‘Melies tried to graft on a new heart, to cheer you up.’
‘Cheer me up? I was at death’s door!’
‘Yes, we all think we’re going to die when we’re separated from someone we love. But I’m talking about your heart in the mechanical sense of the word. Listen carefully, because I know you’ll find what I’m about to say hard to believe . . .’
She sits down by my side and takes hold of my right hand. I can feel her trembling.
‘You could have lived without either clock, old or new. They don’t interact directly with your physical heart. They aren’t real prosthetics, they’re just placebos which, medically speaking, don’t do anything.’
‘But that’s impossible. Why would Madeleine have made all that up?’
‘For psychological reasons, I expect. To protect you from her own demons, as many parents do, one way or another.’
‘Look, you don’t understand this kind of medicine, it’s as simple as that. At least now I realise why she always insisted I got my heart looked after by clockmakers and not doctors.’
‘I know it’s a shock to wake up to this. But if you plan to live a real life at all, then you’ve got to stop getting wound up – if you’ll forgive the pun – by all this nonsense.’
‘I don’t believe you for a single second.’
‘And that’s a perfectly normal reaction. You’ve believed in this cuckoo-clock heart story all your life.’
‘How do you know about my life?’
‘I’ve read about it . . . Melies wrote your story down in this book.’
‘Don’t read the end right away,’ she admonishes me.
‘Why not?’
‘First, you need to get used to the idea that your life isn’t linked to your clock. That’s the only way for you to change the ending of this book.’
‘I could never believe that, let alone accept it.’
‘You lost Miss Acacia because of your iron belief in your wooden heart.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
‘You might have realised what was going on, if the story of your heart wasn’t anchored so deeply inside you . . . But you must believe me now. Right, now you can go ahead and read the third section of the book, if you like, even though it’ll be painful for you. One day, you’ll be able to put all this behind you.’
‘Why did Melies never tell me?’
‘Melies said you weren’t ready to hear it yet, psychologically speaking. He deemed it too dangerous to reveal the truth to you on the evening of the “accident”, given your state of shock by the time you’d made it back to the workshop. He blamed himself dreadfully for not having told you before . . . I think he got seduced by the idea of your cuckoo-clock heart. It doesn’t take much for him to believe in the impossible. It cheered him up to watch you becoming a grown man with such complete belief . . . until that tragic night.’
‘I don’t want those memories dredged up for the time being.’
‘I understand, but I do need to talk to you about what happened immediately afterwards . . . Would you like something to drink?’
‘Yes, please; but not alcohol, my head still hurts.’
While the nurse goes in search of something to help me recover from my emotional overload, I look at my battered old heart on the bedside table, then the new clock under my crumpled pyjamas. A metal dial, with clock hands protected by a pane of glass. A sort of bicycle bell sits on top of the number twelve. The clock feels scratchy, as if somebody else’s heart has been grafted on to me. I wonder what that strange woman in white is going to try and make me believe next.
‘While Melies headed off into town that day, to find a clock that would temporarily calm you,’ she says, ‘you tried to wind up your broken clock. Do you remember that?’
‘Yes, vaguely.’
‘From what Melies described to me, you were virtually unconscious and bleeding heavily.’
‘Yes, my head was spinning, I could feel myself being dragged down . . .’
‘You suffered internal bleeding. When Melies realised this, he suddenly thought of his old friend, Jehanne d’Ancy, and came in great haste to find me. He might have forgotten my kisses all too quickly, but he always remembered my nursing talents. I was able to stem your haemorrhaging just in time, but you didn’t regain consciousness. He still wanted to carry out the operation he’d promised you. He said you’d wake up in a better psychological state if you had a new clock. Call it an act of superstition on his part. He was terrified of you dying.’
I listen to her tell my story; she could be giving me news about somebody I once dimly knew. It’s difficult to connect these wild imaginings with my own reality.
‘I was terribly in love with Melies, even if it was unrequited. That was why I chose to take care of you at first, to stay in touch with him. Then I grew attached to your character as I read
I’m completely taken aback. My blood is pumping strange lighthouse signals into the right side of my brain.
