Jonathan had lost Megi in the crowd a long time ago and headed toward Andrea. As usual, the men had formed a circle around her, from which they emerged – capering knights – more confident, defterm and wittier than usual. Had Jonathan been himself, he would have stood at the side and watched but, when it came to Andrea, he had long ceased to be an observer, which was why he squeezed in between Przemek and Rafal and stared at his lover.
She smiled at him as she did at the others. She shared her attentions fairly with those to whom she spoke, thanks to which they blossomed like northerners under antidepressant light bulbs. Simon’s appearance disturbed the balance. In his brilliance, the brilliance of a bulb marked “authority,” the conversations grew heavier and bristled with facts. Those gathered in a circle now weighed their words, wrapped them in the cotton wool of phrases such as “I don’t know what you think but …”
When Stefan’s son, Franek, sent by Monika with a tray of canapés, stood next to them, an apparatchik with a strong French accent came to life: “Do you like the
Teletubbies
?” he asked the boy.
Franek looked at him, confused. He was too old for stories aimed at two-year-olds.
“Are you also in favor of censoring the program?” A journalist from a British newspaper turned to the Poles in the circle.
Przemek made an effort to laugh.
“We’re in favor of censoring what some of those in government say.”
“You’ve got to admit, it’s an excellent publicity stunt, electing twins for the highest positions in the state,” jibed Simon.
“Isn’t one of them gay?” asked the journalist.
The smile on Franek’s face kept appearing and disappearing. He didn’t understand what was going on but tried to guess by the way the men spoke.
“Wasn’t he the one who detected homosexual undertones in kiddies’
Nightie Night
?” the bureaucrat with a French accent enquired.
“Hello, Dr Freud!”
The journalist raised his hands.
Everybody laughed. Jonathan gently pushed Franek toward some other guests.
“Interesting,” he mumbled. “My friends from Poland heard about all this from the BBC. There was practically nothing about it in Poland. The statement was treated like political folklore.”
“I bet your friends don’t read Polish newspapers.”
“Why shouldn’t they? They’re Polish.”
The journalist waved it disdainfully aside.
“So, how many Polish friends have you got? Two?”
“I’m Polish.”
The journalist burst out laughing.
“You are? So where did you learn to speak English like that? Oxford?”
Jonathan held the silence a second longer than was fitting then said politely, “In Poland.”
“You mean to say,” the bureaucrat with a French accent joined in, “that nobody there has heard about the proposal to take off the kiddies’ TV show because of hidden homosexual undertones?”
“Only those who read a tiny item stuck in the middle of the most trivial news from Poland,” retorted Jonathan.
“It’s not such a small issue since the whole world is talking about it.”
“Depends what the world wants to talk about.”
“But we’re not just making it up,” said Simon.
“Of course not,” Przemek joined in placatingly.
“Facts are facts,” interrupted Jonathan. “They can be blown up or ignored.”
“Isn’t that a bit of a conspiratorial way of thinking?” Simon tipped his glass.
“Typical of those from the old Soviet bloc?” Jonathan’s voice sounded surprisingly sharp.
Przemek opened his mouth and immediately closed it; Andrea raised her hand as if wanting to speak. Simon was still looking at Jonathan with the same smile. Perhaps he was waiting for Jonathan to turn everything into a big joke, as they had both been taught to do by the English education system.
But it was too late. Something had opened in Jonathan, something that deformed his words and drew the muscles around his lips, which refused to respond to Simon’s smile. They were kinsmen, brought up in the same country; and yet Jonathan was seeing himself as others viewed him – coldly, from the outside – and what he saw was the perpetrator of a social gaffe, a serious Pole who had lost his temper.
“My son’s informed me that you’re talking about queers,” Stefan’s jovial voice resounded behind them. “At last something I know a bit about!”
Rafal quickly started chatting to the British journalist; Przemek drew the bureaucrat with a French accent aside; Andrea whispered something in Simon’s ear. Jonathan turned to Stefan and rolled his eyes, at which the latter, as if conspiring, pressed a packet of cigarettes into his hand.
The terrace was deserted, the rain having chased the smokers inside. Jonathan rested against the railings and clicked the cigarette lighter.
