“I couldn’t decide what to wear.” She raised her eyes. “Have I put on weight or something?”
“No chance,” he countered automatically.
“Is Helena here yet?”
“Mm-hmm.” With his eyes he indicated a pair of golden trainers beneath the coat-hooks.
“Helena, could you give the children their supper at nine then chase them off to bed, please?” ordered Megi, catching Tomaszek’s hand at the last moment as it aimed to bury itself in her lacquered hair. She kissed him carefully, not to leave lipstick on his cheek. Antosia came up and put her arms around her mother’s hips, gently so as not to crease the skirt.
They were late for the concert; the seats in the hall above were already full so they had to stay downstairs and watch on the screen.
“Is there anything to eat?” Jonathan leaned over to Megi’s ear.
She indicated a section of the room partitioned off by small barriers where waiters were milling around. He took a step in that direction but she caught him by the arm.
“Only after the concert.”
When the barriers were finally pulled aside, a tightly packed crowd threw itself at the tables. Megi stormed the snacks, Jonathan’s task was to acquire some plates.
“Got them! And look, how ingenious – palette-shaped plates!” He handed her the oval shape with a hole through which he’d put his thumb.
“It’s for your glass,” she snorted, “so you don’t have to hold it with your other hand.”
“So it’s free to …?”
“Hand out business cards.” Megi kissed him on the lips; he felt the moistness of her lipstick.
Martyna sprung up next to them.
“And you two are still at it after all those years! Have you heard about the pregnancy?” She transfixed a mushroom with her fork; a slimy streak gleamed on her plate.
“Andrea’s and Simon’s,” filled in Rafal as he pushed his way toward them, grunting, “What a crowd!”
Jonathan allowed himself to be sucked in by some group, thanks to which, seconds later, he was several meters away, his salad slipping precariously to one side of his plate.
“… is pregnant although it doesn’t show much yet.”
“Simon’s too old to be a father,” replied a familiar voice.
Jonathan turned. Stefan was sweating by the meatballs; below his nose, where until recently he’d cultivated the moustache, beads of sweat were collecting.
“Why are you standing by the pots?” Jonathan indicated the steaming jaws of aluminium containers.
“Herd mentality. I wasn’t hungry but when everyone threw themselves at the food, so did I. Exactly as if ham were still being rationed,” grunted Stefan, adding aggressively, “But you always had all you wanted. There wasn’t any martial law in England.”
“English pork sausages were deadlier than communist water cannons.”
Stefan’s face was taking on one of his national colors when he suddenly noticed Jonathan’s expression. He followed his eyes – Andrea stood surrounded by a circle of friends, Martyna’s hand was on her belly, Rafal was nodding and blinking compulsively, and Monika was listening with a polite expression. Only Przemek was uninterested in Andrea and stood, crushed in with his plate, directly next to Megi.
Jonathan and Stefan moved in that direction.
“When’s the wedding?” Martyna’s falsetto rose high.
“I’m not good material for a wife,” they heard Andrea’s amused voice.
“But what about the baby?” Rafal joined in.
“Oh, come on.” Monika shrugged. “Women used to have to protect themselves from sex so as not to get pregnant otherwise they could’ve landed up with a bastard or died in childbirth. Now we can have both a rich sex life and be mothers. Even single ones, from choice.”
“It’s true, damn it,” Stefan whistled into Jonathan’s ear. “They can have it all!”
“It’s a different matter who’s going to do the housework, cooking, see to the children’s homework …” Monika’s voice now took on a bitter tone.
“There are cleaners and other women to help.” Martyna shrugged.
“And they’re meant to bring up your children, are they?” Monika was piqued.
“Look at Megi,” countered Martyna. “She works and has children.”
“Megi’s not a single mother,” clarified Monika.
Jonathan felt a jab in his side – Stefan was letting him know they should clear out.
“What’s happened to her?” He ran his hands through his hair when they were beyond the others’ earshot.
