Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

“Comrade Petru isn’t here. Comrade Petru has no more meetings. Comrade Petru doesn’t live here. Comrade Petru doesn’t exist. He doesn’t exist — and now what?”

That, that was yesterday. Suzana’s voice, the wife, hysterical, whimpering, unforgiving. So Petru already knew everything yesterday … Perhaps he’d even left home by then. But that was yesterday, before the verdict. Now it was nighttime, the meeting must be over. One, two o’clock in the morning, in a silent, ice-cold, shadowy city where rats scurry and the wind grates against the stores …

“It’s not a question of individuals. It’s not men who count, but principles. There’s no room for emotions here. What’s important is not explanations or excuses or regrets, but standing firm. The only thing that matters is what course we choose to take.”

That was this morning, in front of the bathroom door. Her husband’s face distorted by fear and fatigue, a stubborn phantom in sagging underpants, with tousled hair and empty eyes.

Dead of night; the luminous hand sailed around the cape of two o’clock. In the little alcove on the left burned a bulb on a dimmer switch, shedding only a tiny oval of light. Long, very long shadows flickered uncertainly in the far corners of the room.

The woman wandered listlessly among the armchairs and slender vases, skirting the huge desk, oblivious to the statuettes of bronze and ivory. She went toward the door, toward the bedroom, walking as though she were blind.

“Comrade Director! They phoned you about an evaluation meeting. You also had calls from the ministry, the airport, the institute, your country place, and the foreign-press subscription department.”

That was at noon — no, in the afternoon, around four o’clock.

“I just don’t feel like practicing now. Really, piano is absolutely the last thing I feel like doing. Je regrette, but I’m off to basketball, so ciao!”

It was her daughter, around five or six o’clock … Then the secretary, the long-distance call, her mother’s usual complaints and insults aimed at the son-in-law and his comrades.

And now the squealing of car brakes, yes, an unmistakable sound, at just past three in the morning. She got a grip on herself, hurried toward the bedroom. No, their daughter’s room instead. He’d never look for her there, that was better, he’d never think to check in there. Tomorrow, not now, it was better to forget for the time being, simply sinking down into the comfortable sofa, so welcoming, as though no one, as though no one had ever, no one had ever gone through this ordeal. It was better, like that, collapsed on the sofa, no one, not the slightest idea, nothing, no one would ever awaken her again.

During one lively Thursday afternoon session, someone (no one remembers who, and in any case it’s no longer important) seems to have suggested, doubtless as a kind of extravagant gesture, this little trap: a discussion of purgatory and hell. In other words, Dante, obviously. Without whom, get this, we’d have no frame of reference from which to evaluate different perspectives …

Such a farfetched idea to provoke debates, when so many ears are listening. Someone will happen along who can tie the whole question into some sort of structuralist analysis of biography. Eager to broaden such an approach, this someone will finally focus all commentary on a single point: the identity of those who inhabit purgatory or hell. As for paradise, it will clearly be wise to say nothing about it.

The consensus will be that purgatory doesn’t matter, since the whole thing will wind up in a shabby mess of details so entangled they’ll never be sorted out: vain hopes, weeping and wailing, ersatz. Because of its vague and transitory nature — a kind of indeterminate continuum— such an existence could not be confined within any clear, succinct definition. Since this viscous and heterogeneous matter would hardly lend itself to tragedy, it would spoil all attempts to give it the epic treatment, dribbling along as a minor perpetuum. Stupid suffering and anxious expectation, reduced to the same average level, canceling out all individuality. Just an inexpressive, immature mediocrity. As a result, expression itself would be impossible in this type of life, as would all potential spirituality. Some of the participants, moreover, will be quick to point out the connection: of course, tragedy is impossible in purgatory, since expressiveness has been nullified from the outset … And, at that juncture, someone will inevitably assert that the devil, who signifies mediocrity (“The devil signifies mediocrity!” several participants will shout excitedly), actually rules over purgatory. Hell would thus be only his secondary residence. A pseudo-home. A diversion! A kind of noisy cabaret serving to mask the true, wide-ranging, and incomparable activities in his real property, purgatory.

What about the collective biography in hell? Rich though it might be in spectacular events, it would in the end boil down to monotonous banalities, largely similar tales burdened with commonplace incidents. Violent and caricatural idiocy, recycled paper, dizzying cacophony! A rudimentary, mechanized product. A bestial joy nourished on blood, rictus, and rhinestone. An automated floorshow: pop a coin in the slot, and hurry hurry hurry — freaks on parade!

The controversy will finally be resolved with the suggestion that within the next two months each participant should bring in his or her autobiography on a few typewritten pages. This biography, real or invented, might also be the life story of the author’s bed, fountain pen, or favorite tie, to be enriched with a succinct curriculum vitae of the author’s parents, goals, and dreams. An epic, a collection of story lines that will meander off on their own or converge in patterns of the author’s choosing. This text will be read and discussed in the light of what has been said regarding the Dantean versions of purgatory and hell.

“We are here to envision the future — in other words, something that does not exist, at least for the moment. So what we are concerned with here is paradise, and that is why the minimum biography must deal with purgatory and hell.” With these words, the debate will be closed.

Words that a rather shy and starry-eyed ageless interloper would repeat to himself for nights on end. Unhappy at not being able to write his biography clearly and concisely, humiliated by the lack of imagination that hampers his attempts to set down the story of the armchair where he so often daydreams, or the story of the suspenders that hold up his pants. Too scrupulous to borrow the biography of some cousin or aunt, whose real lives, he feels, are hidden from him, leaving only innocuous banality on view. Keeping eyes and ears wide open in his tireless, frenzied search for something — anything — worthy of consideration, constantly taking notes on some new trifle that will seem like a good point of departure, only to prove dissatisfying when he takes another look at it, later in the day … This ageless adolescent would be absent a good long while from the Thursday meetings where he had once figured so brilliantly.

I.4.

On the stroke of noon, when the woman had burst into tears, everyone else in the office had gathered around the chair by the window.

“No, really, can you believe it, she’z been calling an ambulance for two hourz, and they don’t give a hoot. They zay they’re out of gaz. They’ve uzed up their daily quota! The old lady’z got azzma. Maybe she’z even dying …”

Geta had wailed on and on, pouring out her sorrows in front of everyone, and the girls had listened to her sympathetically. The same old story: bribes and connections, under-the-counter deals and the black market. Naturally … Can’t find any paper clips? Bingo! A pack of Kents! Nobody takes an old woman to the hospital these days. Only with bribes, only with baksheesh. I’m telling you, we’re going to wind up using Kents to wangle even a lousy handful of toothpicks … Everywhere you go, people say one thing and do another, they’re all on the take. A golden age for every petty crook willing to sell any old junk! No matter what you want, they’ll get it for you, if you can grease the right palms! Every attendant and caretaker, porters in fancy hotels, obviously! Same thing in the hospitals: nurses, doctors, all of them! Plumbers, of course, and dentists and taxi drivers and restaurant waiters, they’re the ones in power … The flashier the façade, the more rot there is to cover up. Take a good look at them, you don’t hear a peep from them, they know, all right, but they keep their traps shut or parrot the usual drivel. So once again the wheeler-dealers wheel and deal, while the rest of us get left out in the cold like fools, struggling with the first of the month and the long lines and the health problems and the mindless jargon …