The Suicide Shop (6 page)

The next morning the cuckoo clock on the wall between the front door of the shop and the window next to the counter reads eight o’clock. Above its enamelled-iron dial the Grim Reaper appears – a skeleton in lime-tree wood, dressed in a long white robe and holding a scythe in his hand – and he sings: ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’

The shop’s radio switches on automatically for the news: ‘After the fracture of the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles, and the series of volcanic eruptions that spread their lava and ash all over the continent in the last century, life is returning to America. Iranian scientists have detected the first signs that lichen is appearing on the former site of New York since the Big One. Sport: another defeat for the regional tea—’

Lucrèce, in apron and gas mask, is sluicing away the poisons that fell onto the floor the previous day, and wonders out loud: ‘Won-won-won, won-won-won?’

Mishima turns off the news on the radio. ‘What are you saying?’

His wife unfastens some straps and removes the filtration cartridge from her mask. ‘What are we going to do with Marilyn? Either she goes on as if nothing has happened or she stops. I won’t hide the fact that I would regard that as a shame, for it brought a sudden boost to sales in the fresh produce section. Close the drawer of the cash register, Mishima.’

Her husband does so, then puts back the ropes thoughtfully. He sweeps up, using a dustpan and brush to collect the fragments of the broken jar and the sweets, which he empties onto the counter in a heap. Then he orders Alan: ‘Pick out the bits of glass from this confectionery. We can’t have the children cutting their tongues! And watch yourself too, don’t cut yourself on a fragment. I don’t know …’ he admits to his wife.

Marilyn is wearing her work dress: a lamé creation with a plunging neckline, which clings to her body. She raises her arms, which tantalisingly accentuates the flawless flow of her curves, the perfect arch of her back, her smooth, tensed belly, her outrageously rounded buttocks, her curved breasts high up because she is perched at the top of a ladder, re-hanging the last of the little paintings from the frieze of apples.

‘There, that’s done! While you’re having a think, I’ve got almost an hour before we open to go and see if Ernest has arrived at the cemetery and tell him the good news.’

‘Oh, damn!’ exclaims Mishima, who is under the ladder.

His daughter thinks she has dropped a picture on his head. She bends down to him. ‘What?’

Her father strikes the top of his bald forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘I did something stupid …’

Lucrèce, who is wearing surgical gloves and rinsing a floor-cloth in a bucket, straightens up. ‘What?’

‘Yesterday evening, in a panic, I gave Ernest a disposable Smith & Wesson.’

‘What?!’

Madame Tuvache is stunned, and Marilyn’s feet slip off the step on the ladder to glide down the uprights to the floor. Her stretchy dress, which was so sexy a moment ago, suddenly puffs out, swelling up like a ridiculous parachute.

‘But, Father, we have to do something!’

‘What?’

‘Last night with your revolver … m-my love’ – she stammers at the thought of it – ‘he may have sho– he may have sho–’

‘What?

Her stupefied father does not want to hear her spell it out, while Lucrèce takes off her surgical gloves and takes matters in hand:

‘I know what we are going to do, Mishima.’

‘What?’

‘Go quickly to the Tristan and Isolde florist, and ask if they’ve seen him go past this morning, while I go to his mother’s place in the Moses tower. Marilyn, run to the cemetery and as for you’ – she calls to Alan – ‘while you’re waiting for us to come back and open up, you’re in charge of the shop.’

Alan turns round in astonishment:

‘What?’

It is almost nine o’clock as Lucrèce and Mishima return together, but they enter via the small back door of the ancient place of worship, which has become the Suicide Shop. Their youngest child has not heard them coming in, for his ears are blocked by the headphones of a personal stereo, whose buzzing his parents can hear. He’s listening to an optimistic song and singing the words to himself as he bustles around:

‘
It doesn’t take much to be happy, really not much
to be happy
…
!
’

The boy with the curly blond hair is snapping the fingers of his left hand to the beat in front of the window where he’s pushed the lucky bags. With his right hand, he lifts up each of the acid drops, looks at it, and throws on average one out of every two into Lucrèce’s bucket, where they dissolve amid the poisoned waters.

