Illegal Liaisons (35 page)

Megi’s blood boils. She wants to believe him but hates him, doesn’t know how much truth there is in what he says. She’ll never know.

She stares at him, at what he’s done to their lives; burrowing insects have caused an earthquake, and now he’s surprised that their world’s turned upside down. “Idiot, fathead, twit!” Antosia’s words ring in her head.

She bites when Jonathan wants to touch her. Their yelling brings the children running, and when they, too, are crying, Jonathan runs out. Megi lies down on the floor; the jumbled pages rustle beneath her. She turns the only remaining thought in her head – there isn’t only one man, there are many – but can’t understand the phrase.

Antosia covers her with a blanket. Tomaszek brings her some juice and puts it next to her. They lie down on the sofa, near to her and, after a while, she hears their regular breathing. She wants to get up, give them the blanket, but
doesn’t feel well. Beneath her eyelids she sees a tiny light, somewhere on the left, a glimmer that, as she studies it, turns into a corridor
.

Megi is scared to go there. The light doesn’t disappear so she raises herself on her elbows with a groan. Routine, right? Only routine helps in such cases. All right, she’ll go and wash. She steps under the shower, runs the shaver over her shins, armpits, bikini line, listens to the stream of water. She remembers her father, the lower half of his face smeared white, his funny expressions, the shaving brush …

Her mother had divorced him, her father had left. Now Jonathan was leaving
.

Megi is left alone. Megi is shaving
.

J
ONATHAN ROLLED OVER
on to his other side. The mattress let out a puff, the sleeping bag slid down with a rustle. He kicked it aside, he was too hot as it was. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The glow of the street lamp, the texture of the stucco, four meters of space.

The apartment was empty; all that remained were the washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, mattress, and divan on which Stefan was snoring. Monika had moved out just before Christmas. The children had apparently protested, their daughter especially didn’t want to move to Poland, but Monika had already sorted everything out – the move, the schools, and had even found herself a job.

“What’s she going to do?” asked Jonathan as he was brewing some tea in the morning.

Stefan was sitting on the floor, nibbling a piece of toast.

“Something to do with leasing.” He shrugged his shoulders.

His face was bloated. Not only had they drunk too much the previous evening, he also claimed not to have slept well, which Jonathan, who’d kept on waking because of Stefan’s snoring, believed to be an exaggeration.

“And you?” Jonathan passed him the mug. Only one was left so they had to share.

A couple of hours later they were at Zaventeem airport.

“So, are we going to see each other in Warsaw?” muttered Stefan. They looked at each other, gave each other an awkward bear hug. Stefan averted his face, which sported a moustache again, and sniffled. At passport control, he turned for a moment and lifted his hand in the air. Jonathan lifted his and showed him his middle finger in an offensive gesture; Stefan cheered up briefly.

Jonathan made toward the exit. He hadn’t been surprised when Stefan informed him he was following Monika to Poland. There was something inseparable in the misery of those two, an element of being condemned to each other, the sweetness of suffering in the marriage of old lags.

“She’s changing,” Stefan had said the previous night when they were sitting on the floor with bottles of beer in their hands. “But I’m not going to change any more. I’m not looking for anyone else.”

“No?” There was doubt in Jonathan’s voice.

“Well, perhaps to screw a little on the side.”

“I wonder what made her change?”

“Martyna,” Stefan had retorted without hesitation. “Before she left, Monika told me that when she looked at someone like that – and I quote – ‘useless kept woman,’ she felt sick.”

Jonathan roused himself as somebody’s suitcase caught on his trouser leg, followed by a vague
“Pardon’
. He walked up to the door marked “Exit” but, instead of going out, stopped and pulled his cell out of his pocket.

He had two messages. One from Cecile, asking him to keep an evening in March free because she’d managed to book a room in the little mansion by Botanique where they were going to launch the anthology. The other was from Stefan: “Before you hand the keys back to the owner, chuck the cheese out of the fridge or he’ll think we’ve mucked up the drains.”

He patted his jacket and felt a hard shape in his pocket – the keys to Stefan’s apartment. He had somewhere to stay for a couple of weeks until the end of the year.

