Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

“I really didn’t feel well last night, I was all alone in the house. I was scared when the phone rang, it was right before dawn. He was very upset, he told me that the idea had been his, but he didn’t think it was going to work out. The idea came to him just like that, and he’d thought it was something worth looking into, something new. He wouldn’t have taken it any further if the boss hadn’t shown any interest, but then he’d gotten stubborn about it when he’d seen that the boss wanted to take over the idea for himself. And he’d known him for a long time, ever since the boss was little. But he got scared when he realized that he was being asked to defend his proposal one more time. He didn’t want to give up without a fight, but there wasn’t anything they could do to him anymore. There’s nothing more they can do to him … But he couldn’t stand the fact that the boss seemed to be making fun of him, once he’d realized he wouldn’t let him use his idea for his own schemes. At first the boss had been enthusiastic, making him come up with further details to prove his points and fancy quotations from the classics of Marxism-Leninism, but he wasn’t sure this wasn’t some kind of ploy to discourage him for a while so that the boss could appropriate the idea later, at a more favorable time, but me, there I was, nauseated and everything, sick all night long, and I didn’t understand any of what he was telling me. He was all alone at home, he seemed a bit unwell. I felt sorry for him and let him talk until he was finished. He’d spent hours in a streetcar stop, somewhere over by the Abattoirs. He’d just gotten home. But I was feeling so awful, I could hardly hear him.”

Her colleagues seemed more astonished at the sick young woman’s talkativeness than at what she had to say, so they soon drifted back to their seats when she’d finished. There weren’t many people in the office. The place seemed very familiar to the stranger. The bell over the door reminded him of something, of some old story … The employees didn’t bother him, letting him rest a bit, slumped on the seat near the door. He had all the time in the world to reflect on the fact that a survivor fresh from the still smoking ovens of the war, without any other piece of identification except his membership card in the Association of Former Prisoners, had to locate a distant uncle or some vague cousin or other of the occupant of the house next door to the one where they’d come for him so long ago, it seemed like an eternity … Then he might have been able to understand what had happened all these years since to the minds and bowed shoulders of the average citizen, the journey the paths the very narrow paths rising falling, how did this bizarre Idea take root, what connections were there between a hypothetical neighbor or uncle and the child-man who was supposed to give a speech this afternoon at the Institute of Futurology on “The Conditional Reflected in the Biography,” a rather pompous title for a longtime member like himself, an ordinary child-witness, himself inflammable, fuel of the blood-century, which the little futurologist director wanted to see expressed in “octane numbers.” That telegenic star, that charming, sly informer, polyglot, constantly cooking up paradoxes and hooey: the ultimate composite picture! Publicity for a secret establishment, a trap for derelicts and rebels.

Lolling on that chair near the front door of the bank, I realized that I would have to include — on the personal data sheet that’s supposed to accompany the description of the symptoms of being fed-up that have plagued me these last hundred years — the barbed remarks of the gossiping employees, and the policemen, police files, police speeches, and the fight that broke out at the store across the way, where the waiting line for cheese had poured out into the street in a general melee, and the crematoria and the astronauts, and the streetcars immobilized at the intersection by a power failure due to the energy shortage, everything. Everything. Finally, the new fuel capable of modifying mobilizing massacring everything, absolutely everything … Please take note and work out the obvious correspondences! Stratified, diversified, hundreds of pages of autobiographies and reports, and I was going to go into all that in detail in my lecture, mentioning the sources that lay the foundations of such a scholarly descriptive undertaking, such a delicate analytical experiment … The ambiguity of any “solution of continuity,” as the experts say. A gap, a break …?

There is no other solution of continuity besides the clear and ordinary morning, and so I will display the absentminded expression and dithering gestures of a brilliant student in some obscure field. I will stand up, confidently, to collect my prize forgotten long ago, before the war, before the crisis. I don’t even know what a savings-bank book looks like anymore.

But there won’t be any surprise, or resentment, perhaps just a misunderstanding, a small oversight, because the thin blond employee didn’t speak Romanian very well. She noticed the mistake, though. She had to admit that my address was out-of-date, my old, forgotten address, the card absolutely had to be renewed, my new permanent address had to be on it, plus the required stamps.

She had a sense of humor, however, and was very gracious, just like the soft, pleasant winter morning. She didn’t see any reason why it couldn’t be taken care of right away, we could simply make out an affidavit for the record. A record, of course, a recording, recited by the two of us, each in turn, whispering each word before writing it down again … A preliminary exercise that we were going to carry out, consecrate, perfect, together, in writing, in the present. It was the only possible way to possess some kind of proof to preserve, to prolong the present … As a result, we were going to tackle the retranscription with a cautious hand, stopping after each word, trying to make sure we’d chosen the right one, every stratum of the morning had to be in there, the history of the event, the person, the day, if you like, something that would become day, week, or century, still present, because recorded in writing: “We certify that today, so-and-so, on such-and-such a date, presented a claim at this agency, in support of which claim the aforementioned, to whom by rights …” Which could amount to this: on a chilly, mediocre, and conciliating morning, we press forward, with our bag and baggage, calendar, certificates, cartograms, risks, chitchat, prattling, the cold childish expectation of dawn, our punishment, and joy and pain, all the troubles each one of us packs up in that old kit bag.

Sunday keeps stretching out its arms. . a grasping, famished octopus. A net with threads as slender as a hair. Eiderdown and clouds, a treacherous nest sailing on the endless, swollen ocean of night.

Blessed, cursed peace. . To make it last forever and ever, to erase all sound, thought, the poison of fatigue, the nightmare of our times, places near and far, the past held frozen in a lowering sky, the future tossed into the clock grinder. The rusty toad devours pell-mell seconds, cells, flesh and dreams, tick-tock, no exit.

Light darts its first shaft, its first oblique ray, straight into the huddled body, which lazily divides in two: one being flops softly to the left, the other to the right. Shaken by gloomy storms, the placenta of sleep splits open in an instant, destroyed with a single movement: cruel day calls back her orphans.

The woman settles lightly on the right, the man rolls heavily to the left, while behind its bars the morning grows brighter.

And then a whisper: “You see, it’s that light again. . I’ve asked you so many times to. .” A mist of childish breath, rocking the words. “That. . light. . asked. . you knew. . again and again. . This torture, this same torture.”