Illegal Liaisons

by Grazyna Plebanek

  Andrea had her own theory about sex, and although Jonathan considered it a little girlish, he listened with pleasure as he did to everything she said. She claimed that one could foretell sexual compatibility by first kisses. If there was something in the first touch of lips that broke through otherness, what followed ought to be positive. But if there was a shadow of distaste, unease, a feeling that this was not it, it should end there.

  “Does that mean that all the lips you’ve touched worked out well?” he asked naively.

  She hid her laughter beneath her hair.

  “I understand, you had to learn somehow,” he muttered.

  He was angry at himself for being jealous of her past. This was something new, undesirable. Up until then his partners’ past relationships had not mattered to him; he had recognized that the past was their own business, and together with Stefan ridiculed men who felt threatened by a woman’s sexual experience. Just as they did the myth of deflowering virgins – they associated it with bad-quality sex.

  So where did this unexpected jab of jealousy come from? Did it confirm his commitment or desire to own “his woman”? Was he a man in love or an embarrassing idiot?

  Andrea interrupted these soundless ruminations, snuggling up to him and recounting the story of their first kiss once again. The accidental brush of their lips had given her the premonition of what could happen to them in bed; in the crowded café a world of experiences unknown to her – at least with such intensity – had opened up. The coincidence had been a unique gift to them both, something which, in another configuration, they couldn’t achieve. That was why she’d written to him first.

  Before he left, she showered him with caresses and tender words and, although she was better with the first, he was also sensitive to the latter; at this point in his infatuation he was moved by his lover’s charm. He walked around dazed with admiration, lust, and an incessant desire to be close. This last feeling was so strong that the very thought of parting – which was becoming unavoidable due to approaching holidays – transfixed him with pain.

  At the same time he felt that, despite passionate lovemaking, he was not as close to her as he would like to be, that he was still unsure of her feelings. He was disorientated by the fact that their liaison was different from anything he’d known – too intense for a passing affair, too secretive for a future relationship.

  He didn’t intend to tell anyone about Andrea; he merely mentioned something casually to Stefan because he had to give vent. Despite good intentions, Stefan didn’t show he understood the gravity of what had happened in Jonathan’s life and put his condition down to the atmosphere of the city where bureaucrats landed up without their wives and, in clubs, found women willing to spend the weekend, the night or even shorter periods, with them.

  “A colleague of mine in the department has three girls here,” he informed Jonathan as they watched a school game in which Franek, Stefan’s son, was playing.

  “Do they know about each other?” asked Jonathan, sitting down on a bench damp from the morning mist. Franek, a round-faced ten-year-old, marched toward his teammates with a solemn expression, unsure of his capabilities but determined not to make a fool of himself in front of his father.

  “Think what you’re saying,” said Stefan, his eyes following the boy. “Anyway, you know him, he was at the New Year party. The guy’s got a wife and children in Spain, like every decent Catholic. And three girls here.”

  Jonathan leaned back on the bench and scrutinized the assembled parents: mostly fathers although a few mothers were there, too, surrounded by flasks and bags of clothes for the players to change into.

  “Where did he get them, the chicks?” asked Jonathan, sensing that what was important was slipping away from the conversation.

  “As if there weren’t enough opportunities!” Stefan peered at him from beneath the baseball cap he wore for the occasion in the belief that it suited the father of a ten-year-old footballer. “We’re spoiled for choice here, every color under the sun, young interns and older goods whose husbands stayed at home. And if the worst comes to the worst, there’s always a club like the Madou to pick up a quickie. Everybody knows that you’re only there for one thing. A quick glance, chat up, details fixed, and it’s yours.”

  “What’s mine?”

  “Whatever you want. What you’ve got.”

  3

  THE PAVLOV DOGS slipped unnoticed from Jonathan’s story into his family life. After Antosia sneaked a look at the notes spread out by the computer, he had to explain what he was writing about. From that moment the children started to think of adventures for the dogs, tried out names, and Tomaszek even tried drawing one. The creature looked like an elongated pregnant cow but Jonathan told the boy that the animal was beautiful and could be the leader of his mongrel pack. And, much to his own surprise, that is how he started to imagine his protagonist.

