Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

I.2.

Comrade scarlat had gotten up once more and was heading for the telephone on Geta’s desk. Carmen had signaled to Chickadee to keep an eye on the Turkish coffee pot. The brown-haired young woman, lifting her delicate face from the black circle of the open pot, had intercepted, in some confusion, the fed-up-to-the-back-teeth signal from Auntie Carmen, nicknamed Lots More Fish in the Sea. Chickadee remained on the receiving end of this private message for a moment or two, not having the nerve to look away or ignore it. Volens nolens, she’d duly watched Mr. Victor — proof of consent — as he approached Geta’s desk and leaned once more, as he’d already done twice before in the last half hour, over the telephone. Catastrophe! The coffee boiled over. Chickadee the Geisha, as her girlfriends called her, blushed and became too flustered to think of instantly removing the pot from the hot plate, so the coffee spilled all over it in a sizzling black mess. Carmen, in her role as the boss driven up a wall by the incompetence of youth, which she herself had long outgrown, flung up her hands in irritation and then simply turned her back on the whole situation. Luckily, Viorica, always ready to help, arrived in no time with a cloth she’d just happened to have in her drawer, and wiped off the edge of the chair. The hot plate was finally unplugged and left to cool …

The flurry of activity over the accident hadn’t bothered Comrade Scarlat in the least. He’d given the same number and used the same words, pronounced in a serious and even tone, as he had for the two preceding calls: “Hello, Scarlat calling. Is he there?” He’d evidently received the same answer. Without another word, Mr. Victor slammed the phone down once again. He returned to his desk, treading heavily, looking straight ahead of him. Ina, his closest neighbor, smiled as she polished her glasses …

Comrade Scarlat hardly ever used the telephone. For the last few days, therefore, his colleagues had been understandably amazed by his repeated phone calls, during which he always asked the same question and apparently met with the same disappointment. The identical scenario had been played out the previous day, and the day before that.

As she was settling her big red glasses on her pale, thin little nose, Ina noticed that Geta was winking at her and holding up three fingers. Yes, Mr. Victor had called for the third time, just like yesterday morning, just like the morning before. Three calls, at relatively short intervals, early in the morning … Then, nothing, basta, no more calls for the rest of the day. Sure enough, Comrade Scarlat was once again bent over his long columns of figures, just as on the other mornings. No one would ever have believed that, barely a few moments before, he’d been so irritable and impatient. That meant things were going to follow the same pattern as before: he wouldn’t touch the phone for the rest of the day! Mr. Victor had never called up a friend, or made any business calls, or even called anyone at home, just to ask his wife or mother-in-law or daughter or God-knows-who about whatever, like everyone else, to see if there were errands to be done on the way home, if the elevator was fixed yet, you know, the whole daily pain-in-the-ass grind of every honest and multilaterally put-upon citizen.* No, Comrade Victor Scarlat had never telephoned anyone, and what’s more, no one had ever telephoned him, either …

So it was no wonder this business of the three morning phone calls had intrigued them: the old so-and-so was actually asking for an extension number, how about that! Which meant he was trying to talk to someone in the same building, a colleague, so to speak, a comrade working in a different department there, where, frankly, the girls know everyone, whereas Comrade Scarlat neither knows nor has ever shown any desire to know anyone, aside from his poor, chatty, perfumed, amusing co-workers, among whom — that’s his bad luck — he has landed again this year to spend the autumnal season of balance sheets and pickled vegetables.

I.3.

The soothing sunshine of a bucharestian fall day had reached, in its expansive course, the large windows of branch 46 …

“Pass me a Kent, puh-lease,” mumbled Ina sleepily.

Shading her glasses from the light that had suddenly flooded her desk, she’d leaned down to finish the last of her coffee. The red-polished nail of her index finger traced the cup’s contour. A fond little mannerism, that’s what it looked like … Ultra-thin Ina sometimes had these sleek, feline moments, as though to ward off the fatigue of her working day, or who knows what annoyance she could sense well before it actually turned up. She was bending over the yellow cup, she was smiling. Her finger caressed the outline of the cup, which still contained a swallow of coffee. She was leaning forward, languidly. She savored the fortifying beverage. Her scented, downy nape, the delicate curve of her neck, this charming scene of Chinese refinement … Comrade Scarlat, who had a view of the tableau, had timidly bent his thick glasses over his accounts.

“Haven’t got any more,” Viorica had snapped belatedly. “Everyone’s been helping themselves all day long …”

“I’ve got zome,” murmured Geta Sugar Candy, close by. “The guy with the zavingz bond at eight hundred zlipped them to me, about two hourz ago. Lord knowz, he zure zurprized me. Juzt when I waz about to write down hiz name and ID number, he handz over the pack … A zolid-gold zmile, from here to there! I’m telling you! … To get a bond, can you imagine! I mean, it waz the lazt thing I expected.”*

And Sugar Candy smiled — radiantly, revealing the golden disaster areas of her lousy teeth — to indicate how tickled she still was. She delivered a Kent, clamped between two fingers, to her colleague, but her face was turned in the opposite direction.

“Can’t you turn that zdupid thing off? I really don’t zee how you can zdand it.”

The blaring transistor fell silent, and Auntie Carmen didn’t seem offended by her subordinate’s impertinence.

Ina adjusted her blond chignon. She sat up straight in her chair. She lighted her cigarette, pushed her big red glasses up on her little white Oriental nose. She stared off into the distance, looking as though her thoughts were miles away. And was defenseless against the whispers flitting from one desk to another. Unfortunately, she identified them immediately, in a sort of uncontrollable reflex. Uncontrollable, yes, a sensitive receptor reacting to stimuli, so just try to keep your mind on something else — if you can.

“He said he’d had it. That he was sick and tired of the pregnancy and ready to give up. ‘Do whatever you want, abortion, whatever,’ he told me, ‘I’ll be back when you’ve figured out a solution …’ So much for using the calendar. Proof that it’s not very reliable! It doesn’t work every time. Ever since the other two, I’ve done everything absolutely right. It drives you crazy, you can just imagine … And the business with the rabbit, that’s not a hundred percent certain either. Without protection, nothing is certain. That’s the thing that screwed me up the most. The test had been negative. I thought I had who knows what other problem wrong with me! So I’m waiting. My mother-in-law tells me she knows someone …”

So it was the angelic Chickadee, with her torrid, husky voice. Flat as a board — wherever did she get that voice of hers? When she wasn’t speaking, nobody noticed her. All she had to do was say a few words and everybody’s eyes started to boggle. Then they’d really see her for the first time: what a fetching walk, she’s quite a darling, how demure she is, all that stuff. Unusual, yes, what a babe. She turned everyone’s head. You couldn’t catch her, but she wasn’t exactly running away, either. Soft as silk, the things she said, and all those pauses … so you could think whatever you liked.