Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

“But Simon’s an immovable fixture. You’re safe.”

Andrea suddenly turned to face him but he stared at her belly – the navel protruded like a half-extracted champagne cork. In January, Simon would break open a bottle; not everybody managed to sow a son at Methuselah’s age. Because it was undoubtedly a son, Andrea looked so beautiful.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” said Andrea for the second time that evening.

Her eyes were fixed on him and, after a long while, he said, “How do you imagine all this playing out?”

Andrea didn’t answer, her fingers clung to the curtain.

A few minutes later, striding through the street, Jonathan still had the texture of the fabric in front of his eyes – loose mesh, handcrafted. His thoughts were similar, full of holes: Andrea the office worker, even though she’d encouraged him to be free; Andrea without Simon but with a swelling belly.

He still had her taut skin beneath his fingers. If he felt carefully he could make out the baby’s back, touch its tiny heel. Jonathan watched his step, as the apartments past which he was walking stuck out tongues of metal for cleaning shoes. Picturesque façades slipped by, elevations interwoven with window displays.

He didn’t ask Andrea about the baby; she, too, usually didn’t say anything about it. Both, unanimously, seemed to ignore its existence although it breathed, snuggled up to their heated bodies, its pulse beating between their naked bellies. Bigger and bigger, it demanded its own space and Jonathan knew it would be better if he ceded it. He should leave her in peace but couldn’t. Something made him run after her, after this fleeing woman who didn’t want anything from him. That’s why this day, when she was so close to letting him into her life, he fled like one possessed. He couldn’t imagine Andrea submissive, Andrea warm and devoted.

And that belly of hers! What was Jonathan supposed to do with it – take on somebody else’s child?

“ IT’S RAINING,” said Geert.

They looked at him half-unawares from above the texts they were editing. Jonathan hadn’t yet told them that their stories might be published but arranged their sessions so they could focus on the few pieces chosen by him.

He studied his disciples and thought about how far they’d come. Ariane avoided autobiographical plots like the plague but had an exceptional gift for observing reality, thanks to which she often hit on a narrative vein of gold. She didn’t always have the patience to delve deeper into fields she knew little about, which was blatantly obvious, but she wasn’t discouraged, and that was the main thing.

Kitty had finally stopped writing about motherhood and had reached for her former self, searching, open, sometimes unsure or frustrated. Her cycle of stories about the dilemmas of a teenager, later a young woman, took his breath away with their committed depiction of characters and polished detail. There was something nineteenth-century about Kitty’s writing, no fear of thinking and a resistance to haste.

Jean-Pierre blundered into writing his family history. Jonathan had tried to direct his interest toward smaller forms but his student seethed inside – recorded reminiscences, collected testimonies, amassed old photographs and documents. Jonathan brought him a postcard of a lorry, loaded to the brim with parcels, which had got stuck in desert sand. Jean-Pierre thanked him but didn’t catch the allusion. He was sure he would do justice to the enormity of his subject.

Geert clung to his chosen path and Jonathan clung to Geert. He was fascinated by how the elderly man untangled the trauma of his childhood, how bravely he subjected it to the literary process, how he fought to keep his distance and prayed for the transformation of unexpressed emotions. This was why Jonathan pressed to publish the story, neglected his own writing, sought grants, kept phoning Cecile as if his life depended on it.

Unfortunately, the latest news of the stories’ publication was not promising. A group of beginners did not arouse commercial interest.

“It’s raining,” repeated Geert.

Jean-Pierre glanced blankly at the window; in front of his eyes he still had the shed rigged up on an urban allotment by an old eccentric whom the inhabitants of a neighboring housing estate cursed because he bred pigeons. They claimed it was his fault they’d had to install protective nets because his birds soiled their balconies. Only when he died did they start to whisper among themselves that the pigeons on their balconies were different, gray. Someone had apparently seen white doves on the day of the breeder’s funeral – they’d flown over the allotments and housing estate one last time, their wings carrying them left and right, left and right. The flock had danced to the rhythm of an aerial waltz, the sun turned their feathers to gold. And then they flew away.

“Excellent!” Jean-Pierre tossed at Ariane as he set the pages aside.

She didn’t hear, immersed in Kitty’s story. She smiled and grew serious in turn, referred back to previous pages, underscored. Kitty, concealing her worry, kept glancing at her until Geert’s story drew her in.

“Good evening.” A melodious voice tore them from their reading. “I won’t be a minute, I don’t want to disturb you,” said Cecile, making her way toward Jonathan.

Ariane shot a meaningful glance at Kitty. The men in the room – thirty-year-old Jean-Pierre; Jonathan, not much older; and sixty-year-old Geert – had their eyes glued on Cecile. There was something in the sway of her gait, the fragility of her wrists, the statuesque shape of her shoulders, that made her white hair seem like the provocative accessory of a rebellious girl.

Cecile, as usual, looked a little embarrassed by the impression she made. She walked up to Jonathan and whispered something in his ear; he looked at her, his face brightening. Kitty winked at Ariane – Jonathan looked like a boy whose mother had just given him some candy floss. He turned his sparkling eyes on her again, then on them.

“You’re going to be published authors!” he yelled.

He returned home in sheets of rain. The outline of the arch loomed unclear above the park fence, the fountain in front of it was still. His cell rang in his pocket.

“I hear Andrea’s trying for the position of head of unit,” Stefan said. “Poor Megi!”

“Why?” Jonathan drew to a halt. Drops of rain fell into his hood.

“She probably wasn’t offered it,” Stefan stated, rather than asked.

Anger mounted in Jonathan. He’d felt so good after Cecile’s news and this guy dispelled all his enthusiasm with one stab.

“She’s a bit broken up about it,” Jonathan admitted reluctantly. “She’d passed the exam, after all.”

“I might be bursting your bubble,” Stefan interrupted him impatiently, “but you’ve got to have support in the Commission.”

“Life as a transaction.”

“What?”

“That hideous Przemek was supposedly going to support Megi.”

“He’s not big enough.”

“That’s what I keep telling her,” triumphed Jonathan.

“I mean in influence. Especially if she gets blocked.”

“Who’d want to block Megi?”

Stefan didn’t say anything.

“Well, who?” Jonathan hustled him.

“Think.”

“Who?”

“Simon.”

The rain had stopped but the dusky city didn’t come to life again. The clatter of hooves sounded through the backstreets but the horse patrol was nowhere to be seen. Jonathan raised his eyes to the arch. A souvenir of the time when Belgium was magnificent, a postcolonial monument erected with money from the Congo. The symbol of Jonathan’s freedom – Jonathan, the jogger. But now, after reading Geert’s short story, he looked at the construction in a different light. The pain of the child in Geert’s story permeated Jonathan and remained there.