Free The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu

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 enjoy the show, it’s because of a voyeuristic pleasure. To them, going to see the woman with two heads is the same as witnessing an accident. I’ve known many men applaud, but not one fall in love. It’ll be the same for you. People might be fascinated by your wounded heart, but that won’t make them love you for who you are. Do you really think a pretty young girl like the one you’ve just described to me would want to get involved with a boy who’s got a prosthesis instead of a heart? Personally, I’d have found it a complete turn-off . . . But enough of that: as long as you can frighten my customers, everyone’s happy.’
    The ghastly Brigitte Heim rejoins her coven of doom-sayers. But she has no idea what a thick shell of dreams I’ve been building ever since I was small. As I head off into the night to gobble the moon, which looks like a phosphorescent pancake, I’m dreaming of Miss Acacia. Heim can stalk me with her living-dead rictus all she likes, but she’ll never steal anything from me.
    Ten o’clock. I turn up for my first evening’s work. The train is half full and I’ve got to be on stage in half an hour. It’s time to try my hand as a