“Could it harm the baby?” she asked, as though he were an expert, while he slipped into her gently and rocked forward, backward.
“Break up with me!” he wrote afterward but received only smiling faces. She didn’t take his words seriously. She told him she loved him and was going to have a baby, and that these were two different things. A baby meant a belly and waiting. He was her love, her difficult love.
Jonathan didn’t say much but diligently covered her body with kisses. He stopped at every hollow, at every swell, gentle and tender. He didn’t look her in the eyes; he didn’t want her to see how much he longed to screw her – so hard he’d go right through – and get rid of the intruder inside.
At times, it dawned on him how it must have looked from the outside – he was fucking someone else’s pregnant woman. But, practically at the same time, he also knew that they weren’t an ordinary couple. They created their own laws, discovered new paths, made love on the flipside
of legality, at the limits of society’s good taste, in the maelstrom of their own scruples.
He nodded to the security guard and opened the door. Geert’s eyes were drifting across the stucco, Jean-Pierre was texting someone, Ariane was leaning over the table to hear what Kitty was saying.
“… I remember, the same thing happened to me.” Ariane nodded.
Kitty watched her with fascination. Jonathan couldn’t fathom whether she was really interested or whether it was a former journalist’s professional ability to listen. On the other hand, one couldn’t but help look at Ariane. Jonathan often thought there was a little windmill in her that turned at variable speeds.
Jonathan’s eyes returned to Geert, still sitting in the same position and paying no attention to the women. Neither their glances nor their outbursts of laughter disrupted his concentration.
“Sorry I’m late.” Jonathan closed the door. “I don’t even have a decent excuse because it won’t sound credible.”
“Anything could prove inspiring,” smiled Ariane.
“Maybe one of us will write a story about it?” added Kitty.
“Fairy tale more like,” muttered Jonathan, hanging up his jacket. “Imagine a little boy who creates an elixir out of Coca-Cola, egg shells, sunflower seeds, and dishwashing powder. Oh, and I forgot salt and pepper as ‘seasoning.’ ”
“Who is this magician?” asked Ariane.
“Tomaszek, my son.”
“He didn’t drink it, did he?” Kitty feared.
“No, but he kept the muck under his bed until it turned rancid. I’d rather not talk about the smell.”
“It’s the egg shells.” Jean-Pierre nodded like an expert. “Good thing the eggs weren’t raw. My daughter used them in an experiment once.”
Jonathan had already opened his mouth when he saw Geert was passing some pages over to him. His eyes skimmed over the first lines of English text.
“Mother was wearing a pair of white, open-toed slippers that glistened in the sun as it fell through the car window. Every now and again a black face obscured the yellow sphere. Mother’s shoes then grew dull, surrendering the glint to bloodshot eyes and teeth. Suddenly the window cracked, the glass scattered on her fair hair. The door sprang
open and hung obliquely on its hinges. One white slipper touched the dust, the other flew idly after it.”
“Shall I read it out loud?” asked Jonathan quietly.
Geert nodded; Jonathan continued reading.
“The car stood inclined to the left, far from the town center, on the outskirts of Kinshasa. The boy crawled along the grass, further and further away from the rebels’ cries. His mother’s guttural sobs grew quieter. His father was still waiting for them there, where they had not arrived.
“The boy grazed his elbows and knees so they bled; chirping pounded in his ears; the stench of rubber reached him from afar. He had no strength left. He stopped moving in the damp grass then turned slowly; the burned-out car was growing black by the road, a cloud of smoke drifting from it.
“He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky shimmering in the heat. Somewhere over there the sun was caressing white patent slippers and the tin can of a car filled with the scent of his mother’s perfume, guarding the treasures of childhood. Although aflame, it was closed tight. Beneath the lava of strange faces, what was good set within her.”
The following day, Jonathan phoned Cecile. They had to publish a book of stories written by his students; the two years had matured his people’s talents.
“Your people?” Discreet laughter rang out in the receiver.
