The Suicide Shop (8 page)

‘Learn to look at yourself using the reflection of this mask, Mademoiselle. Look at yourself again and then take it back to your house. You can put it in your bathroom or on your bedside table.’

‘Oh, goodness me, no thank you! I’ve already seen enough horrors …’

‘Yes,’ insists Alan, facing the cash register. ‘Learn to love yourself. Go on, one more time to please me.’

He holds up the mirror mask in front of the young woman, who quickly turns her head away.

‘I can’t.’

‘But why?’

‘I’m monstrous.’

‘How are you monstrous? What on earth are you saying? You’re like everyone else: the same number of ears, eyes, a nose … What’s the difference?’

‘You must be able to see it, little one. My conk is long and misshapen. My peepers are too close together, and I have enormous cheeks, covered in spots.’

‘Oh come on, what rubbish! Let’s see …’

Alan opens the drawer beneath the cash register and unrolls a metre-long dressmaker’s tape measure. He places the metal tip of one end between the customer’s eyes and stretches it to the tip of the nose. ‘Right, seven centimetres. How many should it be? Five? And what about the space between your eyes? Let’s measure that. How much further apart should they be? One centimetre, no more. The cheeks … how much too big are they? Don’t move, while I place this under your earlobe. Personally, I’d say four centimetres too big.’

‘Each.’

‘Yes, each, if you like. But, anyway, it all adds up to a few millimetres compared to the size of the universe. It’s not enough to mess everything up! What I know is, when I saw you come in, I didn’t see an extra terrestrial with eight tentacles covered in suckers and round eyes at the end of twelve-metre antennae! Ah, you’re smiling … Smiling suits you. See how much it suits you,’ he says, lifting up the white plastic mask in front of the customer, who immediately pulls a face.

‘My teeth are hideous.’

‘No, they’re not hideous. Crooked like that, they give you the look of a little girl who’s not ready for braces. It’s touching. Smile.’

‘You’re kind.’

‘It’s true that he’s being kind …’ a low voice comments in a whisper, quite a long way from the young woman’s back, ‘because her teeth are really terrible.’

‘Shh.’

Mishima and Lucrèce, standing side by side by the razorblade rack with arms folded, silently observe their son, who is attempting to flog a mask to this customer, of whom they can see nothing but her waist less back, and her fat bottom, and her legs like fence-posts. They have a glimpse of the ugly features of her inelegant face reflected in the mirror of the white mask as Alan holds it out in front of her.

‘Smile. What’s happening to you is normal. I’ve often heard people here say that they began by not being able to look at themselves in shop windows any more, then that they tear up the photos of themselves. Smile, people are looking at you!’

‘I’m covered in spots.’

‘Anxiety spots … When you are more relaxed, they will go away.’

‘My colleagues think I’m stupid.’

‘That’s because you lack confidence in yourself. And that makes you awkward, makes you say the wrong things at the wrong time. But if you gradually reconcile yourself with the reflection in this mask and learn to love it … Look at her, this person in front of you. Look at her. Don’t be ashamed of her. If you met her in the street, would you want to kill her? What has she done to be hated so much? What is she guilty of? Why isn’t she loved? If you start to feel friendly towards this woman yourself, maybe others will follow suit!’

‘Good grief, all that for a hundred euro-yen mask! I must admit he has a good sales pitch though, and he really puts his back into selling,’ says Mishima appreciatively.

The disconcerted young woman looks to right and left.

‘Have I made a mistake? I am in the Suicide Shop, aren’t I?’

‘Oh, forget it, forget that word; it doesn’t lead anywhere.’

‘Why is he saying that?’ demands Alan’s father, frowning.

‘Life is the way it is. It’s worth what it’s worth! It does its best, within its limitations. We mustn’t ask too much of life, either. Nor should we want to suppress it! It’s best to look on the bright side. So leave the rope and the disposable revolver here. The way you are at the moment, stressed out and in a panic, you’ll fire into the slip-knot. Anything could happen. You’ll fall off the stool and break your knee. You don’t have pain in your knee, do you?’

