He flinched but went, risking arriving late at school, bungling the preparation for his course, not noting down the ideas that came into his head. He never regretted it afterward – both long intercourse and quickies guaranteed him a dose of pure happiness for a day, a day and a half, and the fact that Andrea felt the same prolonged the ecstasy that they celebrated with text messages. Clearly it was to be – the time had come for him to grab several important things at once.
Andrea had her own theory about sex, and although Jonathan considered it a little girlish, he listened with pleasure as he did to everything she said. She claimed that one could foretell sexual compatibility by first kisses. If there was something in the first touch of lips that broke through otherness, what followed ought to be positive. But if there was a shadow of distaste, unease, a feeling that this was not it, it should end there.
“Does that mean that all the lips you’ve touched worked out well?” he asked naively.
She hid her laughter beneath her hair.
“I understand, you had to learn somehow,” he muttered.
He was angry at himself for being jealous of her past. This was something new, undesirable. Up until then his partners’ past relationships had not mattered to him; he had recognized that the past was their own business, and together with Stefan ridiculed men who felt threatened by a woman’s sexual experience. Just as they did the myth of deflowering virgins – they associated it with bad-quality sex.
So where did this unexpected jab of jealousy come from? Did it confirm his commitment or desire to own “his woman”? Was he a man in love or an embarrassing idiot?
Andrea interrupted these soundless ruminations, snuggling up to him and recounting the story of their first kiss once again. The accidental brush of their lips had given her the premonition of what could happen to them in bed; in the crowded café a world of experiences unknown to her – at least with such intensity – had opened up. The coincidence had been a unique gift to them both, something which, in another configuration, they couldn’t achieve. That was why she’d written to him first.
Before he left, she showered him with caresses and tender words and, although she was better with the first, he was also sensitive to the latter; at this point in his infatuation he was moved by his lover’s charm. He walked around dazed with admiration, lust, and an incessant desire to be close. This last feeling was so strong that the very thought of parting – which was becoming unavoidable due to approaching holidays – transfixed him with pain.
At the same time he felt that, despite passionate lovemaking, he was not as close to her as he would like to be, that he was still unsure of her feelings. He was disorientated by the fact that their liaison was different from anything he’d known – too intense for a passing affair, too secretive for a future relationship.
He didn’t intend to tell anyone about Andrea; he merely mentioned something casually to Stefan because he had to give vent. Despite good intentions, Stefan didn’t show he understood the gravity of what had happened in Jonathan’s life and put his condition down to the atmosphere of the city where bureaucrats landed up without their wives and, in clubs, found women willing to spend the weekend, the night or even shorter periods, with them.
“A colleague of mine in the department has three girls here,” he informed Jonathan as they watched a school game in which Franek, Stefan’s son, was playing.
“Do they know about each other?” asked Jonathan, sitting down on a bench damp from the morning mist. Franek, a round-faced ten-year-old, marched toward his teammates with a solemn expression, unsure of his capabilities but determined not to make a fool of himself in front of his father.
“Think what you’re saying,” said Stefan, his eyes following the boy. “Anyway, you know him, he was at the New Year party. The guy’s got a wife and children in Spain, like every decent Catholic. And three girls here.”
Jonathan leaned back on the bench and scrutinized the assembled parents: mostly fathers although a few mothers were there, too, surrounded by flasks and bags of clothes for the players to change into.
“Where did he get them, the chicks?” asked Jonathan, sensing that what was important was slipping away from the conversation.
“As if there weren’t enough opportunities!” Stefan peered at him from beneath the baseball cap he wore for the occasion in the belief that it suited the father of a ten-year-old footballer. “We’re spoiled for choice here, every color under the sun, young interns and older goods whose husbands stayed at home. And if the worst comes to the worst, there’s always a club like the Madou to pick up a quickie. Everybody knows that you’re only there for one thing. A quick glance, chat up, details fixed, and it’s yours.”
“What’s mine?”
“Whatever you want. What you’ve got.”
3
THE PAVLOV DOGS slipped unnoticed from Jonathan’s story into his family life. After Antosia sneaked a look at the notes spread out by the computer, he had to explain what he was writing about. From that moment the children started to think of adventures for the dogs, tried out names, and Tomaszek even tried drawing one. The creature looked like an elongated pregnant cow but Jonathan told the boy that the animal was beautiful and could be the leader of his mongrel pack. And, much to his own surprise, that is how he started to imagine his protagonist.
The dog, which he intended to have been left an orphan by its owner, imperceptibly became an aggressive, bristling creature. Hungry, its head injured by a brick that some drunks had hurled at it, it had learned the first essential thing about survivaclass="underline" to avoid dog catchers.
Megi attempted to join in and invent adventures for the dogs but her imagination lacked the panache of both Jonathan and the children. On hearing that Tomaszek had suggested one of the bitches should be in heat, she strongly protested. She controlled herself only when Antosia came up with the idea that the dog should wear underwear on her “difficult days” – like her classmate’s bitch.
“Flowery ones, you know Mommy, the wild flower pattern? And they’ve got to be long, halfway down the thighs, the dog’s thighs that is, you get it?”
“Yes, I do,” muttered Megi, gathering peelings into a newspaper. “Longer ones, à la bloomers.”
“That would be, like, good,” agreed her daughter, who had caught on to Aunt Barbara’s expression and didn’t want to stop using it despite countless admonitions and threats.
The following morning, Jonathan drove from school with his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard they grew damp. Andrea wanted to meet him that day so he had shaved carefully and, in the evening, caught up with what he’d planned to do in the morning – in a word, he’d done everything so that he could see her once he’d taken the children to their lessons. Yet, she’d given no sign of life since that morning!
Outside the school, he texted her asking if their plans still stood. He waited half an hour in the car, and texted again, this time asking if everything was all right.
She didn’t reply.
He began to drive home with one eye glued to his cell phone. He drove and hated himself for what he’d grown inside – a tangle of burning jealousy, gnawing expectation, a sea of lurking tears. He didn’t cry because he didn’t usually cry – the routine of daily life helped him to rise above the grit of emotions – but when left alone after taking the children to school, he felt close to imploding.
He wanted to think about something else – a beer with Stefan, The Pavlov Dogs, a reading list for his writing group, politics, or the children – but he couldn’t. Nothing, only the pain of uncertainty, a presentiment of rejection, spasms of imagination. He knew Andrea had taken a day off – a day off from him, too?