Illegal Liaisons
Page 28
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.
Epilogue
Brussels, 2009
IN 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.
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about the author
GRAŻYNA PLEBANEK 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.
about the translator
DANUSIA STOK 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.