Veronika Decides to Die: A Novel of Redemption Read online

  She might have impressed a lot of people with her strength and determination, but where had it left her? In the void. Utterly alone. In Villete. In the anteroom of death.

  Veronika's remorse over her attempted suicide resurfaced, and she firmly pushed it away again. Now she was feeling something she had never allowed herself to feel: hatred.

  Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.

  She had begun by slapping an old man in the face, she had burst into tears in front of a nurse; she had refused to be nice and to talk to the others when what she really wanted was to be alone; and now she was free enough to feel hatred, although intelligent enough not to smash everything around her and risk spending what remained of her life under sedation and in a bed in a ward.

  At that moment she hated everything: herself, the world, the chair in front of her, the broken radiator in one of the corridors, people who were perfect, criminals. She was in a mental hospital, and so, she could allow herself to feel things that people usually hide. We are all brought up only to love, to accept, to look for ways around things, to avoid conflict. Veronika hated everything, but mainly she hated the way she had lived her life, never bothering to discover the hundreds of other Veronikas who lived inside her and who were interesting, crazy, curious, brave, bold.

  Then she started to feel hatred for the person she loved most in the world: her mother. A wonderful wife who worked all day and washed the dishes at night, sacrificing her own life so that her daughter would have a good education, know how to play the piano and the violin, dress like a princess, have the latest sneakers and jeans, while she mended the same old dress she had worn for years.

  How can I hate someone who only ever gave me love? thought Veronika, confused, trying to check her feelings. But it was too late; her hatred had been unleashed; she had opened the door to her personal hell. She hated the love she had been given because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal, against the laws of nature.

  That love asking for nothing in return had managed to fill her with guilt, with a desire to fulfill another's expectations, even if that meant giving up everything she had dreamed of for herself. It was a love that for years had tried to hide from her the difficulties and the corruption that existed in the world, ignoring the fact that one day she would have to find this out, and would then be defenseless against them.

  And her father? She hated her father too, because, unlike her mother, who worked all the time, he knew how to live; he took her to bars and to the theater, they had fun together; and when he was still young, she had loved him secretly, not the way one loves a father, but as a man. She hated him because he had always been so charming and so open with everyone except her mother, the only person who really deserved such treatment.

  She hated everything. The library with its pile of books full of explanations about life; the school that had forced her to spend whole evenings learning algebra, even though she didn't know a single person, apart from teachers and mathematicians, who needed algebra in order to be happy. Why did they make them learn so much algebra or geometry or any of that mountain of other useless things?

  Veronika pushed open the door to the living room, went over to the piano, opened the lid, and, summoning up all her strength, pounded on the keys. A mad, cacophonous, jangled chord echoed around the empty room, bounced off the walls, and returned to her in the guise of a shrill sound that seemed to tear at her soul. Yet it was an accurate portrait of her soul at that moment.

  She pounded on the keys again, and again the dissonant notes reverberated around her.

  "I'm crazy. I'm allowed to do this. I can hate, I can pound away at the piano. Since when have mental patients known how to play notes in the right order?"

  She pounded the piano again, once, twice, ten, twenty times, and each time she did it, her hatred seemed to diminish, until it vanished completely.

  Then, once more, a deep peace flooded through her and Veronika again looked out at the starry sky and at the new moon, her favorite, filling the room she was in with gentle light. The impression returned of Infinity and Eternity walking hand in hand; you only had to look for one of them--for example, the limitless universe--to feel the presence of the other, Time that never ends, that never passes, that remains in the Present, where all of life's secrets lie. As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had no more rancor left in her heart. She had finally allowed her negative feelings to surface, feelings that had been repressed for years in her soul. She had actually felt them, and they were no longer necessary, they could leave.

  She sat on in silence, enjoying the present moment, letting love fill up the empty space left behind by hatred. When she felt the moment had come, she turned to the moon and played a sonata in homage to it, knowing that the moon was listening and would feel proud, and that this would provoke the jealousy of the stars. Then she played music for the stars, for the garden, for the mountains she could not see in the darkness but which she knew were there.

  While she was playing that music for the garden, another crazy person appeared: Eduard, a schizophrenic who was beyond all cure. She was not frightened by his presence; on the contrary, she smiled, and to her surprise, he smiled back.

  The music could penetrate even his remote world, more distant than the moon itself; it could even perform miracles.

  "I must buy a new key ring," thought Dr. Igor, as he opened the door to his small consulting room in Villete. The old one was falling to pieces, and a small decorative metal shield had just fallen to the floor.

  DR. IGOR bent down and picked it up. What should he do with that shield bearing the Ljubljana coat of arms? He might as well throw it away, although he could have it mended and ask them to make a new leather strap, or else he could give it to his nephew to play with. Both alternatives seemed equally absurd. A key ring doesn't cost very much, and his nephew had no interest in shields; he spent all his time watching television or playing with electronic toys imported from Italy. Dr. Igor could still not bring himself to throw it out, however, so he put it back in his pocket; he would decide what to do with it later on.

