Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

He jumped up in distress, turning this way and that. On the alert, sniffing, nostrils flared, ears perked up, like a rabbit’s. Ah, that was it! Yes, he did look somewhat rabbity, why hadn’t she noticed this before? Or did he look more like a hare? And a little like a snake, perhaps? A slightly aquiline nose. . They say the great men of history had aquiline noses. . A high, broad forehead, like theirs? But the eyebrows, which reveal temperament, were not very thick. Rather sparse, actually. Beads of perspiration formed on his temples, then on his nose. His hair was thinning, but some still remained on the sides of his head. His face was pale, and he blinked constantly, as though nearsighted. A sign of timidity?

He gesticulated wildly, but stayed right where he was. His jacket had come unbuttoned, and one could see that his polo shirt had grown faded and baggy from too much wear, for it hung on him in a series of sloppy folds. The end of his worn belt had slipped out of the belt loops and dangled in front of his fly, looking silly.

Feeble tremors ran through his body. Hunched down between his shoulders, his head jerked and twitched, as did his hollow chest. His bald spot, which grew larger toward the top of his skull, began to flush deeply. . Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he squeezed it in one fist, then in the other, lifted it to his nose. . and sneezed.

The prisoner couldn’t help smiling. Just then he looked her way and caught her at it. Despite his sneezing, which gave way to a coughing fit, he smiled, too, guiltily.

“I’ve got an allergy, you see,” he mumbled. “The smallest, the slightest, the least little draft is a disaster for me.”

He trotted over to the door and pushed on it, even though it was closed. He leaned — trembling, sighing, defeated, shaken by a series of salvos, bent double, as though stricken — on the doorknob. He went over to the window, making an attempt to stride forcefully. In passing, he placed his hand on the back of the prisoner’s chair. He examined the window frame, the casement bolt: everything was shut tight, and yet. . he was sneezing! A pathetic, helpless wreck. He sneezed, and sneezed, and you’d have thought he was doing it on purpose. His nose, which was already covered with little red veins, now became a dripping blob. He kept pocketing and fishing out again first one hanky, then another, in which he’d bury his face, hands clenched. Racked by convulsions, ashamed.

The prisoner watched as daylight waned outside the window, becoming grayer and grayer. Perhaps quite a while had gone by. She looked at the clock but couldn’t make out a thing. The numbers had vanished, just like the hour and minute hands, from a clock face obscured by dust, as though lost in mist.

The fragile fellow was finally able to catch his breath, not without difficulty. But he seemed no longer willing or able to play out his multiple roles. The challenge didn’t interest him anymore, and worse than that, he was just fed up. As though he’d had enough of wearing all the complicated masks of intelligence. As though the skeptics were right, for all is vanity and absurdity. He succumbed to laziness. . Nothing mattered anymore, nothing could be more profound, more tempting, more certain, more prudent than laziness, he seemed to say. Why wear yourself out? And then, bam! A burst of energy.

The prisoner was still smiling. But her smile no longer expressed the compassion, even the sympathy, that she’d felt for a moment. Only disgust and contempt remained. A fixed smile, a rictus. One might have thought she’d fallen asleep, or, at the very least, that she was beginning to doze. Or that she’d fainted, died, with that horrible grimace on her face. . Then he banged the metal top of the flask, violently, on the glass top of the desk.

A demented look gleamed in his eyes. The impact had been forceful, like the crashing blade of a guillotine.

But he was immediately sorry. . He’d tried, moreover, to soften the blow at the last moment. . to pretend he was simply looking for his flask. Which he then openly lifted to his fleshy lips, tipping his head way back to drain about a quarter of its contents. Then, reinvigorated but embittered, he collapsed into his chair.

“I hate boredom just as much as you do, little lady. You can tell, I suppose. I loathe boredom, I hope that’s obvious. Along with work, perseverance, labor. Even logic. Sometimes truth as well. Frequently, frequently. I’m a.

He’d pronounced the first words in a loud voice, which had then grown weaker. He was recovering his composure, his detachment, and wanted to make this clear.

“Yes, it’s useless to tell you everything I know about Sia Strihan. Or Dinu Barbosa, Tina M rg rit, the engineer Mateescu. Kahane, known as Agahane, or Patraulea the poet. Or that so very clever worker, Victor Vaduva. Or even our prize customer, the one you admire so much. It’s not just admiration, I know, I know, I know all about, how shall I put it, how you love him ‘body and soul,’ as they say. I shouldn’t annoy you by reciting everything I know about one and all, I shouldn’t, I admit. I should tell you instead what I know about myself. To make you understand that I’m a decent sort. Tell you things about myself that are as important as the ones we’ve learned about Simona Strihan. So that you’d respect me? I had the impression I’d succeeded in awakening your interest. . For me, there’s no other form of esteem. You’ll see that I know quite a lot about myself, too. Even though I’m. . That’s what I wanted to mention just now. . Even though I’m a dilettante, a hopeless dilettante. That’s what I am. .”