“She’s always been like that.” Jonathan clenched his fists. “You heard for yourself: “I’m not good material for a wife.” Blah, blah, blah!”
“I’m talking about Monika. And that kid … Is it yours?”
The volume of stories by Jonathan’s protégés was to begin with Geert’s piece about childhood in the Congo. After it came Kitty’s short story pulsating with teenage sensuality, then Ariane’s text about the old pigeon-breeder, and, finally, the amusing tale of a small-town barber under police witness protection, written by Jean-Pierre.
Jonathan spread the pages out in order on the park bench and weighed them down with his wallet to stop them blowing away. On a separate sheet, he wrote the title of the anthology, then another and another. He tilted his head to one side and matched the motifs, patterns and specific scenes from the stories to the two words that were to announce the whole. He already felt the smoothness of the printed page beneath his hands, his nose ran along the spine.
He was pleased that autumn belonged to solid facts. He slipped the pages into a paper folder and looked around. Lunch hour was approaching, office workers loomed at the gate, an old woman perched on the neighboring bench, and every now and again a pervert emerged from the bushes near the statue. Jonathan was on the point of leaving when his eyes fell on the belly of a pregnant woman sitting on a bench nearby. His body grew unspeakably heavy.
Because here, a few meters away from him, concealed beneath a black dress and an office worker’s jacket and swamped in amniotic waters, breathed a little human being, possibly sucking its thumb. Jonathan’s pulse accelerated and his fingers grew damp.
But the rhythm of the child’s breathing and the beating of its mother’s heart radiated toward the neighboring benches, muffled the drone of cars, slowed the city traffic.
And Jonathan slowly, slowly calmed down.
Andrea greeted Jonathan in the doorway. Her belly, a shapely little ball high below her bust, was barely perceptible, her face more beautiful than usual, luminous.
“You look wonderful,” he whispered in her ear and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Jonathan felt her belly press below his ribs in a familiar way.
The leather sofa in the living room stood in its rightful place, yet he looked around as if expecting something to have changed. Only when he felt Andrea’s hands on his back did he bow his head, bring her fingers to his lips and lick them greedily.
This time it was Andrea who wasn’t careful and although Jonathan whispered she ought to watch out “because of the baby,” she sat on him back to front. She rested her hands on his shins and rode, rubbing his penis against the back wall of her vagina. All of a sudden, she reached for his hands, raised herself on them, and abruptly sank.
Later, when they lay on the damp leather, Andrea nestled her head in the hollow of his shoulder, put her arm around his belly. These gestures, so soft, so unlike her! He must have entered her deeper than his own cock since she’d wanted him so much. “Do you love me?” whispered Andrea and, when he didn’t reply, muttered, “You do, I know you love me.”
It wasn’t until Jonathan was getting dressed that Andrea said, “I’ve passed the exams.”
She was lying on the sofa so that he could see the curve between her hips and bust, her belly covered with a blanket.
“I’ve already had an interview to work for the Commission. I think it went well.”
Jon
athan pulled his jacket off the hanger and automatically glanced at the cell in his pocket – no messages. Of course, the “message” was now lying behind him, saying something – about exams?
“You want to be an office worker?” Jonathan hid the phone.
“I need a secure job.”
“But won’t you go mad working for the Commission? It would be different if you were a lawyer like Megi, that’s an entirely different …”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” she interrupted.
“You once said yourself that I’d feel like a goose stuffed ready for foie gras if I worked for the Commission and now you … You’re a journalist!”
“One can change one’s profession.”
“And who, supposedly, would you be?”
“Head of unit.”
“Can’t you hear what that sounds like?” Jonathan laughed and waited for Andrea to do the same. But she got up from the sofa and, without covering her belly, waddled toward the window as if she’d been about to give birth.
“Remember our first conversation?” Jonathan was serious now. “It was about precisely that, it was the beginning of us …”
“I think I’m going to leave Simon.”
“That’s why I took the writing course …” Jonathan broke off.
