Marriage101: Veronica decides to die
One day, I’ll get tired of hearing her constantly repeating the same
things, and to please her I’ll marry a man whom I oblige myself to love. He and
I will end up finding a way of dreaming of a future together: a house in the
country, children, our children’s future. We’ll make love often in the first
year, less in the second, and after the third year, people perhaps think about
sex only once a fortnight and transform that thought into action only once a
month. Even worse, we’ll barely talk. I’ll force myself to accept the
situation, and I’ll wonder what’s wrong with me, because he no longer takes any
interest in me, ignores me, and does nothing but talk about his friends, as if
they were his real world.
When the marriage is just about to fall apart, I’ll
get pregnant. We’ll have a child, feel closer to each other for a while, and
then the situation will go back to what it was before.
I’ll begin to put on weight like the
aunt that nurse was talking about yesterday - or was it days ago, I don’t
really know. And I’ll start to go on diets, systematically defeated each day,
each week, by the weight that keeps creeping up regardless of the controls I
put on it. At that point, I’ll take those magic pills that stop you feeling
depressed, then I’ll have a few more children, conceived during nights of love
that pass all too quickly. I’ll tell everyone that the children are my reason
for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living.
People will always consider us a
happy couple, and no one will know how much solitude, bitterness and
resignation lies beneath the surface happiness.
Until one day, when my husband takes a
lover for the first time, and I will perhaps kick up a fuss like the nurse’s
aunt, or think again of killing myself. By then, though, I’ll be too old and
cowardly, with two or three children who need my help, and I’ll have to bring
them up and help them find a place in the world before I can just
abandon everything. I won’t commit suicide: I’ll make a scene, I’ll threaten to
leave and take the children with me. Like all men, my husband will back down,
he’ll tell me he loves me and that it won’t happen again. It won’t even occur
to him that, if I really did decide to leave, my only option would be to go
back to my parents’ house and stay there for the rest of my life, forced to
listen to my mother going on and on all day about how I lost my one opportunity
for being happy, that he was a wonderful husband despite his peccadillos, that
my children will be traumatised by the separation.
Two or three years later, another
woman will appear in his life. I’ll find out - because I saw them, or because
someone told me - but this time I’ll pretend I don’t know. I used up all my
energy fighting against that other lover, I’ve no energy left, it’s best to
accept life as it really is, and not as I imagined it to be. My mother was
right.
He will continue being a considerate
husband, I will continue working at the library, eating my sandwiches in the
square opposite the theatre, reading books I never quite manage to finish,
watching television programmes that are the same as they were ten, twenty,
fifty years ago.
Except that I’ll eat my sandwiches
with a sense of guilt, because I’m getting fatter; and I won’t go to bars any
more, because I have a husband expecting me to come home and look after the
children.
After that, it’s a matter of waiting
for the children to grow up and of spending all day thinking about
suicide, without the courage to do anything about it. One fine day, I’ll reach
the conclusion that that’s what life is like, there’s no point worrying about
it, nothing will change. And I’ll accept it.
Banyak orang bilang Coelho’s best work adalah Alchemist, aku dah baca 6 bukunya dia, dan Veronica decides to die, I think, is by far his best work. Tulisan diatas adalah cuplikan dari buku tersebut (hal. 19 - paperback) and it’s one of the reasons I love Coelho. He tells story better than anyone, not even my grandmother can come close.