Shoulders bent over the desk, over his liquor flask, he soliloquized in a low voice, head bowed, no longer looking at his audience.

“They tolerate my little foibles: my carelessness, my idleness, my caprices, my weaknesses. They tolerate them. They’ve finally come around to considering me a necessary evil. Because I’m more than useful to them, I’m indispensable. They’re convinced of that. Even though they don’t understand my actions, my tactics, my deductions. Even though they despise me. . They’d be so happy to stuff me into a cell. To take revenge, using the methods that you know, for everything they can’t understand. And, better yet, they’d probably love to toss me into a coffin. Months go by without them calling me in. They leave me alone, the hell with me. But when they finally summon me, they don’t haggle. They accept my conditions, in other words, my fee and complete freedom to do things my way. They’ve given up imposing their program on me, their rigid schedules, all that foolishness they think so much of. The bottom line is, they go along with me without any understanding of how I work. Or of what I’m saying when I go into my big speech. . Every once in a while, you see, I wax eloquent. I explain to them why they should expect ‘special’ cases to crop up on a periodic basis. Exceptions! Spin-offs from life, which are nevertheless vital to it. Against which their disciplined hatred and stupidity have no effect. Different worlds, different species that will never understand each other. They ought to know in the first place what life is, so that they’d comprehend what I’m saying to them. They need my imagination, my temperament, my allergies, my intuitions. They finally figured out that I myself am a special case. Just like Sia Strihan. We two. . But probably not as exceptional as the comrade who’s so often in your thoughts, whom you miss so much. Now him, he’s definitely a special case, absolutely special. . Of course, I do have my successes. I do fairly well, actually, fairly well. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here now. That’s why they keep in touch. They see me as a kind of magician! Loathsome, sickly, cowardly, forgetful, eccentric. But the man gets results! My reports come to an optimistic conclusion, the compulsory optimism, the institutional optimism, so to speak. Institutional optimism in the kind of institution that provides a ‘self-invented’ man like me with enough illusions and occupations to kill some time. In this way, a case that’s been giving them headaches for three months or three years is as good as taken care of, so that the optimists can go back to enjoying their idiot profession. . However, I don’t always succeed. I lose some matches, too. Enigmas or geniuses. Or again, quite simply, my laziness is to blame. My lethargy, my distraction, and even, yes, yes, my generosity or my aversion, sometimes both, yes, both at the same time. I am only human, believe me, little lady. I’m only human and I have occasionally been defeated. Often by myself. Narrow-minded people don’t understand that failure is natural, that it can even be delectable, like everything human, and marvelously melancholy. . Even temporarily appropriate solutions contain a goodly proportion of failure. There’s no use in trying to explain to them that in reality everything is failure! Except that some failures are less obvious than others. Disguised, misleading, they pass for successes. When I don’t reach my goals, their goals, they forget all my previous triumphs. And of course they also suddenly forget their own impotence. Their confidence in their clumsy, stupid arguments is renewed. It’s not surprising that a person of my sort, a useless idler, a disgraceful loser, would be unable to get even the simplest job done! That’s what they scream at me. At last they’ve got a chance to insult me. To spit their hatred in my face, a hatred born of vanity, folly, and rancor. To shout that they don’t trust me. It’s hard to take. Especially for someone like me. You understand, I hope. . Lack of trust is my daily bread. Dry bread, a huge lump of chalk or ice crashing noisily down, trying to crush me. Or, on the contrary, bread dipped in vinegar, in poison. In a daze, I suck for days and nights and weeks at a time on a poisoned sponge that never runs dry. My lack of self-confidence. . So, if others start showing me that they don’t have any confidence in me, either, well! They just destroy me, I’m not able to think anymore, believe me. I become blind, dumb, paralyzed, I’m lost. I’m thrown back into my own misery and mess. Because of those idiots, I’m no longer good for anything here for months on end. They are the ones who should be dumbfounded whenever I appear! But in the end they call me back, those wretches, when they get a case that’s beyond them, one they can’t fathom despite all their efforts. That lunatic, they tell themselves, that weirdo might find the key, that’s what they hope, poor jerks. And me, after such a depression, I don’t have any idea where to begin. It takes me a long time to finally buckle down. I lack assurance, faith in myself. Without confidence, even for just a little while, even if it’s only illusory, nothing works, my dear artist. I can feel them encircling me, those brutes. Silent, all of a sudden, but they’re oppressive, stifling. They spy on my thoughts, my every move. And then something gets me going. A bottle, a woman, a book, a vacation. Or even a poem, don’t laugh. Music, sometimes. . I enjoy a renewed sense of vitality. Spurred on, champing at the bit, I’m raring to go. The facts, the hypotheses, the solution!”