There was a smell of incense in the church, candles blazed, but the pews were empty. Jonathan grew apprehensive. He had walked with a sure step but, in his mind, saw himself going home. Over the swirl of uncertainty, fear, excitement, and lust drifted the rhetorical question, “What for? What for?” But now, when Andrea had not come, he desired her with childish greed.
She emerged from the shadows of a pillar and a wave of heat ran through him as though he were a teenager. A few minutes later they were driving through the city in solemn silence. Jonathan had imagined many times what they’d do if an opportunity like this finally arose – Simon gone to England, Megi staying the night in Luxembourg. And now his fantasies dissolved, the glow of text messages extinguished. Erotic anticipation had turned into a barrier between driver and passenger.
He didn’t try to slip his hand beneath Andrea’s skirt. This was entirely unlike the times they’d met over the past weeks when, drunk with frustration, they’d caressed each other in churches, back streets and empty parking lots. Now, she stared at the passing brasseries while he, with the care of an old man, drove the car across the roundabouts of Ixelles.
Entering Andrea’s apartment, Jonathan was struck by the smell of Simon’s cigars and the gnawing thought that he’d never yet been unfaithful to Megi. Sometimes they attracted each other, sometimes repulsed, but until now he’d never gone with another woman, even though opportunities had arisen.
He stood there as if in a waiting room, shifting from foot to foot. Suddenly he felt Andrea’s fingers on his lips – and sucked them with the instinct of a newborn baby. She was familiar, tasted like a wild apple; she was unknown, the tart smell of her perfume excited him. Her lips were full, moist, her pussy warm.
She drew him onto her – for a brief moment they were still separate beings – but then Andrea wrapped her legs around his hips. Listening to her guttural groans, Jonathan climaxed and in his head clattered the startling thought, “What a relief, what a relief …!”
9
THE SECOND LESSON in creative writing was like the first day of school. Grown-up pupils pulled out their notebooks or brand new exercise books when Jonathan entered; they listened attentively and jotted down a reading list. He gave them homework – they were to dig out their oldest memories of love.
On his way back, he breathed in the warm smell of the city. The arch in Cinquantenaire Park blazed in the light of the setting sun. Erected in triumph at Belgium’s conquest of the Congo, its symbolism reminded him of the Palace of Culture in Warsaw but was aesthetically far more pleasing than the Russian gift. Perhaps because the history of Belgium meant little to him.
He reached Merode roundabout and walked toward the park. Cars sped along the tunnel beneath him. They were going toward the arch but never reached it; they didn’t spring from the tunnel until past the Schuman roundabout. On the square by the arch, some Arabs were testing the power of their mopeds. The room of students flashed in front of Jonathan’s eyes again, giving him an instinctive feeling of contentment. Something told him he had drawn them in, that he was going to succeed in picking out, from the skeins of their emotions and the density of their patterns, the threads of the stories they were determined to spin.
He didn’t get his hopes up that there might be a real writer in the group. To him, they looked more like people who wanted to write about what hurt them. He suspected they’d cry with anger if personal fragments didn’t fit in with their work, but such were beginnings. That was why he had immediately placed a mirror in front of them – their own memories. The sooner they began to delve into themselves, the better. Best they began that very day, in the enthusiasm of their September start.
He entered the park. Trees muffled the din of the mopeds; birds rounded off their conversations before the fall of dusk. His phone vibrated with two text messages, one after the other. “How did it go?” and “I long for your hands … I want them on my hips.” He immediately replied, “I’d take your hips and lower them on me.”
After his first night with Andrea, when he got home in the morning, the nanny leapt from the sofa, her hair dishevelled. He paid her and peeped in on the children. Tomaszek was asleep with arms outspread trustingly; Antosia was on her side, collected and intent, even in sleep. Jonathan went down to the kitchen and poured himself a whisky. He rarely did so; Megi didn’t like alcohol on his breath at night. But his wife wasn’t there now, not in the house, not in his thoughts. His skin, clothes, and hair smelled of Andrea; his thoughts clung to her, danced around the moments spent together, stroked that other reality.
