Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

“In the kitchen!”

“The kitchen, you?”

Martyna smiles, pleasantly tickled, she likes to stress her dislike of “a woman’s chores’ .

“We were talking about this exhibition that has just opened in London. Did you see it?”

Megi shakes her head. She has just been to London but what she remembers most is the airport and the fact that she had masses of work. Martyna doesn’t work; she claims to hold an artistic salon that Jonathan calls her “narcissistic salon.” Martyna now starts to pour out a stream of words and Megi automatically stops listening. She recalls a conversation with Przemek, or rather information slipped in between the lines about his designs on a government position in Poland and the hint that he’d like to see her with him. Now Megi shrugs – she can’t imagine leaving Brussels. She feels at home here; here, she has a choice at every corner. Besides, the children really like their school, and Jonathan … where is he exactly?

Megi stares enquiringly at Martyna’s moving lips .

“We’ve got to go.” She makes a move to pass her interlocutor .

“Are you looking for Jonathan? He’s on the balcony, at least that’s where they were a few minutes ago.”

“They?” Megi freezes .

Martyna looks at her in a way Megi doesn’t like. She looks like a puffball close up, she thinks .

“With Andrea,” says Martyna and adds, “I also saw them in the street together.”

A frame from a Polish film suddenly appears in front of Megi’s eyes – a Polish soldier being killed by a German. That tilt, the way they focused on the tilt of the body as it fell backward, drums the thought in .

“I once saw them leave a church together.” It’s Martyna’s voice again. “I’m not the only one to have seen them.”

Megi tilts her head and the world is crooked. She holds her face in her hands and rearranges it, back to its former expression .

“And now I saw them as …” Martyna raises her arm, there’s something black beneath it .

Moles, birthmarks, or has she got something stuck? The weasel of a thought runs through Megi’s head .

“Goodnight,” she says loudly and runs out .

They’re not on the balcony. Nor in the room with the bottles. Megi tugs at the bathroom door, the handle remains in her hand .

“Don’t worry.” Simon laughs and takes the door handle from her. “Are you off already?” He, too, looks around but Jonathan isn’t anywhere. He indicates the coat stand but Megi rushes out in nothing but her dress .

She races alongside the respectable apartments, or rather skips oddly, rubbing her arms; it’s a cold evening. She can’t remember where they parked. Something blinds her and makes her eyelid pulsate. She presses down on it with her fingers, which makes it harder for her to see anything – how’s she going to find them now?

She sits on a bench in the bus shelter, shivers so much that a black boy stares at her anxiously. Megi opens her handbag – only one tissue, one sheet of paper for all this fear .

“Why doesn’t Jonathan want me?”

She raises her head just as she did when she kissed the other man. He was taller than her, even a tiny bit taller than Jonathan. One business trip, two nights during which they didn’t leave the bed. At one stage he’d kissed her labia and in his English, weighed down with an Austrian accent, asked, “What do you call it?” “Cipka,” she answered . “Cipka,” he repeated without understanding .

He didn’t laugh at the word, he savored its sound. And at that moment she reclaimed them – both her pussy and herself – because she liked this Megi who arched her back, sticking her butt out to her lover so that he could slip into her smoothly and rub her inner walls. She loved the rhythm of the moves, the slapping, his hips and her buttocks, her arms resting on the edge of the bed, her head hanging, swaying with the rhythm of fucking. What had she thought about then? Only one thing – his cock with its pulsating head, the ingeniously formed instrument as it slipped in and out, caught at her insides and teased her, rubbed her, aroused her …

After two nights her pussy was so chafed that, on returning home, she was irrationally relieved that nobody penetrated her (Jonathan was not reaching for her then). Her groin could cool down, and she had time to be with herself .

A couple of days later, as she was going to meet her lover, Jonathan slipped his hand beneath her skirt by chance and discovered she was not wearing any panties. It excited him, she barely escaped, said she had to fly to work .

That day she’d had them both .

After some time, she made a decision – she broke off with the other man. She returned from their last meeting in tears; the car coped with her as a carthorse does with a drunken carter, while she arranged points worthy of a lawyer in her head:

1. Thunderbolt, that is, infatuation .

2. Longing to meet, childishness .

3. Happiness reciprocated .

4. Lows of uncertainty alternating with flights of euphoria .

5. Impossibility of being in the same place at the same time in public because the chemistry is impossible to miss .

6. Phase of blindness due to reciprocation, savoring each other, growing admiration .

7. First cut .

8. First quarrel and reconciliation .

9. Deepening of feelings but also moments of hesitation over whether to back out while there’s time .

10. Blundering on nevertheless .

11. Deepening, getting to know each other better, adapting to each other, trust .

12. Jealousy .

13. Tiredness .

14. Increasingly serious consideration of whether or not to change one’s life for that person. At the same time, small disappointments .

15. More and more shortcomings can be seen. Helplessness because feelings put one at somebody’s mercy. Aversion to the person who has such power .

Brussels, autumn 2008

AN EX-MODEL IN JEANS,black sweater, and suede shoes approached the spick-and-span Land Rover parked in front of the toy shop in Waterloo. He let his children in – they had the same features as their father, the same movements and clothes. Packs of toys landed in the trunk. “He’s going to his trophy wife. And, in the evening, to his lover,” thought Jonathan and pulled out a lollipop stick from his pocket, a present from Tomaszek. His eyes fell on another man leaving the shop. “Poor creep,” he pitied the flabby fifty-year-old. To his surprise a herd appeared behind the man, a Girl-Guide-like wife and a file of boys identical to their father.

Jonathan climbed into his Toyota and drove away; only when nearing home did he realize that he hadn’t bought what he’d set out to buy – presents for his children. He did a U-turn on the Avenue de Fre, glancing at the residences concealed in the parks. “They belong to those who made their fortune in the Congo,” his dentist, a Lebanese who’d comfortably found a clinic for himself near a wealthy clientele, had informed him. His fillings were unreliable so Jonathan had stopped going to him.

As he passed the windows of the Lebanese clinic, it crossed Jonathan’s mind that it was people who hated it who lived in the heart of Brussels. Hatred, the other side of love. He was the same – like a ball-bearing in a bagatelle, he rolled from side to side. Now that Andrea was pregnant, he loved her, hated her, hated her, loved, loved …