Compulsory Happiness

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A METHODICAL SCHEDULE, REPEATED DAILY, FROM FIVE in the morning until ten in the evening. Without any modification, the same ordeals, over and over, repeated indefinitely. To humiliate, intimidate, destroy. From morning to evening. Sometimes at night as well.

The same precision, the same cruelty, for several months now. And then, suddenly, a change.

One Tuesday morning, without any warning, an unbelievable change. They hadn’t beaten her, and instead of beating her, they’d moved her to a bigger cell, on the first floor. She was allowed an extra hour of exercise, alone in the courtyard, before lights out. In the evening, a fat, grumpy guard replaced the toilet can with an enameled chamber pot.

The next morning, hot sugared tea; the meals were better than usual, too. In the afternoon, at the time formerly reserved for her harshest punishment, she was taken to the shower. When she returned, she found a sheet on her bed, and a clean blanket, and some clothing, neatly folded. The most astonishing thing of all: the small rectangular mirror and the slender tube of Nivea lotion found among the clothes.

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