Norman Manea - Compulsory Happiness

He was right. The finite earth, subject to its unchanging rotation. . The night that had united them now cast them up, together, on the cold and glassy shore of day.

He smiled, like a dead man. “Open the window, please.”

The prisoner stood up clumsily. She was pale; her eyes were bloodshot, with great purplish circles under them.

She pivoted and took a first, slow step toward the window. She took another, leaning on the arm of the chair. She kept going, stretching out her left hand, with nothing more to lean on. She took one last, big step and reached the window, almost collapsing, holding both her hands out in front of her to grab the window frame, just in time.

She breathed deeply, with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes. Then she tried to straighten up. Her left hand clutched at the windowsill, her right slid across the casement, fumbling for a moment before reaching the cold metal of the window fastening. She tightened her grip, attempting to open it. She couldn’t. She stood on tiptoe, reaching up with her left arm as well to grasp the handle of the casement bolt with both hands, to wrench it free. Her forehead was damp. She struggled with the bolt, again and again, until at last the two sides of the espagnolette window parted gently. Her arms fell limply to her sides. She leaned on the sill for a moment, then grasped one of the casements and swung it completely back against the wall, doing the same with the other side as well. She stood awhile at the open window, her eyes refreshed by the cool morning air.

She gazed at the downy white sky, the rows of dawn-blue houses, the glistening wet ribbons of the streets, along which raced a few cars, vanishing like insects in a hurry. She placed her hands flat against the sides of the window, which in this room as well was furnished with thick bars. A sky streaked with clouds. Still white, though. Serene.

Prison, illness, solitude, the misfortunes of this singular life. Brief, of unforeseeable duration, let’s enjoy it while we may. If I weren’t revolted by hearing those words from his lips, I might well have spoken them myself, who knows?

Behind her, nothing stirred. Had the little rabbit fallen asleep, with his head on the desk? Or was he still watching her, holding his breath? There was no longer the slightest sound.

She listened intently; no, nothing. Some time had probably passed. She’d opened the window, had rested for a long while, contemplating the sky above the deserted city. She’d forgotten the man who’d shared her night. After all, he’d only told her to open the window. . She turned her head slowly toward him. To indicate, quite properly, that she was entirely at his disposal.

But he was no longer in the room. He’d probably slipped out while she was wrestling with the window.

The chair was in its place behind the desk, as though no one had ever sat there. The telephone, dead. The thin flask and its metal cap that had so often brightened the room during the night, like a tiny sign of life, were gone.

She had such a longing to stretch her legs, get the stiffness out of them. To relax into oblivion, her head buried in a soft pillow. She wasn’t strong enough yet to remember everything, to start putting her thoughts in order.

She gave up the idea of going back to her armchair. Exhausted, she leaned her elbows on the window ledge. Until they came to drag her off wherever they wanted, she was staying right where she was. The door was closed, however, and no one was calling her. They opened the door for barely a second. To keep an eye on me: I could have broken through the bars and escaped by jumping down from the second floor. They saw me and closed the door, reassured. Or perhaps it was him again, taking one last look, between two swigs from that flask.

She felt a light hand on her shoulder. She shuddered; the serpent glided across her shoulder, and now she felt it slithering down her back, cold and damp.

So it wasn’t finished; it was just beginning. The hand pressed softly on her shoulder. Everything was starting all over, and even worse, picking up from the point she’d always dreaded the most. He had unbeatable endurance, that feeble wraith! Strength and inclination had returned, he’d emptied another bottle. He was off and running again, daisy-fresh. It would never end, he’d figured correctly, right on the button, his victim wouldn’t put up a fight, wouldn’t be able to hold out.

“Relax. It’s not starting up again,” murmured a woman’s voice, apparently quite close. . right next to her. .

The slim fingers seemed to grip her shoulder, turning her gently around. The woman from the day before perhaps, that stern, delicate brunette, so familiar, like a colleague. . There was something both lewd and maternal about her. Her hair mussed, her face pale and sweaty, her skirt twisted, her white blouse partially unbuttoned, as though she’d just been unexpectedly rousted out of her lair, after a nap or a night of insomnia or after. . after anything at all. Her breasts, naked and dewy with perspiration, quivered in the plunging neckline of her blouse.

“Thank you. You behaved very well, you didn’t provoke him. .”

The words were barely audible, whispered too softly.

The hand on her shoulder kept creeping, it seemed, ser-pentinely, toward her neck. The apparition tried to caress her cheeks, ever so gently? The prisoner moved away.

“Who tossed your cap over there?” she heard, far away, or was it close by?

The woman bent down, picked it up. Looked at it with a kind of tenderness, thwacked it against the windowsill. Flicked off the last specks of dust with her hand. Then placed it, slowly and carefully, on the shaved head, and came even nearer to the window.

The wretched prisoner leaned her forehead against the bars, drinking in the cold daylight and fresh air, fleeing the voice that pursued her. Sirens wailed, one would have said, all of a sudden; she heard them and didn’t hear them, perhaps they’d been shrieking all night long, just for her, and she hadn’t heard them.

“You behaved well. You can rest a bit, even sleep. .”

Someone, somewhere, sometime, had murmured these words slowly, too slowly, as though talking to a sister. Was the woman barefoot? Was that why she hadn’t heard her come in?

At some point, the door closed again, quietly. A breath, perhaps a trace of scent, a blend of new odors, difficult to identify. She stared at the door a while longer before turning back toward the window.

She stood motionless, her temple resting against the chilly window frame. Her weary face seemed to glow with the light of dawn. She appeared to be asleep.

FOR A LONG TIME NOW WE’VE BECOME UNABLE TO UNDER- stand ourselves except in relation to others. Only this approach, apparently, can lead us to any meaningful conclusions. In the same way, we cannot look to the future before learning who we are.

Perhaps what the eager originator of the project had in mind, essentially, was a portrait of his time. Individualization, or what would remain of it, would once again result only from comparison with a frame of reference. Anyone bothering to consider in this light the personal data sheet (to be handed in the following day at the designated political department) would have no difficulty understanding that he is participating, willy-nilly, in this summation, or synthesis, and that his life, as singular as it may seem to him — a somewhat elusive and astonishing mystery, in his own eyes — would be discernible, if only as an extravagant detail, within a range of collective data.

So it’s easy to understand why the new Director of the Institute of Futurology would prefer to diversify the pool of participants in the study rather than adopt new techniques. As a result, not only the usual mathematicians, physicists, psychologists, doctors, and lawyers will be invited to the first of those lively Thursday conferences, but others as well, strange categories outside the norm.