  The dog, which he intended to have been left an orphan by its owner, imperceptibly became an aggressive, bristling creature. Hungry, its head injured by a brick that some drunks had hurled at it, it had learned the first essential thing about survival: to avoid dog catchers.

  Megi attempted to join in and invent adventures for the dogs but her imagination lacked the panache of both Jonathan and the children. On hearing that Tomaszek had suggested one of the bitches should be in heat, she strongly protested. She controlled herself only when Antosia came up with the idea that the dog should wear underwear on her “difficult days” – like her classmate’s bitch.

  “Flowery ones, you know Mommy, the wild flower pattern? And they’ve got to be long, halfway down the thighs, the dog’s thighs that is, you get it?”

  “Yes, I do,” muttered Megi, gathering peelings into a newspaper. “Longer ones, à la bloomers.”

  “That would be, like, good,” agreed her daughter, who had caught on to Aunt Barbara’s expression and didn’t want to stop using it despite countless admonitions and threats.

  The following morning, Jonathan drove from school with his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard they grew damp. Andrea wanted to meet him that day so he had shaved carefully and, in the evening, caught up with what he’d planned to do in the morning – in a word, he’d done everything so that he could see her once he’d taken the children to their lessons. Yet, she’d given no sign of life since that morning!

  Outside the school, he texted her asking if their plans still stood. He waited half an hour in the car, and texted again, this time asking if everything was all right.

  She didn’t reply.

  He began to drive home with one eye glued to his cell phone. He drove and hated himself for what he’d grown inside – a tangle of burning jealousy, gnawing expectation, a sea of lurking tears. He didn’t cry because he didn’t usually cry – the routine of daily life helped him to rise above the grit of emotions – but when left alone after taking the children to school, he felt close to imploding.

  He wanted to think about something else – a beer with Stefan, The Pavlov Dogs, a reading list for his writing group, politics, or the children – but he couldn’t. Nothing, only the pain of uncertainty, a presentiment of rejection, spasms of imagination. He knew Andrea had taken a day off – a day off from him, too?

  Between surges of emotion he noticed with horror how his moods kept changing: from morning euphoria when he picked his best boxer shorts, through pangs of guilt at hurrying the children into the car, to feeling the senselessness of his illegal liaison – because he had even arrived at the point of seeing it made no sense. He saved himself by listening to Tomaszek and Antosia nattering, enumerating in his mind what he’d achieved: his children’s love, his wife’s companionship, their common successes, mutual understanding. Yes, he imagined life without Andrea. There were moments he wished she wouldn’t write to him any more.

  But once he’d waved his children goodbye and exchanged a few routine greetings with other parents, the sight of the empty screen on his phone terrified him. He locked himself in hi
s car and forwarded a question; he waited and urged her again. He started driving home but had to stop. When he made love to Andrea he breathed deeply, with his whole lungs; now he climbed out of the car, hunched and, pretending to examine his headlights, started frantically to catch his breath in order not to suffocate.

  Suddenly, the trembling of his hands turns into the vibrations of his phone – Andrea sending a text to ask how he is. Jonathan leans on the car door, his arms hanging helplessly. Oh, no, he’s not going to answer the bitch now, not after she left him waiting in fear, a laughing stock unto himself.

  He climbs into the car and drives away furiously like many a poor guy who, racked by an excess of testosterone, wears down the car rubbers instead of latex ones. He speeds ahead; it’s good he knows the way so well. He can afford to be reckless, although the family car screeches at the corners.

  Jonathan firmly refuses to answer; meanwhile the cell beeps again. Jonathan slows down and reads: Andrea is tender and docile, apologizes for oversleeping but is climbing into her bath, and in a moment will rub oil over her body.

