The Suicide Shop / Магазинчик Самоубийств

19

'What on earth is wrong with you, Ernest? You're all pale!'
'Ooooh ... It's that mask! I thought I would die of fright when I saw it,' replies Ernest to his future mother-in-law.
'The mask Vincent designed has that effect on you?' Lucrèce is astonished.
'But why does he build such horrors?' trembles the young cemetery warden, sitting down on a step to try and recover his composure.
'It was my Alan, before he left for his training camp - poor little chap, let's hope ... - who advised him to purge himself of all his anxieties by building masks that represented the monsters from his nightmares.'
'Well, I must say ...'
Marilyn is in raptures. 'My fiancé is so sensitive!' She comes to sit down beside him and takes him in her arms. 'Baby ...'
'Well, I must say, for a cemetery warden ...' comments Mishima, joining them.
'No, but honestly ... Vincent really ought to warn people!' Marilyn's true love justifies himself. 'Because it's serious ...'
'Come on,' Lucrèce downplays it, 'he's finally found his appetite and now he never stops stuffing his face. That's real progress. And besides, Ernest, you know that we Tuvaches ... well, we don't really like psychiatrists very much ...'
'Yes, but all the same ... I don't suppose you have a small glass of eau de vie by any chance?'
'Eau de -? Oh no, we don't keep that in stock,' apologises Mishima. 'On the other hand, those masks ... I'm wondering ... if they can produce this effect ... for people who are oversensitive or have a weak heart ... we'll have to see!' he concludes, as the skeleton door chime begins to tinkle.
A plump, curly-headed lady enters.
'Well, Madame Phuket-Pinson!' trills Lucrèce, heading for her. 'Have you come so that I can pay off our little butcher's account?'
'No, it's not that. It's for me ...'
'Oh, really? What's going on?'
'I've found out that since I've been ill my husband has been having an affair with the waitress at Vatel's. So I want to put an end to it all. I was already suffering with my health problems ...'
'Oh yes ... heart problems, I believe ...' murmurs Monsieur Tuvache with false sympathy as he approaches, carrying a carrier bag containing Vincent's mask. 'Now, Madame Phuket-Pinson, close your eyes and don't peep, while I check something out for you ...'
The rotund, docile butcher's wife, resigned as an animal at the abattoir, lowers her eyelids with their long, cow-like lashes. Mishima ties the cords of the bulky mask behind her neck and head, then hands a mirror to her. 'Now look at yourself.'
Madame Phuket-Pinson opens her eyes and discovers her new appearance in the mirror:
'Aaargh!'
Cheeks made from a chicken carcass that Vincent must have retrieved from the kitchen bin and scraped clean, skin made from a worn-out floor-cloth on the forehead and chin, a nose made from the beak of a cackling hen. On either side, the eyes are windmills in green and pink plastic, like the ones which have been sold for centuries around the lakes in parks. They turn round and make music. Two lines of teeth blink on and off - the lights from a battery-powered Christmas tree decoration - between shattered lips made up of bone fragments from a leg of lamb which had suffered an open fracture! Vincent's nights must not be restful ones. The vision of his nightmares terrifies the plump heart patient, who catches sight of the multicoloured tangle of the mask's ample head of hair, dotted with imitation spiders and other poisonous creatures. By means of a clever system, smoke escapes from the eyes and spirals up as the eyes move.
'Aaargh... !'
The butcher's wife falls to the ground, rigid. Mishima kneels beside her, then leans over: 'Madame Phuket-Pinson? Madame Phuket-Pinson?'
He stands up and has to admit:
'It works!'