Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

It had grown dark outside, but he didn’t turn on the lights. It wasn’t yet completely dark, or was it? Although the prisoner didn’t see him, she could tell he was now standing up behind the desk.

“I could work miracles for an intelligent boss! Someone who would know how to exploit my faults. Yes, my laziness, my carelessness, my absentmindedness. There’s so much room for imagination in these little failings! You can make your moves without anyone being able to anticipate or foil your intentions. But how can I find a superior mind among these peons? It took them years to recognize my talents — even then, only grudgingly — and to learn how to use them. To show some degree of comprehension, providing me with favorable working conditions. A stimulating environment. Putting up with my whims. In other words, nurturing my talents. Which are few, perhaps, but very special, requiring equally special care. It would take them a hundred years to understand that my faults open up a whole new approach to the game!”

He was nervously rubbing his hands together, crossing and uncrossing his index fingers.

“A dilettante, naturally. Neither a professional nor an official. A dilettante, unused to the job, the bosses, the schedules, the plodding, methodical, forced labor. Working infrequently, but with pleasure. For money, for the fun of it. Only when the offer is tempting, intriguing, believe me. When he has the chance to come up against a riddle and solve it. Without ever letting his intuitions, his enjoyment of the game, be spoiled. His passion for inventing, for expanding the realm of possibilities provided by chance. You see. . whatever you could confess doesn’t interest me. I know everything about you. I’m the one, rather, who could tell you things, if you like, about anyone at all. Myself included. So that you might come to know better both your comrades and your adversary.

“In actual fact, I must admit, we play as adversaries. It means we are adversaries, if we dug deeply into our innermost thoughts, we’d probably find that the situation is more complicated. Knowing all that I do, knowing what crimes you’ve committed, crimes that are real, but not relatively serious, I’m perfectly justified in telling you that your importance is entirely a matter of my opinion. . Ideas set people’s hearts and minds aflame in no time. Particularly if they’re young. Taking power: how fascinating! Afterwards, it’s not that simple. Once power is in your hands, things get a lot tougher. I’ve been around in this business, believe me, sweetie. I know how it works.”

The prisoner waited. Was he going to continue this informality?

“You’re hardly the most interesting case, little lady, you must have realized that.”

“But you have a certain correlative importance for me. Because I found a correlation. Your friend, now he really interests me. He deserves particular attention, I confess. What do your comrades think about the fact that you were late on the very day they were arrested? You don’t know. . We haven’t told them that you were arrested as well. I’ll think about that later. Perhaps I’ll request that you be released soon. Which would reinforce their distrust, wouldn’t it? That man who so fascinates us both, you and me, would he defend you against the others’ suspicions, against his own? I understand him, I even like him. A kind of cruelty, typically intellectual. Strength and vulnerability. That last counterbalanced by an even greater strength. Great strength that is at the same time a great weakness. An added attraction, don’t you think? Vulnerable. . therefore liable to fall into a fatal trap. And yet, as I was telling you, I understand him, I really do. The most dangerous excesses are those of the intellectual. The intellectual determined to conquer his weaknesses and hesitations by exaggerating his ‘loyalty.’ I’ve been watching that one for a long time, believe me. Ten years. I already know him well. Constantly threatened, not only by us or by others, but by himself. Let’s let him struggle with himself, I told my bosses. That’s enough, if you ask me. But no one understands me. Those idiots are blind to my powers of insight.”

The little fellow had become so worked up he was panting. And there was something, at times, not quite right. . The prisoner waited, unnerved at the idea that he might be coming closer to her.

Instead, he began screaming at the top of his lungs. “No, this isn’t some kind of joke, and I’m not fucking around! Wipe that silly smile off your face! Perhaps there’s someone paying me to play this double game, paying me for my double-triple-multiple role, what would you know about it? What gives you the right to despise me?”

Still yelping, he abruptly turned on the desk lamp and peered suspiciously at her. He stood there trembling, banging his small fists on the glass. He was completely flushed, his shoulders twitching. In an utter paroxysm of rage, he glared pop-eyed at the prisoner. He flailed his arms in all directions. His body began convulsing in a violent fit. He sneezed. . yes, he was sneezing again, the little rabbit. . couldn’t stop sneezing. . The irritation and weakness that had overtaken him seemed to have sensitized all his membranes at one stroke, for they now quivered under attack. The pleasure of sneezing! As though it drained and revived not only his mucosae but also his soul, his delicate sinner’s soul. He moaned, purified. Rejuvenated, cleansed. Unable to recover, exhausted. At last he collapsed on the desk, all in. His trembling hand fumbled across the glass, seeking the switch. The light went out.

After a long pause, the voice rose once again into the darkness, hesitant, obsessive.

“The game I’m playing is more dangerous than you think, my dear. Much crueler than you suppose. . A mind-game. Calculation and imagination. A restless mind, a subtle, delicate mechanism. It’s true that I lack character. . but not cruelty, not ferocity, believe me, madam. A worthy opponent for you. You’ll understand this, you’ll understand this, too, later on.”

The room was steeped in darkness, immersed in dense shadows. The prisoner couldn’t see a thing, not a thing. . except the tortuous trajectory of his words, his voice thickened by drink, hoarse, even vitreous at times, even moist, emerging between sneezes, swelling, filling the air, suddenly bursting, blown out, like a thin balloon touched by a knife blade.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have listened to him. The preparations, the last few days of softening her up, the meals, then the shock caused by the beginning of this interminable interview. . Instability, a kind of working premise, without which this dangerous clown could neither think nor breathe, a fragile, deceptive mechanism that probably becomes effective only in the end, when you add up all the bizarre elements. . A permanent oscillation and vertigo maintaining each other on their own, functioning through trapdoors and falls and even more desperate recoveries. . Oh, all that had worn her out, beaten her down. Little by little he’d succeeded in instilling a continual tension in her, and in sensitizing her to its different gradations. . She knew that anything could happen and she couldn’t have cared less, no, she’d run out of strength, she had none left, none at all, none.

She was sliding down into her armchair, into sleep. She thought at some point she’d heard the words “my dear.” She was losing it, letting go, falling asleep, ready to drop with fatigue, slipping away into sleep, and he, he was watching her, on the alert, like a huge misshapen rabbit.

She clenched her fists to keep from giving in. She was sliding again, though, drifting lightly into the armchair’s sweet softness. Her body was spreading, overflowing. She shouldn’t give up, she mustn’t; she tensed the muscles in her calves to keep herself awake. As for him, she no longer heard him, she hadn’t heard him for some time now, perhaps he wasn’t talking anymore, perhaps he didn’t even exist any longer, long gone. No, she wouldn’t listen to him anymore, she’d put her fingers in her ears, and anyway, he no longer existed, long gone, all gone, nothing left.