2
'Alan! How many more times do I have to tell you? We do not say "see you soon" to customers when they leave our shop. We say "goodbye", because they won't be coming back, ever. When will you get that into your thick head?'
A furious Lucrèce Tuvache stands in the shop, a sheet of paper concealed behind her back in her clenched hand. It quivers to the rhythm of her anger. Her youngest child is standing in front of her in shorts, gazing up at her in his cheerful, friendly way. Stooping, she reprimands him sternly, taking him to task. 'And, what's more, you can stop chirping' - she imitates him - '"Goo-ood morn-ing!" when people come in. You must say to them in a funereal voice: "Terrible day, Madame," or: "May you find a better world, Monsieur." And please PLEASE stop smiling! Do you want to drive away all our customers? Why do you have this mania for greeting people by rolling your eyes round and wiggling your fingers on either side of your ears? Do you think customers come here to see your smile? It's getting on my nerves. We'll have to get you fitted with a muzzle, or have you operated on!'
Madame Tuvache, five foot four, and in her late forties, is hopping mad. She wears her brown hair fairly short and tucked behind her ears, but the lock on her brow gives her hairstyle a touch of life. As for Alan's blond curls, when his mother shouts at him they seem to take off, as though blown by a fan. Madame Tuvache brings out the sheet of paper she's been hiding behind her back. 'And what's this drawing you've brought home from nursery school?'
With one hand she holds the drawing out in front of her, tapping it furiously with the index finger of her other hand.
'A path leading to a house with a door and open windows, under a blue sky where a big sun shines! Now come on, why aren't there any clouds or pollution in your landscape? Where are the migratory birds that shit Asian viruses on our heads? Where is the radiation? And the terrorist explosions? It's totally unrealistic. You should come and see what Vincent and Marilyn were drawing at your age!'
Lucrèce bustles past the end of a display unit, where a large number of gleaming golden phials are on display. She passes in front of her elder son, a skinny fifteen-year-old, who is biting his nails and chewing his lips, his head swathed in bandages. Next to him, Marilyn, who's twelve and overweight, is slumped in a listless heap on a stool - with one yawn she could swallow the world - while Mishima pulls down the metal shutter and begins switching off some of the neon lights. Madame Tuvache opens a drawer beneath the cash register and takes out an order book. Inside it are two sheets of paper, which she unfolds.
'Look how gloomy this drawing of Marilyn's is, and this one of Vincent's: bars in front of a brick wall! Now that I like. There'sa boy who's grasped something about life! He may be a poor anorexic who suffers so many migraines that he thinks his skull's going to explode without the bandages ... but he's the artist of the family, our Van Gogh!'
She continues, still lauding Vincent as a worthy example: 'He's got suicide in his blood. A real Tuvache, whereas you, Alan ...'
Vincent comes over, with his thumb in his mouth, and snuggles up to his mother. 'I wish I could go back inside your tummy ...'
'I know ...' she replies, caressing his crêpe bandages and continuing to examine little Alan's drawing: 'Who's this long-legged girl you've drawn, bustling about next to the house?'
'That'th Marilyn,' replies the six-year-old child. this, the Tuvache girl with the drooping shoulders limply raises her head, her face and red nose almost entirely hidden by her hair, while her mother exclaims in surprise: 'Why have you drawn her so busy and pretty, when you know very well she always says she's useless and ugly?'
'I think she'th beautiful.'
Marilyn claps her hands to her ears, leaps off the stool and runs to the back of the shop screaming as she climbs the stairs leading to the apartment.
'There, now he's made his sister cry!' yells Marilyn's mother, while her father switches off the last of the shop's neon lights.