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Veronika decides to die :: Coelho Paulo
Страница: 11 из 115Half shy, half extrovert, he had the desire to be an “artist,” something that everyone in the family considered a perfect recipe for ending up a social outcast and dying in poverty
When Paulo Coelho thought about it—and, it must be said, he rarely did—he considered the real madman to have been the doctor who had agreed to commit him for the flimsiest of reasons (as in any family, the tendency is always to place the blame on others, and to state adamantly that the patients didn’t know what they were doing when they made that drastic decision).
Paulo laughed when he learned of the strange letter to the newspapers chat Veronika had left behind, complaining that an important French magazine didn’t even know where Slovenia was.
“No one would kill themselves over something like that.”
“That’s why the letter had no effect,” said his friend Veronika, embarrassed. “Yesterday, when I checked in at the hotel, the receptionist thought Slovenia was a town in Germany.”
He knew the feeling, for many foreigners believed the Argentine city of Buenos Aires to be the capital of Brazil.
But apart from having foreigners blithely compliment him on the beauty of his country’s capital city (which was to be found in the neighboring country of Argentina), Paulo Coelho shared with Veronika the fact just mentioned but which is worth restating: He too had been committed to a mental hospital and, as his first wife had once remarked, “should never have been let out.”
But he was let out. And when he left the sanatorium for the last time, determined never to go back, he had made two promises: ( a ) that he would one day write about the subject, and ( b ) that he would wait until both his parents were dead before touching publicly on the issue, because he didn’t want to hurt them, since both had spent many years of their lives blaming themselves for what they had done.
His mother had died in 1993, but his father, who had turned eighty-four in 1997, was still alive and in full possession of his mental faculties and his health, despite having emphysema (even though he’d never smoked) and despite living entirely off frozen food because he couldn’t get a housekeeper who would put up with his eccentricities.
So, when Paulo Coelho heard Veronika’s story, he discovered a way of talking about the issue without breaking his promises. Even though he had never considered suicide, he had an intimate knowledge of the world of the mental hospital—the treatments, the relationships between doctors and patients, the comforts and anxieties of living in a place like that.
So let us allow Paulo Coelho and his friend Veronika to leave this book for good, and let us get on with the story.
Veronika didn’t know how long she had slept. She remembered waking up at one point—still with the life-preserving tubes in her mouth and nose—and hearing a voice say:
“Do you want me to masturbate you?”
But now, looking round the room with her eyes wide open, she didn’t know if that had been real or a hallucination.
When Paulo Coelho thought about it—and, it must be said, he rarely did—he considered the real madman to have been the doctor who had agreed to commit him for the flimsiest of reasons (as in any family, the tendency is always to place the blame on others, and to state adamantly that the patients didn’t know what they were doing when they made that drastic decision).
Paulo laughed when he learned of the strange letter to the newspapers chat Veronika had left behind, complaining that an important French magazine didn’t even know where Slovenia was.
“No one would kill themselves over something like that.”
“That’s why the letter had no effect,” said his friend Veronika, embarrassed. “Yesterday, when I checked in at the hotel, the receptionist thought Slovenia was a town in Germany.”
He knew the feeling, for many foreigners believed the Argentine city of Buenos Aires to be the capital of Brazil.
But apart from having foreigners blithely compliment him on the beauty of his country’s capital city (which was to be found in the neighboring country of Argentina), Paulo Coelho shared with Veronika the fact just mentioned but which is worth restating: He too had been committed to a mental hospital and, as his first wife had once remarked, “should never have been let out.”
But he was let out. And when he left the sanatorium for the last time, determined never to go back, he had made two promises: ( a ) that he would one day write about the subject, and ( b ) that he would wait until both his parents were dead before touching publicly on the issue, because he didn’t want to hurt them, since both had spent many years of their lives blaming themselves for what they had done.
His mother had died in 1993, but his father, who had turned eighty-four in 1997, was still alive and in full possession of his mental faculties and his health, despite having emphysema (even though he’d never smoked) and despite living entirely off frozen food because he couldn’t get a housekeeper who would put up with his eccentricities.
So, when Paulo Coelho heard Veronika’s story, he discovered a way of talking about the issue without breaking his promises. Even though he had never considered suicide, he had an intimate knowledge of the world of the mental hospital—the treatments, the relationships between doctors and patients, the comforts and anxieties of living in a place like that.
So let us allow Paulo Coelho and his friend Veronika to leave this book for good, and let us get on with the story.
Veronika didn’t know how long she had slept. She remembered waking up at one point—still with the life-preserving tubes in her mouth and nose—and hearing a voice say:
“Do you want me to masturbate you?”
But now, looking round the room with her eyes wide open, she didn’t know if that had been real or a hallucination.