Mathias Ardizzone - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

‘Your heart is only an implant. It’s more fragile than a normal heart and it will always be that way. A clockwork mechanism can’t filter emotions as well as human tissue. You have to be very careful. What happened in town today when you saw that little singer only confirms my fears: love is too dangerous for you.’

‘I couldn’t take my eyes off her mouth.’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘Her dimples are a never-ending game, her smile is always changing, I could watch her for ever.’

‘You don’t understand, you think it’s a game, but you’re playing with fire and that’s very dangerous when you have a heart made of wood. Your gears hurt when you cough, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s nothing compared to the suffering that love can inflict. All love’s pleasures and joys are paid for one day with suffering. And the more passionately you love, the more your pain will increase. You’ll find out what it means to miss somebody, the torment of jealousy and incomprehension, what it feels like to be rejected and unfairly treated. You’ll be chilled to the bone, and your blood will form little blocks of ice that float underneath your skin. Your cuckoo-clock heart will explode. I was the one who grafted that clock on to you, and I have a perfect understanding of its limits. It might survive the intensity of pleasure, and beyond. But it is not robust enough to endure the torment of love.’

Madeleine smiles sadly – still that twitch that vanishes instantly, but at least she’s not angry this time.

CHAPTER THREE

In which Little Jack befriends Anna, Luna, and a hamster called Cunnilingus

The mystery surrounding the little singer tantalises me. In my mind’s eye, I stockpile images of her long eyelashes, her dimples, her perfect nose and the curve of her lips. I nurture her memory the way you’d tend a delicate flower. This fills my days.

I can only think of one thing: finding her again. I want to taste that sensation I can’t put into words; preferably as soon as possible. So what if the cuckoo risks being spat out through my nose? So what if my heart needs mending more often? I’ve been having it repaired ever since I was born. So what if I’m in danger of dying? My life’s in danger if I don’t see her again and, at my age, that’s even more serious.

I’m beginning to understand why the doctor was so keen to put off my encounter with the outside world. You only ask for strawberries with sugar every day once you’ve discovered a taste for them.

Some evenings, the little singer pays me a visit in my dreams. Tonight, she’s two centimetres tall. She enters my heart through its keyhole and straddles my hour hand. She fixes me with her elegant doe-like eyes. I may be asleep, but it’s still an impressive sight. Gently, she starts licking my minute hand. She’s gathering my nectar; something clockwork starts whirring into action, and I’m not sure it’s just my heart . . . TICK-TOCK DING! TICK-TOCK DONG! Bloody cuckoo! I wake up with a jolt.

‘ Love is dangerous for your tiny heart, even in your dreams, so please dream softly,’ Madeleine whispers to me. ‘Go back to sleep . . .’

As if that was easy with a heart like mine.

The next day, I’m woken by the tapping of a hammer. Madeleine is standing on a chair, banging a nail into the wall above my bed. She looks very determined, and she’s got a piece of slate between her teeth. She might as well be driving a nail straight into my skull. Then she hangs up the slate, which has the following words inscribed sinisterly upon it:

Firstly: don’t touch the hands of your cuckoo-clock heart. Secondly: master your anger. Thirdly: never, ever fall in love. For if you do, the hour hand will poke through your skin, your bones will shatter, and your heart will break once more.

The slate terrorises me. I don’t even need to read what’s on it, I know the words inside out and back to front. And they blow an ill wind between my gears.

But fragile as my clock may be, the little singer has settled in comfortably. She’s set down her heavy suitcases in every corner, and yet I’m lighter than before I met her.

It doesn’t matter what it costs, I have to find a way of tracking her down again. What’s her name? Where can I find her? I know she can’t see very well and sings like a bird, but with words. That’s all.

I try discreetly asking the young couples who come to Dr Madeleine’s to adopt. No answer. I hazard my luck with Arthur. ‘I heard her singing in town once, but I haven’t seen her for a wee while now, pet.’ The girls might be more inclined to point me in the right direction.

Anna and Luna are two prostitutes who always turn up around Christmas time with downcast looks at their rounded tummies. From the way they keep saying: ‘No, no, we don’t know anything, absolutely nothing . . . nothing at all, do we Anna? Not a single thing, not us’, I can tell I’m on the right track.

They look like two overgrown kids. Which is what they are, two thirty-year-old kids, with clingy leopard-skin costumes. Their clothes always have a strange whiff of Provençal herbs, even when they’re not smoking. Their cigarettes create a foggy halo and make the girls laugh so hard they must be getting their brains tickled. Their favourite game involves teaching me new words. They never reveal the meanings, they just want to make sure I can pronounce everything perfectly. Of all the wonderful names they teach me, my favourite is cunnilingus . I imagine him as an ancient Roman hero, this Cunnilingus. You have to say it again and again, Cu-ni-lin-guss, Cunnilingus, Cunnilingus. What a fantastic word!

Anna and Luna never show up empty-handed. There’s always a bunch of flowers nicked from the cemetery, or the frock coat of a client who croaked during coitus. For my birthday, they gave me a hamster. I called it Cunnilingus. They seemed very touched that I chose that name. ‘Cunnilingus, my love!’ Luna always sings to it, as she taps the bars of its cage with her painted nails.

Anna is a tall faded rose with a rainbow gaze; her left pupil is a quartz stone, inserted by Madeleine to replace the eye that was gouged out by a customer who didn’t want to pay, and it changes colour with the weather. She speaks quickly, like she’s scared of silence. When I ask her about the little singer, she tells me she’s never heard of her . But her words come out even faster than usual. I can tell she’s dying to let me into a great secret so I decide to ask her a question or two about love; but in hushed tones, because I don’t really want Madeleine meddling.

‘I’ve been working at love for a long time, you know. I haven’t always been on the receiving end of a great deal of it, but sometimes just the simple act of giving makes me happy. I’m no good as a professional. I fall in love as soon as someone’s a regular customer; then I start refusing their money. For a while they come every day, and even bring me presents. But their enthusiasm wears off eventually. I know I’m not supposed to fall for them, I just can’t help it. It’s ridiculous, but I enjoy believing in the impossible.’

‘The impossible?’

‘It’s not easy being simple-hearted when you’re in my profession.’

‘I think I understand.’

And then there’s Luna, a shimmering blonde, a forerunner of the famous Egyptian singer Dalida, with her slow gestures and broken smile, a tightrope walker on the most spindly stilettos. Part of her right leg froze on the coldest day on earth. Madeleine replaced it with a walnut wood prosthesis complete with its own pokerwork suspender. She reminds me of the little singing girl – they share the same nightingale accent, the same spontaneity.

‘You wouldn’t happen to know a little singer who talks just like you and who’s always bumping into things?’ I ask her every now and then.