Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

It’s clear the Kid won’t take this lying down, no way.

“Yes, but they haven’t anyone else! Bigwigs bored shitless with other bigwigs. They want something else, something more exotic. Milady Dina feels like a change of air; as for Vasile, Comrade Vasile … You never know what he’s up to, so it’s useless to try to reassure me!”

Surprise: after the return of Comrade Beldeanu to hearth and home, there were no more phone calls from Madame.

Not a peep, from either Lady Di or Comrade Vasile. A day goes by, then two, then three … Go figure! Felicia and the Kid waited, tense with anticipation. They’d cooked up all sorts of convincing pretexts for avoiding another visit. The Beldeanus’ silence amazed them. They seemed to grow more and more anxious. It’s not good to play around with that kind of person, they can be really vindictive … Arrogant, inhibited, and screwed up! shouted the Child, losing control in a burst of panic. Of course, anyone can become vindictive, sighed his long-suffering wife. Maybe she’s upset, angry, they’re only human, after all. The Learned One had decided, however, that he would absolutely not make the next move.

It seems that after about a week Felicia called Ioana to see if she had any news. No, Dina hadn’t gotten in touch with the Stoians, either. Had anything happened? No, nothing. Ali would have heard about it, Ali saw Bazil every day, no, nothing in particular.

The subject must have come up again in the men’s conversation. Felicia’s husband asked Ioana’s husband if he’d heard anything lately about the wife of Vasile Bazil Beldeanu. What’s going on, what’s happened? She’d vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared. A comet, come and gone, joked the Brat. His friend calmly ignored this display of teasing adolescent humor. The question was repeated. A grunt was the only answer. Intrigued by this mystery, the Guileless One wouldn’t give up. Ali replied as though reciting a lesson in school: nothing in particular. The phrase had a decisive ring to it, clear and definite. Clear and false. As though, somehow, there was still something … something unusual, perhaps.

And so the men took a walk together in town.

“Well, what happened? Come on, spit it out. I could tell, you couldn’t say anything on the phone. Now let’s have it.”

“Things aren’t going too well …”

“What do you mean? The trip didn’t work out? He wasn’t able to stuff the car with chickens or booze? Or was it that he couldn’t cadge enough gas?”

“No, he’s not the problem. I’m not talking about him.”

“Ah, Lady Di. She finally caught him with a secretary or a Party groupie?”

“No, that’s not it. You’ll laugh, but Bazil’s scared to death of Dina. He doesn’t try any funny business within three hundred kilometers of home.”

“So, what then? Three hundred kilometers wasn’t enough? You told me he traveled all over the country. Romania’s pretty big, isn’t it, and it isn’t the Holy Land either, if you get my drift.”

“It’s her, she’s the one who’s not doing well. Poor Bazil, he’s deeply worried. Really worried, believe me, I’m not joking. These problems, you know; it’s not easy to find answers for them.”

“It was inevitable! An organic reaction. No, not organic, a reaction of the entire being, body and soul and spirit, to alienation. Self-alienation. Marriage produces breaks like that, you know. Or the tyranny of the state, of parental authority, a routine job, lots of other things. A void, nothing, unavoidable emptiness …”

“Drop all this philosophizing, it’s serious.”

“And philosophy isn’t, right? But why don’t you tell me exactly what’s wrong? With all this secrecy, you’d think Dina had joined a dissident movement.”

“No, that’s not the problem, obviously. It’s very confused. She’s a bit… shaken. She can’t get back on track.”

Ali flicked away his cigarette and crushed it out beneath the sole of his huge shoe. He studied at length his short friend’s glasses. He studied his friend, with a look of boredom and irritation on his face.

“Since that business. With the trenchcoat.”

“Which trenchcoat?”

“What? What which? The raincoat, I’m telling you … that one. The phone calls. After we went there for dinner. You don’t remember?”

“What?”

“Don’t you remember? She asked us if we hadn’t left a raincoat at their place that evening.”

“No, not me. She never spoke to me about it, not to me. Felicia, perhaps. But no, I don’t think so. She would’ve mentioned it to me. No, I don’t believe so …”

“You don’t believe so? Are you out of your mind? Of course she called you. Apparently she called everyone. She even called our house one morning when she knew we weren’t there so she could speak to our son, and of course Dorin didn’t know what she was talking about. She was clearly checking up on us, checking to see if we’d been telling the truth about the kind of raincoats we had. She went crazy from asking all over town about this thing. Now she’s clammed up.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean, what do I mean! As if you didn’t know! She called you too, obviously. And not just once, twice. I checked. The people she trusted, she called them twice.”

“Well then, she didn’t trust us, because she didn’t call us. Felicia mentioned nothing to me about it.”

“She said nothing to you because it was nothing important. It just seemed like some nonsense.”

“So, wasn’t it? Nothing important, I mean? What trenchcoat … what the hell is all this fuss about, what trenchcoat?”

Ali lighted another cigarette. Drawing the collar of his jacket closer around his neck, he looked up at the sky. The clear, lifeless, inscrutable sky. Brisk, seasonable weather. The street along which they were walking was deserted. Neither said a word. Ali considered his candid companion once more.

“Monday, the day after we had dinner there, Dina found — I mean, she noticed — a raincoat that didn’t belong to them, hanging on the coat tree in the hall. That’s what she says … She asked us first, of course, to see if it might belong to us. Then she asked you the same thing. Then she asked other people. Over and over again, it just didn’t make sense. She got completely worked up over this, it seems. Then she stopped asking people about it.”

“You mean she found the culprit? The owner?”

“The owner! The culprit! No! No, no, that’s not the problem … What owner? The raincoat’s still in the same spot, hanging on the coat tree. That’s what I’m told … In the Beldeanus’ hall. No one knows whether she understood or not. Suddenly she just stopped talking about it. It’s not clear why. From fear, evidently. But no one knows. Fear because she understood, or fear because she didn’t understand at all? Bazil can’t figure out exactly what’s gnawing at her, where things have gone wrong. She refuses to see a doctor. As though doctors … Anyway, the whole thing’s a mess.”

“Oh, fine,” observed the Kid, looking innocently up at his friend Al. I. Stoian, known as Ali, hoping he realized at last that his companion hadn’t any idea what he was talking about, not the faintest idea. He understood, didn’t understand, understood too much, hard to tell, with all the questions he was asking.

“You said you stopped by their place Monday morn-ing.”

“Yes, I went by before noon, before going to the office.”

“Oh, right, so you did stop by. Actually, you told me that, that you’d been there on Monday.”

“Bazil called to tell me he was in a hurry, that he’d hardly had the time to write his article, he was worn out from the dinner party. He had to leave, so he asked me if I’d come pick up the article and take it to the paper.”