“I need a job that will give me the certainty that I won’t get sacked when I’m walking around with an even bigger belly,” Andrea explained in a teacher’s voice.
Jonathan watched her draw back the lace curtains and look out on to the street. Lace strips of fabric – a souvenir of her parents’ country, a communist legacy. Here, in Belgium, nobody hung things like that over their windows; people had lightweight curtains, canvas blinds, or left the windows bare according to the principle, “We’ve nothing to hide.”
“But Simon’s an immovable fixture. You’re safe.”
Andrea suddenly turned to face him but he stared at her belly – the navel protruded like a half-extracted champagne cork. In January, Simon would break open a bottle; not everybody managed to sow a son at Methuselah’s age. Because it was undoubtedly a son, Andrea looked so beautiful.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” said Andrea for the second time that evening.
Her eyes were fixed on him and, after a long while, he said, “How do you imagine all this playing out?”
Andrea didn’t answer, her fingers clung to the curtain.
A few minutes later, striding through the street, Jonathan still had the texture of the fabric in front of his eyes – loose mesh, handcrafted. His thoughts were similar, full of holes: Andrea the office worker, even though she’d encouraged him to be free; Andrea without Simon but with a swelling belly.
He still had her taut skin beneath his fingers. If he felt carefully he could make out the baby’s back, touch its tiny heel. Jonathan watched his step, as the apartments past which he was walking stuck out tongues of metal for cleaning shoes. Picturesque façades slipped by, elevations interwoven with window displays.
He didn’t ask Andrea about the baby; she, too, usually didn’t say anything about it. Both, unanimously, seemed to ignore its existence although it breathed, snuggled up to their heated bodies, its pulse beating between their naked bellies. Bigger and bigger, it demanded its own space and Jonathan knew it would be better if he ceded it. He should leave her in peace but couldn’t. Something made him run after her, after this fleeing woman who didn’t want anything from him. That’s why this day, when she was so close to letting him into her life, he fled like one possessed. He couldn’t imagine Andrea submissive, Andrea warm and devoted.
And that belly of hers! What was Jonathan supposed to do with it – take on somebody else’s child?
3
“IT’S RAINING,” said Geert.
They looked at him half-unawares from above the texts they were editing. Jonathan hadn’t yet told them that their stories might be published but arranged their sessions so they could focus on the few pieces chosen by him.
He studied his disciples and thought about how far they’d come. Ariane avoided autobiographical plots like the plague but had an exceptional gift for observing reality, thanks to which she often hit on a narrative vein of gold. She didn’t always have the patience to delve deeper into fields she knew little about, which was blatantly obvious, but she wasn’t discouraged, and that was the main thing.
Kitty had finally stopped writing about motherhood and had reached for her former self, searching, open, sometimes unsure or frustrated. Her cycle of stories about the dilemmas of a teenager, later a young woman, took his breath away with their committed depiction of characters and polished detail. There was something nineteenth-century about Kitty’s writing, no fear of thinking and a resistance to haste.
Jean-Pierre blundered into writing his family history. Jonathan had tried to direct his interest toward smaller forms but his student seethed inside – recorded reminiscences, collected testimonies, amassed old photographs and documents. Jonathan brought him a postcard of a lorry, loaded to the brim with parcels, which had got stuck in desert sand. Jean-Pierre thanked him but didn’t catch the allusion. He was sure he would do justice to the enormity of his subject.
Geert clung to his chosen path and Jonathan clung to Geert. He was fascinated by how the elderly man untangled the trauma of his childhood, how bravely he subjected it to the literary process, how he fought to keep his distance and prayed for the transformation of unexpressed emotions. This was why Jonathan pressed to publish the story, neglected his own writing, sought grants, kept phoning Cecile as if his life depended on it.
Unfortunately, the latest news of the stories’ publication was not promising. A group of beginners did not arouse commercial interest.
“It’s raining,” repeated Geert.