“Gave him a piece of your mind?” Stefan stood next to him.
Jonathan took a drag and without a word blew out a cloud of smoke.
“Don’t worry, it’s just the usual hiccup after ditching a girl. It doesn’t normally happen to me,” Stefan explained, seeing that Jonathan wanted to say something, “but I’ve seen it happen to others.”
He leaned against the railings then after a while added: “Anyway Simon had it coming. He didn’t invite you to that party. He thinks that since you’re a nobody in the Commission … You’ve shown him that’s not the case.”
“What’s not?” asked Jonathan in a drab voice.
“Well, that if you’re not in the Commission it doesn’t mean you’re not important.”
Jonathan stared at the garden stretching out in front of him.
“Stefan,” he said clearly. “I’m fucking his wife.”
“Still!” Stefan tore his hands away from the railings. “Even though she didn’t invite you to their party, ignored you, and after everything else you said?”
Jonathan stamped out the cigarette butt.
“Right, that’s not the point,” Stefan said, more to himself.
When the terrace door closed behind him, Jonathan rested his back against the rough wall. In the light seeping from the apartment, he could see the rain cutting through the air. He turned his face to the sky. How far he’d gone! He loved Andrea even for her faults. He was hurt, yet happy. Is this the essence of love, he thought. Pain?
All at once, he longed for his calm love of Megi.
“What are they talking about?” wonders Megi, looking at Jonathan on the balcony. “Exchanging rude jokes, what else?”
She turns her eyes to Andrea. She’s like a stone chafing in her shoe. Megi tries to shake it out of her mind – in vain. If it was a man who’d so irked Megi, she would confront him. But Andrea is a woman
.
She remembers the dream she had that night: she was standing at a party like this one and talking about something unimportant. There were fewer people than here which was why she was surprised nobody had noticed a bear slip in through the door
.
It was beautiful! Its coat, almost black, glistened like a pitch-black stream, fur swaying in rhythm with its gait. As it passed Megi, it didn’t slow down but walked between her legs at the same steady pace. She shuddered, clenched her glass tighter and, with an apologetic smile, looked around at the faces of the guests. But they seemed not to notice it, perhaps they had not even noticed the bear’s presence at the party
.
She’d woken up, flooded with an irrational feeling of happiness: the bear had chosen her, passed between her legs! She burned with shame, exciting shame
.
Megi runs her fingers through her hair and her eyes return to the circle of men swaying around Andrea; she watches Andrea make room for them, invite them to be the center of her interest. With her attention, her eyes, she
extracts from those she is talking to whatever they believe is the best in them; she is their mirror; the canvas for their self-portraits. She merely retouches a little and immediately they appear better – are “the real thing!”
Megi shrugs. She doesn’t believe in Native American male friendship. Brought up by women, she knows that nothing can equal their power. Which is why, when women turn against her, Megi feels lost
.
A
S HE WALKED
next to Stefan, Jonathan remembered that, according to Megi, the more time he spent with his friend, the more Jonathan became part of Stefan’s dog team and, like a good Husky, took on some of his friend’s personality for a time: the way he spoke, some of his gestures. “It’s easy to guess who you’ve just seen,” she laughed. “Do I also pick up other people’s traits?” Jonathan worried; he didn’t want to be a chameleon. “No, no,” Megi reassured him. “Only Stefan’s.”
Stefan was less susceptible to Jonathan’s influence and Jonathan consoled himself that even though his friend’s personality may have been more dominating, he, Jonathan, had more empathy. Does that mean I’m more feminine? The thought flitted through his mind, but he quickly rid himself of it. “Masculine” and “feminine” were so flexible and kept on changing; he himself was the best example of this. He didn’t bother to put a name to it. He had already been an outsider in life; he might as well be avant-garde.
This time, as he walked down the street with his friend, Jonathan felt, for the first time, that he was observing him. He studied Stefan’s body language, the glances he threw at passing women, his half-smiles, the way he turned to look – at that woman for example, older than them, classy.
