Veronika Decides to Die (On the Seventh Day 2)

Since the decision could be put off no longer, the ambassador made one last attempt and called his son in for a man-to-man talk.

"Eduard, you are now of an age to take responsibility for your own life. We've put up with this for as long as we could, but now you've got to forget all this nonsense about becoming a painter and give some direction to your career."

"But Dad, being a painter is giving a direction to my career."

"What about our love for you, all our efforts to give you a good education. You never used to be like this, and I can only assume that what's happening is some consequence of the accident."

"Look, I love you both more than anything or anyone else in the world."

The ambassador cleared his throat. He wasn't used to such outspoken expressions of affection.

"Then, in the name of the love you have for us, please, do as your mother wants. Just stop all this painting business for a while, get some friends who belong to the same social class as you and go back to your studies."

"You love me, Dad. You can't ask me to do that, because you've always set me a good example, fighting for the things you cared about. You can't want me to be a man with no will of my own."

"I said, 'In the name of love.' And I have never said that before, but I'm asking you now. For the love that you bear us, for the love we bear you, come home, and I don't just mean in the physical sense, but really. You're deceiving yourself, running away from reality.

"Ever since you were born, we've built up such dreams of how our lives would be. You're everything to us, our future and our past. Your grandfathers were civil servants, and I had to fight like a lion to enter the diplomatic service and make my way up the ladder. And I did all this just to create a space for you, to make things easier for you. I've still got the pen with which I signed my first document as an ambassador, and I lovingly saved it to pass on to you the day you did the same.

"Don't let us down, son. We won't live forever and we want to die in peace, knowing that we've set you on the right path in life.

"If you really love us, do as I ask. If you don't love us, then carry on as you are now."

Eduard sat for long hours staring up at the sky in Brasilia, watching the clouds moving across the blue--beautiful clouds, but without a drop of rain in them to moisten the dry earth of the central Brazilian plateau. He was as empty as they were.

If he continued as he was, his mother would fade away with grief, his father would lose all enthusiasm for his career, and both would blame each other for failing in the upbringing of their beloved son. If he gave up his painting, the visions of paradise would never see the light of day, and nothing else in this world could ever give him the same feelings of joy and pleasure.

He looked around him, he saw his paintings, he remembered the love and meaning he had put into each brushstroke, and he found every one of his paintings mediocre. He was a fraud, he wanted something for which he had not been chosen, the price of which was his parents' disappointment.

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.'"

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

"I've only known you a week, so it would be far too early for me to tell you that I love you, but since

I probably won't live through the night, it would also be too late. But then, the great craziness of men and women is precisely that: love.