Stefan leaned back, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his wrist.
“That’s what life’s like among strangers. Understand?” He reached for his beer.
Jonathan said he did but a moment later asked, “What strangers?”
Jonathan walked home, pushing his bicycle. Although blue with cold, the city had miraculously retained its coziness. Cinquantenaire Park seemed vaster than in summer; the sky broke through the leafless branches on which green parrots swung. Usurpers in a world of satiated starlings and sparrows, forbidden goods which had given a smuggler the slip, they had multiplied and adapted to their new environment. Now they flew in green flocks, squawking, and sweeping their long tails. Only the emerald of their feathers linked them to the “lost little parrots.” With hooked beaks they hammered the local birds on the head, not afraid of even the magpies.
“You live in a world of fairy tales!” Stefan had thrown at him before they parted ways. They had quarrelled, not for the first time, but so fiercely that Jonathan was deeply stung.
“So what?” he’d fumed.
“So,” Stefan had yelled heatedly, “they’re not Polish fairy tales!”
“Are you mad?” Jonathan was stunned. “And Andersen’s tales are Danish, are they?”
But Stefan had only waved it aside. The splash of nationalism he’d spilled on the table of the Belgian eatery was an unknown aspect of Stefan. Jonathan had suddenly seen the hard face of a football fanatic before him.
The deeper he went into the park, the more vengefully he thought about his friend. Was Stefan jealous of his love for Andrea? He lived from fuck to fuck, just like his father had and his grandfather.
Jonathan stood still and studied the criss-crossing alleys of the park, their geometrical forkings, their evenly trimmed hedges. Did Andrea also think of him as a Pole? And what kind of a Pole: one proud of his
history or one who represents a nation of collaborators, like some people from “the West” considered Poles to be? He’d been made aware of this variant by a certain American woman who, when he’d taken offence, had patted him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, the French also collaborated with the Germans.”
As he strolled down the alley, he thought anxiously that, after all, Stefan and Andrea were similar in a way. He reset his mind with a grind, trying to see Andrea from a different perspective. If he closed his eyes to her beauty, education, the fact that she knew several languages fluently and coped perfectly well with working abroad, who was she? The daughter of Czech immigrants, one who associated churches with empty shells of the past. A child with a key around its neck, running around between blocks where an apartment had been allocated to refugees. The poorest girl in class who never felt at home in sated Sweden and was fed stories about a distant revolution by her parents. An ambitious scholarship holder, curious about the world, aesthetically in love with the apartments of Brussels, a snob collecting English tea sets and cutlery, the partner of a financially and professionally well-placed Briton, head of cabinet for the Commissioner, the trophy wife of a charismatic fifty-year-old.
He stood still. Holding on to that perspective, who in that case was he? A writer untainted by official connections, an artist and outsider, “a warrior’s respite.” an idealist thanks to whom she returned to the dreams of her past? No, no, that’s how he liked to think of himself when looking at himself through the eyes of his Andrea. But now he wanted to look at himself through the eyes of Stefan’s Andrea. Was he for her (whoever she was) a handsome, trouble-free lover, but also – and here in a rather secondary guise – a Pole?
A couple of hours later, the children already washed, he came downstairs. Megi was still reading to them and, while waiting for their evening together – two hours blissfully vegetating with an unambitious film and pistachios at hand – he opened his computer. Stefan had emailed, explaining that he’d lost his temper and shouldn’t have yelled like that. He attached “something as an apology.”
Full of foreboding, Jonathan moved the mouse to “attachment.” Enormous breasts filled the screen, gaudy advertisements floated across the
nipples. Half-blinded, Jonathan searched for where to click to turn them off but the mouse froze, fixing the arrow at the groove between the breasts.
“Right!” He heard his wife’s voice behind him.
“Ay, ay!” Jonathan nervously rubbed the mouse over the table surface.
“I knew it.” Megi put her hands on his chair.
“And you still stand there,” groaned Jonathan. “As if I wasn’t humiliated enough! A moment later and you’d have caught me with my hand down my trousers.”
“I wonder,” Megi kneaded her chin and bent over, squinting, “what it’s really advertising.”
