Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

She’d already been there for a good while as he stood outside, paralysed with regret and sadness. He wanted to hug her, explain everything. And kill those gossips. He glowered at the circle of Megi’s colleagues – they were talking about them. A wave of anger surged over him and just as it had swelled so, unexpectedly, it began to subside – how could they help it, the poor bores? They had nothing better to do.

He had to explain everything to Megi. He had to tell her he didn’t want any other woman except for her (which he didn’t, other than Andrea). He simply had to say he’d got drunk.

Megi stands in front of the sink and looks at the mirror cracked with age.

“Bloody hell!” She slaps the sink .

Her golden cap slips down to her eyes but all she can see is Andrea’s dress; beneath her eyelids crumples the red mist of fury .

She wants to run out to them, catch the woman by that long mop of hers. That’s what she wants to do, but she holds on to the sink, holds on with all her strength. Finally, she leans over it as if to vomit .

“Easy, easy.” A voice in her speaks but soon grows silent as if it, too, was scared of Megi. Everybody ought to be scared of her, everybody! That whore, those gossips, Jonathan!

“Easy, easy,” whispers Megi, as if she were steadying a horse. The beast in her still bridles, but a tiny bit less .

“Easy …” She hears her voice and slowly, very slowly, sits down on the closed toilet seat .

“When did it start?” She forces herself to think; the chronology is to help get a hold of what is seething within. “Is it because he’s sitting at home with the kids and is bored?”

Images leap in front of her eyes. Megi on maternity leave, day and night at home; Jonathan at work or in the gym. Megi at the time: hips still narrow but a belly that after the birth resembles an elongated bread-bin suspended over her hips. Jonathan: accepts her body during the pregnancy and birth, but once she’s a mother suddenly no longer wants her .

Another image: her aunt, staying with them for a few days and poking her nose into everything, points at the hook in the hall .

“Don’t you think that’s a good place for you to hang Jonathan’s clothes?”

“What clothes?” Megi doesn’t understand .

“For work. So they’re there waiting for him in the morning. Shirt ironed, tie, trousers, socks …”

“Pants.”

“Underwear, certainly,” says her aunt without a smile .

Next scene: Megi in a suit, already at work, slim again. The crop rotation of work–family suits her, independence carries her away. Men look at her, pick her up, a married woman, a rose without thorns, who can be had without responsibilities. They want her, many of them – except Jonathan .

Someone knocks at the bathroom door .

“Engaged,” Megi answers back .

She places her hands on her skirt and sits on the loo like an old woman in a doctor’s waiting room. And thinks about how the other guy had picked her up – or, in fact, she’d picked him up. Not long afterward Jonathan, too, had come back to her. When she got pregnant they decided Jonathan would stay at home with the child. But Jonathan couldn’t bear it and chickened out of paternity leave .

Megi raises her hands. Something is tickling her and her face is still stiff and a little wet; she hadn’t noticed the tears .

Jonathan … When they do make love it’s so good …

Megi adjusts herself on the convex toilet lid. They’ve both changed; she, too, is no longer the twentysomething who is slightly rigid in bed, “likes” various positions in order to make herself more attractive to the boy. Now sex really does arouse her. So why is he now …? Why are they passing each other by again?

Or maybe it’s not her body but something in her character that’s started to repulse him? Maybe she overlooked his feelings, didn’t notice on time that he didn’t share her joy at being a parent? Maybe deep inside he remained still that other boy, in defiance of all those who – including her – had demanded he be enthusiastic about being a father. Had that been the beginning of their otherness, the tearing apart of the entity that had been put together during the first years of their relationship? Beginning … Does such a thing exist?

The music falls silent or seems to. A quiet voice whispers within, “But what, in fact, has happened? He got drunk, the woman led him on. And people gossip.” Megi has heard a lot about Andrea in the Commission canteen – that she has guys on the side, that she doesn’t want children, that she’s a career woman, that she acts as if the older man isn’t enough. That she’s a whore .

Megi bends back her head. The apartments in Brussels, with their high ceilings edged with stucco, pride themselves in being old. She would also like to be like that some day .

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in – nothing’s happened – she’s got to get rid of the thoughts flitting through her mind, dancing like ghastly butterflies .

Jonathan stared at the bathroom door. How long could a woman spend fixing her make-up and brushing her hair? His wife’s hairstyle was tidy as opposed to Andrea’s hair, which was free to the elements; it was precisely this aspect of feigned neglect that drove him to frenzy.

Damn Megi’s hairstyle! He had to convince her he was drunk.

“Megi.” Seeing the door open, he rushed forward.

She didn’t look at him but neither did she push him aside. Slowly, he took her by the hand; with the other, he raised her chin.

“I got drunk,” he said with a foolish smile.

JONATHAN CLIMBEDas though he were mounting the stairs of a lighthouse. Their house, attached on both sides to the neighboring houses, was like a tower, seductively pretty with its stairs like white teeth. Over the last few days he’d mounted the stairs so many times that his calves hurt. Meanwhile, his cell phone remained silent, hidden beneath the marital bed. Text messages arrived from Stefan, questions from his mother, an amusing remark from his father but, since the New Year’s ball, nothing from Andrea.

Had he studied the messages he sent her, he would have realized he resembled himself from the final days of secondary school. He’d believed, at the time, that dignity came second to feelings and that the woman he loved would understand. Since then the notion of “the woman he loved” had evolved, stretched beyond mere desire. This was colored by the half-bitter, half-amused realization that there was no love without play, and not only foreplay.

Now he was behaving as though he were retarded. And, to his surprise, he sometimes found a masochistic pleasure in it. Up and down he went on a swing, throwing his legs out then drawing them back beneath the seat, his hands loosening their grip on the rope, a pulsating ball tightening then opening in his stomach. The movement robbed him of reason. Just as in childhood he had raced his friends, so now he felt he was swinging harder and harder, up and down.

While he kept checking whether the woman he loved had tossed him at least a few crumbs of reciprocated feelings, Megi was taking down the Christmas decorations with the children. They were having great fun as always. Ever since Jonathan had told them that in Sweden people sang a valedictory song to the tree, each year Antosia, Tomaszek, and Megi had tried to compose a song worthy of their Christmas tree. Jonathan went downstairs just when they’d given up, as usual, and began to howl Wlazl kotek na plotek i mruga (The cat has climbed the fence and sits winking), a popular Polish children’s song. They giggled and the dry needles fell, shaken by their intertwined arms as they circled the tree.