The Suicide Shop (5 page)

‘What do you mean, no?’ demands her mother in astonishment, hands on her hips at the back of the store.

‘Yes, why not?’ repeats her father in his cable-knit waistcoat, pushing his way through the crowd to find out what’s happening with Marilyn: ‘Has she broken down?’

‘I will not kiss that boy,’ his daughter tells him.

‘But why? What’s wrong with him? He seems quite nice and he’s a good-looking lad. You’ve kissed uglier ones, and ones who seemed unpleasant in other ways too.’

The young man in question stands facing young, blonde Marilyn Tuvache, seated on her throne. He can’t take his eyes off her. ‘I never see you any more, Marilyn,’ he says. ‘You don’t come to the cemetery any more. Kiss me.’

‘No.’

‘Oh, come on, you have to sort this out,’ scolds Monsieur Tuvache. ‘Customers are waiting. Marilyn, kiss the boy!’

‘No.’

Mishima is stunned. Lucrèce, who is standing beside him, shakes her head.

‘Oh,
I
see …’

She takes her husband to one side, next to the staircase and beyond the range of indiscreet ears. ‘Your daughter is in love. After kissing all and sundry, it was bound to happen one day …’

‘What are you saying, Lucrèce?’

‘She’s in love with that young cemetery warden, and so she doesn’t want to give him a kiss.’

‘He’s the cemetery warden? I didn’t recognise him. Well, all the same, it’s idiotic. When you’re in love, you kiss.’

‘Come, come, Mishima, think! She has the Death Kiss.’

‘Shit …’ Her husband, who had forgotten this, pales and, with the ground taken away from under his feet, he sits down on one of the steps of the staircase and gazes at the refrigerated section. ‘If it’s not death-cap mushrooms going rotten here or the golden frogs escaping, it’s Marilyn falling in love. This fresh produce section is cursed.’

The crowd in the shop grumbles and grows impatient.

‘Hey, are we going to get some service …?’

Mishima gets up, goes over to the young cemetery warden and proposes an arrangement. ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a rope or some poison? There are ways of finishing with life, especially here! Razorblades, the Turing apple – doesn’t that appeal to you? Lucrèce, what could we offer him? And for you, sir, it would be a gift! It doesn’t matter what, a tanto and a kimono, whatever you want, but decide!’

‘I want Marilyn to kiss me.’

‘No,’ replies the Tuvaches’ daughter. ‘I love you, Ernest.’

‘And I love you too,’ says the cemetery warden. ‘To death.’

It’s an impasse. Despite the crowd, a deathly silence has now fallen over the shop, when suddenly it’s broken by the sound of shouting.

‘
Boom Boom. Fiddledy-dee! And that’s the way we
do it! That’s the way we do it, that’s the way we do it!
That’s the way we do it here!
’

‘What on earth is that?!’

Monsieur Tuvache raises his head towards the ceiling, for the song, sung at full volume, seems to come from upstairs.

‘
Boom Boom. Fiddledy-dee!
’

Madame Tuvache clenches her teeth. Nerves pulse, and make her cheeks hollow. She purses her lips so hard they whiten. The phials of poison tremble and knock against each other on the shelves. With the vibrations of the ear-splitting song, they quiver and start to move around, even fall. Lucrèce rushes forward to hold them back.

‘This is Alan’s doing!’

A neon tube blows, emitting an acrid-smelling skein of smoke that pricks the eyes of all the candidates for suicide who are waiting for a Death Kiss from Marilyn. A seppuku sabre, attached to the wall above the stairs, comes loose, plummeting to the ground tip-first, and buries itself in a step. Its glistening blade vibrates and throws out flashes of light while the ropes for hanging uncoil and fall onto the tiled floor, where the customers’ feet get tangled up in slip-knots. Mishima can’t cope. The jar of sweets on the counter falls off and shatters into a thousand sparkling fragments of glass. The razorblades slide away. The little paintings with Turing’s apple on them fall down, and you’d think you were standing under an apple tree and someone was shaking the trunk. The drawer of the cash register opens all by itself, displaying all the banknotes recently brought in by the fresh produce section. Dishonest folk from Buddha’s tower grab handfuls of them.

Seeing this pillage, Mishima orders loud and clear: ‘Right, everyone out! It’ll be dark soon anyway. You can die another time. Keep your numbered tickets and come back tomorrow when everything has been tidied up! And that means you too, young warden … Go on, get a move on, outside! Take this one-shot disposable revolver and don’t come back to bug us with all that talk about love.’

‘
Boom Boom. Fiddledy-dee! That’s the way we do
it!
’

Expelled depressives emerge from the shop, mechanically humming: ‘
Boom Boom. Fiddledy-
dee
…’ while all the neon tubes are now winking on and off like the spotlights above the dance-floor at the Kurt Cobain discotheque.

