by TEULE, Jean
Tinkle, tinkle – the mournful notes of a requiem – and the girl leaves the shop, unwrapping her sweet (the only possible response to her drama). The youngest Tuvache child leaps off the stool, runs after her and, on the doorstep, he snatches the sweet from her and then throws his hand to his mouth. Lucrèce leaps out from behind the counter, yelling: ‘Alan!’
But it was a joke. The child gets rid of the possibly deadly sweet by throwing it in the gutter while pale-faced Madame Tuvache holds him tightly in her arms: ‘You’ll be the death of me!’
Alan smiles, one cheek against his mother’s chest. ‘I can hear your heart beating, Mother.’
‘Fine, but what about me, and my sweet?’
The distraught girl is so disgusted with life that Lucrèce goes back into the shop to fetch the sweets, and returns to offer her another chance to choose from the glass jar.
The schoolgirl seizes a fortune sweet, and swallows it immediately.
‘So,’ the owner of the Suicide Shop asks her, ‘is your mouth becoming dry? Can you feel the burning as the arsenic trickles down your throat?’
‘Nothing but sugar …’ replies the girl.
‘Well, it really isn’t your day,’ Lucrèce is forced to acknowledge. ‘Come back another time.’
‘Unless you change your mind,’ Alan continues.
‘Of course, unless you change your mind,’ his mother repeats mechanically, still emotional. ‘But … what on earth am I saying?’
Inside the shop, she gives her son a shove. He laughs, and accuses her: ‘It’s you as well; you make me say silly things too!’
12
‘Often people ask us why we named our youngest “Alan”. It’s because of Alan Turing.’
‘Who?’ asks a surprised fat woman whose crestfallen features seem deeply shadowed.
‘Don’t you know Alan Turing?’ asks Lucrèce. ‘He was an Englishman whose homosexuality got him into trouble with the law and who’s regarded as the inventor of the first computer. During the Second World War, his contribution to the final victory was of great importance, for he succeeded in deciphering the Enigma system: the electromagnetic coding machine that enabled the German high command to transmit messages to its submarines. Without Enigma the messages were indecipherable by the Allied secret services.’
‘Oh, right, I didn’t know …’
‘He’s one of History’s great forgotten figures.’
The hesitant customer gazes around the shop with eyes made weary by the doleful regret she feels for her faded dreams …
‘I’m telling you about this,’ Lucrèce goes on, ‘because I saw you just now looking up at the frieze of little pictures.’
Both women look up at the pictures, all the same size, which hang on the wall side by side, just beneath the ceiling.
‘Why does each one depict an apple?’ asks the customer.
‘Because of Turing. The inventor committed suicide in an odd way. On the seventh of June 1954, he soaked an apple in a solution of cyanide and placed it on a small table. Next, he painted a picture of it, and then he ate the apple.’
‘He never did!’
‘It’s said that this is the reason why the Apple Macintosh logo depicts an apple with a bite out of it. It’s Alan Turing’s apple.’
‘Well, well … at least I won’t die an idiot.’
‘And when our youngest child was born,’ continues Lucrèce, getting back to business, ‘we put together this suicide kit.’
‘What is it?’ The interested customer comes closer.
Madame Tuvache shows her the item. ‘In this transparent plastic wallet, you can see that you have a little canvas mounted on a stretcher, two brushes – one large, one fine – a few tubes of paint and of course the apple. Careful, it’s poisoned! This way, you can kill yourself just like Alan Turing did. The only thing we ask of you, if you don’t have any objection, is that you leave us the painting. We really love hanging them up there. They act as souvenirs for us. And, besides, it’s pretty, seeing all those apples in a line under the ceiling. They go well with the Delft tiles on the floor. We already have seventy-two of them. While people wait at the cash register, they can look at the exhibition.’
This is exactly what the fat customer is doing. ‘They are painted in all kinds of styles …’
‘Yes, some apples are Cubist, others almost abstract. The blue apple, there, was painted by a man who was colour-blind.’
