Everything inside his clockwork body began pumping away madly. He didn’t even care if his heart exploded and burst into a million little screws and bolts. That was what it felt like it was going to do any moment, and if it did, it would be worth it. She put her mouth on his dick and he turned his head up toward the sky and laughed and laughed. He felt alive.
He knew that he had to get out of that house in the woods — after he had taken her from behind and she had cried out so loudly that it had startled birds in the neighbouring village.
As soon as the soldier was spent, the girl quickly put her clothes back on. The girl picked up the cat and held it tightly, as if it was all that was valuable in the world and she was suddenly terrified of losing it. She barely even said goodbye as she hurried away. The soldier found himself aching when he saw her go. He loved the sensation of it. For the first time since the Toymaker had brought him back to life, he felt fulfilled by an emotion. He wanted to ache like that again and again. He was impressed that the girl had made love to him and then got up and just left. While he watched her disappear into the woods, he decided that he was going to walk away from the Toymaker. It was what adults did.
He felt in his pocket to make sure the matchbox was still there. He couldn’t leave the cricket behind as it was a present. The Toymaker had gone through so much trouble to fix up all his parts and build him a new metallic heart. The least he could do would be to accept the gift that he had given him. He was undoubtedly an asshole, but when he felt the matchbox in his pocket, he thought for a brief second that he might have a conscience after all.
Although he was taking the cricket with him, he didn’t dare take it out of its matchbox and let it play its bittersweet violin as he walked down the road. The wee violin tune might fill his head with all sorts of emotions that he didn’t want to have. Those were the sorts of emotions that ended up keeping you in one place. They would make you feel guilt and a sense of responsibility. Those emotions were like cages.
The soldier made it out of France. A pretty peasant woman showed him a way out after he made love to her in a haystack. He found his way to the secret rendezvous spot set up by the Canadians to escort Resistance fighters and prisoners back to England. He was whisked across the water in the dead of night. Upon his return, nobody could believe that he was still alive. A doctor looked at the stitches on his torso and whistled at the handiwork. He put a stethoscope against the soldier’s chest and said he’d never heard such a regular heartbeat in all his life. He gave the soldier a clean bill of health.
As a reward for his daring spy ventures, he was given a desk job in England for the remainder of the war. He went out dancing every night with the other soldiers, trying to meet local girls. He was happy there. He found that the girls in London sounded like they had lollipops in their mouths when they spoke. They had adorable little beer bellies from being out drinking all night. The girls in England found everything funny. The commanding officer had to tell the soldiers not to tell the English girls so many jokes, because one of them laughed so hard that she had an asthma attack and died.
When he would get back to base every night, he always had the craziest stories about making love to women. He really outdid all the other soldiers.
He made love to a girl under the bandstand. When the drums were banging, it made all his nerves tremble. He made love to a girl a minute after New Year’s and there was still confetti in her hair. He made love to a girl in a bathroom while she held both their beer mugs, trying not to let them spill.
He made love to a girl who was six months pregnant and said that the father of the child was missing in action. He put his head against her belly and felt the baby kick. He liked anything new. He liked anything unusual. He went to pick up a girl who wasn’t there and he ended up having her mother on the kitchen table. When they were done, she lectured him about keeping her daughter out too late.
Some of the girls would make love to him for a pair of nylon stockings. Some of them, he didn’t even know why on earth they were making love to him. They clearly didn’t like it. There was something about him that made him irresistible. Maybe it was because he didn’t have a soul. Or perhaps it was because he didn’t have a conscience. Women go crazy for a man with no conscience.
He never came close to falling in love with anybody. Instead, he went around having trysts, looking for encounters that would make all the cogs and wheels in his heart begin to spin wildly. He could feel all sorts of little bolts sliding into different compartments and prongs going into different levers. And tiny little pistons started going up and down, and oil would be released over all of his hinges and he felt he moved so smooth and well.
One night he was in an alleyway with a short girl with blond corkscrew curls falling down her round face. She was getting on his nerves because she wouldn’t put out. He naturally sometimes liked the hard-to-get types, but he had just had enough of them for one week. And she bore an uncanny resemblance to the dolls in the Toymaker’s shop, which he found disconcerting.
“Where do you see us ten years from now?” she asked.
“How in the world would I know something like that? What do you take me for? A fortune teller? Am I carrying around a crystal ball?”
What sort of lie did this silly girl want to hear? the soldier wondered. What idiotic fable would she take her clothes off for? She wanted to hear about having a family, of course. If there was anything more ridiculous to the soldier than romantic love, it was undoubtedly this idea that you were supposed to have a family. He felt like lying to her if only to mock her values.
“Well, come to think of it, I see myself living in a really big house.”
When he said this, she undid her top button and jutted her chest out toward him. The girl’s bust was really large and the dress had to, undoubtedly, be pulled together to be buttoned up. The idea of all those buttons coming undone encouraged the soldier to continue his fantastical lie.
“I see myself reading a newspaper in the mornings. And I want to be a father, because I want to know what that feels like. Because I had such a special relationship with my own dad, you know?”
The girl released another button from its tiny hole.
“That’s the most important thing to me: having a close-knit family. I only ever wanted to have one girlfriend, because I know that the task of keeping one girl happy is a big enough job for a fellow like me.”
Every time a lie caused a button to jump free, his dick grew more erect. He didn’t think that he had ever had such a hard-on as the one he had for this curly-haired girl. He pushed her up against the wall and she let him have his way with her as she closed her eyes and fantasized about laughing children climbing into their bed in the mornings.
Later that night in his room, the soldier felt empty. Each affair left him with more assured proof that he didn’t have anything like a soul inside of him, and as though life were insignificant and meaningless. But that night, pretending for a moment that he did care about the idea of a full life had left him with such a sense of the grand futility of everything that he felt as though he were about to be swallowed up by nothingness. That night he decided that he had to go back to France and work as a spy again. He still couldn’t remember his former life, but he wondered if this sort of feeling wasn’t what had sent him over to France as a spy the first time.
A few days later, as he was packing a small bag with only necessary items, he noticed the matchbox with the cricket in it. He opened it and the cricket started playing the most depressing and creepy Bartók tune. It gave him an unholy feeling and made the hair stand up on his neck. He closed the box quickly.