Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

We do not know why Comrade Cotig decides to leave his native city. No definite proof that his departure is due to the dispute at the newspaper over the political-opinion page.

Comrade Cotig turns up later in the port of Constantsa, working first as a longshoreman, then at an office job. We have in our possession the articles he wrote during this period — as well as a poem, all published under a pseudonym in a small local newspaper. They refer to a kind of fellowship among “loners”—the seafaring men of the port. Nothing political about these articles, which may even seem naïve. The poem is a call to never-ending struggle against “barbarous good manners” and the “self-satisfied hypocrites” of the whole world.

All available information about Comrade Cotig ’s brief stay in Constantsa confirms his upright character and capacity for work. Close-mouthed, extremely punctual, he despises comfort and has only modest needs. He refuses to go out drinking, and wears plain, clean clothing. Has few friends and is not well liked by his companions. Some even claim to be afraid of Comrade Cotig , because of his incommunicability; others say it’s “impossible to figure out what his game is.” There is no record of any immoral or reprehensible conduct on the part of Comrade Cotig .

In June 1946, Comrade Cotig arrives in Bucharest. First known address is 38A Buze ti Street. He works at the Bucharest Streetcar Company (BSC) for a month before moving to a job in the printing plant of the newspaper Justice; then hired as a proofreader on a magazine.

At the end of 1946, he becomes a proofreader, then a staff writer in the agricultural department of the Party newspaper, thanks to a recommendation from a former employee of The Port Gazette in Constantsa who is now an important official in the Arts Council. Comrade Cotig enthusiastically carries out all tasks assigned to him, touring the countryside to counter the effects of reactionary propaganda. He is disciplined, hardworking, and combative in the campaign for the collectivization of agriculture. During this period he lodges at 27 Mihai-Vod Street, a public-housing project, where he rents space in the kitchen of an elderly woman. The neighbors’ reports indicate that he is often out of town for weeks at a time, generally comes in late at night and leaves again at dawn. He does not own many clothes: a single spare outfit, which he keeps in his suitcase. He sleeps in the kitchen on a camp bed he sets up at night and puts away before leaving in the morning.

Does not speak to his neighbors, and talks hardly at all with his landlady. He pays the rent regularly, with the exception of March 1947, when he refuses to pay more than half the sum due, citing the fact that he had not spent a single night in the apartment that month. The landlady’s testimony is confused and unreliable, since it includes ill-considered political remarks and gossip about other lodgers.

In November 1946, Comrade Cotig returns to his home town on official business. He refuses to stay in a hotel with the other comrades, preferring his extremely modest family home: a single room in which live his mother, his father (bedridden as the result of losing his left leg in an accident), and a niece from the country who is living there while attending school.

Comrade Cotig stays busy in the surrounding villages in the struggle for collectivization. Although he originally planned to remain in the city for only four days, he stays for two weeks. During this time the house of the Vrînceanu family is searched; the engineer Mihai Vrînceanu is arrested and made the object of an investigation. Comrade Valentina Vrînceanu, summoned from Ia i, where she is a student at the medical school, confirms the accusations brought against her father and reveals the hiding place of the family’s valuables. In January 1948, Comrade Vrînceanu moves from Ia i to the medical school in Bucharest. Comrade Cotig , who had been promoted deputy director of the agricultural department, informs his superiors of his intention to marry Comrade Vrînceanu; he furnishes a detailed description of the Vrînceanu family’s bourgeois origins and education, as well as the reactionary ideas and contemptuous “kulak” attitude displayed by the engineer Vrînceanu, who has been sent to prison. In support of his request, Comrade Cotig points out that the behavior of his future wife, Valentina, has been worthy of a true revolutionary. They are married in June 1948.

Comrade Cotig continues his energetic political activity. With even greater frequency, he writes articles espousing the official Party line and scathing critiques of those who oppose our ideology or hesitate to step to the forefront of revolutionary activity. His devotion, vigilance, and ideological correctness are valued by those in leading circles of the Party, with whom he has close dealings, given his responsibility for the creation of the new socialist agriculture. All reports from this period praise his fearless service to the cause. The tone of his newspaper articles is staunch and rousing, while their language is simple and accessible to all. After 1948, his articles achieve considerable fame, and his name — the pseudonym under which he published his first poems — becomes an important byline in the Party newspaper. It is at this time that he permanently adopts the name with which he signed his first literary efforts, the name already written on the birth certificate of his daughter Dolores, born on April 23, 1949. The family’s address during this period is a furnished room at 25 Transylvania Street.

II.2.

The woman had been waiting by the phone for several hours. She wasn’t really sure what she was expecting to happen. Her mind was emptied of all thought as she watched the glowing minute hand of the clock coursing by, number after number. The hours ticked away: a hard day, a decisive night in those decisive years of the early 1950s.

“I’m sure he’ll do the honest thing and side with me,” said Petru, the family’s friend. “He just can’t do otherwise, we’re old comrades. You’ve got to speak to him, convince him. There’s something inside him I can’t ever be sure of. You can imagine the consequences if he were to …”

But that conversation was from a long time ago, yesterday or the day before …

The evening had slipped into freezing night. A huge living room, stylish furniture: the woman sitting motionless in the depths of the armchair was almost invisible. From time to time she simply looked up at the clock. The telephone was next to her, close at hand to the leather nest where she dozed, waiting for her husband.