Passing each other, patching up, endless effort.
Megi turns from the window. It’s stuffy in her mother’s apartment; heating in the blocks can’t be regulated. Communist levelling still holds strong. Megi rests her thighs against the radiator; heat spreads to her hips.
It wasn’t her lover who’d given her strength to get out of the stalemate of rejection, the euphoria and shock of motherhood, and the sense of being socially lost. She’d thought, at the time, that she was drawing strength from the illicit infatuation. But she, Megi the lawyer, drew her sap from her work. She’d passed the exam, gone to Brussels. Perhaps somebody else would have sucked strength from love. Her fig leaf was independence.
3
JONATHAN ASKED TOMASZEK and Antosia at the airport how they’d enjoyed their stay at Granny’s, whether Father Christmas had already delivered presents in Poland, and what was bulging beneath Tomaszek’s jacket.
“A surprise!” cried the little boy, making himself comfortable in the back seat.
Jonathan fastened the seat belt around him. “Is it alive?” he asked carefully.
“Nah!” giggled Tomaszek.
“They almost didn’t let us on the plane,” informed Antosia grimly. “Because this fathead made a collar out of Granddad’s bullets.”
“Bullets?” This time Jonathan didn’t have to feign surprise.
“Blank ones,” Tomaszek corrected. “Granddad said that they don’t shoot any more.”
“But the customs officers didn’t know that,” snorted Antosia. “That’s why they interrogated Mommy and held us so long that…”
“That Antosia peed herself!” laughed Tomaszek.
“No I didn’t!” Antosia lunged to thump her brother.
“Quiet, children!” Megi spoke for the first time since she’d climbed into the car.
“Don’t swing your legs, Tomaszek,” added Jonathan.
“I didn’t, I only wanted to, you idiot, fathead, twit!”
“That’s enough, Antosia!”
“You peed yourself, you peed yourself!”
“Not a word from now on!” thundered Megi and the car fell silent.
When the children went to bed in the evening, Megi started to unpack the suitcases and Jonathan went to the living room. He stood his present, Tomaszek’s surprise, next to his laptop – a dog made of colorful rags, its throat squeezed by a collar of blank bullets. Tomaszek had wailed so much at the airport that, after they’d carefully inspected the blank bullets, the crew had agreed to put the dog in the baggage hold. Antosia claimed that it was because the soldier had taken a fancy to Megi, Megi assured him that it was because of Tomaszek’s howling, while Tomaszek swore it was thanks to Antosia peeing herself.
Jonathan gazed at the dog, sewn on Granny’s sewing machine. On an impulse, he switched on his computer, found his text, and began printing it. He was sitting on the floor among scattered pages when Megi entered.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Her voice sounded hard.
Jonathan raised his head from the papers. He was overwhelmed by chaos, how out of touch he was with his text. How could he have let it come to this again?
“If I only knew.”
Megi came closer, her feet almost touching the scattered pages.
“What’s up with you and Andrea?”
He lifted his eyes to her. She stood there, looming over him like the Statue of Liberty; beneath her, the adventures of his dogs lay jumbled.
“What on earth is going on?” she yelled.
Jonathan knows he has to answer her.
Megi stares at him.
They argue, sharp words, hard as stones. She screams about his affair; he repeats, “It’s not true, not true, not true!”
Megi’s blood boils. She wants to believe him but hates him, doesn’t know how much truth there is in what he says. She’ll never know.
She stares at him, at what he’s done to their lives; burrowing insects have caused an earthquake, and now he’s surprised that their world’s turned upside down. “Idiot, fathead, twit!” Antosia’s words ring in her head.
She bites when Jonathan wants to touch her. Their yelling brings the children running, and when they, too, are crying, Jonathan runs out. Megi lies down on the floor; the jumbled pages rustle beneath her. She turns the only remaining thought in her head – there isn’t only one man, there are many – but can’t understand the phrase.
Antosia covers her with a blanket. Tomaszek brings her some juice and puts it next to her. They lie down on the sofa, near to her and, after a while, she hears their regular breathing. She wants to get up, give them the blanket, but doesn’t feel well. Beneath her eyelids she sees a tiny light, somewhere on the left, a glimmer that, as she studies it, turns into a corridor.
Megi is scared to go there. The light doesn’t disappear so she raises herself on her elbows with a groan. Routine, right? Only routine helps in such cases. All right, she’ll go and wash. She steps under the shower, runs the shaver over her shins, armpits, bikini line, listens to the stream of water. She remembers her father, the lower half of his face smeared white, his funny expressions, the shaving brush…
Her mother had divorced him, her father had left. Now Jonathan was leaving.
Megi is left alone. Megi is shaving.
4
JONATHAN ROLLED OVER on to his other side. The mattress let out a puff, the sleeping bag slid down with a rustle. He kicked it aside, he was too hot as it was. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The glow of the street lamp, the texture of the stucco, four meters of space.
The apartment was empty; all that remained were the washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, mattress, and divan on which Stefan was snoring. Monika had moved out just before Christmas. The children had apparently protested, their daughter especially didn’t want to move to Poland, but Monika had already sorted everything out – the move, the schools, and had even found herself a job.
“What’s she going to do?” asked Jonathan as he was brewing some tea in the morning.
Stefan was sitting on the floor, nibbling a piece of toast.
“Something to do with leasing.” He shrugged his shoulders.
His face was bloated. Not only had they drunk too much the previous evening, he also claimed not to have slept well, which Jonathan, who’d kept on waking because of Stefan’s snoring, believed to be an exaggeration.
“And you?” Jonathan passed him the mug. Only one was left so they had to share.
A couple of hours later they were at Zaventeem airport.
“So, are we going to see each other in Warsaw?” muttered Stefan. They looked at each other, gave each other an awkward bear hug. Stefan averted his face, which sported a moustache again, and sniffled. At passport control, he turned for a moment and lifted his hand in the air. Jonathan lifted his and showed him his middle finger in an offensive gesture; Stefan cheered up briefly.
Jonathan made toward the exit. He hadn’t been surprised when Stefan informed him he was following Monika to Poland. There was something inseparable in the misery of those two, an element of being condemned to each other, the sweetness of suffering in the marriage of old lags.
“She’s changing,” Stefan had said the previous night when they were sitting on the floor with bottles of beer in their hands. “But I’m not going to change any more. I’m not looking for anyone else.”
“No?” There was doubt in Jonathan’s voice.
“Well, perhaps to screw a little on the side.”