Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

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.”

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 his 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.