‘Alan, will you turn that music off?’ shouts his mother, but her younger son upstairs can’t hear for the din of the two hundred soldier singers – tenors, baritones and solid bass voices – of the Red Army choir, singing at the tops of their voices: ‘
Boom Boom. Fiddledy-dee!
’ and clicking their heels as well.

Lucrèce abandons the phials she was holding in place, so they rain down, their toxins exploding all over the tiled floor and trickling under the gondolas.

‘At least it’ll rid the place of rats.’

As she climbs the stairs she is surprised to have had this thought. She enters Alan’s room.

‘For goodness’ sake, will you stop that racket?’

‘
Boom Boom. Fidd—
’ Click!

Lucrèce has just turned off the sound. ‘You’re sick, that’s what you are! We were reliving a Greek tragedy in the fresh produce section, and this is the music you put on, you imbecile!’ she yells. ‘And there’s your brother, did you think about your brother? I bet he’s destroyed everything again because of having to listen to your stupid songs …’ she continues, walking out into the corridor and entering Vincent’s room.

Vincent is facing his intact model stoically, tapping his fingernails on the table to the rhythm of ‘
Boom Boom. Fiddledy-dee
.’

His mother approaches his bandaged cranium, and her haunted eyes peer at the construction in astonishment. ‘Huh? You’ve joined up the rails of your Big Dipper?’

‘It was Alan who told me it would be better and that the people would be happier …’

‘So this brilliant concept becomes a bog-standard theme park! And what’s more, my cooking is burning in the oven. Come on, everyone, get yourselves round that table!’

Mishima, who has pulled down the steel shutters but left the door open to let some air in, switches off the lights. His daughter, who’s already at the top of the stairs, is dragging her feet again. He begins to grope his way up the steps in the dark, stops, switches on the bulb above him. On the landing, Alan looks at him and smiles.

His mother, who’s in a foul mood, comes charging out of the kitchen and bangs a dish down on the dining-room table. ‘And I don’t want to hear any comments, all right? With all this trouble going on, I cooked the best I could.’

‘What is it?’ asks Vincent.

‘The leg of a lamb that threw itself off the cliffs. That’s why the bone is broken. The butcher saved it for me. But what’s it to you? You’re anorexic. Mishima, your plate!’

‘I’m not hungry,’ warns Marilyn.

The atmosphere at the table is dark and brooding. Marilyn snivels, and everyone is sulking except Alan, who is in ecstasies: ‘Wow, this is really good, Mother!’

Lucrèce raises her eyes to the heavens and says irritably: ‘What do you mean it’s good, you cretin? I did any old thing! I started off roasting it, then I put some foil on it as if it was a fish
en
papillote
, so what are you saying? I even sprinkled it with sugar before I noticed that I had meant to season it with salt and pepper.’

‘Ah, I see …’ smiles Alan’s cheerful, hungry face. ‘That’s where that slightly caramelised taste comes from. And then you covered it with aluminium foil, what a good idea! So it’s crisp on the outside and soft and succulent inside.’

Vincent, who is wearing the expression of Van Gogh in a crisis, pushes his plate towards the food. Monsieur and Madame Tuvache look at each other. Lucrèce serves her elder son while her younger one applauds her: ‘You should open a restaurant. It would be better than the one opposite, the François Vatel, and the customers would be so delighted that they’d come back often.’

‘It’s not my vocation to feed people; that’s a poor task. I poison them and they never come back! When will you ever accept that?’

Alan laughs: ‘That’s more or less what they do at the Vatel … That’s why they’re closing down soon. You’re pretending to be cross, but I know that deep down you’re glad I think your roast lamb’s good.’

‘It is true – it’s first-rate,’ Monsieur Tuvache is forced to acknowledge.

His wife looks daggers at him: ‘So you’re on his side too, Mishima?’

Vincent wipes his cracked lips then pushes his plate towards the roast a second time. He serves himself a large portion. Lucrèce puts down her knife and fork. Only Marilyn looks disgusted and doesn’t touch hers.

‘I understand,’ her mother says to her confidingly. ‘At least one person in the family has taste.’ Lucrèce looks round at the others. ‘She doesn’t talk nonsense. She wouldn’t waste her saliv–’

‘Waaaaah!’ The blonde blubbers into her porcelain plate.

‘What? What did I say?’ cries her mother as she sees a look of reproach in her husband’s eyes.

‘Waaah! Mother, Father … I can’t ever kiss Ernest, the boy I love, or I’ll kill him!’

‘He’s called Ernest?’ asks Mishima. ‘Like Hemingway? Apparently Hemingway’s mother sent him the Smith & Wesson revolver he used for his suicide along with a chocolate cake. His father had already shot himself and his granddaughter did too, on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the writer’s suicide. He’d demanded that she was called Margaux because that was the name of his favourite wine. She became an alcoholic and screwed everything up! That’s amusing, don’t you think?’

