Mathias Ardizzone - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

‘The “little singer,” as you call her, is the love of my life and . . . she’s not here any more. Don’t you ever dare talk to me about her again! I don’t even want to hear you thinking about her, or I’ll smash that wooden clock over your head. I’ll break it, do you hear me? I’ll break it so badly, you’ll NEVER be able to love again!’

His long fingers quiver with rage, even when he clenches his fist.

Just a few hours ago, I thought my heart was a ship ready to cut through an ocean of disapproval. I knew it wasn’t the sturdiest heart in the world, but I believed in the strength of my own enthusiasm. I was so fired up by the idea of finding the little singer that nothing could have stopped me. In less than five minutes, Joe has reset my clock to real-time, swapping my colourful galleon for a dilapidated old tub.

‘I’ll break it so badly, you’ll NEVER be able to love again!’ he says one more time.

‘Cuckoo,’ answers my wooden hull.

The sound of my own voice is cut short; you’d think I’d just been punched in the gut.

As I climb back up Arthur’s Seat, I wonder how such a gorgeous bespectacled goldfinch could have fallen into the claws of a vulture like Joe. I try to cheer myself with the thought that perhaps my little singer came to school without her glasses on and that she couldn’t see what she was getting herself into . . . Where could she be now?

A middle-aged woman interrupts my anxious reverie. She’s holding Joe firmly by the hand – unless it’s the other way round, given the vulture’s size. She looks like him, just a more withered version, and with an elephant’s arse.

‘Are you the boy who lives up there with the witch? Did you know she delivers children from prostitutes’ bellies? You probably came out of a prostitute’s belly too, everyone knows the old lady’s been barren for a long time.’

When adults get involved, a new threshold of ugliness is always crossed.

Despite my obstinate silence, Joe and his mother carry on insulting me for a good part of the journey. I struggle to reach the top of the hill. The day weighs so heavily on my clock hands that I’m having to drag myself along like a ball and chain. Bloody clock of dreams! I’d happily hurl you down Arthur’s Seat.

That evening, no matter how much Madeleine sings to help send me off to sleep, it doesn’t work. When I decide to tell her about Joe, she explains that perhaps he treated me like that to look big in other people’s eyes, and that he’s not necessarily all bad. He must be very smitten with the little singer too. The torment of love can transform people into wretched monsters, she tells me. It annoys me that she’s making excuses for him. She kisses me on my clock dial and slows down my cardiac rate by pressing on my gears with her index finger. I close my eyes in the end, but I’m not smiling.

CHAPTER FOUR

A fistful of emotions, a poked-out eye and a hasty departure from Edinburgh

A year goes by, with Joe sticking to me as if magnetised by my clock hands; punching my clock in full view of everybody. Sometimes I want to tear out his crow-black shock of hair; I try not to flinch when he humiliates me, but he’s getting me down. My quest to find the little singer is proving fruitless. Nobody dares answer my questions. At school, Joe is the law.

Today, at break, I take out Arthur’s egg from one of my pullover sleeves. I’m trying to track down Miss Acacia by thinking about her as hard as I can. I forget about Joe, I even forget I’m in this bloody school. As I stroke the egg, a beautiful dream glides across the screen of my eyelids. The eggshell cracks open and the little singer appears, her body covered in red feathers. I hold her between my thumb and index finger, frightened of crushing her but not wanting her to fly away. A tender fire sparks between my fingers and her eyes flicker open, when all of a sudden my skull goes ‘crack!’

Egg yolk is trickling down my cheeks – the tears of my dream draining away. Joe towers over the scene with the remains of eggshell between his fingers. Everybody’s laughing and some people even applaud.

‘Next time, I’ll smash your heart against your skull.’

In class, everyone makes fun of the eggshell pieces stuck in my hair. I’m itching for revenge. The fairies in my dreams vanish. I spend nearly as much time despising Joe as I do loving Miss Acacia. Dreams have a hard time surviving when confronted with reality.

Joe’s humiliations continue day after day. I’ve become the toy that he uses to calm his nerves and dull his melancholy. No matter how often I water the flowers that are my memories of the little singer, they’re being starved of sunlight.

Madeleine goes to great lengths to comfort me, but she never wants to hear any tales of the heart. Arthur hardly has any memory eggs left in his pouch, and he sings less and less.

On my birthday, Anna and Luna come over for the evening – it’s the same ‘surprise’ every year. As usual, they’re having fun putting perfume on Cunnilingus, but this time Luna gets a little over-enthusiastic when she douses him. The hamster stiffens in a spasm and keels over, stone dead. The sight of my faithful companion stretched out in his cage makes me very sad. A long ‘cuckoo’ escapes from my chest.

As a consolation prize, I get a geography lesson on Andalusia from Luna. Ah, Andalusia . . . If only I could be sure that Miss Acacia was there, I’d leave right away!

Four years have gone by since my encounter with the little singer, and nearly three years since I started school. I still look for her everywhere, but I can never find her. Little by little, my memories are being crushed under the weight of time.

On the night before the last day of school, I go to bed with a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I don’t get a wink of sleep. I’m too busy thinking about what I want to achieve tomorrow. Because this time I’ve made up my mind, it’s time to conquer the Amorous West. I just need to find out where the little singer is right now. And the only person who can answer that question is Joe. I watch dawn tracing the shadows to the beat of my tick-tock .

It’s 27 June and we’re in the school playground under a blue sky, so blue you’d think we were anywhere but Edinburgh. The sleepless night has sharpened my nerves.

I make straight for Joe, with more than purpose in my stride. But before I’ve had a chance to say anything, he grabs my shirt collar and hoicks me off the ground. My heart creaks, my anger overflows, the cuckoo hisses. Joe taunts the crowd around us.

‘Take off your shirt and show us what you’ve got on your chest. We want to see your thing that goes tick-tock.’

‘Yeah!!!’ roars the crowd.

With a swoop of his arm, he rips off my shirt and jams his nails into my dial.

‘How does this open?’

‘You need a key.’

‘Hand it over.’

‘I haven’t got it here, it’s at home, so leave me alone.’

He picks the lock with his little finger, niggling at it furiously. The dial gives way in the end.

‘See, we don’t need a key after all! Who wants to have a grope?’

One after another, students who’ve never said a word to me take it in turns to tug on my clock hands and activate my gears. They’re hurting me and they’re not even looking at me. The cuckoo can’t stop hiccuping. They clap and laugh. The whole playground joins in: ‘ Cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo! ‘

Something flips inside my brain. Dreams anaesthetised for years, pent-up rage, humiliation . . . everything is headed for the floodgates. The barrage is about to give way. I can’t hold back any more.

‘Where’s Miss Acacia?’

‘I don’t think I heard you properly,’ says Joe, twisting my arm.