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Veronika decides to die :: Coelho Paulo
Страница: 9 из 115Then she kicked up a fuss, lost a few pounds, smashed some glasses and—for weeks on end—kept the rest of the whole neighborhood awake with her shouting. Absurd though it may seem, I think that was the happiest time of her life. She was fighting for something; she felt alive and capable of responding to the challenges facing her.”
What’s all that got to do with me? thought Veronika, unable to say anything. I’m not your aunt and I haven’t got a husband.
“In the end, her husband got rid of his lover,” said the woman, “and gradually, my aunt returned to her former passivity. One day she phoned to say that she wanted to change her life: She’d given up smoking. That same week, after increasing the number of tranquilizers she was taking because she’d stopped smoking, she told everyone that she wanted to kill herself.
“No one believed her. Then, one morning she left a message on my machine, saying good-bye, and she gassed herself. I listened to that message several times: I had never heard her sound so calm, so resigned to her fate. She said she was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn’t go on.”
Veronika felt sorry for the woman telling the story, for she seemed to be doing so in an attempt to understand her aunt’s death. In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those people who decide to die?
No one can judge. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering or the total absence of meaning in their lives. Veronika wanted to explain that, but instead she choked on the tube in her mouth, and the woman hurried to her aid.
She saw the woman bending over her bound body, which was full of tubes and protected against her will. She openly expressed desire to destroy it. She moved her head from side to side, pleading with her eyes for them to remove the tubes and let her die in peace.
“You’re upset,” said the woman. “I don’t know if you’re sorry about what you did or if you still want to die; that doesn’t interest me. What interests me is doing my job. If the patient gets agitated, the regulations say I must give them a sedative.”
Veronika stopped struggling, but the nurse was already injecting something into her arm. Soon afterward, she was back in a strange dreamless world, where the only thing she could remember was the face of the woman she had just seen: green eyes, brown hair, and a very distant air, the air of someone doing things because she has to do them, never questioning why the rules say this or that.
What’s all that got to do with me? thought Veronika, unable to say anything. I’m not your aunt and I haven’t got a husband.
“In the end, her husband got rid of his lover,” said the woman, “and gradually, my aunt returned to her former passivity. One day she phoned to say that she wanted to change her life: She’d given up smoking. That same week, after increasing the number of tranquilizers she was taking because she’d stopped smoking, she told everyone that she wanted to kill herself.
“No one believed her. Then, one morning she left a message on my machine, saying good-bye, and she gassed herself. I listened to that message several times: I had never heard her sound so calm, so resigned to her fate. She said she was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn’t go on.”
Veronika felt sorry for the woman telling the story, for she seemed to be doing so in an attempt to understand her aunt’s death. In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those people who decide to die?
No one can judge. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering or the total absence of meaning in their lives. Veronika wanted to explain that, but instead she choked on the tube in her mouth, and the woman hurried to her aid.
She saw the woman bending over her bound body, which was full of tubes and protected against her will. She openly expressed desire to destroy it. She moved her head from side to side, pleading with her eyes for them to remove the tubes and let her die in peace.
“You’re upset,” said the woman. “I don’t know if you’re sorry about what you did or if you still want to die; that doesn’t interest me. What interests me is doing my job. If the patient gets agitated, the regulations say I must give them a sedative.”
Veronika stopped struggling, but the nurse was already injecting something into her arm. Soon afterward, she was back in a strange dreamless world, where the only thing she could remember was the face of the woman she had just seen: green eyes, brown hair, and a very distant air, the air of someone doing things because she has to do them, never questioning why the rules say this or that.