He was surprised not to have a mental hangover. First times tend to be disconcerting, which was why he sometimes ended up that way. With Petra it had been different, and then with Megi. And now with Andrea. Their moves, which that night had replaced the web of meanings spun by text messages, were simpler than words but didn’t seem awkward to them. Thanks to the haze of enchantment that engulfed them from that first, accidental kiss, they lay together unashamed.
He knocked back the rest of the whisky and smiled at his reflection in the kitchen window. He hoped Andrea felt the same – tingling in the tiniest parts of the body and corners of the mind, excitement that was not relieved by orgasm. Although he’d had her four times that night, he was still burning with desire to be with her.
He went to bed and fell into a shallow sleep, longing for their recent closeness. He awoke in the delirium of memory: her arching hips, his intoxication as he climaxed, the taste of Andrea’s lips, those above and below. The following day he was still elated by the electrifying recollection.
It wasn’t until Megi returned that he took fright. Because although he’d slipped back into every day life with his usual facial expressions – grimacing in anger as before at the children’s disobedience, the windshield wiper not working in the Toyota or the long list of shopping – he was someone else after that night in Ixelles. His body was now entangled with another body. He had another woman. Their night, the hours of deep penetration and provocatively slow nearness, made Andrea seem no further than a centimeter away in his thoughts.
10
AFTER FOUR DAYS of her cousin and husband staying with them, Jonathan realized Megi felt like biting someone. It was not that she disliked Adelka. They were more or less the same age, the children got on somehow – especially ten-year-old Paula and the slightly younger Antosia – while the husband was what was called a nice guy. But when they’d announced their arrival, Megi – who in the past would have been pleased that her relatives had forgiven them for “leaving their homeland,” proof of which were the emissaries – was on edge and close to being rude.
“It’s understandable,” Jonathan reassured her as, locked in their room, they ignored the morning bustle as their guests prepared to go sightseeing. “This is your daily life, work, family. You get up at six every morning while they’ve just come to laze around.”
“But she’s my cousin. What’s suddenly made me like this,” said Megi, wrapping the duvet around her.
“Calm down, they’re leaving in two days.”
“Oh God, two more days!”
Jonathan laughed, then immediately turned serious. Megi really was heated up. Hardly surprising: the move, a new job, new colleagues, stacks of migration documents to fill in and formalities to sort out, all this in at least two languages – and now guests!
“As it is, I admire you,” he said. “I’ve always admired you. You’ve got so much patience with people.”
“Even with Aunt Barbara!”
Jonathan nodded. He’d observed Megi struggling with herself for years. He didn’t really know how to help because he didn’t like analyzing other people’s personalities or individual behavior. Even in his stories he adhered to a behaviorist view. He didn’t make notes about his characters’ traits; if a hare or elephant got mixed up in something, it came from the story.
Jonathan preferred to think in images about people around him, which is why a scene from ten years ago now appear
ed in front of his eyes: Megi – tall, slim, running about carrying plates, unaware of the sexy sway of her hips. It had been a couple of weeks after their wedding, and Megi – brought up without a father, according to her relatives – had insisted on making dinner for them.
Jonathan couldn’t tear his eyes away from her and finally grabbed her in the kitchen, slipping his hand beneath her blouse. She scolded him and he looked at her, astounded. He’d fallen in love with a great girl brought up by strong, wise women, and here was this little bourgeoise, worried that Aunt Barbara was grumbling about the veal!
For a while Megi had scrupulously remembered the name days of her uncles and aunts, and even her mother, whom the family had crossed off because she’d dared to get a divorce. They’d been prepared to accept her now – until Aunt Barbara tried to introduce her to her daughter’s mother-in-law as a widow. “I’m a divorcee,” Megi’s mother had corrected her. What was worse, when asked when she was going to marry her fiancé, she’d asked, “Which one?”
