Veronika decides to die   ::   Coelho Paulo

She didn’t know if the feeling of nausea came from her weakened heart or the effort she was making to move.

“I don’t know what it means to be crazy,” whispered Veronika. “But I’m not. I’m just a failed suicide.”

“Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics, psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from others.”

“Like you?”

“On the other hand,” Zedka continued, pretending not to have heard the remark, “you have Einstein, saying that there was no time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent. Or Edmund Hillary, convinced that a man could reach the top of Everest. Or the Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed like people from another time. Those people—and thousands of others—all lived in their own world.”

This madwoman talks a lot of sense , thought Veronika, remembering stories her mother used to tell her about saints who swore they had spoken to Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Did they live in a world apart?

“I once saw a woman wearing a low-cut dress; she had a glazed look in her eyes, and she was walking the streets of Ljubljana when it was five degrees below zero. I thought she must be drunk, and I went to help her, but she refused my offer to lend her my jacket. Perhaps in her world it was summer and her body was warmed by the desire of the person waiting for her. Even if that person only existed in her delirium, she had the right to live and die as she wanted, don’t you think?”

Veronika didn’t know what to say, but the madwoman’s words made sense to her. Who knows; perhaps she was the woman who had been seen half-naked walking the streets of Ljubljana?

“I’m going to tell you a story,” said Zedka. “A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.

“The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them.

“When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication.

“In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: ‘Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.’

“And that was what they did: The king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country?

“The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.”

Veronika laughed.

“You don’t seem crazy at all,” she said.

“But I am, although I’m undergoing treatment since my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. While I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being crazy, living my life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?”

“People who have all drunk from the same well.”

“Exactly,” said Zedka. “They think they’re normal, because they all do the same thing. Well, I’m going to pretend that I have drunk from the same well as them.”

“I already did that, and that’s precisely my problem. I’ve never been depressed, never felt great joy or sadness, at least none that lasted. I have the same problems as everyone else.”

For a while Zedka said nothing; then: “They told us you’re going to die.”

Veronika hesitated for a moment. Could she trust this woman? She needed to take the risk.

“Yes, within about five or six days. I keep wondering if there’s a way of dying sooner. If you, or someone else, could get me some more pills, I’m sure my heart wouldn’t survive this time. You must understand how awful it is to have to wait for death; you must help me.”

Before Zedka could reply, the nurse appeared with an injection.

“I can give you the injection myself,” she said, “or, depending on how you feel about it, I can ask the guards outside to help me.”

“Don’t waste your energy,” said Zedka to Veronika. “Save your strength, if you want to get what you asked me for.”

Veronika got up, went back to her bed, and allowed the nurse to do her work.

It was her first normal day in the mental hospital. She left the ward, had some breakfast in the large refectory where men and women were eating together. She noticed how different it was from the way these places were usually depicted in films—hysterical scenes, shouting, people making demented gestures—everything seemed wrapped in an aura of oppressive silence; it seemed that no one wanted to share their inner world with strangers.

After breakfast (which wasn’t bad at all; no one could blame Villete’s terrible reputation on the meals) they all went out to take the sun. In fact there wasn’t any sun—the temperature was below zero, and the garden was covered with snow.

“I’m not here to preserve my life, but to lose it,” said Veronika to one of the nurses.

“You must still go out and take the sun.”

“You’re the ones who are crazy; there isn’t any sun.”

“But there is light, and that helps to calm the patients. Unfortunately our winter lasts a long time; if it didn’t, we’d have a lot less work.”

It was useless arguing; she went out and walked a little, looking around her and surreptitiously seeking some way of escaping. The wall was high, as required by the builders of the old type of barracks, but the watchtowers for the sentries were empty The garden was surrounded by military-looking buildings, which now housed the male and female wards, the administrative offices, and the employees’ rooms. After a first, rapid inspection, she noticed that the only place that was really guarded was the main gate, where everyone who entered and left had their papers checked by two guards.