Veronika decides to die :: Coelho Paulo
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Visions of paradise were for the chosen few, who appeared in books as heroes and martyrs to the faith in which they believed—people who knew from childhood what the world wanted of them; the so-called facts in that first book he had read were the inventions of a storyteller.
At suppertime, he told his parents that they were right; it was just a youthful dream; his enthusiasm for painting had passed. His parents were pleased, his mother wept with joy and embraced her son, and everything went back to normal.
That night the ambassador secretly commemorated his victory by opening a bottle of champagne, which he drank alone. When he went to bed, his wife—for the first time in many months—was already sleeping peacefully.
The following day they found Eduard’s room in confusion, the paintings slashed, and the boy sitting in a corner, gazing up at the sky. His mother embraced him, told him how much she loved him, but Eduard didn’t respond.
He wanted nothing more to do with love; he was fed up with the whole business. He had thought that he could just give up and follow his father’s advice, but he had advanced too far in his work; he had crossed the abyss that separates a man from his dream, and now there was no going back.
He couldn’t go forward or back. It was easier just to leave the stage.
Eduard stayed in Brazil for another five months, being treated by specialists, who diagnosed a rare form of schizophrenia, possibly the result of a bicycle accident. Then war broke out in Yugoslavia, and the ambassador was hastily recalled. It was too problematic for the family to look after Eduard, and the only way out was to leave him in the newly opened hospital of Villete.
By the time Eduard had finished telling his story, it was dark and they were both shivering with cold.
“Let’s go in,” he said. “They’ll be serving supper.”
“Whenever we went to see my grandmother when I was a child, I was always fascinated by one particular painting in her house. It showed a woman—Our Lady, as Catholics call her—standing poised above the world, with her hands outstretched to the earth and with rays of light streaming from her fingertips.
What most intrigued me about the painting was that this lady was standing on a live snake. I said to my grandmother: ‘Isn’t she afraid of the snake? Won’t it bite her on the foot and kill her with its poison?’”
My grandmother said: “According to the Bible, the snake brought good and evil to the earth, and she is keeping both good and evil in check with her love.
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