  Jonathan stands at the traffic light; someone honkss. Ahead of him the road forks (yet it is only a regular crossroads) – left to his lover, right home. He stands at a red light, and now at a green, cars pass around him, he ought to switch on his hazard lights as the gesticulating drivers urge him to do but he stares at them dumbly; finally, someone stops, lowers his window and asks: “Çava?”

  “Çava,” replies Jonathan.

  He abruptly steps into first gear and drives into the left lane; cars brake behind him, honk furiously, but he slips across the red light.

  Minutes later he is in Andrea’s bed.

  Jonathan stared at Star Wars even though the film didn’t pull him in this time. He watched Antosia and Tomaszek ape a fight with lightsabers: the boy slashed the air abruptly, the girl moved gracefully, using Megi’s dressing gown as a battle dress.

  A wave of pride swept over Jonathan. Although Megi scowled, saying the film was stupid and too brutal, especially for Tomaszek, Jonathan smuggled in scenes from his childhood for the children, certain it was thanks to this that Antosia went horseback riding, rather than walking around in pink like the other girls in her class, and Tomaszek drew warriors and thought up wonderful stories.

  The children’s fight moved further down the room; Jonathan clicked the remote control so that Princess Leia appeared on the screen. Secretly returning to his erotic early teenage dreams, he didn’t notice that Antosia, having conquered Tomaszek, had sat down in front of the television again.

  “Daddy, not this boring stuff!” she moaned, while Tomaszek started bouncing up and down like a ball next to them, shouting: “Give us a fight, give us a fight!”

  Jonathan rewound the film; Darth Vader’s wheeze drifted from the screen. For a moment, he closed his eyes. Stirred sentimentally by Leia – his friends at boarding school had reacted in the same way – he thought back several hours to his morning with Andrea. He drowned in visions and when he emerged, realized his lover had not only replaced Leia but had also taken the place that had until then been reserved for Megi.

  He pulled out his cell and quickly tapped: “You move me and I’m stiff for you.” She swiftly wrote back; he got up and slipped out of the room.

  “Aren’t you watching with us, Daddy?” Tomaszek called after him.

  “In a minute.” Jonathan’s voice came from the hall, muffled.

  “What?”

  “One moment!”

  Megi returned from work just as he was coming downstairs, his phone buried deep in his trousers pocket.

  “I asked you not to show them Star Wars,” she said at the threshold. “And you weren’t supposed to leave them alone to make sure they didn’t see the heavy scenes.”

  “I went to the bathroom,” mumbled Jonathan.

  “Tomaszek pretends to be brave but he’s frightened of all those hideous things. Don’t you remember when he wet his bed a couple of times because of those horrible faces?”

  Antosia stopped short and held out her sword, which just then stopped flashing, to her father.

  “Daddy, has the battery gone?”

  Jonathan tapped the sword and pressed the switch but the light didn’t go on.

  “Is it broken? Completely?” Tomaszek risked a new word.

  “Will you fix it, daddy?” asked Antosia, squatting so that the dressing gown spread on the floor like a plumed headdress in front of her. “It can be mended, can’t it?”

  Jonathan walked up to the chest of drawers and found some new batteries; he unscrewed the flap in the toy. He glanced at Megi’s tired face – he wasn’t attracted to her, everything in him wanted Andrea. Could the pop-anthropological theory that men need to impregnate successive females be proving true? No, this was something else.

  Tomaszek rolled the old batteries along the floor and leapt after them like a cat; Antosia didn’t move, watching her father’s hands. Jonathan pressed the switch – the toy flashed.

  “Ha!” He slashed the air with the plastic blade.

  “Thank you, thank you!” Antosia sprung from the floor.

  Jonathan looked at the sword he held, its direction steered by his hand. In the same way, something in him directed the vector of desire toward Andrea. He felt himself drawn to her by a power as persistent as the call of water beneath the earth, a blind, eternal “I want,” rooted in something mightier than him.

  “Daddy, I want a go now.” Antosia stretched her hand out for the toy.