“That’s what you’re wondering?”
“Some sort of liquid no doubt. Yes!” She pointed to the writing. “There it is. Liquid for washing car windows.”
Jonathan clicked on the cross, the breasts vanished and Megi straightened herself, giggling.
“You caught me out,” Jonathan said without guilt.
“Good thing it was only that,” she muttered, moving off to the kitchen.
Jonathan unwittingly froze, then reluctantly made after her.
“Good thing it wasn’t the same as Stefan …”
Jonathan slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Okay, we’ve got the background, we’ve got the suspense, now let’s have the climax,” he said.
Megi rested her elbows on the work surface, which extended into the living room. Jonathan was tickled by the thought that she must have known how good she looked in that position. The breasts on the screen were nothing compared to her tits, as shapely as apples, and her butt – a little flatter than Andrea’s – took on womanly shapes when she bent forward.
“I caught him red-handed with Aneta,” she whispered secretively.
“No!” exclaimed Jonathan.
Megi scrutinized him; finally she poked an accusatory finger at him.
“You knew! You knew and you didn’t say anything! I always tell you!”
“Why do you tell me now, years later?” countered Jonathan. “Stefan’s already managed to tell me himself.”
“I couldn’t any earlier!”
“Why not? Bound by oath, were you?”
Megi lowered her eyes.
“I couldn’t because I was worried.”
Jonathan gave her a searching look; a moment later, he burst out laughing.
“I almost believed you!”
“No, really,” Megi defended herself but his smile was infectious. “I really was upset. And on top of that, Monika came up and I had to deflect her.”
Jonathan walked up to the fridge and extracted two bottles. Later, they sat on the floor drinking beer, chatting a little, laughing a little. Jonathan stroked Megi’s hair, thinking she was dear to him even though he couldn’t watch porn with her or visit the red light district of Amsterdam.
Before putting on a film, he told her about his argument with Stefan, how his friend had suddenly brought up the subject of being Polish. Megi listened and stroked his hand; the threads of understanding tickled pleasantly. Then, of her own accord, she started telling him how much she liked Brussels where even Masses were celebrated in five languages, and subtitles in three languages were projected in theaters so that everybody could understand.
“And as for being Polish …” She lost herself in thought. “We’re the first lot to have been able to leave Poland really out of choice. Not because of money but because we’re curious about the world.”
“Stefan says that those who are here miss Poland.”
“Nah.” Megi tipped the beer bottle. “Ask any of them if they’d go back. Just ask!”
Megi watches Jonathan walk up to Andrea, start to undress her. He rubs against her olive skin with teasing slowness, drills her groin with his tongue, examines her nipples with his fingers, sucks her ear lobes and whispers something, but what? Megi can’t hear because she’s saying something herself
.
“Jo … Jon …” Megi’s words turn to dust, choke her; she spits, “Yyyyuuuuck, eeeh!”
“Shhh, shhh,” she hears the voice on the other side of the bed. She sits up, drenched in sweat. Above her is the window, a calendar hangs on the wall, days ordered into a uniform grid. There’s no way to say whether one is better than another, she is the only one who knows – once they’ve passed
.
Megi lies on her back; anger runs through her body, explodes in her lower belly. She’s the one he should be making love to in that way! Megi wants him to put it in her pussy and press his hips against her buttocks. That’s what she wants!
But how can she get through to Jonathan when he’s asleep, lost in dreams about himself – everything’s about Jonathan, through Jonathan’s eyes. Hey, I’m here, too, listen to me, hear me, be – obedient!
But he sleeps on, his mouth half open, his breath stale, as happens at night, down below an erection, perhaps. A dark shape, a man
.
T
HE GRASS SMELLED GOOD
in Geert’s story. Jonathan read the beginning several times and each time was struck by the fact that there was no continuation.
“What happened next?” he asked yet again; Geert looked at him helplessly.
“That’s the best question possible,” sighed Ariane, straightening herself on the chair.
