Illegal Liaisons (23 page)

“Simon’s found out,” Jonathan threw at his phone.

“Wait,” grunted Stefan, his voice disappearing somewhere.

“What are you doing?”

“Lifting weights,” he panted. “Repeat what you’ve just said. I can’t hear anything, they’ve got MTV on nonstop.”

“Simon’s. Found. Out.”

Pounding music and the squeaking of machinery came through the telephone.

“Now, did you hear?” Jonathan turned in the street like a spinning top.

“But how?”

Jonathan thought he should have phoned somebody quicker off the mark.

“I don’t know how, what’s it matter? What matters is what he’s going to do about it. Because if he phones or writes to Megi …’

“Hey, hey, hey!” Jonathan could almost see Stefan lifting his hand like a policeman stopping a speeding driver. He stopped obediently. Branches swollen with buds hung over him, sheltering him from his family – they were on the first floor, he in the flowery basement.

“And what would you do if you found out Megi was humping someone on the side?” said Stefan. “Write letters to the guy?”

“Well, no. I’d go and …”

“That’s why I’m asking how he found out. If he’s in England the first blow will have been cushioned.”

Jonathan nodded to a passing neighbor.

“I’m not worried about him punching me in the face,” he retorted, wrapping his hand around the phone. “Only that he’ll tell Megi and create such a stink the kids will find out.”

“Hey, hey!” That afternoon, Stefan’s vocabulary was not impressive. “ ‘Create,’ ‘tell,’ what are you talking about? What guy’s going to brag about his old lady making a cuckold of him?”

Jonathan abandoned his nervous pacing. Inexplicable relief made his knees go soft. “What guy’s …” he silently repeated Stefan’s words.

“So what’s he going to do?” Jonathan’s mind clammed up, suddenly unable to make an effort.

Stefan was glugging something that could have been an energy drink.

“He’ll break up with her?” he asked joyfully.

That evening Jonathan behaved like an automaton and, when his expression started to worry Megi, locked himself in the bathroom on the pretext that he’d eaten something that had gone off. Staring at his own reflection, he reviewed the options. If Simon broke up with Andrea, what was he, Jonathan, to do? Only now did he realize that it was too soon for him to know what he wanted from her. He didn’t envisage her in his
everyday life, that was for sure. Every time he attempted to imagine this possibility, sex came to mind. The surroundings grew blurred; there were no familiar objects, rituals, points in time, even habits he could hang on to. He tried to remember what her clothes looked like, her wardrobe, but instead he saw her naked. Was that supposed to be their future?

Over the next day and night they didn’t write to each other; in the end Jonathan couldn’t stand it. “What’s happening?” he asked. Andrea didn’t reply for a long time then finally sent a message: “What’s the strategy?” He stayed silent. This time it was she who couldn’t stand the wait: “Do we deny it? Do we deny everything, then?”

He lived the following days in a simulation of rejection. He kept glancing at the phone and, when there wasn’t any message, writhed inside with pain. In the end, they bumped into each other at a Commission party – she glued to Simon’s arm, he barely able to stop himself leaving Megi. He tried to get near to Andrea but she wouldn’t leave her partner’s side. It was impossible to read anything in Simon’s face. He greeted Megi as if nothing had happened, nodded to Jonathan.

His fear of Megi finding out disappeared. His wife was the same as always, kind to Andrea, witty in Simon’s presence. Seeing this, Jonathan finally believed Stefan – the old trouper had figured Simon out. There was to be no trumpeting around or abrupt action; instead there was a mature calm, beneath which no one knew what lay. Or rather did know, judging by the barely noticeable trace of servility in Andrea’s behavior.

Watching her gaze at Simon, Jonathan was doused by a wave of jealously, despair, and disgust. She’d only recently bestowed similar looks on him, laughed at his jokes. Now she seemed to forget the whole world, as she gazed into her senile, self-important sun. Even her admirers noticed and, that evening, focused exclusively on Simon as though his beautiful partner didn’t exist.

