Veronika Decides to Die (On the Seventh Day 2)

"Other things, however, become fixed because more and more people believe that's the way they should be. I'll give you two examples. Have you ever wondered why the keys on a typewriter are arranged in that particular order?"

"No, I haven't."

"We call it the QWERTY keyboard, because that's the order of the letters on the first row of keys. I once wondered why it was like that, and I found the answer: The first machine was invented by Christopher Sholes, in 1873, to improve on calligraphy, but there was a problem: If a person typed very fast, the keys got stuck together and stopped the machine from working. Then Sholes designed the QWERTY keyboard, a keyboard that would oblige typists to type more slowly."

"I don't believe it."

"But it's true. It so happened that Remington--which made sewing machines as well as guns at the time--used the QWERTY keyboard for its first typewriters. That meant that more people were forced to learn that particular system, and more companies started to make those keyboards, until it became the only available model. To repeat: The keyboard on typewriters and computers was designed so that people would type more slowly, not more quickly, do you understand? If you changed the letters around, you wouldn't find anyone to buy your product."

When she saw a keyboard for the first time, Mari had wondered why the letters weren't in alphabetical order, but she had then promptly forgotten about it. She assumed it was simply the best layout for people to type quickly.

"Have you ever been to Florence?" asked Dr. Igor.

"No."

"You should go there; it's not far, for that is where you will find my second example. In the cathedral in Florence, there's a beautiful clock designed by Paolo Uccello in 1443. Now, the curious thing about this clock is that, although it keeps time like all other clocks, its hands go in the opposite direction to that of normal clocks."

"What's that got to do with my illness?"

"I'm just coming to that. When he made this clock, Paolo Uccello was not trying to be original: The fact is that, at the time, there were clocks like his as well as others with hands that went in the direction we're familiar with now. For some unknown reason, perhaps because the duke had a clock with hands that went in the direction we now think of as the "right" direction, that became the only direction, and Uccello's clock then seemed an aberration, a madness."

Dr. Igor paused, but he knew that Mari was following his reasoning.

"So, let's turn to your illness: Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone in your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not in the other?"

"No."

"If someone were to ask, the response they'd get would probably be: 'You're crazy.' If they persisted, people would try to come up with a reason, but they'd soon change the subject, because there isn't a reason apart from the one I've just given you. So to go back to your question. What was it again?"

"Am I cured?"

"No. You're someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness."

"Is wanting to be different a serious illness?"

"It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it's insane to be different, and that's why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?"

Mari nodded.

"People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known."

"What's Vitriol?"

Dr. Igor realized he had gone too far and decided to change the subject.

"That doesn't matter. What I mean is this: Everything indicates that you are not cured."

Mari had years of experience in law courts, and she decided to put them into practice right there and then. Her first tactic was to pretend to be in agreement with her adversary, only to draw him immediately into another line of argument.

"I agree. My reason for coming here was very concrete: I was getting panic attacks. My reason for staying was very abstract: I couldn't face the idea of a different way of life, with no job and no husband. I agree with you that I had lost the will to start a new life, a life I would have to get used to all over again. Further, I agree that in a mental hospital, even with its electric shocks--sorry, ECT, as you prefer to call it--rigid timetables, and occasional hysterical outbursts on the part of some inmates, the rules are easier to accept than the rules of a world that, as you say, does everything it can to conform.

"Then last night, I heard a woman playing the piano. She played superbly, in a way I've rarely heard before. As I was listening to the music, I thought of all those who had suffered in order to compose those sonatas, preludes, adagios: How foolish they must have been made to feel when they played their pieces--which were, after all, different--to those who held sway in the world of music then. I thought about the difficulties and humiliations involved in getting someone to fund an orchestra. I thought of the booing public who was not yet used to such harmonies.

"Worse than the composers' suffering, though, was the fact that the girl was playing the music with such soul because she knew she was going to die. And am I not going to die? Where is my soul that I might play the music of my own life with such enthusiasm?"

Dr. Igor was listening in silence. It seemed that all his ideas were beginning to bear fruit, but it was still too early to be sure.

"Where is my soul?" Mari asked again. "In my past. In what I wanted my life to be. I left my soul captive in that moment when I still had a house, a husband, a job I wanted to leave but never had the courage to.