Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

A mother he knows emerges from the drizzle and points to the lush hedge. He recognizes his son’s voice among the cacophony of screams drifting from there; Antosia he finds on the swings. In the light of the street lamp, he sees the altered faces of parents, late because of the traffic jam. Soon, just like his, their eyes would anxiously be groping through the dusk, as they worried where their children were.

Holding their hands, Jonathan drags his kids to the car; they’re with him now – two hands, two children. He has no more hands.

Megi passes Portofino brasserie and comes to Luxembourg Square. The wheels of taxis rasp along the cobblestones, the old tenements cower in the drizzle. The corridors of the new European Parliament building hang suspended above the ground, stairs meander in glazed cages, a screen projects a circle of stars. “What a clear-cut shape,” thinks Megi. “You don’t have to struggle to find the Great Bear.”

Przemek had insisted he walk her home; she’d just about managed to wangle her way out of it. She wanted to be alone after what he’d implied: that she would have got the position of head of unit had it not been for blocking from above .

“Above?” she’d asked. “But was it official?”

He’d shaken his head, looking around carefully .

“Who doesn’t like me and why?” She’d groaned, and a moment later regretted her imprudent words because Przemek had immediately moved closer .

Megi shudders when she remembers that moment of physical proximity. How come some people have no inhibitions? Even men who look like Shrek try to pick her up, not giving a second thought to why an attractive woman who has a handsome husband should want to go to bed with them .

Megi pulls back her hair, wet from the drizzle. An unwanted admirer was nothing compared to the fact that she’d passed a difficult exam and not got the job because of someone’s whim. If only she knew who it was, but it was like shadow-boxing. She guessed it was someone much higher up than Przemek, some vengeful éminence grise .

And later, in the ladies’ toilets, she’d overheard that Andrea had got the post .

Her umbrella slips down Megi’s back, her hair and shoulders get wet. She cuts across the cobbled square, where the little fountains froth in summer. Only the approach to Schumann roundabout left .

WHEN ANDREA TOLD HIMshe’d got the position of head of unit, he tried to assume a suitable expression. What was worse was that he didn’t know which suited best. On the one hand, the new job would turn the journalist into an office worker, on the other, the post was a Eurocrat’s dream because the money was secure and the head of unit was untouchable. Well, and his wife had sat up many a night in order to pass the exam and get the job, then everything had gone to waste because he, during his free time from writing, was fucking the life partner of the head of cabinet for the Commissioner. At least that was Stefan’s theory.

“Congratulations, you’re magnificent,” said Jonathan, kissing Andrea on the forehead, which, for some time now, had been a strong rival to her lips.

He recalled the saying that people love each other as long as they want to kiss each other on the lips. But there were so many shades of love, after all; desire could evolve into friendship, into mutual respect … “Bullshit!” something cried in Jonathan, whose emotions expressed themselves in English, while common sense used Polish. Probably because when, as a boy, he’d said goodbye to one of his parents, the other didn’t spare him arguments, saying that he had to come to terms with the situation. English was the language of school and peers, but also feelings. When he gazed into Petra’s icy irises, he heard her hot, English declarations. Bullshit, he repeated in his thoughts.

Love was infatuation, desire, and passion, that’s what his body told him, his ever-fertile body, which, having sniffed out the smell of its woman, followed her trail until he’d fucked her. Friendship, respect – those were the values the human being in Jonathan called upon, the human being Andrea had noticed when he’d agreed to be with her, even though she’d got herself pregnant by another man. But the human being in him was not constant. It took on the characteristics of a male, because how else could he explain the doubts that assailed him as to who the father of his lover’s child was, the way he downplayed Simon’s procreative abilities, and his attempts, underlain with anxiety, to ascribe the child to himself?

The human being in Jonathan kept being burned to a cinder by desire and from his ashes arose the male. He peed to mark out his territory, took his female, then lay on his back in a gesture of surrender – because once more the human being had appeared on stage – whom the male chased away. And so it went round and round.

“You’re magnificent,” repeated Jonathan.

Andrea cheered up and, in his heart, he congratulated himself on having perfectly mastered the schoolboy reflex of repeating the last sentence without understanding.

“I’ve got to go.” He reached for his jacket.

Ever since the roads had been blocked, he left with time to spare, then sat in front of the school in a car that grew cold.

“What did you say?” He glanced absentmindedly at Andrea, as he groped in his pockets in search of his cell.

“That I want to leave Simon.”

He froze, one arm in the sleeve. Something like this had already happened, this scene, her eyes fixed on him expectantly, with concealed joy. So what was that last sentence?

“But,” he began, chasing away thoughts about déjà vu , “Simon won’t let you leave.”

Her face darkened. He continued nevertheless: “And what about his child?”

“It’s my child.”

Silence, then: “Andrea!” yells Jonathan, throwing his jacket on the floor. His cell flies from the pocket and slides until it comes to a rest by Simon’s slippers.

Jonathan grabs Andrea by the elbows and shakes her. Her hair covers her face so that only her belly, that belly, indicates where her front and back are. When finally her face appears between the dark strands, her lips, twisted in fury, scream, “You didn’t want to have a child with me!”

Jonathan squeezes her arms, feels her muscles tense, feels her bones as though his fingers had long ago punctured her body.

“Is it mine?” he wants to yell.

She waits for the question but Jonathan purses his lips and watches Andrea tilt back her head; her eyes are black, angry, her lips tremble. When she finally says something, her voice is sure, distinct: “It’s my child.”

Jonathan’s fingers slacken. Andrea moves away from him.

“Mine,” she repeats as if she were informing viewers of the fall of shares on the exchange. “I can afford it, in all respects.”

A few hours later, lying on the bed he shared with Megi, the children cuddled up to his sides, Jonathan tried in vain to understand what Antosia was reading. The words of the story hummed soothingly, Tomaszek’s eyes were closing and from the whirlpool of Jonathan’s thoughts leapt Andrea’s yelling. Or maybe it was he who’d taken it as yelling because in reality she hadn’t raised her voice again when he left her that afternoon, only drily informed him that if she left Simon, it didn’t obligate him, Jonathan, in any way. She wouldn’t break up his family, wouldn’t take that responsibility on her shoulders. Jonathan didn’t have to be afraid either for himself or, more to the point, for her. Andrea would manage.

“Daddy, Tomaszek’s fallen asleep. And you’re not listening,” complained Antosia.