He couldn’t write that morning; excitement chased him out of the apartment. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel any pain. “It seems my nerve roots have stopped doing me in,” he noted on a piece of paper that he extracted from a side pocket of his rucksack. There was a drawing by Tomaszek on the back: a map of favorite places sketched in the sprawling hand of a seven-year-old. Jonathan orientated the piece of paper – and here he was, halfway down a road decorated with crooked houses, in front of him a roundabout coming into view. He knew there had to be a laundromat there, a shop selling olives and chocolates, and one of Brussels’s numerous pharmacies, but it was only thanks to the little map that he noticed that the roundabout lay in the shade of an enormous tree.
He walked on ahead. Rue des Tongres started with a sweet turn, which led to the delicacies of his youth: French cheeses and wines
appeared behind glass. In the next window was a meat roast like the one Nick, his mother’s husband, used to prepare, while in the GB shop on the other side of the street were pickles and a mock-up of the works of art his paternal grandmother had fed him. “And dat way to films,” prompted Tomaszek’s writing. Jonathan looked down the street: cars glided in a narrow thread toward a crossroads where trams clattered. Beyond the crossroads the street descended more steeply but must have ascended somewhere again because at its far end towered a church – the one where he had met Andrea so frequently.
He put the vibrating phone to his ear. It was Cecile Lefebure with some good news: a friend of hers, working for a publisher, had promised to ask if they’d be interested in publishing the work of a group of beginners. The money would have to come from grants.
“So it’s possible?” he asked.
She laughed, won over by his enthusiasm.
“I can’t promise anything.”
“But maybe?”
Because of the fuss, he lost sight of his Dogs. They had not fled completely, but he felt them scampering away and panicked that he wouldn’t be able to catch up with them.
“You’ve got too much on your plate,” Megi consoled him.
She was sitting on the stairs, her arms wrapped around her knees. It was two o’clock in the morning and he was flitting like a moth between his computer and the kitchen.
“You’re editing your disciples’ stories, applying for a subsidy to publish the collection, looking after the children, and still harbor ambitions to write. It’s hardly surprising you’re uptight.”
He stopped short in front of her as if seeing her for the first time.
“I don’t harbor ‘ambitions,’ ” he let out through his teeth, angry, “only characters who are going all over the place!”
“So why did you pick ones with four legs?” giggled Megi, but seeing his expression turned serious. “I meant to say that they’ll come back to you. When you whistle.
Nomen omen.”
Jonathan grabbed the end of a bread roll Antosia had rejected and started to nibble at it absentmindedly.
“If only that were possible, to whistle and that’s it,” he said indistinctly. “Some things have a time and place, but if you miss them …”
Megi adjusted herself on the stairs, buttoned her pajamas higher. She sat in front of him, warm with sleep, devoted. He moved as if to stroke her but stopped mid-gesture.
She went back to bed; Jonathan remained downstairs on the pretext of gathering his notes. He pulled his cell out of his pocket and exchanged a few messages with Andrea. Unlike him she didn’t need much sleep; that’s where they differed. “And in many other ways,” he thought.
He took a beer from the fridge and opened the window. The inner courtyard, lit by the gentle glow of windows, chirped quietly with holidays. Their Brussels apartment was unusual – if he crossed to the other side of the room, and opened the huge balcony window, the shrill sounds of the city entered, music from the pub on the corner, the din of motorbikes. One apartment with windows on two worlds.
He stood in the middle of the room, and took a gulp of Leffe. His eyes wandered over the stucco. Why had he built all of this – to demolish it? Is that the eternal meaning of constructing something? He ought to be grateful to Andrea, in fact, for not pressing him for anything. If she’d gone to Megi, like Stefan’s lover, and demanded that his wife get out of the way of their love … He took a draught of beer and leaned against the window frame. The air was not cooling. It was the hottest month of the year and the city lay to its side, panting lazily.
Andrea hadn’t gone to Megi asking for him because women like her didn’t have to fight for anyone. They forged ahead and everybody else ran after them, catching crumbs of attention, the sweetness of their glance, scraps of conversation. He slapped his forehead and yanked the cap off another beer with his teeth. Andrea laughed whenever he did that, Megi too, although she worried about his teeth.
“You can see straight away that you went to an English boarding school,” giggled Andrea, and he grimaced as if he really had broken a tooth. “Simon does it too, does he?” he asked, and when she said yes, added, “Then I’ll ask them to replace my molars with a bottle opener when I’m his age.”