‘
It doesn’t take much
…
!
’

‘What’s he doing?’ whispers Mishima in Lucrèce’s ear, and she replies, ‘He’s spotting which sweets are stuffed with cyanide by how transparent they are, and throwing them away.’

‘Oh, the –’

Madame Tuvache puts a hand over her husband’s mouth. In his temper, he’s lashed out and clumsily dislodged a rolled-up rope at the end of the double central display unit. It flops onto the floor with a dull thud.

Alan, still standing in front of the window, turns round. Baby-faced and dotted with reddish freckles, he removes one earpiece, listens and notices the rope that’s fallen on the floor. Leaving the window and still singing to himself, he grabs a razorblade from the display, then goes to pick up the rope and cuts the fibres at random.

‘
It doesn’t take much to be happy! Really not
much
…’

To the rhythm of the song, he makes incisions around the slip-knot, wets one index finger with saliva and slides it over the fibres to hide his sabotage, then puts the rope back among the others. His parents, hiding behind the staircase, are outraged, but they continue to spy on their child, who returns to the counter lisping and dancing a little jig.

‘
Drive all your worries from your mind! See life on
the bright side …
’

He wears out the razorblade on a breeze-block moulded by his father, then when it’s become blunt and useless he puts it back with the others.

He opens several transparent bags from the Alan Turing suicide kits, inside which he replaces the apples with new ones.

‘Where did he get those?’ whispers Mishima.

‘From the fruit basket in the dining room.’

‘I hope he’s not going to put the other ones in their place … Oh, the little devil!’

Monsieur Tuvache emerges, muttering, from beneath the stairs. The Grim Reaper shoots out of the cuckoo clock and announces nine o’clock: ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo …!’ The radio switches on automatically for the news:

‘Weather! Things are getting worse. Sulphuric acid rain is expected …’

Monsieur Tuvache switches off the radio and faces his surprised younger son, who takes the earpieces out of his ears in order to hear his parent thunder: ‘Right! I’ve had it with you!’

Up above, on the wall, the Grim Reaper continues to play out his series of nine irritating double ‘Cuckoos’ indicating the hour. Mishima throws a poisoned apple at the clock. Taking a hit, the Reaper loses his lime-wood head and the fatal fruit becomes impaled upon the blade of the scythe. ‘Cuck–!’ The apple and the unbalanced, decapitated figure block the little arched doors, preventing them from closing, while the fruit drops its juice onto the Reaper’s robe.

Alan’s eyes narrow against the blast of Mishima’s fatherly wrath. His parent’s tongue twists in his mouth like the blades of a fan, and Alan’s curls fly back from his sweet little face. ‘You will spend your two-week school holiday this winter in Monaco, training as a suicide commando!’

Lucrèce suddenly joins them, holding her head in her hands.

‘Oh no, Mishima! Not Monaco. Please not there!’

‘Yes!’

The mother of the family pleads with her husband: ‘But, darling, the people there are all nutcases, mad with hatred and brutality, whereas he’s so … very …’

‘Maybe they’ll put a hole in his head, so his vocation can sink in!’ shouts Monsieur Tuvache, who then says to his son: ‘Go and get your things ready! Do not take any CDs. This is not a place where they listen to songs – no, that’s not what kamikazes do!’

Lucrèce is devastated, but Alan looks on the bright side of this punishment: ‘Monaco? Well, it’ll be warm there. I’ll take some sun cream too, and a pair of trunks in case we go swimming …’

‘What on earth is wrong with you, Ernest? You’re all pale!’

‘Ooooh … It’s that mask! I thought I would die of fright when I saw it,’ replies Ernest to his future mother-in-law.

‘The mask Vincent designed has that effect on you?’ Lucrèce is astonished.

