18
It is almost nine o'clock as Lucrèce and Mishima return together, but they enter via the small back door of the ancient place of worship, which has become the Suicide Shop. Their youngest child has not heard them coming in, for his ears are blocked by the headphones of a personal stereo, whose buzzing his parents can hear. He's listening to an optimistic song and singing the words to himself as he bustles around:
'It doesn't take much to be happy, really not much to be happy... !'
The boy with the curly blond hair is snapping the fingers of his left hand to the beat in front of the window where he's pushed the lucky bags. With his right hand, he lifts up each of the acid drops, looks at it, and throws on average one out of every two into Lucrèce's bucket, where they dissolve amid the poisoned waters.
'It doesn't take much... !'
'What's he doing?' whispers Mishima in Lucrèce's ear, and she replies, 'He's spotting which sweets are stuffed with cyanide by how transparent they are, and throwing them away.'
'Oh, the -'
Madame Tuvache puts a hand over her husband's mouth. In his temper, he's lashed out and clumsily dislodged a rolled-up rope at the end of the double central display unit. It flops onto the floor with a dull thud.
Alan, still standing in front of the window, turns round. Baby-faced and dotted with reddish freckles, he removes one earpiece, listens and notices the rope that's fallen on the floor. Leaving the window and still singing to himself, he grabs a razorblade from the display, then goes to pick up the rope and cuts the fibres at random.
'It doesn't take much to be happy! Really not much...'
To the rhythm of the song, he makes incisions around the slip-knot, wets one index finger with saliva and slides it over the fibres to hide his sabotage, then puts the rope back among the others. His parents, hiding behind the staircase, are outraged, but they continue to spy on their child, who returns to the counter lisping and dancing a little jig.
'Drive all your worries from your mind! See life on the bright side ...'
He wears out the razorblade on a breeze-block moulded by his father, then when it's become blunt and useless he puts it back with the others.
He opens several transparent bags from the Alan Turing suicide kits, inside which he replaces the apples with new ones.
'Where did he get those?' whispers Mishima.
'From the fruit basket in the dining room.'
'I hope he's not going to put the other ones in their place ... Oh, the little devil!'
Monsieur Tuvache emerges, muttering, from beneath the stairs. The Grim Reaper shoots out of the cuckoo clock and announces nine 'clock: 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo ...!' The radio switches on automatically for the news:
'Weather! Things are getting worse. Sulphuric acid rain is expected ...'
Monsieur Tuvache switches off the radio and faces his surprised younger son, who takes the earpieces out of his ears in order to hear his parent thunder: 'Right! I've had it with you!'
Up above, on the wall, the Grim Reaper continues to play out his series of nine irritating double 'Cuckoos' indicating the hour. Mishima throws a poisoned apple at the clock. Taking a hit, the Reaper loses his lime-wood head and the fatal fruit becomes impaled upon the blade of the scythe. 'Cuck-!' The apple and the unbalanced, decapitated figure block the little arched doors, preventing them from closing, while the fruit drops its juice onto the Reaper's robe.
Alan's eyes narrow against the blast of Mishima's fatherly wrath. His parent's tongue twists in his mouth like the blades of a fan, and Alan's curls fly back from his sweet little face. 'You will spend your two-week school holiday this winter in Monaco, training as a suicide commando!'
Lucrèce suddenly joins them, holding her head in her hands.
'Oh no, Mishima! Not Monaco. Please not there!'
'Yes!'
The mother of the family pleads with her husband: 'But, darling, the people there are all nutcases, mad with hatred and brutality, whereas he's so ... very ...'
'Maybe they'll put a hole in his head, so his vocation can sink in!' shouts Monsieur Tuvache, who then says to his son: 'Go and get your things ready! Do not take any CDs. This is not a place where they listen to songs - no, that's not what kamikazes do!'
Lucrèce is devastated, but Alan looks on the bright side of this punishment: 'Monaco? Well, it'll be warm there. I'll take some sun cream too, and a pair of trunks in case we go swimming ...'