All of a sudden, he turned around and fixed his eyes on where departing passengers disappeared. He was on the same side as his mother had once been. She’d no longer loved his father then, only Nick. But
most of all, she’d loved him, Jonathan, as she kept telling him to the point of boredom.

How many years it had taken him to shake off his binding belief in realism. It was only recently that he’d realized he had a right to premonitions, impressions, instincts, and outbursts – even though he was a man.

It was too cold to sit on the park bench so he just stood beside it. A pigeon limped in front of him. Jonathan watched it – the bird was missing one foot. Jonathan rested his hip on the bench – he, too, was limping, inside. But he could still fly.

He pulled out his cell. “What are we going to do now? Are we going to be friends?” She didn’t reply so he tapped out, “But you don’t believe in friendship.” “No, I don’t,” wrote back Andrea.

A moment later the little screen flashed again. “Neither of us will guarantee your happiness but you can count on pleasant experiences that will allow you to forget.”

Jonathan put away his cell and, despite the cold, sat down on the bench. If he decided to leave, he would become a kidney stone – the family would excrete him but with great pain.

The two women he loved. His best friend and the mother of his children. His pregnant lover.

Something red appeared in the sky – balloons had escaped from a fair. He heard children’s cries. They’re what’s most important, he thought. And women, men? That’s just pumping up the ego. Which is life-giving, unfortunately.

Jonathan stands at the door but doesn’t take the keys out of his pocket. He rings the bell. His daughter opens the door, looks at him solemnly.

“Have you come back?” she asks.

Behind her stands Megi, who now also stares at Jonathan. Tomaszek pushes his head between his mother and sister.

“Are you coming in?” That’s Megi’s voice.

Jonathan enters and stops in the hallway.

“What next?” he asks.

I
N THE SPRING OF
2009
, the anthology entitled
About Loving
comes out. At the book launch, Jonathan says, “We built up our approach to love together – at our sessions. When one of us wasn’t coping, he or she passed the baton on to the others. Our writing is a set of connected vessels.”

Megi goes to Warsaw for a decisive talk concerning her work. At the same time, she receives an offer for the position of head of unit in Brussels. She returns to Brussels and, when she finds herself with the children at Zaventeem airport, unexpectedly breaks into tears.

“Are you missing Granny’s house?” asks Antosia.

Megi doesn’t answer, only gazes at Brussels’s colorful crowd.

She doesn’t know what awaits her here, but knows she’ll stay.

In the autumn, Jonathan publishes
The Pavlov Dogs
. The parents of his former readers make sure the novel doesn’t find itself in the hands of their children. It’s the parents who lose themselves in the author’s first “grown-up” novel.

Andrea gives birth to a son.

New Europe Books
Williamstown, Massachusetts

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G
RAŻYNA
P
LEBANEK
was born in Warsaw, Poland. She is the author of the highly acclaimed and bestselling novels
Pudelko ze szpilkami
(Box of Stilettos; 2002),
Dziewczyny z Portofino
(Girls from Portofino; 2005) and
Przystupa
(A Girl Called Przystupa; 2007).
Illegal Liaisons (Nielegalne zwiazki
, 2010) sold 27,000 copies in Poland and is her first novel to be translated into English. In 2011 Plebanek received Poland’s Zlote Sowy literary prize for her contribution to promoting Poland abroad. She is among a group of international artists whose portraits are exhibited in Brussels Gare de l’Ouest for the next decade. She writes a regular column in the Polish weekly
Polityka
and has worked as a journalist for Reuters News Agency and for Poland’s highest circulation daily newspaper,
Gazeta Wyborcza
. She lives in Brussels, Belgium.

D
ANUSIA
S
TOK
has translated novels by Marek Krajewski, Andrzej Sapkowski, and Agnieszka Taborska; nonfiction books by Mariusz Wilk and Adina Blady Szwajger; and screenplays by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. She compiled, translated, and edited
Kieslowski on Kieslowski
. She is a member of The Translators’ Association / The Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. She lives in London, England.