Jonathan, who was also “stranded” – his mother had married again and his father was living with another woman – adored his mother-in-law and wouldn’t let himself be carried away by his wife’s romantic visions of the supportive clan. He’d decided to wait out the period of heightened socialising that the wedding had brought down on Megi. To expect a group of people tied by blood always to stand like a wall behind them was, he believed, childish. He was right. A wall did quickly spring up but between them and her relatives. Jonathan’s and Megi’s absence at a cousin’s wedding, belated greetings, an inappropriate present, not calling back or calling at the wrong moment – and the rubbish already began to stack up.
He now stroked Megi’s fair hair. He’d fallen in love with her because she was beautiful and had the makings of an individual, not a cog in a mixer, blending family celebrations.
“Even with Aunt Barbara,” he repeated after her.
“Shhh, they’ll realize we’re not asleep.” She put her hand over his mouth just as Adelka’s face appeared in the door.
“Magda dear, where is the colander with the small holes? So, off in forty minutes, are we?”
Adelka found Grand Place small while Robert paid no attention to the buildings because he was telling Jonathan about the sick system of promoting employees in his bank.
“If he got a new Toyota Picasso at the start why can’t I choose a car? Why do I have to drive around in what’s practically a wreck?”
“Look at this Art Nouveau building.” Megi indicated the narrow building with windows shaped like portholes covered in seaweed.
“It must be dark in there,” Adelka pondered. “Italy’s got better ones but you can’t really live in them either. Stucco’s all well and good but I need a new bathroom. Oh, I didn’t tell you in the end about the tiles Robert’s found for our kitchen! You know how much they cost?”
“There’s a very good café here. Shall we go for a coffee?” Jonathan suggested, catching his wife’s grateful eye.
They returned from dinner just before midnight. Jonathan avoided the tunnels so as to show his guests the Avenue Louise lit up.
“Chanel,” squealed Adelka in the back. “And Dior!”
“That’s all women think about,” muttered Robert, leaning over to Jonathan. “So when are you going back?”
“In about ten minutes?”
“I’m talking about your country.”
“Poland? But we’ve only just left!”
“You’re right, must make some money to take back with you.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Jonathan let slip. “Well, certainly not now anyway.”
“Look, Adelka, Tommy Hilfiger.” Megi’s voice reached them.
“Well, brother, you’re lucky your wife brought you here, then,” Robert said, bridling.
When they got back, the babysitter, exhausted with looking after the three children, needed someone to drive her home.
“I’ll go,” Jonathan was quick to volunteer.
He dropped the girl at the seedy end of rue Dansaert, which was famous for its expensive shops, and turned back to the city center. His cell beeped – he was to be in Ixelles within ten minutes. He made a sharp turn right.
He’d be late coming home. What would he tell his wife? He’d think of something. That there was a traffic jam. Or a detour. That he’d got lost – after all, he didn’t know the city all that well yet. “Sorry, Megi, I got lost,” he repeated as he sped over the limit to Andrea.
On Sunday, Megi drove their guests to the airport while Jonathan gave the children their supper and put them to bed. Once they were asleep he stretched out on the bed in the conjugal bedroom and gazed at the sky through the loft window. Two stars shone brightly, moved toward each other – no, they were airplanes.
He closed his eyes. Last night’s quick rendezvous with Andrea, and then the next; lust pressed them more than time. She’d pulled a condom on to him, murmuring with feigned gravity, “Securing a condom is probably more effective on a cock that’s thicker at the base, not one shaped like a baseball bat.”
They’d made love with such force she’d scratched his sides with her fingernails. With her, he discovered new depths of erotic imagination; he wanted things that had never entered his mind before. Instead of pinning reality down with “to do” notes, he jotted down ideas in his memory to try out with Andrea. She was his inspiration, so unremitting that he started to wear his shirts pulled out over his trousers in order to hide his frequent erections.
