The Suicide Shop

by TEULE, Jean

  Outside, it is raining sulphuric acid on the bedroom windows.

  33

  ‘I know, I know perfectly well, I know exactly! What do you think? Everything has changed here while I was depressed; I don’t recognise anything any more. It’s not the same shop any more – a cow wouldn’t be able to find her calf here!’

  Mishima has vaguely recovered. He’s wearing a waistcoat and checked shirt, while on his head there is a white cardboard cone, decorated with multicoloured circles. A piece of elastic stretches beneath his chin, holding on this hat, which is being observed doubtfully by the very serious man to whom he’s speaking and explaining. ‘And yet I had ideas for it to continue as it was before. I’d planned to organise an aeroplane cruise around the world. Nobody would have returned from it! We would have offered a selection of the most dangerous regional airlines in the world and the least reliable pilots. At Don’t Give A Damn About Death, they had taken on about twenty of them – depressive alcoholics on tranquillisers and always with powder up their noses, even at the controls. We made sure all the luck was on our side. At each stop, the suicidal passengers would board a new dilapidated plane, wondering if it was going to crash into a mountain, at the bottom of an ocean, in a desert, on a town … The people wouldn’t have known in what part of the globe they were going to die. Yes, but there you go; we’ve changed our supplier.’

  ‘You shouldn’t complain,’ comments the man Mishima is talking to, ‘because things seem to be going rather well here.’ He gazes around him at the large numbers of eager customers entering the Suicide Shop.

  The customers kiss Lucrèce affectionately on both cheeks. ‘How are you, Madame Tuvache? It’s so good to come back to your shop.’

  She, disguised as a phial of poison, with a headdress in the form of a cork, offers them the large dishes containing the culinary specialities of the day – Monday: suicidal lamb, beef stifled in steam, duck in blood – which she has noted down on the slate where she used to write the name of the day’s poisoned cocktail.

  She has had the double central display unit dismantled and taken down to the cellar to make way for a long table where the customers meet to think up solutions for the future of the world.

  ‘To resolve the advance of the desert,’ suggests one, ‘you’d have to be able to transform the sand into a raw material useful to people, such as has already been done with the forests. Coal, petroleum, gas –’

  ‘Without a doubt, by compacting it and heating it to extreme temperatures,’ cuts in another, ‘we could turn it into incredibly hard vitrified bricks, which would be vital to construction.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ exclaims a girl. ‘And so each apartment, bridge or anything else that was built would be a small victory over the dunes.’

  ‘The regions of the world that suffer the most from this calamity would become the wealthiest. That would be great.’

  ‘I shall note down that idea,’ enthuses Alan, sitting at the end of the table in an Aladdin costume. ‘There’s always a solution to everything. We must never despair.’

  Hearing those words in his shop does something to Mishima …

  More and more people love to come here to meet, and to hope, in the Suicide Shop, which they now call TSS, like they might say YMCA.

  Dumbfounded, Mishima prefers to stick to the shop’s original ethos when facing the stern man in front of him. ‘I wanted to install a letter box where customers could slip in a message explaining what they’d done. It’s a good idea, don’t you think? The relatives of the suicidal person, and friends if there were any, could have come to consult the letters which the dead person had written to them. I tell myself that doubtless afterwards, in their pain, as they explored the shelves they might perhaps have bought something for themselves. I’d planned for several weeks of promotion: hemp week, etc. And two for the price of one on Valentine’s Day.’

  Marilyn, disguised as the sexy and amusing fairy Carabosse in the fresh produce section, now only touches the customers with her magic wand: ‘Zap, you’re dead!’ A small green light switches on and crackles as it throws out sparks from the tip of the wand as soon as it makes contact. The pretend suicides roll about on the floor, miming horrible convulsions, much to the dismay of Mishima, who despite everything banks the twelve euro-yens for the Death Ki—for any old kiss!

  The shopkeeper pulls the elastic from under his chin, as it is pinching the skin of his neck. ‘Can you see my daughter’s pregnant? By the cemetery warden. She wants to give life.’

