Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

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.”

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.