‘I shall take the suicide kit,’ sighs the fat lady, her heart beating out a funeral march. ‘It will add to your collection.’
‘You’re very kind. Try and remember to sign and date it. The date today is –’
‘What time is it?’ asks the customer.
‘A quarter to two.’
‘I must go. I don’t know if it’s from seeing all the fruit in your frieze, but I’m feeling a little peckish now.’
As Madame Tuvache opens the door for her, she warns: ‘Make sure you don’t eat the apple until you’ve finished the painting! You’re not supposed to paint the core. In any case, you wouldn’t have time.’
*
Mishima is sitting on a stool at the back of the shop, stirring a basin containing a mixture of cement, sand and water. Alan comes down the stairs, whistling a merry tune. His father asks him: ‘Ready to go back to school for the afternoon? Did you finish your lunch, and remember to watch the news on TV?’
‘Yes, Father. The lady presenter on the one o’clock bulletin has changed her hairstyle. She looked very well groomed.’
His mother rolls her eyes heavenwards and cuts in: ‘Is that all you remember? That’s a real worry. Didn’t she talk about regional wars, ecological disasters, famine …?’
‘Oh yes, we saw those pictures again of the Dutch dykes that exploded during the last tidal wave, and the beach that now extends as far as Prague. They showed the emaciated inhabitants of the German province crying out and rolling naked in the dunes. If you narrowed your eyes, the shining grains of sand mixed with the sweat on their skin looked like little stars. It was unreal but everything will be sorted out. They’re going to remove the sand.’
Lucrèce is at her wits’ end. ‘Oh, you! With your optimism, you’d make a desert bloom! Go on, get off to school. I have more than enough to do without forever seeing you as happy as a lark.’
‘See you soon, Mother!’
‘Yes, soon, that’s right. Unfortunately …’
Mishima, who is next to the fresh produce section currently under construction, rolls up one sleeve of his jumper. He pours water onto his forearm, then sand, and turns his arm around under the light from the neon tubes, at the same time screwing up his eyes.
His wife looks at him. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
13
‘It’s a cement breeze-block with a ring attached. It comes with a chain, which you padlock to your ankle. You stand beside the river. You throw it in front of you and – splash! You’re dragged down to the bottom and it’s all over.’
‘That’s interesting,’ nods a customer with a moustache.
Mishima runs the palm of his hand across his brow and half of his bald pate, then continues: ‘I make them myself here or in the cellar, with the name of the shop moulded in relief on one side. Pass your hand over it. It reads: THE SUICIDE SHOP. these breeze-blocks can also be used for defenestration.’
The customer is astonished. As he looks at him, Mishima gives a lop sided smile plumping his cheek out on one side under eyes as round as marbles. He raises his eyebrows. ‘Yes, yes, yes, breeze-blocks make you heavier because before, you know, on nights when there was a tornado or a hurricane, and people with light bodies threw themselves out of the window, they were found the next morning in their pyjamas, having ended up stuck ridiculously in the branches of a tree, hanging from lampposts or stretched out on a neighbour’s balcony. Whereas with the Suicide Shop breeze-block fixed to your ankle, you fall straight down.’
‘Ah!’
‘Often in the evening, I lift t
he curtain in our bedroom and watch them falling from the estate’s towers. With the breeze-block on one ankle, they look like shooting stars. When there are a lot of them, on nights when the local sports team gets beaten, you’d think it was sand flowing down from the towers. It’s pretty.’
Standing anxiously beside the cash register, Lucrèce knits her brows above her beautiful dark eyes, observes her husband, listens to him, and wonders:
‘Could Alan be contagious?’
14
‘You want to die? Kiss me.’
