The Suicide Shop / Магазинчик Самоубийств

23

'Cuckoo!'
Monsieur Tuvache looks up in surprise and eyes the shop's clock - 'Gracious me, has it started working again?' - then lowers his gaze.
'Oh, it's you! But what are you doing here?'
In front of the poisons display, Madame Tuvache is wrapping up a phial for an old lady with a twisted body. The misshapen monster that used to be a woman complains: 'Getting old takes such a long time.' It seems that the fragile being, who has become as small as a child, is gently progressing, carrier bag in hand, towards a new cradle. Her tears could fill a river.
Lucrèce turns round. 'Alan!'
Bundle of belongings on one shoulder, hair all over the place, her youngest child is standing beside the cash register and suddenly a ray of summer sunshine seems to pass through the shop. His mother rushes towards him: 'My little one, you're alive!'
His outfit, spectacularly colourful in places, is like a summer flowerbed, and hope seems to shine in through the window. Over in the fresh produce section, Marilyn hastily shakes a customer's hand and gets rid of him. 'Off you go! Death says hello to you too!'
Then she runs towards her little brother, her wide skirt sweeping the air and her heart beating like a drum. 'Alan!'
She kisses him, strokes his cheeks, shakes his hands, slides her bare fingers beneath the child's sweatshirt, touches his skin.
Marilyn's customer is astonished. 'Are you killing your little brother too?'
'What? Of course not!'
The dejected customer pays twelve euro-yens, but doesn't understand. He brushes past Alan, dazzled by the health that radiates like bright light from his arms and his shoulders. He makes his exit behind the downcast grandmother.
Madame Tuvache calls out: 'Vincent! Vincent! Come and see! Alan is back!'
Box of chocolates in hand and munching, Vincent appears at the top of the stairs by the little door leading to the spiral staircase of the old religious building (church, temple, mosque? ...) The north wind, blowing under the door, puffs up the bottom of his djellaba, decorated with atom bombs.
Alan climbs the stairs and embraces his big brother. 'Hey, City's Artist, you've put on weight!'
The latter - this turbaned Van Gogh - peers at his younger brother's sweatshirt, illustrated with a design that intrigues him. It depicts an aquarium with a letter at the bottom reading: Goodbye. Above the opening of the glass tank, a goldfish drips and flies away, attached to the string of a balloon. Another fish, which is still in the water, is making bubbles and shouting to him: No, Brian! Don't do it!
Vincent doesn't laugh.
'What's that?'
'Humour.'
'Oh.'
Arriving at the bottom of the steps, Mishima throws back his head and shouts up to Alan: 'Why have you come back early?'
'I was sent home.'
The child, who astonishes everyone with his frankness, who is at ease everywhere like the air in the sky and water in the sea, walks down the staircase, his laughter covering it with a triumphal carpet.
'I had a lot of fun there but that annoyed the instructors. And I knew how to make the other pupils who were learning to be human bombs like me relax. When we were sneaking through the darkness, dressed in white sheets and a pointed hood with two holes for the eyes, I told them jokes that made them crack up, all over the cakes of plastic explosive taped to their bellies. While they were peeing in the dunes of Nice, I was gathering desert roses and when I told them they were made of camel's piss mixed with sand and carved by the wind, they thought life was marvellous. They went back singing: "Boom! My heart goes boom... !" The director of the suicidecommando course was devastated. I pretended that I didn't understand any of his technical explanations. He was tearing his hair out and his beard. One morning, when he was at the end of his tether, he put on a belt of explosives, took the detonator in his hand and told me: "Look closely, because I'll only be demonstrating this to you once!" And he blew himself up. I was sent home.'
Mishima first nods his head up and down, in silence. He is like an actor who can't remember the words of his part. Then he shakes it from side to side: 'What on earth are we going to do with you?'
'You mean for the rest of the holidays? He can help me make the poisons!' enthuses Lucrèce.
'And he can make masks with me,' says Vincent from the top of the stairs.