Jonathan woke at dawn again and contemplated what he should do, thrashed out scenarios – the deeper into the night, the more pessimistic. The fact that the matter hadn’t exploded with a bang, that Andrea had deflected the blow (how?), ceased to bring relief. The absence of his lover
became so painful it obscured everything else. And yet his imagination still refused to envisage a life together with Andrea – he couldn’t arrive at such prosaic questions as where they would live, or, even more importantly, how they would tell their partners everything.

His mind, however, became truly powerless when he tried to think about his children in this context. Daily life without Antosia and Tomaszek was unimaginable. Again he realized how much his contact with his daughter and son had evolved during his paternity leave in Brussels. He no longer understood the phrase “leave home.” He was aware that the signal his body gave out – “I’m hungry” – had over the years changed to, “Have the children eaten yet?” “I’m a parent,” he noted, half with pride, half with surprise.

Which did not mean that, now he had stopped seeing his lover, he was good to his children. On the contrary, the chaos they created annoyed him, the quarrels, demands, and constant need for attention irritated him. Nevertheless, he didn’t flee, scared he would do the worst thing possible – stand beneath Andrea’s window.

When Stefan phoned to ask how the situation was developing, Jonathan couldn’t give him any concrete details. Numb, he listened as his friend reassured him that he hadn’t heard any rumors, meaning Simon hadn’t let on and the only thing that had changed was Andrea’s behavior. Stefan’s experienced eye noticed that the woman had lost half of her characteristic drive for independence. She wasn’t even flirting.

“Look on the bright side,” concluded Stefan. “You had the chick, that’s what counts!”

“I did,” replied Jonathan flatly.

“And what did you expect? That she’d leave the loaded high-flyer and get married to a house husband?”

“She didn’t even consider it.”

“Maybe you should have proposed?” snorted Stefan.

Jonathan slowly hid his cell in his pocket. It wasn’t surprising she hadn’t reacted to his question, “Couldn’t we be together?” He hadn’t known himself what he had in mind at the time. All the guys had been staring at her, lusting after her. So he’d pressed the bag of ice at Jean-Pierre
and isolated her from them, wanting his question to close her off in the embrace of a promise. She had smelled a rat. She didn’t want to belong to someone again.

Over the following days, Jonathan played with building blocks, solved jigsaws and daily puzzles. Only when drunk did he gawp at Andrea and ridicule what the officials talked about. Pushed aside by them – the circle had the invaluable ability discreetly to spit out inappropriate interlocutors, typical of people whose priority is power – he sat in a corner following his lover with his eyes.

Megi retreated into herself, reminding him of Andrea at the start of their affair – subdued and sad. Andrea, on the other hand, was resuming the colors of a hummingbird. Still very attentive to Simon, she moved further and further afield and even began to send out furtive signals that infallibly drew men to her. Simon looked on with tolerance, whereas Jonathan unexpectedly discovered in himself a deep disdain for a man who remained with a woman despite knowing she’d had another.

In the end, he stopped going to receptions where he might come across them, then, when Megi returned from the parties, picked out scraps of information about his lover. In this way he learned that Andrea had come to a party alone for the first time since the crisis, and danced with a young, gifted lawyer recently employed by Simon. Toward the end of the party, apparently, they’d disappeared in the garden.

When he heard, Jonathan got up and excused himself for a moment. He texted Andrea from the toilet, with the noncommittal suggestion they meet. She wrote back after a few minutes saying she was very sorry but a girlfriend was visiting and staying overnight. Jonathan slammed down the toilet lid.

“Everything OK?” asked Megi from the stairs.

He hated her for her concern, for decently blabbering everything out.

“Oh, and there’s one more piece of news!” she said. “Andrea mentioned she and Simon are thinking about a baby.”

“Whose baby?” Jonathan didn’t understand.

“Theirs.” Megi yawned.

He ended up beneath her window at the fall of dusk. He told his wife that he was going for an impromptu beer with Stefan and wrote to his lover that unless she came down he’d stand there until Simon saw him.

For a good few minutes she didn’t text back, but finally she appeared in the window. The light from the street fell on her simple vest and panties, slid down the contours of her naked hips. Andrea disappeared into the depths of the apartment; after a while she emerged from the house and stood opposite him, dressed in a pale coat tied with a belt.

