Paulo Coelho - Adultery

I stop. I’m seriously ill. It’s a real possibility. Maybe I should get out of here right now and find a doctor. I need to finish the task I’ve set out to do, but I will, even if the doctor then tells the police—he’ll protect me with patient confidentiality, but at the same time expose an injustice.

I arrive at the classroom door, reflecting on the “whys” I’ve listed along the way. I go in anyway, without hesitation.

I find a cheap desk with no drawers. Just a wooden tabletop on turned legs. Something for laying down a few books, a bag, and nothing more.

I should have guessed. I’m frustrated and relieved at the same time.

The halls, previously silent, begin to show signs of life; people are returning to class. I leave without looking back, walking in the direction from where they came. There is a door at the end of the hall. I open it and exit at the top of a small hill across from the hospital for the elderly with its massive walls and—I’m sure—the heating running smoothly. I walk over and, at the reception desk, I ask for someone who doesn’t exist. I am told the person must be somewhere else—Geneva must have more nursing homes per square meter than any other city. The nurse offers to look around for me. I say there’s no need, but she insists:

“It’s no trouble.”

To avoid further suspicion, I agree to let her search. While she sits busily at her computer, I pick a book off the counter and leaf through it.

“They’re children’s stories,” says the nurse, without taking her eyes off the screen. “The patients love them.”

It makes sense. I open to a page at random:

A mouse was always depressed because he was afraid of cats. A great wizard took pity on him and turned him into a cat. Then he started to be afraid of dogs, and so the wizard turned him into a dog. Then he began to fear tigers. The wizard, who was very patient, used his powers to turn him into a tiger. Then he was afraid of hunters. Finally, the wizard gave up and turned him back into a mouse, saying:

“Nothing I do will help you, because you never understood your growth. You are better being what you always were.”

The nurse is unable to find the imaginary patient. She apologizes. I thank her and prepare to leave, but apparently she is happy to have someone to talk to.

“Do you think plastic surgery helps?”

Plastic surgery? Ah, right. I remember the small pieces of adhesive tape under my sunglasses.

“Most patients here have had plastic surgery. If I were you, I would stay away. It creates an imbalance between the mind and body.” I didn’t ask her opinion, but she seems overcome with humanitarian duty and continues: “The aging process is more traumatic for those who think they can control the passage of time.”

I ask her nationality: Hungarian. Of course. Swiss people never give their opinion without being asked.

I thank her for her trouble and leave, taking off the sunglasses and bandages. The disguise worked, but the plan did not. The campus is empty again. Now everyone is busy learning how to care, how to think, and how to make others think.

I take the long way back to my car. From a distance, I can see the psychiatric hospital. Should I be in there?

ARE WE all like this? I ask my husband after the kids have fallen asleep and we are getting ready for bed.

“Like what?”

Like me, who either feels great or feels awful.

“I think so. We’re always practicing self-control, trying to keep the monster from coming out of his hiding place.”

It’s true.

“We aren’t who we want to be. We are what society demands. We are what our parents choose. We don’t want to disappoint anyone; we have a great need to be loved. So we smother the best in us. Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. They become things not done, possibilities not lived.”

As I understand it, psychiatry used to call it “manic-depressive psychosis,” but now they call it “bipolar disorder” to be more politically correct. Where did they get that name? Is there something different between the north and south poles? It must be a minority …

“Of course people who express those dualities are a minority. But I bet almost every person has that monster inside of them.”

On one side, I’m a villain who goes to a campus to incriminate an innocent person without understanding the motive behind my hatred. On the other, I’m a mother who takes loving care of her family, working hard so that my loved ones want for nothing, but still without understanding where I get the strength to keep these feelings strong.

“Do you remember Jekyll and Hyde?”

Apparently, Frankenstein isn’t the only book that has stayed in print since it was first published: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in three days, follows suit. The story is set in London in the nineteenth century. Physician and researcher Henry Jekyll believes that good and evil coexist in all people. He is determined to prove his theory, which was ridiculed by almost everyone he knows, including the father of his fiancée, Beatrix. After working tirelessly in his laboratory, he manages to develop a formula. Not wanting to endanger anyone’s life, he uses himself as a guinea pig.

As a result, his demonic side—whom he calls Mr. Hyde—is revealed. Jekyll believes he can control Hyde’s comings and goings, but soon realizes that he is sorely mistaken; when we release our dark side, it will completely overshadow the best in us.

The same is true for all individuals. That is how dictators are born. In the beginning they generally have excellent intentions, but little by little, in order to do what they think is for the “good” of their people, they make use of the very worst in human nature: terror.

I’m confused and scared. Can this happen to anyone?

“No. Only a minority lack a clear notion of right or wrong.”

I don’t know if this minority is all that small; something similar happened to me in school. I had a teacher who was the best person in the world, but suddenly he changed and left me completely bewildered. All the students lived in fear, because it was impossible to predict how he would be from day to day. But no one dared complain. Teachers are always right, after all. Besides, everyone thought he had some problem at home, and that it would soon be resolved. Until one day, this Mr. Hyde lost control and attacked one of my classmates. The case went to the school board and he was removed.

Since that time, I’ve become afraid of people who seem excessively sensitive.

“Like the tricoteuses. ”

Yes, like those hardworking women who wanted justice and bread for the poor, and who fought to free France from the excesses committed by Louis XVI. When the reign of terror began, they would go down to the guillotine square bright and early, guarding their front-row seats and knitting as they waited on those who had been condemned to die. Possible mothers, who spent the rest of their day looking after their children and husbands.

Knitting to pass the time between one severed head and the next.

“You’re stronger than me. I always envied that. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve never shown my feelings—so I won’t seem weak.”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying. But the conversation has already ended. He rolls over and goes to sleep.

And I’m left alone with my “strength,” staring at the ceiling.

ONE week later, I do what I promised myself I would never do: see a psychiatrist.

I make three appointments with different doctors. Their schedules are packed—a sign there are more unbalanced people in Geneva than imagined. I say it’s urgent, but the secretaries contend that everything is urgent, thank me for my interest and apologize, but they can’t cancel other patients’ appointments.