15
'What do you mean, no?' demands her mother in astonishment, hands on her hips at the back of the store.
'Yes, why not?' repeats her father in his cable-knit waistcoat, pushing his way through the crowd to find out what's happening with Marilyn: 'Has she broken down?'
'I will not kiss that boy,' his daughter tells him.
'But why? What's wrong with him? He seems quite nice and he's a good-looking lad. You've kissed uglier ones, and ones who seemed unpleasant in other ways too.'
The young man in question stands facing young, blonde Marilyn Tuvache, seated on her throne. He can't take his eyes off her. 'I never see you any more, Marilyn,' he says. 'You don't come to the cemetery any more. Kiss me.'
'No.'
'Oh, come on, you have to sort this out,' scolds Monsieur Tuvache. 'Customers are waiting. Marilyn, kiss the boy!'
'No.'
Mishima is stunned. Lucrèce, who is standing beside him, shakes her head.
'Oh, Isee ...'
She takes her husband to one side, next to the staircase and beyond the range of indiscreet ears. 'Your daughter is in love. After kissing all and sundry, it was bound to happen one day ...'
'What are you saying, Lucrèce?'
'She's in love with that young cemetery warden, and so she
doesn't want to give him a kiss.'
'He's the cemetery warden? I didn't recognise him. Well, all the same, it's idiotic. When you're in love, you kiss.'
'Come, come, Mishima, think! She has the Death Kiss.'
'Shit ...' Her husband, who had forgotten this, pales and, with the ground taken away from under his feet, he sits down on one of the steps of the staircase and gazes at the refrigerated section. 'If it's not death-cap mushrooms going rotten here or the golden frogs escaping, it's Marilyn falling in love. This fresh produce section is cursed.'
The crowd in the shop grumbles and grows impatient.
'Hey, are we going to get some service ...?'
Mishima gets up, goes over to the young cemetery warden and proposes an arrangement. 'Wouldn't you rather have a rope or some poison? There are ways of finishing with life, especially here! Razorblades, the Turing apple - doesn't that appeal to you? Lucrèce, what could we offer him? And for you, sir, it would be a gift! It doesn't matter what, a tanto and a kimono, whatever you want, but decide!'
'I want Marilyn to kiss me.'
'No,' replies the Tuvaches' daughter. 'I love you, Ernest.'
'And I love you too,' says the cemetery warden. 'To death.'
It's an impasse. Despite the crowd, a deathly silence has now fallen over the shop, when suddenly it's broken by the sound of shouting.