The Suicide Shop (4 page)

Night has fallen. In her room, Marilyn has undressed and, standing naked, she plays with the large square of white silk before her reflection in the panes of her window, which looks out onto the City of Forgotten Religions estate. People fall from the balconies of the Moses, Jesus, Zeus and Osiris towers like autumn drizzle.

Monsieur and Madame Tuvache’s daughter makes the scarf fly around her. As the silk brushes her shoulders it provokes shivers that arch her back. She lets the pure fabric slide down her buttocks, catches it in front between her legs and throws it into the air above her. There, the white square spreads out like the gracious movement of a principal dancer. It floats down like a slow parachute onto her upturned face. Eyes closed, she breathes out and the silk floats up again. Marilyn catches a corner of it, which she winds around her belly, her hips, like the arm of a man holding her by the waist. Aaah … the swish of the scarf rising further between her thighs and catching in her hairs. Aaah … Marilyn, ordinarily stooped with drooping shoulders, straightens up. Aaah … She arches more when Alan’s gift, gathering momentum, rises up her chest and brushes her breasts of which, wrongly, she is ashamed. Their nipples harden, becoming erect. Her breasts are large and magnificent and, with fingers joined behind the nape of her neck, Marilyn is astonished to discover herself like this, reflected in her bedroom window, as the scarf falls back down. She catches it as it reaches her shapely calves, and bends forward. Her backside is splendid, broad beneath a waist that is only the tiniest bit fat. And the silk travels again, revealing to the mixed-up girl the unsuspected harmony of her body. She is the most beautiful girl in the whole district! Not a single girl in the City of Forgotten Religions estate can hold a candle to her. Her little brother’s gift, better than a dream … And the scarf continues its hypnotic, sensual dance across her quivering skin. Marilyn’s eyelids lower in an expression of ecstasy unknown to her. But what else is she discovering? Is she becoming Monroe? She parts her lips, revealing a thin strand of … deadly … saliva.

OPEN OWING TO BEREAVEMENT
. The little sign, turned towards the outside and fixed to the front door with a sucker, moves as something above it tinkles. Hanging high on the frame like a little bell, a minuscule skeleton made of iron tubes picks out the mournful notes of a requiem. Then Lucrèce turns her head and spots a young customer entering.

‘Hm, you’re not very old, are you? How old? Twelve, thirteen?’

‘Fifteen!’ lies the adolescent. ‘I would like some poisoned sweets, please, Madame.’

‘Well, listen to you, with your “sweets” in the plural! You can only take one of our fatal delicacies. We couldn’t have you distributing them to all your classmates. We’re not here to decimate Montherlant High School or Gérard de Nerval College!’ says Lucrèce, unscrewing the large lid of a spherical glass jar filled with sweets. ‘It’s the same with bullets for revolvers – we only sell them singly. A man who shoots a bullet into his head doesn’t need a second one! If he demands an entire box, it’s because he has something else in mind. And we are not here to supply murderers. Go on, choose … but choose well, eh, because in this jar, only one sweet in two is deadly. The law demands that we give children a chance.’

The very young girl hesitates over the chewing gums, paper-wrapped fortune sweets and deadly caramels – half clamshells filled with hard yellow, green or red confectionery, to be licked for a long time because they cause a slow death. By the window, there are large paper cornets: lucky bags, blue for boys and pink for girls. She doesn’t know what to choose, but finally seizes a fortune sweet.

Young Alan is sitting beside his mother, drawing large suns on pages from an exercise book. ‘Why do you want to die?’ he asks.

‘Because life isn’t worth the trouble of living,’ replies the girl, who is around the same age as the Tuvaches’ youngest child.

‘That’s what I half kill myself trying to tell him!’ cuts in Lucrèce, filled with admiration for her young customer. ‘Here, take a leaf out of her book,’ she continues, addressing her son.

The schoolgirl approaches Alan, and confides: ‘I’m alone against everyone, misunderstood in a cruel world, and my mother is such an idiot … She confiscated my mobile, all because I went over the time allocation by a few hours. I mean, what’s the use of a telephone if you can’t call people with it? I’m sick of it. If I had an allocation of fifty hours, I wouldn’t have exceeded it … In fact, she’s jealous because she doesn’t have anyone to call, so she takes it out on me: “Blah, blah, blah! Why do you spend hours calling Nadège? You could just go and see her, she only lives opposite.” So I don’t have the right to stay in my room, is that it?’ demands the girl indignantly. ‘Why should I go out? I don’t want to see the sun, that crummy star. It’s good for nothing, the sun …’ she continues, looking at Alan’s drawings. ‘It’s too hot and nobody could live there.’

She turns back to the cash register and pays for her fortune sweet. ‘My mother doesn’t realise how much time I have to spend getting dressed, doing my hair and putting on my make-up before I go out. I wasn’t going to spend all that time in front of the mirror when I could just pick up the phone!’

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!’

‘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?’

‘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 the 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?’

‘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.’