‘But why does he build such horrors?’ trembles the young cemetery warden, sitting down on a step to try and recover his composure.

‘It was my Alan, before he left for his training camp – poor little chap, let’s hope … – who advised him to purge himself of all his anxieties by building masks that represented the monsters from his nightmares.’

‘Well, I must say …’

Marilyn is in raptures. ‘My fiancé is so sensitive!’ She comes to sit down beside him and takes him in her arms. ‘Baby …’

‘Well, I must say, for a cemetery warden …’ comments Mishima, joining them.

‘No, but honestly … Vincent really ought to warn people!’ Marilyn’s true love justifies himself. ‘Because it’s serious …’

‘Come on,’ Lucrèce downplays it, ‘he’s finally found his appetite and now he never stops stuffing his face. That’s real progress. And besides, Ernest, you know that we Tuvaches … well, we don’t really like psychiatrists very much …’

‘Yes, but all the same … I don’t suppose you have a small glass of eau de vie by any chance?’

‘Eau de –? Oh no, we don’t keep that in stock,’ apologises Mishima. ‘On the other hand, those masks … I’m wondering … if they can produce this effect … for people who are oversensitive or have a weak heart … we’ll have to see!’ he concludes, as the skeleton door chime begins to tinkle.

A plump, curly-headed lady enters.

‘Well, Madame Phuket-Pinson!’ trills Lucrèce, heading for her. ‘Have you come so that I can pay off our little butcher’s account?’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s for me …’

‘Oh, really? What’s going on?’

‘I’ve found out that since I’ve been ill my husband has been having an affair with the waitress at Vatel’s. So I want to put an end to it all. I was already suffering with my health problems …’

‘Oh yes … heart problems, I believe …’ murmurs Monsieur Tuvache with false sympathy as he approaches, carrying a carrier bag containing Vincent’s mask. ‘Now, Madame Phuket-Pinson, close your eyes and don’t peep, while I check something out for you …’

The rotund, docile butcher’s wife, resigned as an animal at the abattoir, lowers her eyelids with their long, cow-like lashes. Mishima ties the cords of the bulky mask behind her neck and head, then hands a mirror to her. ‘Now look at yourself.’

Madame Phuket-Pinson opens her eyes and discovers her new appearance in the mirror:

‘
Aaargh!
’

Cheeks made from a chicken carcass that Vincent must have retrieved from the kitchen bin and scraped clean, skin made from a worn-out floor-cloth on the forehead and chin, a nose made from the beak of a cackling hen. On either side, the eyes are windmills in green and pink plastic, like the ones which have been sold for centuries around the lakes in parks. They turn round and make music. Two lines of teeth blink on and off – the lights from a battery-powered Christmas tree decoration – between shattered lips made up of bone fragments from a leg of lamb which had suffered an open fracture! Vincent’s nights must not be restful ones. The vision of his nightmares terrifies the plump heart patient, who catches sight of the multicoloured tangle of the mask’s ample head of hair, dotted with imitation spiders and other poisonous creatures. By means of a clever system, smoke escapes from the eyes and spirals up as the eyes move.

‘
Aaargh
…
!
’

The butcher’s wife falls to the ground, rigid. Mishima kneels beside her, then leans over: ‘Madame Phuket-Pinson? Madame Phuket-Pinson?’

He stands up and has to admit:

‘It works!’

Marilyn Tuvache poisons through her sweat, at least that’s what she says. She shakes customers’ hands. ‘Death salutes you, sir.’

One scrawny, desperate young man with a mischievous look, the only customer in the shop and standing right in front of her, is surprised – ‘Is that all? You think that’ll be enough?’ – while Marilyn slips the fingers of her right hand into a fleece glove, to make her palm sweat.

‘Oh yes, yes,’ she replies with aplomb. ‘My lethal sweat will have penetrated your pores and soon you will be …’

‘Can’t I have a little kiss from Death too?’ the other demands.

