by TEULE, Jean
On the other side of the adjoining wall, in the bedroom to the right, Ernest dances lovingly above Marilyn’s belly. He bends over to caress her. And when he feels the liquid of his sweetheart’s mouth on his teeth, he drinks it, and tells her: ‘You have entered my heart like a knife.’ The beauty of their caresses is shrouded in rose-scented vapours. The Tuvaches’ daughter moves her lips. In a corner, flowers swoon with rapture. The sounds and scents circle in the air; a melancholy waltz and giddy, painful fever. Marilyn’s breasts, like shields, catch flashes of light. These make the cemetery warden stumble over his words as though they were cobbles: ‘I-I-I love you!’ He embraces her and cradles her soul. The eternal smile of the girl’s perfect teeth leads him into uncharted places. To him, she is like a beautiful vessel in full sail. Laying bare her breasts to him and lying with one elbow in the cushions, his bare-chested siren looks resplendent. Fervently in love too, she raises her head and lies back. Pinned up on the wall is a postcard: ‘You are the most beautiful of all.’
*
Lucrèce, Marilyn, Mishima, Vincent … All of them miss Alan; life has no meaning without him.
23
‘Cuckoo!’
Monsieur Tuvache looks up in surprise and eyes the shop’s clock – ‘Gracious me, has it started working again?’ – then lowers his gaze.
‘Oh, it’s you! But what are you doing here?’
In front of the poisons display, Madame Tuvache is wrapping up a phial for an old lady with a twisted body. The misshapen monster that used to be a woman complains: ‘Getting old takes such a long time.’ It seems that the fragile being, who has become as small as a child, is gently progressing, carrier bag in hand, towards a new cradle. Her tears could fill a river.
Lucrèce turns round. ‘Alan!’
Bundle of belongings on one shoulder, hair all over the place, her youngest child is standing beside the cash register and suddenly a ray of summer sunshine seems to pass through the shop. His mother rushes towards him: ‘My little one, you’re alive!’
His outfit, spectacularly colourful in places, is like a summer flowerbed, and hope seems to shine in through the window. Over in the fresh produce section, Marilyn hastily shakes a customer’s hand and gets rid of him. ‘Off you go! Death says hello to you too!’
Then she runs towards her little brother, her wide skirt sweeping the air and her heart beating like a drum. ‘Alan!’
She kisses him, strokes his cheeks, shakes his hands, slides her bare fingers beneath the child’s sweatshirt, touches his skin.
Marilyn’s customer is astonished. ‘Are you killing your little brother too?’
‘What? Of course not!’
The dejected customer pays twelve euro-yens, but doesn’t understand. He brushes past Alan, dazzled by the health that radiates like bright light from his arms and his shoulders. He makes his exit behind the downcast grandmother.
Madame Tuvache calls out: ‘Vincent! Vincent! Come and see! Alan is back!’
Box of chocolates in hand and munching, Vincent appears at the top of the stairs by the little door leading to the spiral staircase of the old religious building (church, temple, mosque? …) The north wind, blowing under the door, puffs up the bottom of his djellaba, decorated with atom bombs.
Alan climbs the stairs and embraces his big brother. ‘Hey, City’s Artist, you’ve put on weight!’
The latter – this turbaned Van Gogh – peers at his younger brother’s sweatshirt, illustrated with a design that intrigues him. It depicts an aquarium with a letter at the bottom reading: Goodbye. Above the opening of the glass tank, a goldfish drips and flies away, attached to the string of a balloon. Another fish, which is still in the water, is making bubbles and shouting to him: No, Brian! Don’t do it!
Vincent doesn’t laugh.
‘What’s that?’
‘Humour.’
‘Oh.’
Arriving at the bottom of the steps, Mishima throws back his head and shouts up to Alan: ‘Why have you come back early?’
‘I was sent home.’
The child, who astonishes everyone with his frankness, who is at ease everywhere like the air in the sky and water in the sea, walks down the staircase, his laughter covering it with a triumphal carpet.