‘I have pain everywhere.’

‘Yes, but in your knee?’

‘No, fortu—’

‘Well, so much the better! Carry on like that. And may your knee make efforts to carry you back to your tower, with this woman’s face on the mask. If you don’t do it for me, do it for her. What’s her name?’

The customer opens her eyes and looks at the mirror. ‘Noémie Ben Sala-Darjeeling.’

‘That’s a pretty first name, Noémie … Lovely Noémie. You’ll see; she’s nice. Take her mask home with you. Smile at her, she’ll smile at you. Take care of her, she needs affection. Wash her, dress her in nice clothes, put a little scent on her so that she feels more at home in her skin. Try to accept her. She will become your friend, your confidante, and you will become inseparable. How you will laugh together! And all that for a hundred euro-yens. It’s really not expensive. Go on, I’ll wrap her up. I’ll entrust her to you. Take the greatest care of her. She deserves it.’

At the sound of the till opening, Mishima laments: ‘He could at least have billed her for the rope and the revolver as well …’

‘Come on, choose a sweet from the jar,’ smiles Alan.

‘Oh, aren’t they …?’ asks the customer.

‘Oh no! Off you go. Goodbye, lady who doesn’t even have pain in her knee!’

When Lucrèce looks straight ahead, her fingers linked on the top of her head, her bent arms make the shape of an eye, with her head as the pupil. On either side of her ears, inside the space left by her arms, the wall behind her gleams like the white of the eye. Madame Tuvache becomes one large fixed eye atop a woman’s torso.

‘See you again, sir.’

Alan, who is standing next to her, is surprised. ‘Gosh, Mother, are you saying “see you again” to the customers now?’

‘He didn’t buy anything. I said “see you again” because he’ll be back. When someone comes in here to look, they always come back sooner or later to buy. They have to get to grips with the idea. Those who are tempted by hanging begin by going out wearing scarves, which they tie more and more tightly. Those kind of people put a hand tightly round their throat to feel the vertebrae, the cartilage, the tendons, the muscles, the throbbing veins. They get accustomed to the feel of it. He’ll be back …’

Lucrèce, hands still interlinked on her hair, turns her head and inclines it to the right. And it looks as if the entire large eye is commanding the child. ‘Pull down the shutters and turn off the lights. We’re going upstairs, Alan.’

The door is closed and Mishima is standing at the window of the parental bedroom. Holding the curtain back with one hand, he is watching the sun drowning in its own blood and his life’s philosophy falling away in large sections on the balconies of the towers. The future, in freefall, is mortally wounded and, down below, men and their dreams lie shattered.

Monsieur Tuvache, a shopkeeper who has become yellow and melancholic, with the colours of the sunset reflected in his eyes, feels desolate, decrepit, dusty, dirty, abject, slimy, cracked.

He is even growing disenchanted with Lucrèce. Everything is falling apart at the seams, even love and beauty, ready for oblivion to cast them into eternity. He would like to get drunk, but alcohol is expensive, and as for the carnal act, that’s yet another thing that is too tiring to contemplate. People say it is entertaining but it’s merely a strange sort of gymnastics. And his thoughts go round in his mind to the sound of the hullabaloo.

There are no longer any seasons, no more rainbows, and the snow has given up. Behind the towers of the City of Forgotten Religions – which is a state of mind – are the first large sand dunes, grains from which sometimes blow onto Boulevard Bérégovoy and even under the door of the Suicide Shop. On the ground, whirling, fantastical searchlights sweep through the pollution and the overcast sky with long cones of green light. Birds that venture here on a sudden whim are asphyxiated or die of heart attacks above the towers. In the morning, women collect their feathers and use them to make themselves exotic hats before they too cast themselves into the void.