Andrea was never spiteful about Megi. Jonathan loved her for it all the more. There was something noble about her, which he would willingly have told his friend-wife. He knew Megi would have been
pleased to have her theory proved that intelligent women today fought over a position in the company where they worked rather than over men.
He spat the cap out of the window. Everything would be simpler if he could finish with the duplicity in his life. But how could he ditch Andrea? Or Megi? Harmony with Megi, passion with Andrea: the mixture gave him wings, allowed him to live life to its fullest.
Paradoxically, it was now that his relationship with Andrea had assumed an unexpected equilibrium. The fact that he hadn’t broken up with her when he found out about someone else’s baby like many men would have done, had started a new phase in their love. He became dear to her; he saw this and, although the man in him would most willingly have got rid of someone else’s foetus, it was his humanity that won Andrea over.
Jonathan stood the half-empty bottle on the sill and stared at the lights opposite as they went off, one by one. What a brittle equilibrium! Her swelling belly and with it his pain; messages by night, life by day and, in the evenings, trips to churches where he avoided people’s eyes like a vampire avoided daylight.
J
ONATHAN STOOD
downstairs in his jacket, but Megi still wasn’t coming down. Finally, he heard the rhythm of her heels on the stairs.
“I couldn’t decide what to wear.” She raised her eyes. “Have I put on weight or something?”
“No chance,” he countered automatically.
“Is Helena here yet?”
“Mm-hmm.” With his eyes he indicated a pair of golden trainers beneath the coat-hooks.
“Helena, could you give the children their supper at nine then chase them off to bed, please?” ordered Megi, catching Tomaszek’s hand at the last moment as it aimed to bury itself in her lacquered hair. She kissed him carefully, not to leave lipstick on his cheek. Antosia came up and put her arms around her mother’s hips, gently so as not to crease the skirt.
They were late for the concert; the seats in the hall above were already full so they had to stay downstairs and watch on the screen.
“Is there anything to eat?” Jonathan leaned over to Megi’s ear.
She indicated a section of the room partitioned off by small barriers where waiters were milling around. He took a step in that direction but she caught him by the arm.
“Only after the concert.”
When the barriers were finally pulled aside, a tightly packed crowd threw itself at the tables. Megi stormed the snacks, Jonathan’s task was to acquire some plates.
“Got them! And look, how ingenious – palette-shaped plates!” He handed her the oval shape with a hole through which he’d put his thumb.
“It’s for your glass,” she snorted, “so you don’t have to hold it with your other hand.”
“So it’s free to …?”
“Hand out business cards.” Megi kissed him on the lips; he felt the moistness of her lipstick.
Martyna sprung up next to them.
“And you two are still at it after all those years! Have you heard about the pregnancy?” She transfixed a mushroom with her fork; a slimy streak gleamed on her plate.
“Andrea’s and Simon’s,” filled in Rafal as he pushed his way toward them, grunting, “What a crowd!”
Jonathan allowed himself to be sucked in by some group, thanks to which, seconds later, he was several meters away, his salad slipping precariously to one side of his plate.
“… is pregnant although it doesn’t show much yet.”
“Simon’s too old to be a father,” replied a familiar voice.
Jonathan turned. Stefan was sweating by the meatballs; below his nose, where until recently he’d cultivated the moustache, beads of sweat were collecting.
“Why are you standing by the pots?” Jonathan indicated the steaming jaws of aluminium containers.
“Herd mentality. I wasn’t hungry but when everyone threw themselves at the food, so did I. Exactly as if ham were still being rationed,” grunted Stefan, adding aggressively, “But you always had all you wanted. There wasn’t any martial law in England.”
“English pork sausages were deadlier than communist water cannons.”
Stefan’s face was taking on one of his national colors when he suddenly noticed Jonathan’s expression. He followed his eyes – Andrea
stood surrounded by a circle of friends, Martyna’s hand was on her belly, Rafal was nodding and blinking compulsively, and Monika was listening with a polite expression. Only Przemek was uninterested in Andrea and stood, crushed in with his plate, directly next to Megi.