  The man replies: ‘You had three children yourself, so you must have felt some attachment to life.’

  ‘Three children … The third …’ Mishima puts things into perspective. ‘I had planned to implement an idea my eldest had before he was corrupted by the youngest: a simple metal crown placed on the head. At the back there was a small articulated arm, at the end of which a magnifying glass was fixed. And so, in summer, people could commit suicide by sunstroke. All you’d have to do would be to sit in a place with no shade and adjust the magnifying glass until you found the burning point. When your hair started to singe, you’d just have to remain motionless. The concentrated point of the ray would burn the scalp, then the skull. In collecting up the desperate people, wisps of smoke would have been rising from the big, black holes in their burnt skulls … But that’s no longer on the cards, alas. Look at that one – my eldest – in whom I invested so much pride, see what he’s become! A former anorexic with the real psychopathic temperament of a mass killer, he has discovered a new passion for – guess what! – pancakes! Frankly … He stuffs himself with them from morn till night.’

  Vincent, with very rounded cheeks and short red beard, eyes still furious beneath the head bandage, is dressed up as Death in a clinging black one-piece painted with white bones. Tossing soft pasta in a large salad bowl, he looks at his father, who comes over and pats his son’s prominent abdomen. ‘The skeleton’s putting on a bit of padding, eh!’

  Then Mishima turns to the visitor once again and says: ‘As you can see, I had no lack of ideas. At one point it even made me feel a bit off-colour – and that’s as long as it took the rest of the family to accomplish their treachery under the influence of the other eternally delighted one, the Optimist over there … And now see what’s happened. Look at this: our new disposable pistols fire blanks, and the only harm the Sweets of Death do is to teeth. As for the ropes for people to hang themselves, if I were to tell you … And the sabres for seppuku serve as fly-swatters.’

  ‘Yes, but … what about our bit of business?’ asks the visitor anxiously. He has the look of an official person who has been sent here on a special mission. ‘It involves the collective suicide of all the members of the regional government! We can hardly give them fly-swatters.’

  ‘What would you have liked?’

  ‘I’m not really sure … I’ve heard about that poison – Sandman? – if you have enough left in stock for forty people.’

  Mishima calls to his wife, disguised as a twisted phial of poison, who is standing by the meeting table, listening to all the ‘we could haves’, ‘we’d only have had tos’, ‘we’re going to do this and thats’, etc …

  ‘Lucrèce! Have you still got some belladonna, deadly gel and desert breath in the scullery?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘What for …’ sighs the shopkeeper, facing the government envoy. ‘I can assure you there are times when she loses the plot, that one …’

  Then he raises his voice and addresses his wife again: ‘The government, recognising its own incompetence and its culpability, has decided to commit mass suicide tonight, live on TV! Can you prepare what’s needed?’

  ‘I’ll go and see what I have! Will you help me, Alan?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  34

  ‘Who did this? Who dared? Who’s the bastard …?’

  Mishima emerges from the apartment, his eyes spinning like flying saucers. He finishes tying the (yellow) belt of a kimono jacket bearing a red cr
oss on the solar plexus.

  Legs apart and arms outspread, he is now gripping a tanto with a sharpened, gleaming blade (not a rubber one), which he took down from above the sideboard in the dining room.

  He swallows a small glass of sake in a single gulp. At the top of the steps and with flowered slippers on his feet, he is every bit as menacing as a samurai about to attack. He even sounds as if he’s speaking Japanese: ‘Hoo di dit? Hoo?’

  He asks who did it, but instinctively descends towards Alan, who is innocently manipulating some marionettes in the fresh produce section.

  Lucrèce, hands flat on her head, swiftly lowers them and steps in front of her husband. ‘What’s going on now, darling?’

  She seems to be gazing far into the distance while her husband cleaves the air with sweeping strokes of his blade, attempting to reach Alan, who ducks away, slips between his father’s legs and climbs the stairs.

  ‘Grrr!’