It is the time of day when shouts come from the immense stadium, suddenly illuminated, and from the population that loves the deadening whip. It is the time of day when, elsewhere, swarms of bad dreams make the first people to fall asleep twist and turn on their pillows. Alas, everything is ruined – action, desire, dreams – and as Mishima holds back the curtain, feeling the air blow in under the window, all the hairs on his arm stand on end with fear. The bedroom door opens and Lucrèce asks: ‘Are you coming down to dinner, Mishima?’

‘No, I’m not hungry.’

Being alive takes so long. Giving up everything takes so long.

‘I’m going to bed.’

The thing is, tomorrow he’ll have to live again.

The next morning, Monsieur Tuvache no longer has the strength to get up. His wife tells him not to worry. ‘Stay in bed. With the children’s help, we’ll manage very well. The doctor I’ve called says that you’re having a real nervous breakdown and that you have to rest. I’ve made an arrangement with Alan’s school. He’ll miss a few days but it doesn’t matter. You know how full of ideas that little chap is.’

‘What ideas?’

Mishima attempts to get up: ‘I have to mould breeze-blocks, weave ropes, sharpen blades …’

But his head is spinning and his wife orders: ‘Get back into bed! And don’t think about it any more. We’ll work out how to run the shop without you.’

And off she goes, leaving the door open so that her husband can call. From downstairs in the shop, Monsieur Tuvache hears imagination preparing for an orgy of activity in the bright light of day. Lucrèce and Marilyn come up the stairs.

‘There, my dear, take the basket and go and buy three legs of lamb, some oranges and bananas … and some sugar too! I’m going to prepare it in the old way, and I’ll follow Alan’s advice as well. It doesn’t matter if the lambs didn’t commit suicide. It doesn’t change the taste. Ernest, would you help me to get rid of all this? So, Vincent, will the first ones be ready soon?’

Mishima detects an odd smell in the air. ‘What are you making?’

His wife arrives with a plate, enters the bedroom and answers: ‘Crêpes.’

‘You mean … mourning crêpe?’

‘Of course not; don’t be silly! The sort of crêpes you eat, of course. Look, Vincent pours batter into the frying pan with the ladle. He designs them in the shape of a skull and leaves holes for the eyeballs, the nasal cavities and the spaces between the teeth. And then, see? He pours in the batter crosswise, in the form of two crossed bones, like on pirate flags.’

‘Do you serve them dusted with cyanide?’

‘Oh, very funny! I think you need to rest now,’ says Lucrèce, leaving the room.

They all bustle about, passing each other in the corridor, like butterflies scattering madness at a whirling ball. At lunchtime, orders are shouted out: ‘Two portions of lamb – Lucrèce! Three crêpes – Vincent! Marilyn, would you please go and shake the hand of the gentleman downstairs? Crêpes: two with chocolate and one with sugar.’

‘Lucrèce!’

‘What now?’

Madame Tuvache enters the bedroom again, wiping her hands on an apron. Her husband, who is horribly tense, asks her: ‘What is this place turning into? A restaurant?’

‘No, you silly thing, because we’re going to have music too!’

‘Music?! What kind of music?’

‘Alan has some friends who play ancient instruments. I think they’re called … guitars. And besides, that boy’s remarkable, you know. He cheers up the victims.’

‘What victims?’

‘The customers.’

‘You call our customers victims? But, Lucrèce …’

‘Oh, everything’s fine. I don’t have time to argue.’

She goes out again leaving him to a melancholy waltz and vertigo; Mishima seems to be looking though a haze of vapour. Sitting in his bed, wearing a kimono jacket with a red X under the solar plexus, he looks like some oriental thinker … Chaos churns in his mind and heavy mists swim before his eyes.

Alan passes the room and stops. ‘How’s it going, Dad?’

What large eyes the child has, this friendly healer of human anxieties. His adored schemes in which unknown treasures sparkle. And his fireworks, his outbursts of joy, which bring laughter to the dumb, shadowy skies of the City of Forgotten Religions.

Something escapes from Mishima’s throat like a song that has lost its way. The child goes away.

