The Suicide Shop / Магазинчик Самоубийств

11

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!'