  Monsieur Tuvache turns round and pursues him. At the top of the steps Alan, rather than find himself trapped in his bedroom or one of the other rooms in the apartment, chooses to open the little door on the left – the one that gives access to the spiral staircase in the tower. His father pursues him up the slippery steps of worn stone. The blade of his sabre strikes sparks as it touches the walls while he roars: ‘Who is the bastard who put laughing gas into the government’s cocktail?’

  Madame Tuvache, thinking that her husband is going to kill her little one, returns from the scullery with a bottle of belladonna and also rushes up the tower’s narrow staircase, only to be followed shortly afterwards by Marilyn, who cries ‘Mother!’, and then Vincent. Ernest – still a little lost in the cloud of sulphuric acid – asks, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Going on? Going on!’

  Monsieur Tuvache, also breathless after climbing the stairs, chokes as he is joined on the platform of the tall, narrow tower by the rest of his family. The paved area is circular and covered by a conical slate roof with an exposed timber frame. In the walls, slits are open to the sky, like the arrow-slits in battlements, no doubt so that the sound of the bells could travel further in the old days, or the voice or loudspeaker belonging to some long-deceased muezzin. Here, a breeze makes a continuous wailing sound. Marilyn’s flared and pleated white dress flies up as she thrusts her arms and wrists between her thighs to hold it down. It is night-time. Red and green neon signs displaying gigantic Chinese advertisements light up the tower. Madame Tuvache picks up the bottle filled with liquid belladonna, raises it to her lips and threatens her husband as he approaches Alan:

  ‘If you kill him, I’ll kill myself!’

  ‘So will I!’ says Marilyn, buckling up the chinstrap of the helmet containing two sticks of dynamite, which Vincent gave her for her coming of age. In her hands she grips the wires of the detonators.

  The eldest Tuvache child has pressed the cutting edge of a thick-bladed kitchen knife to his own throat: ‘Go on, Dad …’

  Mishima blurts: ‘It’s not him I want to kill, it’s me!’

  The neck of the bottle is right up against Lucrèce’s lips, and she won’t back down. ‘If you kill yourself, I’ll kill myself!’

  ‘Meeh oo …’ says Marilyn’s muffled voice inside the helmet with the armour-plated visor, meaning ‘Me too.’

  ‘Go on, Dad,’ repeats Vincent’s crazy voice as he stuffs down a pancake.

  ‘So will this never end?’ cuts in the gentle Ernest, suddenly beside himself with anger. ‘Marilyn, darling, you’re going to be a mother! And what about you, Father? If you do this, who’ll run the shop?’

  ‘There is no Suicide Shop any more!’ declares Mishima.

  This puts a damper on proceedings.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Lucrèce, suddenly lowering the bottle of belladonna.

  ‘They’re going to destroy the shop! At best, they’ll close it tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Uh oo? (But who?),’ Marilyn wants to know.

  ‘Those we made fools of tonight.’

  The wind gusts around the top of the tower, whistles over the edges of the walls. Alan steps back as his father comes forward and explains:

  ‘After the head of the government made his speech criticising himself, live on the televised bulletin, he took the stopper from a phial of Sandman in front of him and inhaled it. All the regional ministers and secretaries of state did the same. None of them touched the cocktail or swallowed it (that was a worthwhile precaution!). But they all burst out in an enormous attack of laughter, each one in turn describing a childhood terror while laughing uproariously. The finance minister said: “When I went on holiday to my grandmother’s house in the country, she woke me every morning by throwing live adders into my bed. Well, actually they were dead grass snakes, but boy was I scared! When I came back to the City of Forgotten Religions, I stammered with terror and peed in my pants. Uh-oh! Now it’s starting again …” And there was indeed a smell of urine in the room. The minister of defence intervened: “I was told: close your eyes and open your mouth. I thought it was to give me some sweets but I was made to swallow rabbit droppings! Argh …!” And he started rolling about on the floor, and hopping around as if he was a little rabbit. “I remember when I was eleven,” said the minister for the environment, “I was forbidden to pick flowers from the hedges. I was told they were thunder-flowers and that if I picked one, a thunderbolt would fall on me. Well, I tell you, that was back in the days when there were still flowers on the banks! Ha, ha, ha! Now that I’ve become a minister, there’s no risk of it happening again, oh, ha, ha! There aren’t any wild flowers any more!” Then he tore out his hair in handfuls, laughing: “He loves me, he loves me not!” I was dumbfounded, no doubt like all the TV viewers and I had to flick off some of the minister’s hair, which had fallen onto my sleeves. “As for me, one time …” at last declaimed the president, who was weeping with laughter, “an uncle imprisoned me in a potato sack, which he placed on the flat back of a cart and then whipped his horse to make him set off at a gallop. Thrown around in the chaos on the cart, I fell off, and found myself at the side of the road, still imprisoned in a potato sack! Aaah! They should have left me there. Oh! I wouldn’t have led my region to disaster. Oh! Oh, oh, oh!” This was a crazy televised bulletin, which the producer had to stop suddenly because the cameramen in the studio were so doubled up with laughter too. The zigzags of their 3D-integral-sensations camera were bouncing around in all directions. You couldn’t see or understand anything any more. All of this because a scoundrel … made the members of the government breathe in laughing gas! Well, Alan?’ Finally he rolls his eyes, in which Chinese advertisements are reflected.

  The eleven-year-old child recoils. ‘But, Father, I didn’t know! I was wearing Mother’s gas mask and I didn’t notice. I took the bottle of desert breath from its usual place, but I’d forgotten we’d changed suppliers … and now it’s Laugh Out Loud who delivers to us …’

  His father advances, arm stretched out and holding the hilt of his tanto, the point of its blade pricking the red silk cross on his kimono jacket. His head, dripping with sweat, gleams with sliding colours. His wife walks at his side, ready to swallow a litre and a half of belladonna. Marilyn, with the big black helmet enclosing her head, looks like a fly from a nightmare. In her ultra-sexy dress, the kind worn by a film actress, she advances blindly, gripping two detonators in her fists. As for Vincent the artist, illuminated like a ridiculous fakir, grimacing horribly and belching after a pancake, he’s savouring in advance the squirt of red paint that will shoot out of the tube in his throat.

  Alan backs away in panic from the incomprehensible sight of his whole family caught up in the storm about to break and turn people into corpses, right in front of him! An advertisement for effervescent tablets sends its three-storey bubbles climbing up the entire height of the Zeus tower.

  Alan rejects the inevitable and stretches out a hand. ‘No, no! Don’t do this …’ He draws back and stumbles.

  He disappears backwa
rds through one of the openings. His legs shoot into the air and drop straight down. Lucrèce, Mishima, Marilyn, Vincent, and Ernest too, abandon everything on the flagstones – the bottle of belladonna, the tanto, the knife – to rush forward and bend over the opening. Marilyn, who’s getting tangled up in the detonator wires of the integral helmet with the visor that blinds her, asks: ‘What’s happened?’

  Her cemetery warden unfastens the strap and replies: ‘Alan has fallen through the window.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘But he’s not yet squashed on Boulevard Bérégovoy!’

  Alan is there, a storey below at the edge of a small roof, suspended by his right hand from a zinc gutter whose rivets are giving way and popping out, one by one. It looks like his left shoulder was hurt in the fall so he can’t move his arm. The gutter is splitting and bending over, taking Alan with it. It is about to break completely. It’s then that a long, white ribbon descends, on its way to reach the child. Vincent is unwinding his turban! Fast as lightning and bending over the void, he unrolls the immensely long crêpe bandage from his head, and it soon reaches Alan’s right hand. He seizes it just as the gutter comes off and falls away, bouncing off the pavement down below in the depths of the darkness. His flabbergasted parents and sister turn towards Alan’s elder brother, whose clenched fists are still gripping the long bandage at the end of which Alan is dangling.