The Suicide Shop / Магазинчик Самоубийств

21

Mishima closes the trapdoor of the cellar behind him, switches on a pale light bulb then walks down the steep staircase, where his soul founders. In his hand he holds Alan's holographic postcard and in the wintry, late-afternoon light from the basement window, with his back against the wall, he reads it:
Dear Mother, Father, I love you...
This sends a shaft of light through Mishima's heart. This man who sometimes likes to throw his weight around in the house or upstairs in the shop no longer kicks up a fuss when he's alone in the depths of the cellar, reading his youngest child's words:
Don't worry about me. It'll all be fine...

Oh, that eternal optimist, that cheeky monkey!
The day fades, the darkness grows. The sky closes slowly like a box. This is the time when the sorrows of the sick become more bitter still, for the dark night takes them by the throat. Underground, just like the dead, Mishima worships at the altar of his distress and lets out a plaintive cry:
'Alan ...'
It's little more than a thought and less than a whisper. Breeze-block sand flows through his fingers. It is like cold water rising, it is like a shame that grows. For a week now, every night, he has suffered a terrible nightmare, struggling like a drowning man. In his bed, to left and to right, all he can find is insomnia. And even when he is asleep, he cries:
'Alan!'
Through the cellar's barred window, he hears the sounds of heels on the pavement above. Hemmed in by this monotonous hammering, it sounds as if someone is nailing down a coffin somewhere. It is dusk. The sand turns bluish. It is always evening, more or less, for someone in the world, always a time when someone is frightened. 'I can't take any more,' says the acid rain. 'I can't take any more of all this.' Mishima had thought he was balancing freely on a steel wire when in fact all the balance came from the balancing pole. He misses Alan. Nothing can act as a counterweight. Outside, a shriek from a tram - a finger caught in the electric wires - and deep in the cellar the pervasive feeling of suicides shying away from the brink. The fine sand, vaguely starry. Mishima feels like the breeze-block in front of him - he no longer has any law but his own weight. One of Alan's abandoned shirts rests on a chair. He picks it up, buries his head in it, and voids his sorrow in a great flood of tears.

Did she hear him sobbing? Standing beside the shop's cash register, Lucrèce lifts up the trapdoor and asks in the half-light: 'Mishima, are you all right? Mishima!'