Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

When he got back, Megi was asleep. He peeped in on the children, set their window ajar. Antosia was lying on her side, the girl-elf of Bauer’s paintings; her long hair flowed off the bed, glistening in the streak of light coming from the hallway. In the daylight, it was a shade of gold, almost red, just like Megi’s before she’d started “improving” it with highlights.

Jonathan turned and picked up the duvet, which had slid from the other bed. Tomaszek slept in a spread-eagle position, his arms and legs flung to the sides. Jonathan noticed how his son had grown; his shape had lost some of its roundness, his limbs had lengthened. He covered him, breathing in the puppy smell.

“My child. Mine,” drifted Andrea’s voice. Jonathan abruptly pulled himself up and stole out of the children’s room. He slipped under the duvet and wrapped himself in Megi’s warmth. But sleep didn’t come. He rolled on to his back and stared at the oblique window.

Stefan appeared in his mind. His women were amazingly like each other. Clinging women – those were the ones he attracted, those were the ones he shunned, starting with Monika, through to his last whim, Martyna, the doyenne of narcissists. Stefan saw his children chiefly on weekends. He talked to Jonathan about his daughter’s piercings but lacked the courage to speak to her. Franek still tried to please his father but it was clear that the twelve-year-old was inevitably beginning to gravitate toward his peers, ceasing to need his father.

Jonathan’s women were different, independent, self-sufficient. He congratulated himself for not being a menace who mended his own ego by undermining their values. He wasn’t afraid of strong women, nor was he afraid of children. He didn’t run away from being a father – it was his right to be one. Although he sometimes growled with tiredness, these growls expressed love. If he were the father of Andrea’s child, he wouldn’t dodge the responsibility. If he were …

He started counting in his head: she was to give birth at the end of January so she must have conceived in May, perhaps April. “I told you I wanted one with you,” came Andrea’s voice. Megi sighed in her sleep.

Jonathan sprung out of bed, ran downstairs and pulled out his diary from his jacket. When exactly had that been, the time they didn’t use a rubber? An article deadline, his mother’s birthday, a school meeting, but no markings for fertile and infertile days. May, May … There was still that night in Sweden when she hadn’t replied to his messages. Had that been because someone was with her?

He stepped onto the balcony, lit a cigarette, and let out a column of smoke. Constellations: Orion, the North Star. Megi didn’t know much about them, could barely find the Great Bear. Andrea didn’t want anything from him, she cut him off from her life. Whose was that little human being growing in her?

A bat glided above the gardens, its trajectory cut by a light, a falling star or a plane.

Who else was Andrea screwing?

Jonathan leans Andrea against the wall and slips his hands under her dress; his fingers run down her naked body, only the swell above her pubic mound brings him round. She quickly turns and sticks out her rump. Her waist is still narrow from the back, her buttocks firm and shapely. Jonathan parts them and takes a while to fit his cock into the hole. Andrea pushes her rump out further but Jonathan prolongs his manipulations. He knows how hot she is – a miracle of the middle trimester, an onslaught of hormones that sweep a woman away, telling her to get as much humping in as she can before confinement and delivery.

Slowly he inserts himself into Andrea; her pussy is hot and wet, the walls part effortlessly. She absorbs him into herself, sucks him in with her warm opening, would have allowed herself to be screwed to bits. She writhes in orgasm, although she doesn’t usually come from behind. Now she howls quietly; her legs, shaking but obstinate, hold her stiff.

Jonathan helps her lie on her side. He waits until she’s had enough – she’d come four times that day – but again she arches her back. Just before her wave reaches its climax, he picks up speed, the whirl has caught him, too.

Later, they lie wet, Jonathan’s hand wandering up toward Andrea’s hips. It comes across her belly and, instinctively, irrationally, retreats. He still can’t ask about the shape that is there between them, doesn’t know the due date or how the pregnancy is going.

He climbs into his car and moves away from her apartment. Around the corner he hits a traffic jam straight away – dairy workers from Germany and France are blocking the main streets of Brussels, police stand guard at the impassable tunnels. Jonathan presses the pedals one by one: accelerator – he’s driving on postcoital euphoria; brake – he ought to ask Andrea openly who the father of her child is; clutch – he’s afraid of what she’ll say.

He goes back to the same crossroads, passes her apartment again. The hands of the clock glide mercilessly; he should have been at the school long ago but had been fucking when they closed the thoroughfares. After forty minutes, he manages to get to Reyers. The lower part is closed off, along the upper rolls a vehicle cleaning the road. The cars move bumper to bumper; police watch threateningly from beneath the plastic screens of their helmets. Jonathan, in rhythm with the frog hop of his car, searches his memory for any affirmation that Simon is the child’s father. He can’t remember any.

“Shit, shit!” He thumps his palm against the steering wheel; the man in the Audi next to him watches him in sympathy.

The street has already been swept but all the lanes of traffic are stuck; cars glisten as far as the eye can see. The vehicles move off slowly and again come to a standstill at the Montgomery roundabout. Tractors block the lanes around the fountain; a red, plastic cow looks on from a trailer. “Shit, shit!” Jonathan stamps the floor of the Toyota but the string of cars still doesn’t move. He pulls out his phone and calls the mother of one of Tomaszek’s friends. He’s fallen victim to the demands made by French dairymen, has been immobilised near a red cow. Could she keep an eye on his kids?

He moves forward slowly and finally grinds to a halt in the siege of honking cars. The tractor drivers aren’t there; they’ve gone for a beer. Only their machines are left, blocking the way for Brussels’s rushing inhabitants. If the farmers were here that would be something, at least, but no! It’s shadow-boxing. Sweating, Jonathan opens all his windows. He hadn’t asked Andrea if he was definitely not the father. The red cow looks at him accusingly. He hadn’t asked because he can’t stand heart-to-heart talks; truthful answers scare him. There’s no room for truth in illicit liaisons; truth might destroy the delicate construction.

Something changes in the configuration of vehicles; the gray nose of his Toyota sniffs out a thinning of the traffic and, at last, breaks out toward Avenue Tervuren. It streaks along the empty lane; cold wind and rain sweep down Jonathan’s collar, veil his glasses with drizzle. Things are fine as they are, with their staggering rate of lovemaking and short moments of happiness. The child is her child and she is his love.

With bravado, Jonathan turns right into Boulevard du Souverain, passes the crossroads, and in reaction to his unexpectedly restored freedom races down the street – in the process of being repaired ever since they’d moved to Brussels. Then he speeds until he grinds to a halt in another traffic jam. Another unexpected obstacle: a fairground has installed itself on the one and only free lane.

Parents are milling around awkwardly when Jonathan arrives at the school playground, their eyes searching for their children. Dusk transforms the playground, the cheerfully painted monkey-bars and huts become forts, delighted gnomes giggle in the bushes. His heart in his throat, Jonathan looks around for his kids. He could count on Antosia’s common sense but where had giddy-headed Tomaszek got to?