The church bells chimed. They arranged to meet in churches because hardly anybody went there apart from them. The temples of their love. They would meet there and then go to her place. Even now, on hearing the bells, the head of his cock stirred gently in his trousers.
He reached for his notebook to make some notes for his course but again he was distracted by the recollection of how they’d fucked on the leather sofa in Andrea’s apartment. She hadn’t wanted to make love to him in the bedroom and he hadn’t insisted – the smell of Simon might have had an adverse effect on his erection.
When she returned from the airport, Megi sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the bedspread.
“You know, my grandmother used to treat the marital bed with great respect?”
“Your grandmother?” Jonathan’s eyebrows shot up. “That somehow doesn’t fit with her. She was no traditionalist.”
“I told her once that a friend of mine from school was having an affair with a married man and they met at his place. And Granny replied, “In the same bed as the other woman?” And I said, “Granny. She’s having an affair with a married man. Do you understand?” To which Granny responded, “Yes, she is. But in the marital bed! Can’t they do it somewhere else?” ’
Jonathan put his notes aside. Megi had started unfastening her blouse seductively – she must have seen the cock promisingly stiff in his trousers. She slipped her bra straps down but the more naked she was, the further he retreated into himself. He came, finally, despairingly, with his face hidden in her bust.
11
THE APPLES stood in a black bowl, their red skins gleaming. The richness of their color came from the rays of the setting September sun, which peeped into the room where Jonathan held his course. The stripes on the bowl spiralled to infinity and were as effective as a professional hypnotist. With difficulty, Jonathan tore his eyes away from them and looked at the seated group.
Their international character reflected the variety of Brussels’s inhabitants. Of different races, cultures, descent, they all came from somewhere else; most of them were still en route. They had stopped here for a year or twenty; time would show whether they’d be able to give up further wandering and decide to set down roots.
Jonathan pushed the list aside; he knew their names by heart.
“Geert,” he turned to the gray-haired man dressed in a jacket with beige patches at the elbows. “I wonder why you write.”
Geert blinked and adjusted himself on the chair; his w
ire-framed glasses made him appear concerned.
“Why do I write?” he repeated like a child wanting to gain time. “Ehhh … That’s a difficult question.”
“A bit like asking, ‘What’s your favorite book?’ ” The black British woman, Kitty, joined in. She was plump, her tight black curls swirled beneath a colorful headscarf; the green eyes set in a dark face were surprising. “I never know what to say.”
“Nor do I,” agreed Ariane, an attractive German of over fifty. “Almost as bad as, ‘What’s your favorite color?”
“Black,” muttered Geert. “Why do I write … Because there’s a story I want to write. Have to.”
“It’s important for you, is it?” asked Jonathan.
“Yes. Very … For me, that is, because I don’t know what …”
“Why is it important?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say in a couple of words.” Geert now spoke faster. “It’s important because in a way it’s there … That is, somehow I keep dwelling on it.” He looked helplessly around at the gathered group. “It’s the base on which I built the rest.”
“The rest? Other stories?”
“My life.”
A steady tapping could be heard in the silence – a fat autumn fly bounced against the window. Thirty-year-old Jean-Pierre, sitting on the other side of the tables, sprawled out on his chair, frowned in concentration. The fly took off and collided with his bald pate.
Geert sat with lowered head. Jonathan opened his mouth but Ariane was there before him.
“I can understand that perfectly well,” she told Geert, who raised his worried eyes to her. “My story’s also got layers that I want to write down. My daughters say I’ve lived through a lot and am very good at talking about it. But they don’t have the time to listen. They say I should write it all down. I’ve even started doing so but it’s an uphill struggle. I used to be able to write quite well – got top marks at school – but then, working for so many years as an architect, my pen got rusty.”
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