Eduard, the solitary boy, who in his two years in Brazil had never once brought friends home, was now filling the house with strange people, all of them badly dressed and with untidy hair, who listened to horrible music at full blast—endlessly drinking and smoking and showing a complete disregard for basic good manners. One day the director of the American school called his mother.

“I think your son must be involved in drugs,” she said. “His school marks are well below average, and if he goes on like this, we won’t be able to renew his enrollment.”

His mother went straight to the ambassador’s office and told him what the director had said.

“You keep saying that with time, everything will go back to normal!” she screamed hysterically. “There’s your crazy, drug-addict son, obviously suffering from some serious brain injury, and all you care about are cocktail parties and social gatherings.”

“Keep your voice down,” he said.

“No, I won’t, and I never will again if you don’t do something. The boy needs help, don’t you see? Medical help. Do something!”

Concerned that the scene his wife was making might embarrass him in front of his staff, and worried that Eduard’s interest in painting was lasting longer than expected, the ambassador, a practical man, who knew all the correct procedures, drew up a plan of attack.

First he phoned his colleague the American ambassador and asked politely if he could again make use of the embassy’s medical facilities. His request was granted.

He went back to the accredited doctors, explained the situation, and asked them to go over all the tests they had made at the time. The doctors, fearing a lawsuit, did exactly as they were asked and concluded that the tests revealed nothing abnormal. Before the ambassador left they demanded that he sign a document exempting the American Embassy from any responsibility for sending him to them.

The ambassador immediately went to the hospital where Eduard had been a patient. He talked to the director, explained his son’s problem, and asked that, under the pretext of a routine checkup, a blood test be done to see if there were any drugs in the boy’s system.

They did a blood test, and no trace of drugs was found.

There remained the third and final stage of his strategy: talking to Eduard himself and finding out what was going on. Only when he was in possession of all the facts could he hope to make the correct decision.

Father and son sat down in the living room.

“Your mother’s very worried about you,” said the ambassador. “Your marks have gotten worse, and there’s a danger that your place at the school won’t be renewed.”

“But my marks at art school have improved, Dad.”

“I find your interest in art very pleasing, but you have your whole life ahead of you to do that. At the moment the main thing is to finish your secondary education, so that I can set you on the path to a diplomatic career.”

Eduard thought long and hard before saying anything. He thought about the accident, about the book on visionaries, which had turned out to be only a pretext for finding his true vocation, and he thought about Maria, from whom he had never heard again. He hesitated for some time, but in the end, said: “Dad, I don’t want to be a diplomat. I want to be a painter.”

His father was prepared for that response and knew how to get round it.

“You will be a painter, but first finish your studies. We’ll arrange for exhibitions in Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo. I’ve got influence, I can help you a lot, but you must complete your studies.”

“If I do that, I’ll be choosing the easy route. I’ll enter some faculty or other, get a degree in a subject that doesn’t interest me but that will help me earn a living. Painting will just recede into the background, and I’ll end up forgetting my vocation. I’ll just have to find a way of earning money through my painting.”

The ambassador was starting to get irritated.

“You’ve got everything, son, a family that loves you, a house, money, social position—but as you know, our country is going through a difficult time, there are rumors of civil war. Tomorrow I might not even be here to help you.”

“I can help myself. Trust me. One day I’ll paint a series entitled Visions of Paradise. It’ll be a visual history of what men and women have previously experienced only in their hearts.”

The ambassador praised his son’s determination, drew the conversation to a close with a smile, and decided to give him another month; after all, diplomacy is also the art of postponing decisions until the problems resolve themselves.

A month passed, and Eduard continued to devote all his time to painting, to his strange friends and to that music apparently expressly designed to induce some psychological disorder. To make matters worse, he had been expelled from the American school for arguing with a teacher about the existence of saints.

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 Brasília, 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.