  Jonathan cleared his throat and handed her the sword.

  Megi removed her jacket and threw it on the arm of the armchair.

  “I met Monika.”

  “Ah! Did she draw you into the black hole?”

  “Don’t be silly. Didn’t Stefan tell you?”

  “What?”

  “Simon’s holding a party tonight.”

  “And …”

  “Simon Lloyd, the head of cabinet for the Justice Commissioner, the Simon who was here.” She was almost speaking in syllables. “Don’t you get it? They were here but they haven’t invited us.”

  Her voice broke and Jonathan was amazed to see Megi cry. In her tights, skirt, and white blouse she looked like a frightened schoolgirl.

  Before Jonathan managed to react, Tomaszek had run up to Megi and wrapped his arms around her hips.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll invite you, we love you!”

  “Yes, we’ll throw a party for you.” Antosia joined the boy.

  Megi ruffled their hair and made toward the hall.

  “Megi,” Jonathan followed his wife hesitantly. “Don’t worry.”

  She nodded and wiped her eyes.

  “Przemek tried to cheer me up at work saying it might be because of our French. But that’s a lot of rubbish, you speak better than that prat and his Czech-Swede, and I can get by, too. So why?”

  Jonathan walked up to her and put her head on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry about it,” he repeated, out-talking his thumping heart.

  “It’s not because so much depends on Simon, promotions and various … It’s just that I feel cut off, you understand, like a helium balloon cut loose from its string,” snivelled Megi.

  He stroked her hair, a little stiff with lacquer.

  “Do you miss your family, friends?”

  She pulled herself up and wiped the smudged mascara with her fingers.

  “Are you kidding? Not them.”

  “Is it because you’ve never lived anywhere apart from Poland?”

  Megi shrugged.

  “It’s not because of Poland! We’re not immigrants, we’re free individuals, we can buy pickled gherkins at the nearest corner. It’s a sort of feeling, oh, I don’t know? The umbilical cord being cut?”

  “That you’re suspended between one and the other? One thing’s coming to an end, while the Other …”

  “Exactly, a transition. And during the transition, total uncertainty.”

&nbs
p; Jonathan looked at her and raised his hand, which froze in the air. He clenched his fist and gently lowered it on Megi’s shoulder. After a short hesitation, Megi replied with the same gesture.

  They were still standing like that, staring at each other in silence, when whispering and clattering reached them from the room.

  “What are you doing there?” Jonathan asked suspiciously.

  “Ta-da!” Antosia stood in the doorway, ceremoniously pointing behind her.

  Jonathan peered into the room. On the table stood little bowls of sweets, in the center towered Belgian chocolates and ptasie mleczko, Polish speciality chocolates.

  “Sweets? Before going to bed?” Jonathan feigned outrage.

  Megi burst out laughing; Tomaszek leapt from behind his sister and stood in line with her.

  “Mommy’s party!” He stood straight as a ramrod and looked at Jonathan. “Mommy’s!”

  As long as Andrea sought a reply, Jonathan didn’t return her messages, but when finally she fell silent, he plunged into despair. He couldn’t enjoy the regained clarity of his situation. He drove the children to school, came home, sat on the edge of the sofa, and stared in front of him. He craved the love of this one and only woman and, although Megi gave all of herself to him, his body howled for Andrea.

  During the first days of blossoming summer, Jonathan cursed being in love, the plague that for months had given him wings but now devoured him, more biting than soap in a wound, salt on a cut, a blister in a shoe. He ceased jogging, did just what needed to be done, and only the Pavlov Dogs held him upright as they milled around in his head, ignoring his moods.

  Jonathan sat and wrote but when he tore himself away from the laptop, the awareness of loss stabbed at him twice as hard. Unable to bear it any longer, he called Stefan. He briefed him about the metaphorical slap on the cheek his lover had dealt him – she hadn’t invited them to dinner, which devastated Megi. He also poured out what hurt him most: they had made great love that morning yet Andrea hadn’t uttered a word about the party in the evening.