Monsieur Tuvache would like to get up but he gets tangled in the sheets like a fish struggling in the mesh of the net. He can’t manage it, and drops his arms onto the bedcovers.

He can feel the metamorphosis, attributes it entirely to Alan. He knows that now everything at the Suicide Shop has been altered by the skilled little alchemist.

‘The door!’

Mishima has ordered that the bedroom door be kept shut. In bed, he switches on his TV (3D – with integral sensations) in time for the evening news. He presses one of the many buttons on a remote control.

A female presenter materialises in the room. At first as translucent as a veil, she becomes progressively clearer.

‘Good evening. Here is the news.’

She announces nothing but ultra-pessimistic shit. At least there’s one person who doesn’t disappoint Mishima.

She looks real; seated there on a chair with her arms folded, you would think she was actually in the room. By leaning to right or left, you can see her in profile. Mishima can smell her perfume, which he finds too heady. He diminishes its intensity with the use of his remote control.

The presenter crosses her long, attractive legs. Monsieur Tuvache is not so keen on the colour of her skirt. He swaps its colours round by pressing on the zapper. He clicks a cursor to bring the chair closer to him. The presenter is now by the pillows, as though she is seated at the bedside of a sick man. If Monsieur Tuvache stretches out his hand he can touch her, feel the fabric of her skirt, which he can push up above her delicate-skinned knees. While she is talking, he could also unbutton her blouse if he wanted, but he’s not in the mood for that. He listens to her.

Relaxed, leaning forward and with one elbow on her thigh, she whispers the news to him in the manner of an intimate conversation. Gone is the declamatory, solemn tone of the television of yesteryear. The presenter’s low, slightly tired Italian voice is beautiful:

‘This morning, in the Siberian province, the dictator of the universe, Madame Indira Tu-Ka-Ta, opened a vast complex of eight hundred thousand chimneys six hundred metres tall, which will – we hope – repair the ozone layer round our planet. But I don’t believe it,’ the presenter says.

Mishima shares her opinion.

‘All the experts think that this decision ought to have been taken as early as the twenty-first century,’ she goes on, ‘and that it’s now much too late. Madame President is, however, convinced …’

‘Of course,’ says Mishima.

‘… as she declared in her inaugural speech. And now, watch out, it will feel as if we are in the middle of this vast territory dotted with ozone chimneys. It is very cold there. Cover yourselves up.’

Mishima’s bed is suddenly right in the middle of Siberia. He feels the icy wind, pulls up the covers, sniffs the damp, frozen peat. And, everywhere, very tall chimneys are blowing ozone into the sky. The smell of this gas pricks his eyes a little. Monsieur Tuvache reaches one hand out of bed and touches the ground. It’s a long time since he’s felt the texture of grass that, when you stretch it, cuts into your fingers a little. He looks at his hand, which shows no sign of injury.

Suddenly Siberia leaves the bedroom. The presenter reappears on her chair. Blonde Marilyn enters, wearing a rippling Spanish gown. She is even more beautiful than the woman on the TV. Her cemetery warden is with her: ‘Good evening, Father.’

Monsieur Tuvache’s daughter walks through the light that constitutes the presenter. ‘It smells like a perfume factory in here,’ she says, sitting down on her father’s bed.

He turns off the TV.
Click!

‘Father, look at the beautiful bouquet Ernest gave me. He picked flowers from the tombs while he thought of me. Ah,
l’amour
, as the French would say.’

‘
La mort?
’

‘
L
’
a-mour
… Oh dear, you’re not cured at all! You’d feel much better downstairs in the shop with us. You’d soak up the atmosphere with the garlands and the Chinese lanterns – that would put you back on your feet. Do you want me to bring you a pancake?’

‘Only if it’s stuffed with poisonous mushrooms …’

‘Oh, Father, you old devil. Look, I’ll leave my bunch of flowers from the cemetery on your bedside table. Don’t wait for Mother before you go to sleep, because she’ll be coming to bed late. Tonight we’re going to live it up in the fresh produce section.’

‘Live it up?’