He took her by the hand and led her to the nearest church. She entered the dark vestibule first; he followed, unable to chase away the thought of whether she had anything else on beneath her coat apart from underwear. They sat down in a pew. For the first time, Andrea was not in a hurry; Jonathan, on the other hand, wriggled around. He gazed at her, took her hand, stroked the skin of her forearm as high as the sleeve of her coat allowed.

In the end, Andrea whispered, “Let’s go.”

They made love on the bed. No traces of tenderness remained; they tore each other apart, bit each other’s tongues. He sniffed her neck and licked away the damp, glued his hips to her buttocks, searched for what was familiar and for what was unknown.

When finally he rolled over to the other end of the bed, Andrea spread her arms and legs; they lay in silence like pale stars.

“What did you tell him?” he asked in the end, and immediately regretted it.

“That you’re one of many.”

“Screwing you?”

“Who’d like to.”

“And he still wants a child with you?”

“He does. Because he loves me.”

“The way you are?”

She got up and wrapped a sheet around herself, tugging a resistant corner out from beneath him.

“Andrea.” He curled up on his side. “I’m taking risks.”

She clicked a cigarette lighter. She didn’t smoke but clearly must have done at some stage since she kept lighters in the house.

“What do you want from me?”

He groaned as if she had set fire to him.

“You.”

“You want me?” she hissed. Her glistening hair swayed in the darkness.

He looked at her shoulders, at the flickering flame of the cigarette lighter.

“I’d like to have you both.”

F
LUFFY PETALS
fell from the trees to the pavement, their cool touch brushing the tips of shoes. Once again, Jonathan sneaked out and, wherever possible, rocked and caressed, whispered and kissed. The angry Andrea grew increasingly docile, consoled. He went to her, and it was as though they had a home. Flower pots stood in the windows, books on the shelves and, next to which, photographs. They had their favorite tastes and colors, films and rituals, declarations of love and trivial resentments. He felt that now Andrea had really fallen in love with him, the game was over. She took his face in her hands, looked him in the eyes, and said, “I love you.” She licked his cheeks, lips, chin, and everything swelled within him, from his erection to his heart. He was managing to be a lover, father, writer, and husband all at once. “People ought to be able to live like this,” he repeated, powerful. If he’d had a tail, he would be constantly wagging it. He’d choose a shaggy one, like a Setter’s.

Andrea spread herself beneath him and said he was the one with whom she wanted a child. She’d never thought about it before but now something had come over her. “Pour it in, come inside me,” she meowed, presenting her wet pussy. He went crazy with desire, but with what remained of his willpower, pulled on a rubber. She threw herself at him, like a mongrel at a bowl of food – bit him, sucked, licked, almost lost consciousness so that he was a little scared of her. Yet he couldn’t not take her in that state, couldn’t not make love to her. He wrestled with her until they fell off the bed, rubbed her clitoris, immersed his cock to its very roots. Until one time he couldn’t wait and came without a condom. He had never yet experienced such a strong orgasm.

“Good thing you protect yourself,” he tossed, rolling on to his back.

“Not any more,” she said lightheartedly. “But don’t worry, my period’s just due.”

He gave no more thought to it. He lay down to sleep next to Megi and dreamt of Andrea’s thighs; he cooked what his wife liked, fantasising about his lover’s rump. That’s the way he was now – and he couldn’t help it.

Yet, somehow, he ceased to be in a hurry to see Andrea. He cuddled the insecure and sad Megi, stroked her hair when they lay on the sofa together, gazed at her blonde bangs, and it wrung his heart: she felt so safe with him. He also missed the children. Although they didn’t notice his actual absence, they must have sensed a distance because they approached him a little warily, as if he smelled of something unfamiliar. In the end, they’d let themselves be cheered up and the three of them would sit down to a game of
Battleship
or go on bike rides.

Now Andrea didn’t take well to his “returning home.” She inundated him with messages, disclosed her feelings, and demanded replies. Half-amused, half-troubled, he wrote back, a little surprised by her passion and his own distance. He didn’t know whether he fully believed her but was so moved by her eagerness that he responded in the same vein.

Sometimes they argued, like the time when, furious at some triviality, she screamed, “I’m not any ‘love’ of yours!”

“Aren’t you?” He was astonished.

“At best I’m what you imagine love to be. You’re deaf to me, to my needs!”