But this poison, which was now very expensive and difficult to obtain, had been replaced by more reliable methods of extermination—revolvers, bacteria, and so on. Dr. Igor, a natural romantic, had rescued this name from obscurity and given it to the disease of the soul he had managed to diagnose, and whose discovery would soon astonish the world.
It was odd that no one had ever described Vitriol as a mortal poison, although most of the people affected could identify its taste, and they referred to the process of poisoning as bitterness. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone had some bitterness in their organism, just as we are all carriers of the tuberculosis bacillus. But these two illnesses only attack when the patient is debilitated; in the case of bitterness, the right conditions for the disease occur when the person becomes afraid of so-called reality.
Certain people, in their eagerness to construct a world no external threat can penetrate, build exaggeratedly high defenses against the outside world, against new people, new places, different experiences, and leave their inner world stripped bare. It is there that bitterness begins its irrevocable work.
The will was the main target of bitterness (or Vitriol, as Dr. Igor preferred to call it). The people attacked by this malaise began to lose all desire, and, within a few years, they became unable to leave their world, where they had spent enormous reserves of energy constructing high walls in order to make reality what they wanted it to be.
In order to avoid external attack, they had also deliberately limited internal growth. They continued going to work, watching television, having children, complaining about the traffic, but these things happened automatically, unaccompanied by any particular emotion, because, after all, everything was under control.
The great problem with poisoning by bitterness was that the passions—hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity—also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while the embittered person felt no desire at all. He or she lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem.
That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say. The madman committed suicide, the hero offered himself up to martyrdom in the name of a cause, but both would die, and the embittered would spend many nights and days remarking on the absurdity and the glory of both. It was the only moment when the embittered person had the energy to clamber up his defensive walls and peer over at the world outside, but then his hands and feet would grow tired, and he would return to daily life.
The chronically embittered person only noticed his illness once a week, on Sunday afternoons. Then, with no work or routine to relieve the symptoms, he would feel that something was very wrong, since he found the peace of those endless afternoons infernal and felt only a keen sense of constant irritation.
Monday would arrive, however, and the embittered man would immediately forget his symptoms, although he would curse the fact that he never had time to rest and would complain that the weekends always passed far too quickly.
From the social point of view, the only advantage of the disease was that it had become the norm, and internment was no longer necessary except in cases where the poisoning was so severe that the patient’s behavior began to affect others. Most embittered people, though, could continue to live outside, constituting no threat to society or to others, since, because of the high walls with which they had surrounded themselves, totally isolated them from the world, even though they appeared to participate in it.
Dr. Sigmund Freud had discovered the libido and a cure for the problems it caused, in the form of psychoanalysis. Apart from discovering the existence of Vitriol, Dr. Igor needed to prove that a cure for it was also possible. He wanted to leave his mark on the history of medicine, although he had no illusions about the difficulties he would face when it came to publishing his ideas, for “normal” people were content with their lives and would never admit to the existence of such an illness, while the “sick” fed a gigantic industry of mental hospitals, laboratories, conferences, and so on.
I know the world will not recognize my efforts, he said to himself, proud of being misunderstood. After all, that was the price every genius had to pay.
“Is anything wrong, doctor?” asked the girl. “You seem to have drifted off into the world of your patients.”
Dr. Igor ignored the disrespectful comment.
“You can go now,” he said.
Veronika didn’t know if it was day or night. Dr. Igor had the light on, but then he did every morning. It was only when she reached the corridor and saw the moon that she realized she had slept far longer than she had thought.
On the way to the ward, she noticed a framed photograph on the wall: It was of the main square in Ljubljana, before the statue of the poet Prešeren had been put up; it showed couples strolling, probably on a Sunday.
She looked at the date on the photograph: the summer of 1910.
The summer of 1910. There were all those people, whose children and grandchildren had already died, frozen in one particular moment of their fives. The women wore voluminous dresses, and the men were all wearing a hat, jacket, gaiters, tie (or “that colored piece of cloth,” as the insane call it), and carrying an umbrella under one arm.
And how hot would it have been then? The temperature must have been what it would be today in summer, ninety-five degrees in the shade. If an Englishman turned up in clothing more suited to the heat—in Bermuda shorts and shirtsleeves—what would those people have thought?
“He must be crazy.”
She had understood perfectly what Dr. Igor meant, just as she understood that, although she had always felt loved and protected, there had been one missing element that would have transformed that love into a blessing: She should have allowed herself to be a little crazier.