Jean-Pierre glanced blankly at the window; in front of his eyes he still had the shed rigged up on an urban allotment by an old eccentric whom the inhabitants of a neighboring housing estate cursed because he bred pigeons. They claimed it was his fault they’d had to install protective nets because his birds soiled their balconies. Only when he died did they start to whisper among themselves that the pigeons on their balconies were different, gray. Someone had apparently seen white doves on the day of the breeder’s funeral – they’d flown over the allotments and housing estate one last time, their wings carrying them left and right, left and right. The flock had danced to the rhythm of an aerial waltz, the sun turned their feathers to gold. And then they flew away.
“Excellent!” Jean-Pierre tossed at Ariane as he set the pages aside.
She didn’t hear, immersed in Kitty’s story. She smiled and grew serious in turn, referred back to previous pages, underscored. Kitty, concealing her worry, kept glancing at her until Geert’s story drew her in.
“Good evening.” A melodious voice tore them from their reading. “I won’t be a minute, I don’t want to disturb you,” said Cecile, making her way toward Jonathan.
Ariane shot a meaningful glance at Kitty. The men in the room – thirty-year-old Jean-Pierre; Jonathan, not much older; and sixty-year-old Geert – had their eyes glued on Cecile. There was something in the sway of her gait, the fragility of her wrists, the statuesque shape of her shoulders, that made her white hair seem like the provocative accessory of a rebellious girl.
Cecile, as usual, looked a little embarrassed by the impression she made. She walked up to Jonathan and whispered something in his ear; he looked at her, his face brightening. Kitty winked at Ariane – Jonathan looked like a boy whose mother had just given him some candy floss. He turned his sparkling eyes on her again, then on them.
“You’re going to be published authors!” he yelled.
He returned home in sheets of rain. The outline of the arch loomed unclear above the park fence, the fountain in front of it was still. His cell rang in his pocket.
“I hear Andrea’s trying for the position of head of unit,” Stefan said. “Poor Megi!”
“Why?” Jonathan drew to a halt. Dro
ps of rain fell into his hood.
“She probably wasn’t offered it,” Stefan stated, rather than asked.
Anger mounted in Jonathan. He’d felt so good after Cecile’s news and this guy dispelled all his enthusiasm with one stab.
“She’s a bit broken up about it,” Jonathan admitted reluctantly. “She’d passed the exam, after all.”
“I might be bursting your bubble,” Stefan interrupted him impatiently, “but you’ve got to have support in the Commission.”
“Life as a transaction.”
“What?”
“That hideous Przemek was supposedly going to support Megi.”
“He’s not big enough.”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” triumphed Jonathan.
“I mean in influence. Especially if she gets blocked.”
“Who’d want to block Megi?”
Stefan didn’t say anything.
“Well, who?” Jonathan hustled him.
“Think.”
“Who?”
“Simon.”
The rain had stopped but the dusky city didn’t come to life again. The clatter of hooves sounded through the backstreets but the horse patrol was nowhere to be seen. Jonathan raised his eyes to the arch. A souvenir of the time when Belgium was magnificent, a postcolonial monument erected with money from the Congo. The symbol of Jonathan’s freedom – Jonathan, the jogger. But now, after reading Geert’s short story, he looked at the construction in a different light. The pain of the child in Geert’s story permeated Jonathan and remained there.
When he got back, Megi was asleep. He peeped in on the children, set their window ajar. Antosia was lying on her side, the girl-elf of Bauer’s paintings; her long hair flowed off the bed, glistening in the streak of light coming from the hallway. In the daylight, it was a shade of gold, almost red, just like Megi’s before she’d started “improving” it with highlights.
Jonathan turned and picked up the duvet, which had slid from the other bed. Tomaszek slept in a spread-eagle position, his arms and legs flung to the sides. Jonathan noticed how his son had grown; his shape had lost some of its roundness, his limbs had lengthened. He covered him, breathing in the puppy smell.
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