This time it’s Lucrèce who frowns at her husband, who goes on: ‘All right, maybe not. It’s true that this Death Kiss thing’s a bit unfortunate. Damn, a good lad who could have given us grandchildren and who has a career with a future: a cemetery warden! Because Vincent and children, I don’t think … And as for the other one, if he gets married one day, it’ll be to a clown. And, well, if I have to have circus artistes in the shop, juggling with phials of poison or making hula hoops out of hangmen’s ropes, it’s not worth it …’

Vincent Tuvache is concentrating, chewing like a ruminant. Before, the mere idea of swallowing food made him vomit the bile from his empty stomach, but here he is, feasting, chewing at length and appreciating the juices of the suicidal lamb as they flow down his throat. Seated next to Alan, he asks him with a full mouth: ‘Is it three times you have to sing
Boom
before
fiddledy-
dee
?’

‘No, twice,’ replies his brother: ‘
Boom Boom.
Fiddledy-dee
.’

Their mother, who is sitting opposite Vincent, is thunderstruck by the boys’ indifference to their sister’s despair. Crushed, she listens as her youngest child advises her while wiping his plate with some bread:

‘I was thinking that maybe … with some roundels of banana too, placed in the lamb juices to pickle, and then some orange zest sprinkled on the juices …’

Lucrèce contemplates her child and finds only cause for regret: ‘Why, oh why did we test a condom with a hole in it?’

Seated to her left and facing Alan, Marilyn starts blubbering again and censures her parent:

‘And what about me, Mother, why did you want me to have death in my mouth like a rattlesnake? You never think about the future!’

‘The thing is … preparing for the future, we … given our profession …’ apologises Monsieur Tuvache at the end of the table. ‘We’re more accustomed to the short term, if I can put it like that.’

Lucrèce has had enough, and spits out words in a tone she’s never used for her eldest before: ‘Vincent, stop stuffing yourself! It’s indecent. Your sister is in pain!’

‘Really, why?’ asks Alan.

Mishima looks at the long knife used to cut up the meat, then locates the exact spot on his youngest child’s chest where he would have to plunge it for a seppuku. He is feeling murderous, but regains control of himself and reminds Alan in a neutral voice: ‘Since she came of age, your sister is poisonous –’

‘No, she’s not!’ sniggers the Tuvaches’ youngest child. ‘For her birthday, I opened the fridge and replaced the filth in the syringe with a glucose solution, like the doctor uses for Vincent when he’s too weak. What do you think?’

A deathly silence descends, giving us a moment to observe the style of the dining room: a violet sofa (the colour of mourning) in front of the curtained window overlooking the City of Forgotten Religions, an old sideboard dating perhaps from the twenty-first century, a lampshade in the shape of Saturn with its rings above the table, and at the back, in a corner, a 3D television, which during the news makes you believe that the woman presenter is actually physically in the dining room with you to give you the news of all the ghastly catastrophes in person.

‘What did you say, Alan?’

‘Did you know this, Vincent?’

‘Yes,’ belches the Tuvaches’ eldest child, wiping his lips with his napkin.

The parents are stunned. This reminds Lucrèce of the time she breathed in a little Sandman by accident. She thinks she’s going to faint.

Marilyn is still not entirely sure she has understood properly. ‘What exactly are you saying?’

His breathing slow and laboured, her father growls like a storm appearing on the horizon, laden with acid rain: ‘You can go back to your cemetery warden. Go on, Marilyn! Your kisses are inoffensive and, without knowing, you have deceived the customers …’

Mishima’s voice swells: ‘… And all because these two little scum …!’

Lightning flashes from his eyes.

‘… slipped you a placebo.’

His tongue claps within his mouth like thunder.

‘Doing such a thing … Tuvaches! You are the shame of the nation! Ten generations in suicide, and we’ve never seen such fraud! When they came back, I too was saying, “Why aren’t they dying?” And
you
, Vincent! I was so proud of you … I should have named you Brutus! You allowed yourself to be influenced by this little bastard who really does deserve to bear the name of an English homosexual. Oh, the little bugger!’

‘Come on, Mishima, you’re getting everything mixed up!’ cuts in Madame Tuvache, who has regained her composure.

But her husband gets to his feet and reaches out his big suicide-broker’s paws for Alan’s neck, and Alan runs away, laughing, down the corridor, pursued by his father. Marilyn also leaves the table and runs after her young brother. The two chase Alan: one – Mishima – to strangle him, the other – Marilyn – to wrap her arms round him and cry, ‘Oh, Alan!’

Her mother, who has not yet quite digested all the recent information, begs: ‘Marilyn! Don’t kiss your brother, especially if you love him!’

Vincent, seated opposite her, reminds her: ‘But, Mother, since it’s glucose solution she has in her veins …’

‘Oh goodness me yes, well, I’ll be …!’