‘I had a lot of fun there but that annoyed the instructors. And I knew how to make the other pupils who were learning to be human bombs like me relax. When we were sneaking through the darkness, dressed in white sheets and a pointed hood with two holes for the eyes, I told them jokes that made them crack up, all over the cakes of plastic explosive taped to their bellies. While they were peeing in the dunes of Nice, I was gathering desert roses and when I told them they were made of camel’s piss mixed with sand and carved by the wind, they thought life was marvellous. They went back singing: “Boom! My heart goes boom … !” The director of the suicidecommando course was devastated. I pretended that I didn’t understand any of his technical explanations. He was tearing his hair out and his beard. One morning, when he was at the end of his tether, he put on a belt of explosives, took the detonator in his hand and told me: “Look closely, because I’ll only be demonstrating this to you once!” And he blew himself up. I was sent home.’
Mishima first nods his head up and down, in silence. He is like an actor who can’t remember the words of his part. Then he shakes it from side to side: ‘What on earth are we going to do with you?’
‘You mean for the rest of the holidays? He can help me make the poisons!’ enthuses Lucrèce.
‘And he can make masks with me,’ says Vincent from the top of the stairs.
24
‘Ha ha! Oh, that’s so funny, tee hee! Oh, my stomach’s hurting. Ha ha …! I can’t breathe! Oooh …!’
A small, scrawny man with a moustache and a hat, dressed all in grey, had walked sadly into the shop. Lucrèce had shown him a mask made by Vincent and Alan.
‘Oooh! Oooh! Oh, but that’s funny! Ha ha ha …! Oh, that moronic face, oh …!’
Mishima is sitting slumped on a chair, feeling oppressed. Forearms resting on his parted thighs, with his fingers interlaced between his knees, he raises his head with an effort to look at this morning customer, the first of the day. He watches him face-on, guffawing at the sight of the mask Lucrèce is showing him, with her back to her husband.
The laughing customer puts a hand to his mouth. ‘Oh! But how could anyone have given birth to that?! Oh!’
‘My boys made this mask last night. It’s well put together, don’t you think?’
‘Oh! But what a stupid-looking face. And the eyes! Tee hee! And nose! Oh good grief, look at the nose … I can’t believe it!’
The customer bends double with laughter at the sight of the facial disguise, which Madame Tuvache is holding at chest height right in front of him. He’s suffocating, coughing, belching.
‘Oh no, I mean, really, living with a face like that! It’s not the kind of mug to win you friends, is it? And what about women? Do you know a single woman who’d want anything to do with a guy like that? Oh! Not even a dog or a rat would want him!’
The customer laughs until he cries, attempting to get his breath back. ‘Show me again. Oh, I can’t take any more!’
‘Then look away,’ Madame Tuvache advises him.
‘No, my decision is made. Ha ha ha! And how seedy-looking he is. He must be some kind of bloody idiot, that guy there! Even a goldfish would rather fly out of its bowl than stay looking at him! Aaaah!’
The customer laughs so much he wets himself:
‘Oh, forgive me! I’m so embarrassed. I’d heard that you had grotesque masks but this one … Aaah!’
‘Would you like to see others?’ suggests Lucrèce.
‘Oh no, nothing could be worse than the one you’ve shown me. Ha ha! Oh, the idiot! I hope he dies, the damn fool! Nobody will miss the bloody idiot!’
Up to now, Mishima’s gaze has been vague and demoralised. Now, he fixes his attention on the unusual customer who is killing himself with l
aughter at the mask.
‘My heart! Aaaah …! Oh, how stupid he looks! Ha ha ha!’
He turns red, becomes rigid, arms folded across his chest and his fingers outspread like the points of a star, then collapses onto the floor, yelling at the mask. ‘Idiot!’
Mishima stands up and checks him over:
‘Well, that makes two … But what did they dream up this time?’
Lucrèce turns round and shows him a mask in impersonal white plastic, onto whose nose Alan and Vincent have stuck a mirror.
25
‘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!’
26
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.’
27
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 l
ie 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?’