest up until I’m back. And no silly business.’

I decide to wind up my old heart one last time. My head is spinning. A guilty thought flies away to Madeleine, who made so many sacrifices for me to be able to stand on my own two feet and keep going forward without snapping. I feel thoroughly ashamed.

I thrust the key into my lock and a sharp pain rises up beneath my lungs. Drops of blood form at the intersection of my clock hands. I try to pull out the key, but it sticks in the lock. Then I try un-jamming it with my broken clock hands. I force it, but my strength is fading fast. By the time I’ve finally succeeded, blood is pouring out of the lock. Curtain.

Méliès is back. I can only see a blurred moustache, you’d think my eyes had been replaced by Miss Acacia’s.

‘I found you a new heart – with no cuckoo and a much quieter tick-tock.’

‘Thank you . . .’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Yes, thank you . . .’

‘You’re quite sure you don’t want the heart Madeleine saved your life with?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You’ll never be the same again, you do understand?’

‘That’s exactly what I want.’

I don’t remember anything after that, except for a hazy dream, followed by a gigantic hangover.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In which much is revealed, but not necessarily resolved, concerning ‘The Man Who Was No Hoax’

When I finally open my eyes, I can see my old clock lying on the bedside table. It’s odd being able to pick up your own heart. The cuckoo doesn’t work any more. And there’s dust on it. I feel like a ghost leaning against a gravestone and calmly smoking a cigarette, except for the fact that I’m alive. I’m wearing a strange pair of pyjamas and two tubes have been fitted into my veins – something else to drag around with me.

I inspect my new heart without clock hands. It doesn’t make any noise. How long have I been asleep? Getting up is hard. My bones ache. Méliès is nowhere to be found. But there’s a woman dressed in white sitting at his desk. His new belle , I guess. I wave at her. She looks startled, as if she’s just seen an apparition. Her hands tremble. I think I might have frightened somebody at last.

‘You’ve no idea how happy I am to see you back on your feet . . .’

‘Me too. Where’s Méliès?’

‘Sit down, I need to explain a few things.’

‘I feel like I’ve been lying down for a hundred and fifty years, so standing up for five minutes isn’t going to hurt me.’

‘Honestly, it’s better if you sit down . . . I’ve got something important to tell you. Something nobody ever wanted to explain before.’

‘Where’s Méliès?’

‘He went back to Paris a few months ago. You’ve been asleep for a long time. He asked me to look after you. He loved you very much, you know. He was fascinated by the effect your clock had on your imagination. When you had your accident, he blamed himself terribly for not telling you about your true nature, even if he couldn’t be certain whether doing so would have changed the course of events. But you need to know the truth, now.’

‘What accident?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ she says sadly. ‘In Marbella, you tried to wrench out the clock that was stitched on to your heart.’

‘Oh yes . . .’

‘Méliès tried to graft on a new heart, to cheer you up.’

‘Cheer me up? I was at death’s door!’

‘Yes, we all think we’re going to die when we’re separated from someone we love. But I’m talking about your heart in the mechanical sense of the word. Listen carefully, because I know you’ll find what I’m about to say hard to believe . . .’

She sits down by my side and takes hold of my right hand. I can feel her trembling.

‘You could have lived without either clock, old or new. They don’t interact directly with your physical heart. They aren’t real prosthetics, they’re just placebos which, medically speaking, don’t do anything.’

‘But that’s impossible. Why would Madeleine have made all that up?’