Marilyn Tuvache sits enthroned like a queen in the fresh produce section. Seated in a large armchair, upholstered in scarlet velvet and carved with gilded acanthus leaves, she wears a clinging dress with a plunging neckline. She leans towards a customer who is intimidated by her new splendour, her youth and the blondeness of her hair. Her lipsticked mouth pouts towards the despairing client: ‘Here, on the mouth, with your tongue …’
The customer dares to approach. Marilyn unfurls her large square of white silk – Alan’s gift – and uses it to cover her own and the man’s head. And beneath the scarf, which hangs down below their shoulders and conjures up images of ghosts, you can just make out that they’re kissing. The heads move slowly for a long time beneath the silk, then Marilyn pulls it away. A delicate thread of saliva stretches between their mouths. The customer collects it with the back of one hand, then licks it so as not to lose anything.
‘Thank you, Marilyn …’
‘Don’t linger. Other customers are waiting.’
Marilyn Tuvache’s new post is proving to be a success, much to the amazement of her parents.
‘After a school career that was doomed from the very beginning, she has finally found her place … in the fresh produce section,’ sighs her mother.
‘It’s the best idea we’ve had since the Alan Turing kit,’ confirms her father.
And the till drawer pings shut. There’s a waiting list. When customers telephone to reserve a Death Kiss, Lucrèce replies: ‘Yes of course, but not before next week!’
There are so many candidates for the Death Kiss that checks have to be made to ensure that customers don’t come back several times. Some of them complain: ‘But I’m not dead yet!’
‘Ah, well, the Death Kiss can take time to work but it will come and, besides, you can only have one go or there won’t be enough to go round.’
Some suicidal customers ask if, by paying more, they could spend an entire night with Marilyn.
Lucrèce is offended by this: ‘And then what next? We’re not procurers, you know!’
Indignantly, Mishima kicks them out of his shop. ‘Go on, get lost! We don’t need customers like you here.’
‘But I want to die.’
‘Sort out your own mess. Go to the tobacconist’s shop!’
And, at the back of the shop, Marilyn blossoms like an exotic, carnivorous flower as she kisses the men.
Alan passes close by her, whistling under his breath. ‘You see, I was right when I said you were beautiful! All the guys in the City of Forgotten Religions estate are only interested in you. Look at them …’
They are waiting, the young men from the Osiris tower who’ve obtained a group discount. In single file between the display units they move forward centimetre by centimetre, through the shelving with its forests of familiar symbols – a skull for toxic products, a black cross on an orange background for noxious and irritant substances, a drawing of a tilted test tube and a droplet to signify corrosives, a black circle with lines emerging from it in star formation indicating explosives, a flame symbolising flammable products and a leafless tree beside a dead fish showing that a product is harmful to the environment. Triangles are illustrated with a lightning flash, an exclamation mark, another skull and then three circles joined together for biological dangers. Every one of the items for sale here is decorated with one of these symbols, but now none of the male customers seems to want anything but a kiss from Marilyn. Jealous female customers are sulking a little.
‘But …! You can partake too, ladies,’ points out Mishima, who is broad-minded. ‘Marilyn has nothing against it.’
A nice young man enters the overcrowded shop, declaring that he has made a booking for a Death Kiss. Lucrèce turns her gaze towards him:
‘You’ve been before. I recognise you.’
‘No, I’ve never been.’
‘Yes, you have; I’ve seen you before.’
‘I’m the warden from the cemetery where your daughter used to lay wreaths for the customers who invited you to their funerals.’
‘Oh, forgive me!’ exclaims Lucrèce, suddenly lifting a hand to her mouth in confusion. ‘I couldn’t place you. And yet I should have, because, apart from the cemetery, we don’t get out much. Sometimes at the weekend we go to the woods to pick poisonous mushrooms, but apart from that … It’s all these customers trying to come several times who are making my head spin.’
The delicate young man gets into the queue behind them. He is desperate, infinitely wise, and as pale as a candle. His attractive face ravaged by cancers of the heart, he observes Marilyn’s breasts in her low-cut dress as she bends forward, and the way her neckline gapes open when she twists round to kiss the men. He gazes fearfully at the woman who is about to give him a kiss. When his turn comes, he commands: ‘Poison me, Marilyn.’
Wiping her lips, Marilyn Tuvache looks at him and replies:
‘No.’
15
‘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 yo
u, 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.
16
‘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.