The Suicide Shop / Магазинчик Самоубийств

22

'There aren't many customers this morning.'
'Yes, it's dead.'
'Maybe it's because the regional team won yesterday.'
'Maybe ...'
A young tramp enters the Suicide Shop. He is wearing a large, dirty overcoat that fits tightly round him over a mass of ragged knitted jumpers. Stained trousers hang shapelessly down his legs and his feet are enveloped in torn bin bags. He asks in a hoarse, coughing voice: 'I would like to kill myself but I don't know if I have the means. What is your cheapest item?'
Mishima, who's wearing a rust-coloured sleeveless pullover with a V-neck over a petrol-blue shirt, replies: 'Those who can't afford anything usually suffocate themselves with our carrier bags. They are very strong. Here, have a bit of adhesive tape too, to seal it properly round your neck.'
'How much do I owe you?'
'Oh, nothing, nothing ...' Monsieur Tuvache smiles, with a slight tension at the corners of his mouth.
The young tramp with the rotten teeth, beneath a red woolly Chinese hat from which dusty, lifeless hair escapes, laments:
'If I could only have met people as unselfish as you more often, I wouldn't be in this position ... or if I could have had someone attentive and protective like you for a father ...'
Hearing this, Mishima becomes irritated: 'That's enough!'
But the grateful homeless man indicates the open carrier bag and persists: 'To thank you, I shall put it on while I'm sitting on the bench opposite. Passers-by will read the name of the shop round my head and it'll get you a bit of business. I'll sort of be your sandwich-man.'
'All right ...' says Mishima wearily, opening the door and feeling how cold it is outside. 'Come on, out you go quickly, there's a nip in the air!'
Once the door is closed, Monsieur Tuvache, who is both feverish and fevered, folds his arms and rubs his hands on his shirt, from shoulders to elbows, to warm himself up. He moves the lucky bags slightly in front of the window by the cash register, and slides his palm across the misted pane.
Outside, he sees the young tramp walk across to the opposite pavement and sit down on a bench. He sees him slide his head into the bag, arrange its opening around his neck and seal it with adhesive tape. He looks just like a bouquet of flowers in a collar. The bouquet soon begins to struggle. The sealed bag swells, subsides, swells. The name of the shop stands out like the slogan on a rubber balloon: THE SUICIDE SHOP. Legs crossed, hands deep in the pockets of his heavy coat and his head drawn in, he suffocates, leaning to one side. Now you can read the other side of the bag: HAS YOUR LIFE BEEN A FAILURE? LET'S MAKE YOUR DEATH A SUCCESS! The young man falls onto the pavement.
Lucrèce comes up behind her husband as though sliding on rails. She watches too. She's extraordinarily dignified, and the way she carries her head on that bird-like neck is pure nobility. Above her red silk blouse, open at the neck, a brown lock of hair sweeps down over her forehead, giving life to her hairstyle. She looks as if she's in a breeze. Her mouth, a little pursed, relaxes and her dark eyes narrow as if she were having difficulty seeing or as if she were looking at something very far, so very far, in front of her. 'At least there, he doesn't feel the cold.'
'Who?'
Mishima replaces the lucky bags and turns round. Through the shop's ceiling, he can hear convulsive sobs interspersed with sniggers, curses, shouts.
'Vincent is up early creating,' comments his father. 'And hasn't Marilyn come down yet?'
'She's having a lie-in with Ernest,' replies his wife.
'Aaah! Wu! Whua!' Vincent is in his bedroom, wearing his grey djellaba decorated with explosives. He has a headache. 'Alan!' He feels as if his skull is about to explode, as if bits of shattered bone are about to be flung across the room. The incredibly long, thick bandage around his head is now so voluminous that he looks like a fakir with a bearded, imploded face. Vincent - this human wound with the blood-red face of an artist in crisis - has eyes like disembowelled sunflowers, and all his distinctive features are a terrific blaze of burning coals which explode into sparks. Although he has put on a little weight, he is still only nerves and flesh laid bare, the violent first casting of someone shredded by life. He has the face, the colour of overfired brick, of an alien suffering from hallucinations. A wave runs up and down him as he looks at a hideous mask furrowed and squeezed on all sides by his intoxicated brush. The tumult of the diverse incongruous materials of this disguise, the radiance and vibrancy of its hues, and the paint that seems to leap straight from the tube, all puke and cry: 'Alan!' Hanging from the lamp on his work table is a holographic postcard from his little brother, which reads: 'You are the city's artist.' On the other side of the adjoining wall, in the bedroom to the right, Ernest dances lovingly above Marilyn's belly. He bends over to caress her. And when he feels the liquid of his sweetheart's mouth on his teeth, he drinks it, and tells her: 'You have entered my heart like a knife.' The beauty of their caresses is shrouded in rose-scented vapours. The Tuvaches' daughter moves her lips. In a corner, flowers swoon with rapture. The sounds and scents circle in the air; a melancholy waltz and giddy, painful fever. Marilyn's breasts, like shields, catch flashes of light. These make the cemetery warden stumble over his words as though they were cobbles: 'I-I-I love you!' He embraces her and cradles her soul. The eternal smile of the girl's perfect teeth leads him into uncharted places. To him, she is like a beautiful vessel in full sail. Laying bare her breasts to him and lying with one elbow in the cushions, his bare-chested siren looks resplendent. Fervently in love too, she raises her head and lies back. Pinned up on the wall is a postcard: 'You are the most beautiful of all.'
*

Lucrèce, Marilyn, Mishima, Vincent ... All of them miss Alan; life has no meaning without him.