The Suicide Shop / Магазинчик Самоубийств

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Lucrèce is in bed, beside her husband. Lying on her back with her arms at her sides, an eternal silence hovers above her. The shapes have faded and are no more than a dream now, but then the horrible cloud of her past rises up again, making her slowly bend her knees within herself.
When she was a little girl - four or five years old - her mother would ask her to wait for her after school, sitting on a bench in the playground of the infant school, and promised her that if she was very good, she could have a go on the swings.
Her mother was often late, and sometimes didn't come, so the headmistress of the school would tell the child to go home on her own. Her father, despite his promises, never came. And often in the evening the little girl waited, behaving well, so well; waiting for her mother and the go on the swings.
Did she ever have a go on the swings? Lucrèce doesn't remember. All she can remember is the wait, the wait for her mother who, she imagined, would watch her on the swings.
With her chubby little hands, with the turned-up tips of the fingers, laid flat on her thighs and sitting up tall, not slumping at all, her eyes wide open, she looked straight in front of her. She looked straight in front of her but she saw nothing! She was nothing but good, the very image of goodness, so good that her mother must come!
She forbade herself any movement, any word, any breath of a sigh. She waited so perfectly that her mother could not but come. If the tip of her nose was itching or one little sock had slipped down over her ankle, she remained motionless. Mummy would come. She dissolved into herself, breathed in the itch at the tip of her nose, the cool patch on her calf where her sock had slipped down. She had learned how to absorb that. She knew how to gather herself together, was learning how to become Zen. When, later on, she watches documentaries on ancient Buddhists she will realise that already, at the age of four, she knew how to attain the same mental state. From her childhood, she has retained this ability to absent herself, this way of suddenly seeming to look very far in front of her. There is a great space in her head, just as when she waited for her mother on a bench in the school playground. She was turning to stone there, could no longer feel her body, could swear that she was no longer breathing. When the mother arrived, her daughter would no longer be alive.
Outside, it is raining sulphuric acid on the bedroom windows.