  That was why he was the director of the hospital and not a patient, because he thought a lot before making any decisions.

  He turned on the light; as winter advanced, dawn came ever later. Dislocation, divorce, and the absence of light were the main reasons for the increase in the number of cases of depression. Dr. Igor was hoping that spring would arrive early and solve half his problems.

  He looked at his diary for the day. He needed to find some way to prevent Eduard from dying of hunger; his schizophrenia made him unpredictable, and now he had stopped eating. Dr. Igor had already prescribed intravenous feeding, but he couldn't keep that up for ever. Eduard was a strong young man of twenty-eight, but even with an IV drip, he would eventually waste away, becoming more and more skeletal.

  What would Eduard's father think? He was one of the young Slovene republic's best-known ambassadors. He had been one of the people behind the delicate negotiations with Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. He, after all, had managed to work for years for the Belgrade government, surviving his detractors, who accused him of working for the enemy, and he was still in the diplomatic corps, except this time he represented a different country. He was a powerful and influential man, feared by everyone.

  Dr. Igor felt momentarily worried, just as before he had been worried about the shield on his key ring, but he immediately dismissed the thought. As far as the ambassador was concerned, it didn't matter whether his son looked well or not; he had no intention of taking him to official functions or having Eduard accompany him to the various place
s in the world where he was sent as a government representative. Eduard was in Villete, and there he would stay forever, or at least as long as his father continued earning his nice fat salary.

  Dr. Igor decided to stop the intravenous feeding and allow Eduard to waste away a little more, until he felt like eating again. If the situation got worse, he would write a report and pass responsibility on to the council of doctors who administered Villete. "The best way to avoid trouble is to share responsibility," his father had taught him. He had been a doctor too, and although he had had various deaths on his hands, he had never had any problem with the authorities.

  Once Dr. Igor had ordered Eduard's treatment to stop, he moved on to the next case. According to the report Zedka Mendel had completed her course of treatment and could be allowed to leave. Dr. Igor wanted to see for himself. There was nothing a doctor dreaded more than getting complaints from the families of patients who had been in Villete, which was what nearly always happened, for it was rare for a patient to readjust successfully to normal life after a period spent in a mental hospital.

  It wasn't the fault of the hospital, or of any of the hospitals scattered around the world; the problem of readjustment was exactly the same everywhere. Just as prison never corrects the prisoner--it only teaches him to commit more crimes--so hospitals merely got patients used to a completely unreal world, where everything was allowed and where no one had to take responsibility for their actions.

  There was only one way out: to discover a cure for insanity. And Dr. Igor has engaged his heart and soul in just that, developing a thesis that would revolutionize the psychiatric world. In mental hospitals, temporary patients who lived alongside incurable patients began a process of social degeneration that, once started, was impossible to stop. Zedka Mendel would come back to the hospital eventually, this time of her own volition, complaining of nonexistent ailments simply in order to be close to people who seemed to understand her better than those in the outside world.

  If, however, he could find a way of combatting vitriol, the poison which Dr. Igor believed to be the cause of insanity, his name would go down in history and people would finally know where Slovenia was. That week, he had been given a heaven-sent opportunity in the shape of a would-be suicide; he was not going to lose this opportunity for all the money in the world.

  Dr. Igor felt happy. Although he was obliged for economic reasons to accept treatments, like insulin shock for example, that had long ago been condemned by the medical profession, the same economic reasons lay behind Villete's instigation of a new psychiatric treatment. As well as having the time and the staff to carry out his researches into vitriol, he also had the owners' permission to allow the group calling itself the Fraternity to remain in the hospital. The shareholders in the institution tolerated--note that word well, not "encouraged," but "tolerated"--a longer period of internment than was strictly necessary. They argued that, for humanitarian reasons, they should give the recently cured the option of deciding for themselves when would be the best moment for them to rejoin the world, and that had led to a group of people deciding to stay in Villete, as if at a select hotel or a club for those with similar interests and views. Thus Dr. Igor managed to keep the insane and the sane in the same place, allowing the latter to have a positive influence on the former. To prevent things from degenerating and to stop the insane having a negative effect on those who had been cured, every member of the Fraternity had to leave the hospital at least once a day.

  Dr. Igor knew that the reasons given by the shareholders for allowing the presence of healthy people in the hospital--"humanitarian reasons" they said--were just an excuse. They were afraid that Ljubljana, Slovenia's small but charming capital, did not have a sufficient number of wealthy crazy people to sustain this expensive, modern building. Besides, the public health system ran a number of first-class mental hospitals of its own, and that left Villete at a disadvantage in the mental health market.

  When the shareholders had converted the old barracks into a hospital, their target market had been the men and women likely to be affected by the war with Yugoslavia. The war, however, had been brief. The shareholders had felt certain that war would return, but it didn't.

