Laurain Smoking Kills

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-364-7
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 218 Seiten

How far would you go to enjoy a cigarette?When headhunter Fabrice Valantine faces a smoking ban at work, he decides to undertake a course of hypnotherapy to rid himself of the habit. At first the treatment works, but his stress levels begin to rise when he is passed over for an important promotion and he finds himself lighting up again - but with none of his previous enjoyment. Then he discovers something terrible: he accidentally causes a mans death, and needing a cigarette to calm his nerves, he enjoys it more than any other previous smoke. What if he now needs to kill someone every time he wants to properly appreciate his next Benson and Hedges? An original and totally French black comedy from bestselling author Antoine Laurain.

Antoine Laurain was born in Paris and is a journalist, antiques collector and award-winning author of ten novels, including The Red Notebook and The President's Hat. His books have been translated into 25 languages and sold more than 200,000 copies in English. He lives in Paris, France.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Laurain, Antoine

Weitere Mitwirkende

Rogers Lalaurie, Louise

Leseproben

At the private view for Inflammatory Art – eighteen years after the incident at the Centre Pompidou, and for the hundredth or perhaps the two-hundredth time – I found myself wandering among utterly impenetrable artworks, with nothing to say about any of them. It was here that I first came across Damon Bricker, a young French artist, though his distinctly English pseudonym would have been better suited to the leader of a rock band. A newcomer on the contemporary art scene, he had made a name for himself thanks to his vile mania for setting fire to our furred and feathered friends: as the disciple of a mad British artist who specialised in formaldehyde and preserved entire cows sliced into pieces, this blond-haired poster boy cheerfully chargrilled his animal subjects, using his blowtorch like other artists use their brushes. His installation of a life-size charred and blackened chicken house, complete with hens, cockerels and a fox, had caused a sensation at the previous year’s FIAC art fair in Paris. For Inflammatory Art, Bricker was showing ten glass domes containing a series of urban pigeons, all similarly charred and blackened. ‘Why do you do that?’ I asked him. He gave me a strange look: clearly, the question had never crossed his mind. ‘Why?’ he murmured, looking me up and down. ‘That is the question …’ To me, the sight of the carbonised pigeons, like a row of post-apocalyptic scarecrows, was deeply unpleasant. ‘Don’t you like pigeons?’ I persisted. He stared at me with the quizzical interest often reserved for the naive questions children ask. ‘No, nothing against pigeons,’ he declared. ‘But then Damien Hirst didn’t have anything against cows, either.’ He was referring to the complete cow carcass sliced through with a chainsaw and immersed in a series of aquariums at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. My wife had dragged me along to the art foundation’s opening there, and the walls of the Hotel Danieli are doubtless still ringing with the scenes of marital discord sparked by the comment I had left in the exhibition’s visitors’ book. ‘Perfectly sickening.’ With my signature, clearly legible underneath. Apparently, the anecdote had reached the ears of the Grand Carboniser himself, since he reminded me of it now. ‘“Perfectly sickening!”’ He spoke the words with a seductive smile. ‘So you’re the great contemporary art lover?’ ‘Ever have any trouble with the animal welfare people?’ I retorted, anxious to avoid dwelling on the Venice incident. ‘Not that I know of. Unless you’re about to report me to the Paris Pigeon Fanciers’ Association, Monsieur Valantine.’ ‘Well, there’s an idea …’ We eyed one another in suspicious silence. ‘Ah, you’ve met!’ cried Sidonie, coming up behind me. ‘Your pigeons are extraordinary,’ she told Bricker. ‘Aren’t they, Fabrice?’ ‘Extraordinary. A great artist,’ I said, then turned and walked away. My wife stayed chatting to Bricker while I wandered off through the museum. Alone in a room on the ground floor, I found myself drawn to the bookshop, closed at this hour. My eye fell on a book in the window with a photograph of a leading tobacco brand from the eighteenth century on the cover. I couldn’t help thinking that wars and revolutions aside, past centuries were infinitely more civilised than our own in which we burned pigeons and sliced cows in half to be exhibited in museums. My phone rang in my pocket. My wife was looking for me, as we were joining friends for dinner. There were five of us, and happily the Grand Carboniser was not with us. As we walked along the street, my wife attempted to set me straight. I shouldn’t pass judgement on artists’ works to their faces, she said. It wasn’t done. I replied that every artist was open to criticism, by definition. They had a duty to play by the rules, it seemed to me. ‘They’re highly sensitive creatures,’ Sidonie insisted. ‘With very thin skins.’ That didn’t give them the right to blowtorch animals for pleasure, I replied, before letting it drop, as I had done so many times before. There’s a point beyond which every discussion becomes tiresome, and I often reflected on the rules of my own profession: interviews of up to one hour and no more. Enough time to know whether the candidate is right for the job or not. I tried to interest the group in a brasserie with a fine entrecôte béarnaise and a decent Brouilly, but to no avail: everyone was thinking of their figures and wanted something healthier. We wound up in one of those sterile Japanese restaurants that serve fillets of raw fish which look like French patisserie, all bright colours and asymmetric shapes, accompanied by delicate balls of rice. Nothing at all like a decent plate of food, to my mind, more like some kind of fish-flavoured dessert. As one of my British counterparts was fond of telling me, ‘You’re so French, Valantine!’ Yes. He’s right, I am profoundly French, with all the faults that implies. ‘A Frenchman who likes an English cigarette!’ the genial Londoner would laugh as I produced my packet of Benson & Hedges, though strange to say, he filled his pipe with that most French of tobaccos, Caporal Export. Although I failed on the entrecôte béarnaise, I had managed to ensure we sat in the smoking area of the sushi bar. Our party included Michel Vaucourt, the Avenue Matignon gallerist, and his wife. We smoked the same brand of cigarettes. After our raw salmon balls in soy sauce and several glasses of sake, it was time for coffee. The conversation had dwelt mostly on the upcoming FIAC, at which the bird-blaster would be guest of honour, with a top-secret new work. Even my wife had failed to get so much as a scrap of information out of him for her publication. After a while, people were polite enough to ask what I had been up to at work lately. I told them how we had recruited one of the best financial directors in the business for a rival company. I had been in charge of the whole delicate operation, which had enabled me to make some important new contacts in the major media groups, and ultimately to repeat the coup for one of the big names in advertising. ‘It’s an art in itself,’ Michel Vaucourt was kind enough to say. He understood well enough that I had never fitted in within their artistic circle, a situation that weighed heavily on me. By way of thanks for his amiable remark, which had been met with silent acquiescence by everyone else around the table, I proffered my packet of cigarettes, having first popped one out for him to take. ‘We smoke the same brand, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I don’t smoke anything any more,’ smiled Michel Vaucourt, raising his hand in refusal. I stared at him in disbelief. His wife took his arm with a simpering look. ‘Michel hasn’t smoked for two months now. And he has a secret!’ ‘A secret? I’m sure Fabrice would like to know what it is, wouldn’t you, Fabrice? You’re having some trouble with that at the moment …’ said my wife, in a meaningful tone. I wanted to reply that no, I had no problem at all with ‘that’, and even less desire to know Michel’s secret, which he could kindly keep to himself, vile traitor that he was. ‘This morning they announced a ban on smoking in Fabrice’s canteen,’ Sidonie continued. ‘They’re rather late in implementing that,’ said Michel Vaucourt. I couldn’t believe it. Now that it was full steam ahead with the smoking ban, the rats were leaving the sinking ship. Vaucourt had joined the enemy. He was as bad as the barman – another smoker – at the Hôtel d’Aubusson, who, ever since his hotel had implemented the ban, had been vaunting the merits of his smoke-free workplace. ‘I work better and I can breathe,’ he told me, earnestly. This was a man who from time to time used to share a smoke with me at the bar. And he wasn’t the first smoker I had seen rally to the opinion of the majority. Strange how people are apt to turn their coats once large-scale manoeuvres are under way. And especially in times of trouble. When France was liberated, Nazi collaborators were the first to rush to the Champs-Élysées and cheer General de Gaulle, whose broadcasts they had routinely ignored. Now the war on smoking was prompting the same calculated, cowardly behaviour, though it had to be said – and this was most surprising of all – it was, for the most part, genuine. ‘Go on, Michel, what’s your secret?’ Catherine Dix, the fifth member of our party, wanted to know, even as she was lighting a Marlboro Red. ‘I’ve been longing to give up for ages,’ she confessed, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke. Michel Vaucourt looked serious, then assumed the air of a man who knows his audience will laugh, but doesn’t care. After a few seconds, during which everyone gave the appearance of waiting with bated breath for his pronouncement, he announced: ‘Hypnosis.’ At that, I let out a kind of high-pitched chuckle, that took even me by surprise. My wife shot me a furious look. ‘What’s got into you, Fabrice? You should listen, not mock.’ Michel...