Mathias Ardizzone - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

‘Where is she? Tell me where she is. I’ll find her, whether she’s here or in Andalusia, do you hear me?’

Joe pins me face down to the ground, so I can’t move. My cuckoo is singing at the top of its voice, I feel like my oesophagus is on fire, something’s changing inside me. Violent spasms shake me every three seconds. Joe turns around triumphantly.

‘So, you’re setting off for Andalusia just like that?’ he asks, through gritted teeth.

‘Yes, I’m leaving! And I’m leaving today!’

My eyes are bulging, so is my throat, and my movements too. I’m turning into a pair of shears that will chop up anyone and anything.

Pretending to be a dog sniffing a turd, Joe brings his nose close to my clock. The whole playground bursts out laughing. This is too much. I grab him by the neck and ram his face against my clock hands. His skull cracks loudly against my wooden heart. The clapping stops dead. I deal him a second blow, more violent this time, then a third. Time seems to stand still. I’d love a photograph to document this moment. His first cries for help shatter the silence, just as the first spurts of blood splatter the nicely ironed clothes of the creeps in the front row. When the hour hand impales itself on the pupil of his right eye, his socket turns into a bloody fountain. All Joe’s terror is concentrated in his left eye, as it watches the shower of his own blood. I relax my grip and Joe yelps like a poodle whose paw has accidentally been trodden on. The blood trickles between his fingers. I don’t feel the slightest bit of compassion for him. Silence follows, and it lasts.

My clock’s burning. I can barely touch it. Joe doesn’t move. Is he dead? I’d like him to stop wiping his feet on my dreams, but I don’t necessarily want him dead. I’m starting to feel frightened now. The sky shimmers with beads of blood. All around us, kids stand like statues. Perhaps I really have killed Joe. Who’d have thought that one day I’d be worried about Joe dying.

I run away, the whole world on my heels as I cross the playground. I climb up the left pillar and clamber on to the school roof. The realisation of what I’ve just done chills me to the bone. My heart produces the same noise as when I first fell in love with the little singer. Up on the roof, I can make out the top of Arthur’s Seat goring the mist. Oh Madeleine, how furious you’d be . . .

A swarm of migrating birds hovers above me, as if stacked on a bank of clouds. I’d like to catch hold of their wings and tear myself away from the earth; if only my heart’s troubles would take flight, nothing else would matter. Please, dear birds, take me to Andalusia, and I’ll find my way from there.

But the birds are out of reach, like chocolate piled high on a shelf, or the alcoholic flasks of tears in the cellar, or my dream of the little singer where I have to climb over Joe in order to get to her. If I’ve killed him, things will be even more complicated. My clock is throbbing. Madeleine, you’ve got your work cut out.

I must try to turn back time. I grab the hour hand that’s still warm with blood, and tug it backwards in one quick stroke.

My gears whine, the pain is unbearable. Nothing happens. I hear shouting, they’re heading this way from the playground. Joe is holding his right eye. I’m almost reassured to hear the injured poodle yelping.

A teacher intervenes and I hear the children denouncing me, all eyes scouring the playground like radar. Panicked, I tumble from the roof and jump into the first tree I see. I scratch my arms on the branches and go crashing to the ground. Adrenalin gives me wings. My legs have never been in such a hurry to get to the top of the mountain.

‘Did you have a nice day at school today?’ Madeleine asks, as she tidies her shopping away into the kitchen cupboard.

‘Yes and no,’ I answer, trembling all over.

She looks at me, sees my twisted hour hand, and fixes me with a disapproving stare.

‘You saw the little singer again, didn’t you? The last time you came home with your heart in such a filthy mess, you’d heard her singing.’

Madeleine talks to me like I’m a schoolboy sloping home with his best shoes ruined after playing football.

As she tries to straighten my clock hand with a crowbar, I start telling her about the fight. But it makes my heart beat faster again.

‘You’ve been very foolish!’

‘Can I turn back time by making my clock hands go backwards?’

‘No, you’ll put pressure on your gears and it’ll be extremely painful. But it won’t make the slightest bit of difference. You can never undo your past actions, not even when you have a clockwork heart.’

I was expecting to be scolded horribly for poking Joe’s eye out. But hard as Madeleine tries to look annoyed, she’s not entirely successful. And if her voice chokes, it’s more with concern than anger. She seems to think it’s less serious to poke out a bully’s eye than to fall in love.

Strains of ‘Oh When the Saints’ suddenly come our way. It’s unusual for Arthur to be paying us a visit at this time of night.

‘Och, a carriage full of police officers is making its way up the hill, and they’re all looking like their wee minds are set, if ye ken what I mean,’ he says, out of breath.

‘I’ve got to go, they’re coming to find me because of Joe’s eye.’

A fistful of different emotions sticks in my throat: the rose-tinted dream of finding the little singer combined with my fear of listening to my heart beating against the bars of a prison cell. But a wave of melancholy drowns everything. No more Arthur, no more Anna, no more Luna and, above all, no more Madeleine.

I will come across a few sad looks in the course of my life, but the one Madeleine gives me right now will always be – along with just one other – the saddest I’ll ever witness.

‘Arthur, go and find Anna and Luna, and try to find a carriage. Jack must leave town as fast as possible. I’ll stay here to greet the police.’

Arthur plunges into the night, limping as fast as he can to reach the bottom of the mountain.

‘I’ll get your things ready. You need to be out of here in less than ten minutes.’

‘What will you tell them?’

‘That you haven’t come home. And in a few days, I’ll say that you’ve disappeared. You’ll be declared dead after a while, and Arthur will help me dig your grave at the foot of your favourite tree, next to Cunnilingus.’

‘What will you put in the coffin?’

‘There won’t be a coffin, just an epitaph carved into the tree. The police won’t run any checks. That’s the advantage of people thinking I’m a witch, they won’t go rummaging through my graves.’

Madeleine prepares me a bag containing several flasks of tears and a few items of clothing. I don’t know how to help her. I could say something meaningful, or fold my underwear, but I’m like a nail stuck in the floorboard.

She hides the second set of keys to my heart by tucking them into my frock coat, so that I can always wind myself up. Then she distributes a few oatcakes wrapped in brown paper among the bag’s contents, and hides some books in my trouser pockets.

‘I can’t carry all that around!’

I’m trying to behave like a grown-up, even if I’m very touched by all this fussing. By way of a response, she flashes me her famous twitch of a smile. No matter what the situation, from the funniest to the most tragic, she always has to make something to eat.

I sit down on my bag, to shut it properly.

‘Don’t forget, as soon as you’ve settled down somewhere, you need to make contact with a clockmaker.’

‘You mean a doctor!’

‘Absolutely not! Never go to a doctor if there’s something wrong with your heart. No doctor would understand. You’ll need to find a clockmaker to sort it out.’