‘Look, we will get rid of it, but I need more time. It was Dr Madeleine’s masterpiece, after all. Let’s just wait until I’m feeling a bit better, all right?’
‘You’re feeling better already . . . How about I cut your hair and shave off that prehistoric beard of yours?’
‘No, not yet. By the way, you don’t happen to have one of Melies’ old suits still hanging around?’
Every now and then, I position myself in a key spot, not far from the Ghost Train. That way, we can run into each other, as if by chance. The rapport we strike up resembles what we used to have so closely that I don’t know if I’m laughing or crying. Sometimes, during our silences, I tell myself that she knows but isn’t saying anything. Except that’s not her style.
I’m careful not to harass Miss Acacia. I’ve learned my lesson from my first accident in love. Instinctively, I still want to push things, but the pain slows me down; or at any rate stops me being in such a rush.
I’m starting to manipulate the truth again. But I’m enjoying nibbling the crumbs of her presence from the safety of my new identity, and the thought of ending all this makes my stomach lurch.
This game has been going on for more than two months and Joe doesn’t seem to have noticed anything. Melies’ shoes are starting to hurt my feet now. As for his suit, I look like I’m going fishing disguised as a magician. Jehanne, my nurse, thinks this metamorphosis is a result of my long coma. My bones are trying to make up for lost time after being compacted like springs for three years. As a result, I’ve got curvature of the spine which affects my whole body. Even my face is changing. My jaw is more thickset, and my cheekbones more prominent.
‘Here comes Mr Neander-Cute dressed up in his brand new suit,’ Miss Acacia calls out when she sees me coming. ‘All you need is a trip to the hairdresser’s and we’ll have you back to being a fully civilised man,’ she tells me today.
‘If you call me Mr Neander-Cute, I’ll never shave my beard off again.’
It came out just like that,
‘You could shave it off, and I’d still call you Mr Neander-Cute, if you’d like . . .’
So we’re back to these deliciously confused emotions. I can’t savour them fully but it’s already a lot better than being apart from her.
‘You remind me of an old lover I once had.’
‘More of the “old” or the “lover”?’
‘Both.’
‘Did he have a beard?’
‘No, but he was a mysterious figure like you. He believed in his lies, or rather his dreams. I thought it was just to impress me, but he really did believe in them.’
‘Perhaps he believed in them and wanted to impress you at the same time.’
‘Perhaps . . . I don’t know. He died a few years back.’
‘Died?’
‘Yes, I laid flowers on his grave again this morning.’
‘And what if he only died to impress you, to get you to believe in him?’
‘Oh, he’d have been perfectly capable of something like that, but he wouldn’t have waited three years to come back.’
‘What did he die of?’
‘That’s a mystery. Some people saw him struggling with a horse, others say that he died in a fire which he accidentally started. As for me, I’m afraid he died in a fit of anger after our final argument. It was a terrible row. All I know for sure is that he’s dead, because they buried him. And anyway if he was alive, he’d be
A ghost hiding behind his beard, that’s what I’ve become.
‘Did he love you too much?’
‘You can never love someone too much.’
‘Did he love you badly?’
‘I don’t know . . . But let me tell you this: encouraging me to talk about my first love, who died three years ago, isn’t the best way of flirting with me.’
‘What is the best way of flirting with you, then?’
‘Not to flirt with me.’
‘I knew it. That’s exactly why I haven’t been flirting with you!’
She smiled.
I nearly, so nearly, told her everything. With my old heart, it would have popped out all by itself . . . but now, everything’s different.
I went back to the workshop just as a vampire reclaims his coffin – ashamed of having bitten a magnificent neck.
