The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Page 0,22
how furious you’d be . . . Méliès smiles his big mustachioed grin and then gently starts to manipulate my gears.
‘Does it hurt anywhere?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Your gears are rather hot, but not unusually so. Otherwise everything’s in perfect working order. Come on, let’s go. Affairs of the heart are all very well, but we need a good bath and somewhere to sleep!’
After exploring the Extraordinarium, we settle into an abandoned stall for the night. Despite our dilapidated surroundings and our growling stomachs, we sleep like babies.
At dawn, my mind is made up: I’ve got to find a job so that I can stay here.
But all the jobs have been taken at the Extraordinarium. All the jobs except one that is, in the Ghost Train, where they need someone to scare the passengers. Sheer persistence gets me an interview with the manager for the following evening.
Seeing as he’s got nothing better to do, Méliès performs a few old tricks at the entrance with his set of hoax cards. He’s a hit, especially with the ladies. His belles, as he likes to call them, form a huddle around his table and marvel at his every sleight of hand. He tells them that he plans to create a story in motion, a sort of photographic book that will spring to life. He knows how to capture the imagination of his belles.
This morning, I saw him collecting cardboard boxes and cutting rockets out of them. I think he still hopes to win back his fiancée. He’s even started talking about the voyage to the moon again. His dream machine is gently revving into action.
It’s six o’clock when I arrive at the great stone entrance to the Ghost Train. I’m greeted by the manager, a shrivelled old lady who answers to the name of Brigitte Heim.
Her face is so tight that you’d think she was gripping a knife between her teeth. She’s wearing big sad shoes – nun’s sandals – that are ideal for trampling on dreams.
‘So, you want to work on the Ghost Train do you, dwarf?’
Her voice reminds me of an ostrich, an ostrich in an extremely bad mood. She has the knack of inducing a sickening sense of panic the moment you meet her.
Jack the Ripper’s last words echo in my head: ‘You’ll soon learn how to survive by frightening others!’
I unbutton my shirt and turn the key in my lock to make the cuckoo sing. Brigitte Heim watches me with the same disdain as the clockmaker in Paris.
‘You’re not going to earn us a fortune with that! But I haven’t got anybody else, so I’ll take you.’
Desperate for the work, I swallow my pride.
My new boss embarks on a tour of her premises.
‘I have an agreement with the cemetery: I collect the skulls and bones of the dead whose families can no longer pay for their burial plot,’ she says, proudly showing me around. ‘They make rather good decorations for a ghost train, don’t you think? And anyway, if I didn’t collect them, they’d be tossed on to the rubbish heap!’ she declares, in a voice that’s creaky and hysterical.
Skulls and spiders’ webs have been methodically arranged to filter the light from the candelabras. There’s not a speck of dust anywhere else, and nothing out of place. I wonder what extra-terrestrial emptiness makes this woman spend her life cleaning catacombs.
‘Do you have children?’ I ask, turning towards her.
‘What kind of a question is that? No, I have a dog, and I’m very happy with my dog.’
If I end up growing old one day and I’m lucky enough to have children, and why not grandchildren too, I’d like to build houses full of little people chasing each other, laughing and shouting. But if I don’t have offspring, then houses full of nothing won’t be for me.
‘Touching the décor is strictly forbidden,’ she tells me, showing me around. ‘If you walk on a skull and break it, you have to pay!’
Pay, her favourite word.
She wants to know my reason for coming to Granada. I rattle off my story. Or rather I try to, but she keeps cutting me off.
‘I don’t believe in this clockwork heart business, or in your love story full stop. I wonder who made you fall for such nonsense? I suppose you think you’ll work wonders with this trinket? Well, mark my words, you may be short but you’ll fall from a great height! People don’t stray far; they don’t like anything that’s different. And even if they