  Moreover, recent research had shown that while wars did have their psychological victims, they were far fewer than, say, the victims of stress, tedium, congenital illness, loneliness, and rejection. When a community had a major problem to face--for example, war, hyperinflation, or plague--there was a slight increase in the number of suicides but a marked decline in cases of depression, paranoia, and psychosis. These returned to their normal levels as soon as that problem had been overcome, indicating, or so Dr. Igor thought, that people only allow themselves the luxury of being insane when they are in a position to do so.

  He had before him another recent survey, this time from Canada, the country an American newspaper had recently voted to have the highest standard of living. Dr. Igor read:

  According to Statistics Canada, 40% of people between 15 and 34, 33% of people between 35 and 54 and 20% of people between 55 and 64 have already had some kind of mental illness. It is thought that one in every five individuals suffers some form of psychiatric disorder and one in every eight Canadians will be hospitalised at least once in their lifetime because of mental disturbances.

  They've got a bigger market there than we have, he thought. The happier people can be, the unhappier they are.

  Dr. Igor analyzed a few more cases, thinking carefully about those he should share with the council and those he should resolve alone. By the time he had finished, day had broken, and he turned off the light.

  He immediately ordered his first appointment to be shown in: the mother of the patient who had tried to commit suicide.

  "I'm Veronika's mother. How is my daughter?"

  Dr. Igor wondered if he should tell her the truth and save her any unpleasant surprises--after all, he had a daughter with the same name--but he decided it was best to say nothing.

  "We don't know yet," he lied. "We need another week."

  "I've no idea why Veronika did it," said the woman tearfully. "We've always been loving parents, we sacrificed everything to give her the best possible upbringing. Although my husband and I have had our ups and downs, we've kept the family together, as an example of perseverance in adversity. She's got a good job, she's nice-looking, and yet..."

  "...and yet she tried to kill herself," said Dr. Igor. "There's no reason to be surprised; that's the way it is. People just can't cope with happiness. If you like, I could show you the statistics for Canada."

  "Canada?"

  The woman seemed startled. Dr. Igor saw that he had managed to distract her and went on.

  "Look, you haven't come here to find out how your daughter is, but to apologize for the fact that she tried to commit suicide. How old is she?"

  "Twenty-four."

  "So she's a mature, experienced woman who knows what she wants and is perfectly capable of making her own choices. What has that got to do with your marriage or with the sacrifices that you and your husband made? How long has she lived on her own?"

  "Six years."

  "You see? She's fundamentally independent. But, because of what a certain Austrian doctor--Dr. Sigmund Freud, I'm sure you've heard of him--wrote about unhealthy relationships between parents and children, people today still blame themselves for everything. Do you imagine that Indians believe that the son-turned-murderer is a victim of his parents' upbringing? Tell me."

  "I haven't the faintest idea," replied the woman, who couldn't get over her bewilderment at the doctor's behavior. Perhaps he was influenced by his patients.

  "Well, I'll tell you," said Dr. Igor. "The Indians believe the murderer to be guilty, not society, not his parents, not his ancestors. Do the Japanese commit suicide because a son of theirs decides to take drugs and go out and shoot people? The reply is the same: no! And, as we all know, the Japanese will commit suicide at the drop of a hat. The other day I read that a youn
g Japanese man killed himself because he had failed his university entrance exams."

  "Do you think I could talk to my daughter?" asked the woman, who was not interested in the Japanese, the Indians, or the Canadians.

  "Yes, yes, in a moment," said Dr. Igor, slightly annoyed by the interruption. "But first, I want you to understand one thing: apart from certain grave pathological cases, people only go insane when they try to escape from routine. Do you understand?"

  "I do," she replied. "And if you think that I won't be capable of looking after her, you can rest assured, I've never tried to change my life."

  "Good." Dr. Igor seemed relieved. "Can you imagine a world in which, for example, we were not obliged to repeat the same thing every day of our lives? If, for example, we all decided to eat only when we were hungry, what would housewives and restaurants do?"

  It would be more normal to eat only when we were hungry, thought the woman, but she said nothing, afraid that he might not let her speak to Veronika.

  "Well, it would cause tremendous confusion," she said at last. "I'm a housewife myself, and I know what I'm talking about."

  "So we have breakfast, lunch, and supper. We have to wake up at a certain hour every day and rest once a week. Christmas exists so that we can give each other presents, Easter so that we can spend a few days at the lake. How would you like it if your husband were gripped by a sudden, passionate impulse and decided he wanted to make love in the living room?"

  The woman thought: What is the man talking about? I came here to see my daughter.

  "I would find it very sad," she said, carefully, hoping she was giving the right answer.

  "Excellent," roared Dr. Igor. "The bedroom is the correct place for making love. To make love anywhere else would set a bad example and promote the spread of anarchy."

  "Can I see my daughter?" said the woman.

  Dr. Igor gave up. This peasant would never understand what he was talking about; she wasn't interested in discussing insanity from a philosophical point of view, even though she knew her daughter had made a serious suicide attempt and had been in a coma.