The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Page 0,40

hands.’

No sign of a dimple on her cheeks.

‘I’m doing everything back to front today because I don’t know how to stop losing you and it’s making me sick. I love yo—’

‘The worst is you actually believe your lies!’ she cuts me off. ‘It’s pathetic. There’s no way you’d be behaving like this if there was a grain of truth in what you’re saying . . . No way. Get out, get out, please!’

The short-circuiting intensifies, spreading to my clock which glows red. Mournful screeching as the gears crash against each other. My brain is on fire, and my heart is rising up into my head. Surely the person with the controls can see this, by looking into my eyes.

‘So I’m a fraud, am I? A con artist? Well, let’s see about that, shall we, why waste any time?’

I wrench my clock hands as hard as I can. It’s horrifically painful. I grab hold of the dial with both hands and, like a person deranged, try ripping out the clock. I want her to see me banishing this millstone and throwing it in the bin, so she understands. The pain is intolerable. First jolt. Nothing happens. Second, still nothing. The third, more violent, feels like knife blows raining down on me. Far away, I can hear her voice calling out: ‘stop it . . . stop it!’ But it’s too late, a bulldozer is smashing everything between my lungs.

Some people claim to see intense light as death approaches. I only saw shadows. Giant shadows as far as the horizon. And a storm of black snowflakes; black snow progressively covering my hands, then my outstretched arms. The dressing table is so drenched in blood that red roses appear to be growing out of it. Then the roses vanish, and my body with them. I’m relaxed and anxious at the same time, as if getting ready for a long-haul flight.

A last spray of sparks flashes up on the screen of my eyelids: Miss Acacia dancing, poised on those stilettos spindly as clock hands, Dr Madeleine leaning over me, winding up my clockwork heart, Arthur roaring his swing to the beat of ‘Oh When the Saints,’ Miss Acacia dancing on clock hands, Miss Acacia dancing on clock hands, Miss Acacia dancing on clock hands . . .

The terrified screams of Miss Acacia finally rouse me from my trance. I raise my head and look up at her. I’ve got two broken clock hands in my palms. The sadness and anger in her gaze have given way to fear. Her cheeks are hollow; her eyebrows punctuate her forehead like two circumflex accents. Yesterday her eyes were filled with love; today they’re leaky cauldrons. I feel as though I’m being stared at by a pretty corpse. A sense of shame overwhelms me, as the rage I feel towards myself outstrips even the fury Joe provokes in me.

Miss Acacia walks out of her dressing room. The door slams like a gunshot. A bird shakes itself on my hat; Méliès must have forgotten to remove it. I’m feeling cold, so cold. This has to be the coldest night on earth. I’d be more relaxed if somebody was knitting my heart with icy pokers.

She walks past me without looking back, and disappears into the dark like a sad comet. I hear the sound of her bumping into a lamppost, followed by swearing in Spanish. My brain orders up a smile from my memories, but the message gets lost along the way.

A few metres above the stage, lightning rips across the sky. Umbrellas open like funeral flowers; I’m rather tired of dying all the time.

I hold my clock in place with the flat of my hand. Blood on the gears. My head is spinning, I don’t know how to make my legs work any more. When I try walking, I’m as knock-kneed as a first-time skier.

My cuckoo coughs with each of my spasms, leaving wood chippings all around. Heavy sleep overcomes me. I melt into the mist with Jack the Ripper on my mind. Will I end up like him, only successful in relationships with dead women?

Everything I did, I did for Miss Acacia. But my dreams – and my reality – haven’t worked out. I wanted it to work, wanted it so badly, probably too much. I thought I could do anything for her, crumbling the moon to make her eyelids sparkle; never sleeping before the sound of birds yawning at dawn; going to the ends of the earth