Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

She was smiling like a total idiot! You’ll have to buy some, she said … Buy some, can you believe it! We have to give them all this stuff so that the school can turn around and sell what we’ve bought … Just once, I’d really like to see teachers that would refuse to go along with this crap! Whatever they’re told to do, they can’t wait to say yes, we’ll follow orders, no sweat. They’re scared of losing their jobs, of getting booted out on their butts!”

Geta wasn’t really listening, but she genuinely agreed with Viorica. She had a daughter, too; she knew what the other woman was talking about. Bundled up in her big woolen cardigan — there was no heat in the room and it was as cold as a refrigerator — she yawned, paying a bit of attention now and then, thinking mostly about the fact that there was only one more hour to go until their little treat. Just what they needed to liven up this cold, gray day! The plates, serving dishes, bottles, and glasses had been carefully stashed behind the cupboard. She’d made friends again with Viorica; the girls weren’t really bad-tempered, these things happen, that’s all. She’d simply gone to see Viorica one morning to talk to her, heart to heart.

“Come on, what do you zay, shall we make up? I’ve been quite upzet that you’re not talking to me … Thingz just zlip out, you know how it iz. Onze it waz zaid, that waz it, I couldn’t do anything about it. It’z true I should have kept my mouth shut, but you’ve got to admit, you’re the one who told everyone about that buzinezz with the minkz. The ztory that I had a mink hutch in my garden and waz going to get rich. And then the fib around three yearz ago that I waz growing mushroomz in my zellar.

You know perfectly well it’z not true! Happenz to everyone, talking too much. Look, I’ve brought you a prezent, zo let’z kizz and be friendz again!”

And she’d unwrapped a bracelet Made in China that she’d slipped around the other woman’s wrist. Viorica’d had tears in her eyes. Because she wasn’t a bad sort, Viorica, just a bit touchy, always ready to fly off the handle, but if you knew how to manage her, she’d soon be herself again, sweet and attentive … Today, for Viorica’s birthday, her next-desk neighbor and gossiping companion had prepared stuffed cabbage and a jellied meat dish. In other words, the main course. You have to wait weeks and then stay in line hours and hours to get some meat, but she did it! So, in comparison with Chickadee’s deviled eggs and Ina’s pastries and even Comrade Carmen’s cake, Sugar Candy had definitely proved she deserved her place next to chatty Viorica, once more her friend and confidante. Nothing, not even the worst blunder, would ever come between them again! After all, that was truly something, that item about the husband accidentally coming home unexpectedly in his pajamas from his out-of-town business trip that was actually just downstairs in the same building; and those stories about the minks and the mushrooms hadn’t been easy to brush off, either … Well, all that was behind them now, friendship had triumphed! And here was Viorica, fresh from the hairdresser’s, impeccably turned out in a brand-new green dress, waiting to be feted by her office chums.

They celebrated everyone’s birthday, and their saint’s day, too: Saint George for Geta and Saint Gabriel for Gabriela aka Chickadee and Saint John for Ioana Carmen Petroianu. But Viorica’s pig-out was even grander than Carmen’s, because her birthday fell on December 25, so she was treated to the traditional Christmas dishes of stuffed cabbage leaves and jellied meat, with more wine and stronger brandy than they usually had.

Barely a week had gone by since they’d had their party for Comrade Boss Lady Carmen, who was also born in December. Here at branch 46, they had a special way of doing things: it wasn’t the birthday person who gave the party — which was how it was done elsewhere — but everyone else in the office. The idea was that the star of the day should feel pampered, coddled, and enjoy being the center of attention without having to worry about waiting on line and slaving in the kitchen. Almost all of them lived in newer, outlying neighborhoods, far from the downtown area where they did their shopping, endlessly on line. Sweating, lugging heavy bags, they stood around for hours at bus stops waiting for broken-down vehicles to lurch into view, buses already stuffed to bursting with desperate commuters, more of whom still managed to shove their way on at every stop.

At branch 46, the birthday person truly was the star. All she had to do was visit her dressmaker and her hairdresser, as Viorica had done to get her new perm and that striped green dress.

On Wednesday, Ina had returned to the office after a bout of flu, so the gang was all there. The week before, Carmen’s pet had been absent and had missed Auntie’s birthday, so the girls hadn’t had a chance to admire the extravagant gift with which, year after year, Ina Murgule made up for her relatively apathetic response to the office manager’s daily show of affection. Naturally, they hadn’t been able to resist quizzing Comrade Petroianu about it, and once again it was that little motor-mouth Viorica who’d dared pop the question they were all dying to ask.

“And Ina, what did she give you this year? Since she isn’t here, we’ve no way of knowing …”

Carmen had replied without hesitation and with definite satisfaction. “As you know, girls, Ina never stints on my birthday present. She’s just adorable, I’m telling you. Sweet, intelligent, discreet, doesn’t shoot her mouth off all over the place. Which she’s proved more than once … She called me the afternoon before my birthday. She could barely talk, because she was running a fever. After she’d wished me a happy birthday — she was quite upset that she wouldn’t be able to be with all of us — she told me that in an hour she’d be sending me her present, something special, and that her son would drop it off. Because, besides her daughter, she’s also got a boy who’s still in school. Real cute he is, too. He was supposed to arrive with a van. A van! I couldn’t imagine what she was giving me, my little sweetheart of Sevastopol — you know I call her that, she’s just so adorable! I mean, it couldn’t be a refrigerator or a washing machine, after all! Well, what do you think it was? A samovar! A real collector’s item! Silver-plated, with loads of ornamentation, a superb piece!”

Comrade Carmen seemed truly pleased, and she really did love Ina like a sister, there was nothing suspect at all about her affection. She’d been very jovial at her own party and had joked around a lot; she was already a trifle tight, La Carmencita, when they started in on the traditional droll stories about the eminently subversive Bulâ, that foolish trickster and sexual maniac of Romanian folklore. That’s when she’d taken a swipe at Chickadee.

“Well, girls, I had the feeling that cold fish they’ve been shoving down our throats for three months every year wasn’t going to turn up today. He doesn’t like this sort of thing. But he always used to come anyhow, when it was my birthday …”

True, Comrade Victor Scarlat had never gotten used to these office parties, and preferred to avoid them. In previous years, he’d come up with excuses to be absent, and over the last trimester he’d skipped September 18, when Sugar Candy had celebrated her daughter’s birthday, and September 29, Chickadee’s anniversary, and November 14, when Carmen had bought her Skoda. Of course, Comrade Scarlat would have been welcome to join in the regular or improvised parties of the last three months, even if he was only a temporary colleague instead of a permanent employee. He’d never shown up in past years for Viorica’s birthday on December 25, which was an ordinary working day under our atheistic calendar, and sometimes he’d even found a pretext to slip away for a few hours on December 31, to avoid having to toast the New Year. But he’d always come into the office on Comrade Petroianu’s birthday, even though he never stayed until the end of the festivities.