Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

“Me … well, I would’ve accepted their invitation a long time ago,” the soft voice of Felicia observes, floating up from the back seat. “After all, they’ve been trying for years. A courtesy visit, basically, and basta. So they don’t think we’ve got anything against them. The problem was that …”

“The problem was that the Kid didn’t want to. The Kid can’t stand Lady Di, I know, he’s told us all often enough. He can’t stand her, and he avoids that husband of hers. A purely preventive measure, I know. A sanitary precaution, yes, I’ve heard the whole rigmarole. We also feel no undying love for the Beldeanus. But Ali couldn’t very well refuse Bazil. Not when he’s a colleague on the editorial staff, it’s just not done.”

The gears grind, the headlights poke their stubby beams out into the drenched black streets. Advancing cautiously across town, a long and difficult journey. A deep-sea dive, one might think, with colonies of organisms bursting into view for a brief instant, sinister monstrosities outlined against an unpredictable fluid vastness. But here, inside the diving bell, it’s really cozy. Ioana wears her hair boyishly short, in what’s called a typhus cut, which looks rather good on her, while Felicia is in her new black mohair vest, so perfectly chic, Italian, isn’t it nice to be cruising along lazily underwater while, all around, nature is putting on a show of vitality and grandeur.

“Bazil’s a great guy, I’m telling you,” announces Ali enthusiastically from the driver’s seat. “Two weeks ago, I went with him to a teaching farm outside Bucharest. The guy in charge was a former buddy of his at the Political Institute. He keeps him in chickens, and that’s not all. Every once in a while he needs Bazil to do him a little favor in return, obviously. A journalist, in the capital— you never know … He supplies him with chickens, but also with the latest jokes about… ah … you know who. He telephoned Bazil to let him know that he was sending the car from the farm to pick him up, but Bazil didn’t want that. Forget it, he tells his pal, we’ll manage on our own, thanks anyway.”

“Uh, a journalist, in the capital, who knows,” comes an echoing purr from Felicia, just to show she’s keeping track.

“Of course, Bazil invites me along on this chicken chase, and I can hardly refuse, naturally. These days we’d be happy with sparrows, as long as we didn’t have to spend the best years of our lives waiting on line for them. So we set out Tuesday morning in Bazil’s car. Now, I was wondering what he was up to. There are people today who’re ready to kill for a drop of gas. Thirty liters a month! That’s not even enough to get to the office, I mean, really …”

Embarrassed silence. Could that be an allusion to this evening’s gas consumption? Ioana rummages nervously in her purse as though she hadn’t heard that last remark. A gaffe, Ali felt it immediately, but there’s nothing he can do about it. So he goes on in the same vein.

“We stop in front of the first gas station. Comrade Bel-deanu gets out his press card, of course. He starts explaining that he’s on an assignment, he needs gas. The attendants couldn’t care less. They’ve heard it all. The only argument they listen to is a big fat tip, and even that doesn’t always do the trick. Nothing impresses them anymore, not the press, not the Party, nothing. Talk about blase, they are blase to the core, you have to come up with a real stunner to jolt them out of their apathy. Bazil doesn’t admit defeat, obviously. He insists and finally asks permission to telephone Comrade Colonel Adam, the chief economic watchdog in that area, everyone knows who he is. Well, you can imagine, they don’t wait around for that phone call, naturally — they give him a full tank. Now, that’s Bazil all over! Unbeatable! You know how he introduces himself? He’s not Comrade Vasile Beldeanu, like before. Bazil. That’s all, the American way. The name’s been Hispani-cized … but the style’s cutting edge, very U.S.A. Simple and direct. Bazil, journalist. On the way back, what do you think? He pulls the same thing again. Goes home with a full tank, naturally. Unbeatable! To look at him, you’d think he was nobody in particular. But a real go-getter, I’m telling you. Even that house he has. Right in the middle of Embassy Row! And as for what we’ll be eating and drinking tonight … Just wait. You’re going to forget what kind of a world we live in, you’ll see.”

“Stop blabbing and pay attention to the road! It’s pitch-dark, and with this rain, we’ll end up wrapped around a tree,” warns Ioana sharply. “It’s like wartime, like a blackout. In the streets, the apartments, everywhere you look, darkness … The elevators all suddenly go on the fritz, then the running water comes back when everyone has given up on it. The children refuse to ride in elevators, did you know that? No food, no electricity, nothing. Dorin, our son, recited the new children’s patriotic oath: ‘I’ll be tall, healthy, clean and neat, without ever needing a bite to eat

Laughter at this seemingly recent joke. Laughter, jokes, signs of the times. All around them, the urgent and festive forces of nature, and here, in the torpedo, a sudden clearing. Ioana’s new suit, her long, white gloves, her waspish sting form a contrast with the driver’s moderating role, with Felicia’s proletarian Mona Lisa smile and her limpid radio announcer’s voice.

“That’s what they’d really like. Not to be asked for food, money, heating, nothing — nothing,” continues the wasp.

They, meaning them, meaning Him, the audience knows

it.

“Speaking of children, what’s happened to the Child, hmm? He hasn’t said one word, he must be bored stiff by our chatter.”

“Not at all, no, really,” stammers a baritone voice in the back seat.

“Not at all, not at all … So why don’t you say something? Well, poor Bazil isn’t a gorilla, just your basic pig. But Dina Eisberg … that is her name, isn’t it?” asks the wasp, swiveling around toward the man in the back seat, who continues to stare with indifference out the black window, rippling with rain. “Eisberg, I’m sure of it. Icicle, that’s what Ali calls her, and he’s an expert on refrigerators. She freezes everything she touches. Unless it’s the other way around? You never know … It might very well turn out to be the other way around. Well, what have you got to say about it? You’re from the same background, after all, you’ve known Miss Goldberg for a long time. Or is it Salzberg, Süssberg? Now that I think about it, it must be Süssberg …”

Felicia tries to stem the attack.

“Dina thinks very highly of him, if you want to know. When I run into her, which isn’t often, the first thing she says, every time, is … how smart he was in school. The local genius, more or less.”

You’d never guess she was talking about someone right there, yet it would seem that this absent mind is the unique receiver, the only one listening.

“Yeah, sure,” mumbles Ioana, without turning around this time, studiously contemplating the dripping windshield. “And why, may I ask, doesn’t the Boy want to see his former friend and classmate again? Watch out, Felicia, there might be something behind all this.”

“No, not this time.” Felicia laughs childishly. “No, that’s not it. We just try to stay away from the new class, that’s all.”

More embarrassed silence … Could that insinuation … A blunder, perhaps, who knows … But Ioana wastes no time in returning to the attack.

“An after-effect of puberty, why not? Those are the most dangerous love affairs. If they crop up again, later in life. Nuclear explosion, catastrophe, end of the world. You never know … What does the Kid think about all this? We’d like the Kid’s opinion.”