Гражина Плебанек - Illegal Liaisons

He left the apartment and stepped into the lift. Megi was acting just like him who hadn’t yet asked Andrea if he was the father of her child. He pulled the lift doors apart and stood on the stairwell lined with nineteenth-century tiles. He nodded to the neighbor living on the second floor and asked the old man from the first floor after his health. Over the last few days they’d exchanged greetings, comments about the weather, and the negligence of the trash collectors.

He drew the winter air into his lungs. Soon it would be Christmas, presents, his birthday… He pulled up the collar of his jacket and made toward the Brasserie Verschueren. He didn’t want to go to Ludwik’s, who hosted the immortal Commission Christmas parties, but he didn’t like the idea of Andrea going without him. He intended to arrive a little after her and have a glass of mulled wine on the corner beforehand.

When he saw him, Ludwik swept the hallway with his eyes.

“My wife’s in Poland,” Jonathan rattled off. What did the man expect? That she was hiding behind the coat rack?

Jonathan looked around the familiar interior – the floor gleamed with unhealthy brightness, the Christmas tree looked as if it had been bought in a shop selling appropriate accessories.

“Don’t worry, we’ll soon puke all over this place,” he heard Stefan’s voice at his side.

From the balcony where they had gone to smoke, the Eurocrats’ district looked like Lódz in the previous century after its manufacturers had gone bankrupt – dark windows illuminated by street lamps, no pub music, no twenty-four-hour alimentation générale .

“Martyna saw you going to Andrea’s apartment with her.” Stefan blew a few impressive smoke rings, pursing his lips like a carp. “Apparently you were lugging a shopping bag.”

“And they say I try to dodge cooking.” Jonathan reached for a Gauloise.

“But is it true? I told her she must have been seeing things, I even blew up at her.”

“Good.” Jonathan nodded.

Nothing else came to his mind, he felt light and empty inside. Something told him that this feeling preceded another, painful sensation but he couldn’t, of his own volition, leap from his balloon of indifference.

“Eh!” Stefan tapped him on the shoulder. “So how are things with you two?”

Jonathan turned his eyes on him. Megi would ask the same question when she returned.

“I’m living with Andrea,” he replied.

“Does Megi know?” asked Stefan after a long while.

Jonathan held on to the barrier, pretending he was gazing at the dark street. He shook his head.

“And what’s going to happen now?” His friend’s voice reached him.

Jonathan shrugged. He was in no state to stammer out anything else. “I’m living with Andrea.” Those four words released into a space full of guests at the Commission Christmas party, even though separated from it by a pane of glass, drained him of strength.

“I’ve never gone that far.” There was helplessness in Stefan’s tone. “The furthest I got was when that crazy woman came flying up to Monika.”

“What really happened to you then?” Jonathan choked out, trying to focus on the story that he couldn’t care less about right now.

“Don’t ask.” Stefan waved it away. “But going back to you… Think it over carefully, old man.”

“Meaning?” Jonathan gripped the barrier again, his cigarette going out several meters below them on the pavement.

“You don’t really know her.” Stefan’s forehead furrowed. “Don’t announce anything until you’re a hundred percent sure.”

Stefan went in, returning a moment later with two bottles of beer. He clearly wasn’t himself that evening, didn’t intend to circulate among people or sort out professional matters.

“Monika wants to go back to Poland, as you probably know,” he mumbled in the end, tilting a bottle into his mouth. “Martyna told me, do you see? Monika hasn’t said a word to me since that time and it was only when everybody started asking me what I thought about it, that I realized I was the only one who didn’t know. Like a total idiot!”

He gestured at Jonathan with the bottle and added, “I even resented you for not telling me but then I heard that you’re having it off with her again.” He indicated Andrea who was standing next to a dark-haired stranger.

Jonathan tore himself away from the barrier and practically glued his forehead to the window.

“Who is he?”

Stefan followed his gaze.

“You know, the guy who’s got three chicks here and a wife and children at home. I told you about him.” He shrugged. “Apparently he’s just getting a divorce.”

“Does he know Andrea?”

“Oh, yes!” began Stefan and broke off suddenly.

Jonathan turned to him.

“You know something. Talk.”

“Everybody knows.” Stefan had the expression of a dog caught peeing. “Rumor has it that she’s been going with him ever since she left Simon. But if I know him, he was the one chasing her, he’s always wanted a go at her.”

Stefan said no more. Jonathan stood with his head bowed; the balcony swayed beneath his feet. The horizon seemed to expand and expand in front of him and, finally, there was a vast space there. A moment longer and he would have an attack of agoraphobia.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He barely recognized his own voice.

“Because you said you weren’t together any more! The last time we spoke you said you had lumbago and had ditched her, remember?”

“Kurwa, kurwa…” Jonathan put his hands over his face. Polish curses seemed foreign to him, he switched to English.

Stefan stood with his hands spread out helplessly, one holding beer, the other a cigarette.

“I had that whole Monika mess hanging over me.”

Jonathan didn’t hear him; fragments of scenes ran through his head, snippets of conversations fell into place, suddenly clear and logical: the muted ring on Andrea’s cell, the conversations she ended on the stairs, a man’s disposable razor in the cupboard beneath the sink, which she apparently used for shaving, although she had once told him she had her legs waxed.

He felt Stefan’s hand on his shoulder.

“She doesn’t know anything.” Jonathan picked up four recurring words. “Megi still doesn’t know anything.”

“I haven’t got any strength left,” said Jonathan and swayed above the barrier.

Stefan grabbed him by the shirt; Jonathan straightened himself and turned. He now stared through the balcony window at the group around Andrea – Rafal was sneaking a meaningful look at Przemek, who was hiding a smirk, and only crooked Ludwik and the dark-haired man were talking, oblivious to everything, and gazing at Andrea.

Jonathan tore himself from the barrier and for a moment looked as if he was going to plunge head first through the windows of the balcony door.

“What are you doing?” He heard Stefan’s cry.

“What?” Jonathan was looking at him as if he didn’t see him.

“You’re not going to do anything foolish, are you?”

Jonathan shook his head rhythmically in a futile search for words.

“No,” he retorted finally. “I’m only fucking off out of here.”

He didn’t switch the lights on at home; he entered the living room in the dark and collapsed on the sofa. He slept in his jacket and shoes, dreamless, just as when he’d sat difficult exams. When he woke up in the morning, he was afraid to move – everything in him was dispersed. He cast his eyes around. The plants had dried up, the rubbish he hadn’t thrown away stank, a pile of letters lay strewn by the door.

It was on this pile that Andrea’s eyes fell as she stood at the threshold.

“Who let you in?” asked Jonathan. He was in the kitchen, unwashed, with no jacket but still in his shoes.