‘Fine, a little kiss, yes.’

She bends forward, and leaves the sensual imprint of her lipstick on one cheek. The customer shows his disappointment. ‘No, but, I meant there, on the mouth, with the tongue and the saliva, like you did before … It’s so I can be really sure.’

‘Oh no, that’s finished …’ The curvaceous blonde sits up on her throne, in her lamé dress. ‘Because now I am engaged to the cemetery warden,’ she confesses, blushing and fluttering the lashes of her heavily made-up eyes.

The customer, telling himself that he never has any luck, goes to pay at the checkout: ‘How much do I owe?’

‘Twelve euro-yens.’

‘Twelve?! Blimey, some people really earn a good living … They shake your hand and they’ve earned twelve.’

‘Yes, but afterwards you’re dead,’ justifies Monsieur Tuvache.

‘Well, I hope so! At that price …’

And the customer, whom everything disappoints, leaves, pushing through the little metal tubes of the skeleton that tinkles on the door. Back in the shop, Monsieur Tuvache shakes his head, uncomfortable. Five o’clock on the dot! In the cuckoo clock, the wrecked headless lime-wood figure of the Grim Reaper, which is still stuck between the doors, splutters as he shakes the blade of his scythe, embedded in a mouldy apple. ‘Cuck—!’

Mishima lifts his head and comments: ‘That clock’s ridiculous now … And, in any case, nothing here works properly any more.’

The radio switches on: ‘Catastrophe! The regional government promises terrorist attacks by our suicide comma—’ He switches it off. ‘That radio’s starting to get on my nerves too.’

‘But, darling, you’re the one who wanted us to programme it so that it would come on automatically at news time and go off automatically as soon as the songs and variety shows came on. You said that for the custom—’

Lucrèce, sitting anguished at the cash register, chews her lip and wrings her hands in anxiety, because she really wanted to hear the rest of the news to find out what was happening.

Her husband, handsome as a Roman emperor even though he is semi-bald, looks closely at Marilyn at the back of the shop. Wearing her polar fleece glove, she is carelessly flicking through the pages of a women’s magazine in the fresh produce section. ‘What we’re doing isn’t honest. My ashamed ancestors must be turning in their graves. And to think that in addition we’re now selling comical carnival masks … This shop used to have quality; now it’s looking more and more like a stall selling jokes and novelties.’

‘But it’s so that people can die of fright …’

‘Yes, yes, Lucrèce! And who exactly is going to die? A heart patient on the way out of hospital? They may impress a susceptible cemetery warden, but apart from that … You know as well as I do, people buy them from us to amuse everyone at birthday parties.’

‘Perhaps they die laughing when they blow out the candles …’

‘Well, of course, you always have to be right, don’t you? And also, if you think I haven’t seen you, as soon as my back is turned, sorting through the sweets in the light from the window … I’m certain that there isn’t a single poisoned one left in that jar! When I go down to the cellar, I can hear you offering handfuls of them to the children, and wiping their eyes with a handkerchief. I hear you telling them: “It’ll be all right, it’ll be all right. Now be good and go home to your parents. They must be worrying about you.” No, no, everything’s falling apart and even you are standing in my way, my poor Lucrèce. And I know when everything started to go wrong! Why, oh why, did we want to test a condom with a hole in it? What’s that, sellotaped to the cash register in front of you?’

‘A postcard from Alan, which came this morning …’ replies Madame Tuvache nervously.

‘Let me see. What picture has he chosen? A hologram of a bomb, good … Oh, but, of course, he had to draw a smile on it!’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Hadn’t you noticed it, Lucrèce? Before, you would have noticed it …’ continues Mishima, postcard in hand, going down into the cellar towards a sack of cement used for making the drowning or defenestration breeze-blocks. ‘Oh, that child; I hope they can sort him out for us … or that he’ll be a martyr.’

Lucrèce, eaten up inside, chews on her fingernails as she gazes far into the distance.