Her parents would still have loved her, but, afraid of hurting them, she had not dared to pay the price of her dream. That dream was now buried in the depths of her memory, although sometimes it was awoken by a concert or by a beautiful record she happened to hear. Whenever that happened, though, the feeling of frustration was so intense that she immediately sent it back to sleep again.
Veronika had known since childhood that her true vocation was to be a pianist.
This was something she had felt ever since her first lesson, at twelve. Her teacher had recognized her talent too and had encouraged her to become a professional. But, whenever she had felt pleased about a competition she had just won and said to her mother that she intended to give up everything and dedicate herself to the piano, her mother would look at her fondly and say: “No one makes a living playing the piano, my love.”
“But you were the one who wanted me to have lessons.”
“To develop your artistic gifts, that’s all. A husband likes that kind of thing in a wife; he can show you off at parties. Forget about being a pianist, and go and study law, that’s the profession of the future.”
Veronika did as her mother asked, sure that her mother had enough experience of life to understand reality. She finished her studies, went to university, got a good degree, but ended up working as a librarian.
“I should have been crazier.” But, as it undoubtedly happens with most people, she had found this out too late.
She was about to continue on her way when someone took her by the arm. The powerful sedative was still flowing in her veins; that’s why she didn’t react when Eduard, the schizophrenic, delicately began to lead her in a different direction—toward the living room.
The moon was still new, and Veronika had already sat down at the piano—in response to Eduard’s silent request—when she heard a voice coming from the refectory, someone speaking with a foreign accent.
Veronika could not remember having heard it in Villete before.
“I don’t want to play the piano just now, Eduard. I want to know what’s going on in the world, what they’re talking about over there, who that man is.”
Eduard smiled, perhaps not understanding a word she was saying, but she remembered what Dr. Igor had said: Schizophrenics could move in and out of their separate realities.
“I’m going to die,” she went on, hoping that her words were making sense to him. “Today death brushed my face with its wing and will probably be knocking at my door if not tomorrow, then soon afterward. It’s not a good idea for you to get used to listening to the piano every night.
“No one should let themselves get used to anything, Eduard. Look at me; I was beginning to enjoy the sun again, the mountains, even life’s problems. I was beginning to accept that the meaninglessness of life was no one’s fault but mine. I wanted to see the main square in Ljubljana again, to feel hatred and love, despair and tedium—all those simple, foolish things that make up everyday life, but that give pleasure to your existence. If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy. Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don’t know they’re crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.
“But none of that’s possible, do you see? In the same way, you can’t spend the whole day waiting for night to come. Or for one of the patients to play the piano, because soon that will end. My world and yours are about to come to an end.”
She got up, tenderly touched the boy’s face, and then went to the refectory.
When she opened the door, she came upon an unusual scene; the tables and chairs had been pushed back against the walls, forming a large central space. There, sitting on the floor, were the members of the Fraternity, listening to a man in a suit and tie.
“…then they invited Nasrudin, the great master of the Sufi tradition, to give a lecture,” he was saying.
When the door opened, everyone in the room looked at Veronika. The man in the suit turned to her.
“Sit down.”
She sat down on the floor next to Mari, the white-haired woman who had been so aggressive on their first encounter. To Veronika’s surprise, Mari gave her a welcoming smile.
The man in the suit went on: “Nasrudin arranged to give a lecture at two o’clock in the afternoon, and it looked set to be a great success: The thousand seats were completely sold out and more than seven hundred people were left outside, watching the lecture on closed-circuit television.
“At two o’clock precisely an assistant of Nasrudin’s came in, saying that, for unavoidable reasons, the lecture would begin late. Some got up indignantly asked for their money back, and left. Even so a lot of people remained both inside and outside the lecture hall.
“By four in the afternoon, the Sufi master had still not appeared, and people gradually began to leave the place, picking up their money at the box office. The working day was coming to an end; it was time to go home. By six o’clock, the original seventeen hundred spectators had dwindled to less than a hundred.
“At that moment Nasrudin came in. He appeared to be extremely drunk and began to flirt with a beautiful young woman sitting in the front row.
“Astonished, the people who had remained began to feel indignant. How could the man behave like that after making them wait four solid hours? There were some disapproving murmurs, but the Sufi master ignored them. He went on, in a loud voice, to say how sexy the young woman was, and invited her to go with him to France.”
Some teacher! thought Veronika. Just as well I’ve never believed in such things.