by TEULE, Jean
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 …!’
17
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?’
18
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: