“Best a
non-paper
,” he growled and leaned over the sink to rinse the white mask off his face.
Megi fell silent, and Jonathan thought how uncomfortable he felt standing with his backside sticking out in front of an embittered woman. He was gripped by an irrational fear of being spanked.
“But you do realize,” she said more calmly, “that something like that really does exist?”
He turned to her, water dripping from his face.
“What? Non-papers?”
“A non-paper is also a document.” Megi tightened the cord of her dressing gown. “Even nondocuments are about something. So, since I told you a hundred times to hire a costume …”
Jonathan watched her lips moving at great speed and thought that this was a battle he’d lost even before starting. Not only had he forgotten about the fucking fancy dress but he was standing here stark naked. On top of that there was nothing at hand with which he could defend
himself. Even his cudgel was useless – hanging there pitifully, reflected in the mirror, as crooked as his wife’s face.
Andrea’s red dress perfectly summed up the theme of the ball and her derisive eyes were the best counterpoint to it. Following her with his gaze, Jonathan subconsciously noted the number of men doing the same and the vigilant presence of Simon, who had his arm around his woman’s waist. He looked tired and Jonathan almost felt sorry for him, but the redness of Andrea’s dress was the stronger force.
The sight and smell of his lover made him dizzy and he lost his guard; he got carried away talking to her, brought her wine, followed her when she went to talk to someone, or stood and watched as she danced. Her hips moved in the same lazy way when she danced as they had so recently when she’d sat on him. She danced and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight; he saw nobody else, only those swaying hips of hers and her twinkling smile. And even though he knew that she was smiling to herself as she always did when she immersed herself in making love or dancing, in his eyes the entire room revolved around Andrea.
At one moment, she stretched her arms out to him, placed his hands on her hips and they twirled, lost in each others eyes – Simon, Megi, and all others had fallen from the red orbit.
The redness of the dress washed away the contours but didn’t blur the picture. Martyna, her weasel-like eyes sparkling behind a carnival mask, drew on a cigarette as she peered into the room through the windows of the terrace.
“Have you seen Jonathan and Andrea?” she asked Monika. “What’s going on between them?” Przemek, wearing the costume of a Turkish pasha, nudged Rafal who was busy fishing out a piece of carp from the platter.
“Poor Megi,” lamented Martyna, passing Monika the cigarette lighter. “Maybe it’s only a passing fancy,” muttered Monika. Her corset kept slipping down so she had to grip the contraption and hoist it up.
The trainee who dreamt of opening a retro clothes shop stood in the kitchen doorway wearing the costume of an undressed pussycat. She attracted men’s attention but only until Andrea, dancing with Jonathan now, appeared.
“Has she gone mad, she’s got Simon!” The girl shook her head. “Perhaps she’s drunk?”
“Who’s drunk?” asked the Spaniard dressed as Zorro, struggling with a corkscrew.
“Pity poor old Simon,” mumbled Rafal, carefully turning the sliver of carp around in his mouth. He wasn’t dressed formally, having thought people weren’t really going to dress up. “She was always like that, remember?” The eastern ornaments clattered as Przemek shrugged his shoulders and scrutinized the table, annoyed that he’d tried everything.
“But who is this guy to make Andrea want to dance with him like that?” The trainee touched her eyelashes to make sure they hadn’t come unstuck. “He’s only some writer, Megi’s husband.”
“We’re going after the toast. I’ve got a flight tomorrow. I promised my wife I’d spend the weekend with them.” The cork squeaked in the Spaniard’s hands as he sweated beneath his cape.
“What a slut,” stated Martyna, stamping the cigarette butt out on the terrace tiles. “She hasn’t got any children so she’s making the most of life.” Monika blew smoke mixed with vapor toward the sky. The cork popped from the bottle and the Spaniard smiled roguishly beneath his moustache.
“A lot of guys have had her …” Przemek stretched out his ring-covered hand for a pickled mushroom.
“You too?” asked Rafal placing a carp bone on his plate. Przemekpasha laughed. “I don’t like furniture from flea-markets or women past their prime.”
“What are you staring at?” asked Stefan.
He’d just left the bathroom where he’d spent some time fishing out his monocle, which had fallen into the toilet bowl. He hadn’t noticed that he’d accidentally opened the door when leaning over the toilet bowl and now looked around hoping nobody had witnessed this nineteenth-century dandy’s humiliation.
“Sparks are flying between them!” Rafal put down his plate with what remained of the aspic.
“Sparks?” Stefan looked around.
The couple on the dance floor moved in an off hand manner that to them must have seemed smooth and graceful but to observers might
have appeared obvious, blatant. Stefan carefully scanned the dancers and observers.
“They’re drunk, that’s all,” he snorted disdainfully, wondering whether to insert the monocle back into his eye socket, but unable to bring himself to do so.
“You think so?” Przemek’s eyebrows shot up. “I saw them walking down the street once suspiciously close to each other.”
Stefan was more annoyed than he’d been a few minutes ago in the toilet.
“And Martyna told me that she once saw them leaving somewhere together, a church I think it was,” added Rafal.
“Jonathan in a church?” Stefan wiped his brow with a napkin decorated with golden letters:
Happy New Year
. “He’s an old atheist, even a chick like Andrea couldn’t get him to go to one!”
Rafal laughed but Przemek froze with a strange expression on his face. Stefan followed his gaze – two feet away from them stood Megi. Her bobbed haircut was ideally suited to her Roaring Twenties costume but the golden cap, which until then had added a decadent charm, now looked like the tilted hat of a clown.
For a moment, nobody said anything. Only when a strange smile appeared on Rafal’s face – something like an attempt to sympathize beneath which lay uncensored joy – did Megi turn and leave.
“Bloody hell,” said Stefan.
“What’s happened?” asked Martyna, joining them by the table.
Rafal leaned over to his wife’s ear. Stefan made his way toward the dancers. He tapped Jonathan’s shoulder and whispered something to him. As Jonathan went to where Megi had disappeared, Stefan walked Andrea to the terrace. He pulled some Gauloises from his frock coat and passed them to her, but she refused with a wave of her hand. He must have said something amusing because she burst into laughter, a little exaggerated.
“Her last fellow said she had a drink problem.” Rafal lowered his voice as he poured himself more punch.
“Man problems, more like,” muttered Martyna.
“Let it be. The girl’s just got drunk, that’s all.” Monika waved it aside.
“She’s one thing.” Przemek adjusted the Turkish fez slipping down to his ear. “But that husband of Megi’s! With a wife like that …”
Jonathan stood outside the toilet waiting for Megi to emerge. He stood close enough to hear her open the door but far enough not to have to explain why he was keeping an eye out for his wife.
When Stefan had warned him that Megi had heard something and wanted to go, he’d left Andrea and run after his wife, only to see her disappear behind the bathroom door. He knocked. “Engaged,” came the answer.
She’d already been there for a good while as he stood outside, paralysed with regret and sadness. He wanted to hug her, explain everything. And kill those gossips. He glowered at the circle of Megi’s colleagues – they were talking about them. A wave of anger surged over him and just as it had swelled so, unexpectedly, it began to subside – how could they help it, the poor bores? They had nothing better to do.
He had to explain everything to Megi. He had to tell her he didn’t want any other woman except for her (which he didn’t, other than Andrea). He simply had to say he’d got drunk.
Megi stands in front of the sink and looks at the mirror cracked with age.
“Bloody hell!” She slaps the sink
.
Her golden cap slips down to her eyes but all she can see is Andrea’s dress; beneath her eyelids crumples the red mist of fury
.
She wants to run out to them, catch the woman by that long mop of hers. That’s what she wants to do, but she holds on to the sink, holds on with all her strength. Finally, she leans over it as if to vomit
.
“Easy, easy.” A voice in her speaks but soon grows silent as if it, too, was scared of Megi. Everybody ought to be scared of her, everybody! That whore, those gossips, Jonathan!
“Easy, easy,” whispers Megi, as if she were steadying a horse. The beast in her still bridles, but a tiny bit less
.
“Easy …” She hears her voice and slowly, very slowly, sits down on the closed toilet seat
.
“When did it start?” She forces herself to think; the chronology is to help get a hold of what is seething within. “Is it because he’s sitting at home with the kids and is bored?”
Images leap in front of her eyes. Megi on maternity leave, day and night at home; Jonathan at work or in the gym. Megi at the time: hips still narrow but a belly that after the birth resembles an elongated bread-bin suspended
over her hips. Jonathan: accepts her body during the pregnancy and birth, but once she’s a mother suddenly no longer wants her
.
Another image: her aunt, staying with them for a few days and poking her nose into everything, points at the hook in the hall
.
“Don’t you think that’s a good place for you to hang Jonathan’s clothes?”
“What clothes?” Megi doesn’t understand
.
“For work. So they’re there waiting for him in the morning. Shirt ironed, tie, trousers, socks …”
“Pants.”
“Underwear, certainly,” says her aunt without a smile
.
Next scene: Megi in a suit, already at work, slim again. The crop rotation of work–family suits her, independence carries her away. Men look at her, pick her up, a married woman, a rose without thorns, who can be had without responsibilities. They want her, many of them – except Jonathan
.
Someone knocks at the bathroom door
.
“Engaged,” Megi answers back
.
She places her hands on her skirt and sits on the loo like an old woman in a doctor’s waiting room. And thinks about how the other guy had picked her up – or, in fact, she’d picked him up. Not long afterward Jonathan, too, had come back to her. When she got pregnant they decided Jonathan would stay at home with the child. But Jonathan couldn’t bear it and chickened out of paternity leave
.
Megi raises her hands. Something is tickling her and her face is still stiff and a little wet; she hadn’t noticed the tears
.
Jonathan … When they do make love it’s so good …
Megi adjusts herself on the convex toilet lid. They’ve both changed; she, too, is no longer the twentysomething who is slightly rigid in bed, “likes” various positions in order to make herself more attractive to the boy. Now sex really does arouse her. So why is he now …? Why are they passing each other by again?
Or maybe it’s not her body but something in her character that’s started to repulse him? Maybe she overlooked his feelings, didn’t notice on time that he didn’t share her joy at being a parent? Maybe deep inside he remained still that other boy, in defiance of all those who – including her – had demanded he be enthusiastic about being a father. Had that been the beginning of their otherness, the tearing apart of the entity that had been put together during the first years of their relationship? Beginning … Does such a thing exist?
The music falls silent or seems to. A quiet voice whispers within, “But what, in fact, has happened? He got drunk, the woman led him on. And people gossip.” Megi has heard a lot about Andrea in the Commission canteen – that she has guys on the side, that she doesn’t want children, that she’s a career woman, that she acts as if the older man isn’t enough. That she’s a whore
.
Megi bends back her head. The apartments in Brussels, with their high ceilings edged with stucco, pride themselves in being old. She would also like to be like that some day
.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in – nothing’s happened – she’s got to get rid of the thoughts flitting through her mind, dancing like ghastly butterflies
.
Jonathan stared at the bathroom door. How long could a woman spend fixing her make-up and brushing her hair? His wife’s hairstyle was tidy as opposed to Andrea’s hair, which was free to the elements; it was precisely this aspect of feigned neglect that drove him to frenzy.
Damn Megi’s hairstyle! He had to convince her he was drunk.
“Megi.” Seeing the door open, he rushed forward.
She didn’t look at him but neither did she push him aside. Slowly, he took her by the hand; with the other, he raised her chin.
“I got drunk,” he said with a foolish smile.
J
ONATHAN CLIMBED
as though he were mounting the stairs of a lighthouse. Their house, attached on both sides to the neighboring houses, was like a tower, seductively pretty with its stairs like white teeth. Over the last few days he’d mounted the stairs so many times that his calves hurt. Meanwhile, his cell phone remained silent, hidden beneath the marital bed. Text messages arrived from Stefan, questions from his mother, an amusing remark from his father but, since the New Year’s ball, nothing from Andrea.
Had he studied the messages he sent her, he would have realized he resembled himself from the final days of secondary school. He’d believed, at the time, that dignity came second to feelings and that the woman he loved would understand. Since then the notion of “the woman he
loved” had evolved, stretched beyond mere desire. This was colored by the half-bitter, half-amused realization that there was no love without play, and not only foreplay.