Compulsory Happiness by Norman Manea

Author:Norman Manea
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

IV.

Rejuvenated bya brief convalescence in the mountains, the stranger will go back down into the big, flat patchwork of the city, groping his way for a while through the dawn darkness, in the shadowy streets riddled with potholes. He’ll walk from the station to the outskirts of the city, stepping over puddles of waste water, looking among the new concrete boxes for the house where, it seems, he once lived.

The morning will be mild and sunny by the time he stops, at a noisy intersection crowded with buses and streetcars, before what used to be a slum-street stall and is now a branch of the National Savings Bank. He’ll shrug off his worn backpack and loop the strap around his arm. He’ll grasp the doorknob and gently push open the door, alerted in an instant by the ringing of the little bell overhead signaling that his strange wanderings are over. These ladies in the savings bank must have been amused at first by this noise, but they probably haven’t noticed it for a long time now.

An ordinary ageless gentleman, polite, somewhat head-in-the-clouds, watching the people around him with a pleasantly curious expression: that’s what he looked like, this stranger with the face of a teenager. The high-school kid, the college student, the scholar of indeterminate age, the recluse, the mountain climber—God knows who he was—sat down in a chair and put his backpack on the one next to him. He contemplated, overheard, memorized … the dance, the words of the foursome gathered around a pale, elegant young woman whom the others called Chickadee and who was speaking in a soft, composed voice.

“I really didn’t feel well last night, I was all alone in the house. I was scared when the phone rang, it was right before dawn. He was very upset, he told me that the idea had been his, but he didn’t think it was going to work out. The idea came to him just like that, and he’d thought it was something worth looking into, something new. He wouldn’t have taken it any further if the boss hadn’t shown any interest, but then he’d gotten stubborn about it when he’d seen that the boss wanted to take over the idea for himself. And he’d known him for a long time, ever since the boss was little. But he got scared when he realized that he was being asked to defend his proposal one more time. He didn’t want to give up without a fight, but there wasn’t anything they could do to him anymore. There’s nothing more they can do to him … But he couldn’t stand the fact that the boss seemed to be making fun of him, once he’d realized he wouldn’t let him use his idea for his own schemes. At first the boss had been enthusiastic, making him come up with further details to prove his points and fancy quotations from the classics of Marxism-Leninism, but he wasn’t sure this wasn’t some kind of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.