Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

“I don’t know how, what’s it matter? What matters is what he’s going to do about it. Because if he phones or writes to Megi …’

“Hey, hey, hey!” Jonathan could almost see Stefan lifting his hand like a policeman stopping a speeding driver. He stopped obediently. Branches swollen with buds hung over him, sheltering him from his family – they were on the first floor, he in the flowery basement.

“And what would you do if you found out Megi was humping someone on the side?” said Stefan. “Write letters to the guy?”

“Well, no. I’d go and …”

“That’s why I’m asking how he found out. If he’s in England the first blow will have been cushioned.”

Jonathan nodded to a passing neighbor.

“I’m not worried about him punching me in the face,” he retorted, wrapping his hand around the phone. “Only that he’ll tell Megi and create such a stink the kids will find out.”

“Hey, hey!” That afternoon, Stefan’s vocabulary was not impressive. “ ‘Create,’ ‘tell,’ what are you talking about? What guy’s going to brag about his old lady making a cuckold of him?”

Jonathan abandoned his nervous pacing. Inexplicable relief made his knees go soft. “What guy’s …” he silently repeated Stefan’s words.

“So what’s he going to do?” Jonathan’s mind clammed up, suddenly unable to make an effort.

Stefan was glugging something that could have been an energy drink.

“He’ll break up with her?” he asked joyfully.

That evening Jonathan behaved like an automaton and, when his expression started to worry Megi, locked himself in the bathroom on the pretext that he’d eaten something that had gone off. Staring at his own reflection, he reviewed the options. If Simon broke up with Andrea, what was he, Jonathan, to do? Only now did he realize that it was too soon for him to know what he wanted from her. He didn’t envisage her in his everyday life, that was for sure. Every time he attempted to imagine this possibility, sex came to mind. The surroundings grew blurred; there were no familiar objects, rituals, points in time, even habits he could hang on to. He tried to remember what her clothes looked like, her wardrobe, but instead he saw her naked. Was that supposed to be their future?

Over the next day and night they didn’t write to each other; in the end Jonathan couldn’t stand it. “What’s happening?” he asked. Andrea didn’t reply for a long time then finally sent a message: “What’s the strategy?” He stayed silent. This time it was she who couldn’t stand the wait: “Do we deny it? Do we deny everything, then?”

He lived the following days in a simulation of rejection. He kept glancing at the phone and, when there wasn’t any message, writhed inside with pain. In the end, they bumped into each other at a Commission party – she glued to Simon’s arm, he barely able to stop himself leaving Megi. He tried to get near to Andrea but she wouldn’t leave her partner’s side. It was impossible to read anything in Simon’s face. He greeted Megi as if nothing had happened, nodded to Jonathan.

His fear of Megi finding out disappeared. His wife was the same as always, kind to Andrea, witty in Simon’s presence. Seeing this, Jonathan finally believed Stefan – the old trouper had figured Simon out. There was to be no trumpeting around or abrupt action; instead there was a mature calm, beneath which no one knew what lay. Or rather did know, judging by the barely noticeable trace of servility in Andrea’s behavior.

Watching her gaze at Simon, Jonathan was doused by a wave of jealously, despair, and disgust. She’d only recently bestowed similar looks on him, laughed at his jokes. Now she seemed to forget the whole world, as she gazed into her senile, self-important sun. Even her admirers noticed and, that evening, focused exclusively on Simon as though his beautiful partner didn’t exist.

Jonathan woke at dawn again and contemplated what he should do, thrashed out scenarios – the deeper into the night, the more pessimistic. The fact that the matter hadn’t exploded with a bang, that Andrea had deflected the blow (how?), ceased to bring relief. The absence of his lover became so painful it obscured everything else. And yet his imagination still refused to envisage a life together with Andrea – he couldn’t arrive at such prosaic questions as where they would live, or, even more importantly, how they would tell their partners everything.

His mind, however, became truly powerless when he tried to think about his children in this context. Daily life without Antosia and Tomaszek was unimaginable. Again he realized how much his contact with his daughter and son had evolved during his paternity leave in Brussels. He no longer understood the phrase “leave home.” He was aware that the signal his body gave out – “I’m hungry” – had over the years changed to, “Have the children eaten yet?” “I’m a parent,” he noted, half with pride, half with surprise.

Which did not mean that, now he had stopped seeing his lover, he was good to his children. On the contrary, the chaos they created annoyed him, the quarrels, demands, and constant need for attention irritated him. Nevertheless, he didn’t flee, scared he would do the worst thing possible – stand beneath Andrea’s window.

When Stefan phoned to ask how the situation was developing, Jonathan couldn’t give him any concrete details. Numb, he listened as his friend reassured him that he hadn’t heard any rumors, meaning Simon hadn’t let on and the only thing that had changed was Andrea’s behavior. Stefan’s experienced eye noticed that the woman had lost half of her characteristic drive for independence. She wasn’t even flirting.

“Look on the bright side,” concluded Stefan. “You had the chick, that’s what counts!”

“I did,” replied Jonathan flatly.

“And what did you expect? That she’d leave the loaded high-flyer and get married to a house husband?”

“She didn’t even consider it.”

“Maybe you should have proposed?” snorted Stefan.

Jonathan slowly hid his cell in his pocket. It wasn’t surprising she hadn’t reacted to his question, “Couldn’t we be together?” He hadn’t known himself what he had in mind at the time. All the guys had been staring at her, lusting after her. So he’d pressed the bag of ice at Jean-Pierre and isolated her from them, wanting his question to close her off in the embrace of a promise. She had smelled a rat. She didn’t want to belong to someone again.

Over the following days, Jonathan played with building blocks, solved jigsaws and daily puzzles. Only when drunk did he gawp at Andrea and ridicule what the officials talked about. Pushed aside by them – the circle had the invaluable ability discreetly to spit out inappropriate interlocutors, typical of people whose priority is power – he sat in a corner following his lover with his eyes.

Megi retreated into herself, reminding him of Andrea at the start of their affair – subdued and sad. Andrea, on the other hand, was resuming the colors of a hummingbird. Still very attentive to Simon, she moved further and further afield and even began to send out furtive signals that infallibly drew men to her. Simon looked on with tolerance, whereas Jonathan unexpectedly discovered in himself a deep disdain for a man who remained with a woman despite knowing she’d had another.

In the end, he stopped going to receptions where he might come across them, then, when Megi returned from the parties, picked out scraps of information about his lover. In this way he learned that Andrea had come to a party alone for the first time since the crisis, and danced with a young, gifted lawyer recently employed by Simon. Toward the end of the party, apparently, they’d disappeared in the garden.