Jonathan thought that if texts were to reflect a writer’s personality, hers ought to be full of details, although a little angular. But when he picked up what she’d written during the Christmas break, he couldn’t conceal his surprise. Something tender had crystallized, which he’d have believed more likely to come from Kitty had she been more daring in her range of subjects. Because this one was strong: the story of a dying peasant who reaches the decision to reconcile himself with his son.
“Ariane,” he said, placing the pages on the table. “This is something entirely new to you. Where did the story come from?”
Ariane smiled, pleased. Jean-Pierre observed her with curiosity, Kitty with attention.
“Did writing a diary help?” Kitty asked affirmatively.
Ariane nodded her head again.
“In what way?” Jonathan glanced at the text. “Surely this hasn’t got anything to do with your own experience.”
“That’s exactly why,” said Ariane. “I had a lot of personal stories in me and finally found a place for them. But not here.” She indicated the pages in front of Jonathan.
Geert opened his mouth as if wanting to say something but decided against it.
“Your grass smells good,” Jonathan addressed him.
“And if something smells good to you it means you love it,” added Kitty.
Jean-Pierre laughed; Ariane tossed back her thick hair.
“It’s true,” she joined in. “As long as you want to kiss someone, there’s feeling. The smell is what’s most important.”
Jean-Pierre looked at her hesitantly; in the end, he reluctantly agreed.
“That’s why Geert finds it hard to continue,” concluded Ariane. “When you love something, you don’t know how to write about it.”
“You think so?” asked Jonathan.
“Look at my protagonist,” Ariane joined in. “I don’t love this peasant, he’s an old tyrant.”
“But there’s tenderness in the text,” noted Jonathan. “It’s clear that you’re indulging the main character, there’s no straightforward ‘you I like but you I don’t.’ All the arguments are in the son’s favor yet it’s the father we pity.”
“According to your theory,” Jean-Pierre spoke out, “Geert ought to fall out of love with his Congo.”
“That would be ideal,” replied Jonathan. “But the rule’s hard to apply when it comes to childhood memories. You can’t avoid love there. It’s present, childishly stubborn.”
“We haven’t been of much help to you,” Ariane addressed Geert.
“Thanks to you I know why grass smells good,” he said quietly.
After his class, Jonathan made his way through the park as usual. He pondered what had been said at the lesson. Would he be able to describe Andrea? And the trees in Brussels? He looked at his cell and, with a sigh, slipped it back into his pocket. She hadn’t sent a single message in the past few hours.
When a message finally did arrive, Jonathan’s mind had initially fixated on trying to understand how he’d never thought about what would happen if they were caught. All these months he’d subconsciously ignored Simon’s
existence. As for Megi, there was a place assigned for her in this whole configuration. In his eyes his wife was understanding, as if she knew what was happening to him, and had accepted both him and the situation in which he found himself – and that he’d found himself in it because he had no choice. She was his friend. He’d always told her so many things. And what he didn’t say, she ought to understand.
Simon was beyond the scope of his feelings and, therefore, predictions. Jonathan rarely came across him because Andrea liked to go to parties by herself, which made her seem all the more available. When they made love, she belonged only to him, everything was theirs, nothing of her permanent relationship infiltrated, so that he began to suspect that Andrea’s marriage was celibate.
The message which arrived just as Jonathan was about to insert the key into his front door consisted of three words: “Simon’s found out.” For a moment, Jonathan stood rooted to the doormat, listening to the familiar sounds within: Antosia chasing Tomaszek because he’d swiped her eraser, Megi shouting over both of them, her voice mixed with the clatter of pans. A moment longer and a frying pan would go crashing or she’d scream.
Jonathan turned and quietly descended, not waiting for the noisy finale. He rested against one of the trees in the street. The buds would blossom when the time was ripe, over one night. When, at Megi’s request, Jonathan had finally taken a photograph of the flowering trees, he’d noticed that each tree carried a tiny shield. Like numbered pedigree dogs, the trees stood and blossomed obediently. Then their petals fell in order to turn the glory of color over to other trees, planted on neighboring streets.
But now Simon had found out! Jonathan imagined his children and Megi in the impending snowstorm and was overcome with fear. “Ay, ay!” A lament rose within him, and an invisible punch below the ribs deprived him of breath. What had he done – what on earth had he done?