Once she’d passed by, Stefan didn’t even interrupt what he was saying, as though separate cells in his brain registered aesthetic and sexual events without disturbing those responsible for the coherent spinning of a story. Yet the woman walking away must have thought Stefan was still eyeing her because when Jonathan glanced back, he saw that she was trying to step lightly in her stilettos over the uneven pavement.
The street traced a gentle arch. Brussels, he thought, a sexy city where people look at each other and this mutual attention warms them as if they were lying in a beach shelter. A city where Megi had one morning dared to say, “Why clitoris? It should be tickloris.”
They passed another girl at whom Stefan cast his approving eye.
“Not bad,” he muttered.
“Young.”
“What do you expect? Thirty-year-olds are desperate. Marriage and babies – that’s what they have in mind. Forty-year-olds are great but they scare me.”
“Twenty-year-olds in bed are like broth from a stock cube.”
“But you can screw them,” sighed Stefan.
Jonathan stopped short. Stefan walked on a while before realizing he was talking to himself. He turned and looked questioningly at Jonathan.
“She wasn’t even twenty,” Jonathan indicated behind him.
“What’s up with you? I haven’t raped her!”
“You’re forty and dribbling over a girl half your age. Are you retarded or something?”
Stefan cast his eyes around as if to seek understanding from the waiters watching for customers at the Italian restaurants.
“What’s …” he began but Jonathan hissed through clenched teeth, “You don’t like Andrea, do you?”
Stefan stared at him goggle-eyed.
“You don’t like her because she’s just like you,” continued Jonathan, speaking as if he were also listening to himself. “She eyes men in that same way and then …”
Stefan stepped up to him, slowly, as if he were an injured bird.
Two waiters stopped talking; their coal-dark eyes glowered beneath the awning.
“Why do you leave them?” Jonathan jabbed Stefan’s chest with his finger.
“Who?”
“Those birds of yours!”
Stefan gazed at him and, tilting his head to one side, said slowly, as though to a toddler, “Because I’ve got a wife.”
Jonathan shook his head.
“No, no! I mean why do you pick them up? Why do it at all? Understand?”
Stefan walked up to him, sheltering them both from the waiters’ sight.
“Sorry, old chap,” he said quietly. “But I don’t understand.”
Autumn smelled of flowers and it wasn’t clear where the scent was coming from since leaves were rustling in the trees, fumes drifting from cars and police horses, leaving odors more suited to a nineteenth-century street.
With the start of a new school year, Jonathan returned to his routine: he drove the children to school, wrote, fetched them and, when Megi came home and began preparing dinner, took his gym bag and left. Andrea already waited for him in the church. They went to her place and made love on Simon’s bed.
He couldn’t settle his thoughts for a long time after his return; they skipped in euphoria and made him want to run, hold witty discussions, learn Spanish. In order to cover his tracks, he tapped the keyboard while allowing images from an hour ago to scud before his eyes: Andrea snuggling on top of him, her slender thighs wrapped around his hips, his eyes and lips covered by his lover’s dark hair.
In October, Simon left for a whole two weeks. Jonathan wanted to make the most of the time, even though his going to the gym every day might have appeared suspicious. Andrea was the one who showed caution for them both and, as was her wont, was sparing with herself and forced him to wait for her invitation.
He was furious. Why hold on to the rhythm of their first dates? The speed at which they see each other ought to have equalled the strength of the emotions which carried him. He pressed her because she was now the only one he wanted to make love to; her body seemed semifluid and unearthly, their fucking ecstatic.
He stopped enjoying Megi. He waited for his wife to fall asleep at night and only then went to bed. He lay there, still feeling the weight of Andrea’s head on his shoulder, recalling the murmur of their whispering, the tangle of words, the moisture of their tongues, the merging of English and Polish, French and Swedish.
Once, when he’d had enough of waiting for Megi to fall asleep, he silently picked up his phone, which at night he kept beneath the bed and, hiding it behind a bottle of water, started to leave the bedroom. Suddenly, the light of a message flashed on the screen and, magnified by the plastic bottle, fell on Megi’s face.
Only after a while did he dare to look at her. She was asleep … But if she had woken up then, if she’d read what was painted on his face, illuminated by the bluish glow, he would have answered with sheepish simplicity: “I love her. I want to be with her.”