“I wonder what made her change?”
“Martyna,” Stefan had retorted without hesitation. “Before she left, Monika told me that when she looked at someone like that – and I quote – ‘useless kept woman,’ she felt sick.”
Jonathan roused himself as somebody’s suitcase caught on his trouser leg, followed by a vague “Pardon’. He walked up to the door marked “Exit” but, instead of going out, stopped and pulled his cell out of his pocket.
He had two messages. One from Cecile, asking him to keep an evening in March free because she’d managed to book a room in the little mansion by Botanique where they were going to launch the anthology. The other was from Stefan: “Before you hand the keys back to the owner, chuck the cheese out of the fridge or he’ll think we’ve mucked up the drains.”
He patted his jacket and felt a hard shape in his pocket – the keys to Stefan’s apartment. He had somewhere to stay for a couple of weeks until the end of the year.
All of a sudden, he turned around and fixed his eyes on where departing passengers disappeared. He was on the same side as his mother had once been. She’d no longer loved his father then, only Nick. But most of all, she’d loved him, Jonathan, as she kept telling him to the point of boredom.
How many years it had taken him to shake off his binding belief in realism. It was only recently that he’d realized he had a right to premonitions, impressions, instincts, and outbursts – even though he was a man.
It was too cold to sit on the park bench so he just stood beside it. A pigeon limped in front of him. Jonathan watched it – the bird was missing one foot. Jonathan rested his hip on the bench – he, too, was limping, inside. But he could still fly.
He pulled out his cell. “What are we going to do now? Are we going to be friends?” She didn’t reply so he tapped out, “But you don’t believe in friendship.” “No, I don’t,” wrote back Andrea.
A moment later the little screen flashed again. “Neither of us will guarantee your happiness but you can count on pleasant experiences that will allow you to forget.”
Jonathan put away his cell and, despite the cold, sat down on the bench. If he decided to leave, he would become a kidney stone – the family would excrete him but with great pain.
The two women he loved. His best friend and the mother of his children. His pregnant lover.
Something red appeared in the sky – balloons had escaped from a fair. He heard children’s cries. They’re what’s most important, he thought. And women, men? That’s just pumping up the ego. Which is life-giving, unfortunately.
Jonathan stands at the door but doesn’t take the keys out of his pocket. He rings the bell. His daughter opens the door, looks at him solemnly.
“Have you come back?” she asks.
Behind her stands Megi, who now also stares at Jonathan. Tomaszek pushes his head between his mother and sister.
“Are you coming in?” That’s Megi’s voice.
Jonathan enters and stops in the hallway.
“What next?” he asks.
Epilogue
Brussels, 2009
IN THE SPRING OF 2009, the anthology entitled About Loving comes out. At the book launch, Jonathan says, “We built up our approach to love together – at our sessions. When one of us wasn’t coping, he or she passed the baton on to the others. Our writing is a set of connected vessels.”
Megi goes to Warsaw for a decisive talk concerning her work. At the same time, she receives an offer for the position of head of unit in Brussels. She returns to Brussels and, when she finds herself with the children at Zaventeem airport, unexpectedly breaks into tears.
“Are you missing Granny’s house?” asks Antosia.
Megi doesn’t answer, only gazes at Brussels’s colorful crowd.
She doesn’t know what awaits her here, but knows she’ll stay.
In the autumn, Jonathan publishes The Pavlov Dogs. The parents of his former readers make sure the novel doesn’t find itself in the hands of their children. It’s the parents who lose themselves in the author’s first “grown-up” novel.
Andrea gives birth to a son.
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“A manic, wild ride.”
“[G]enuine imagination and an energetic wit.”
“Unsettling yet addictive.”
about the author
GRAŻYNA PLEBANEK was born in Warsaw, Poland. She is the author of the highly acclaimed and bestselling novels Pudelko ze szpilkami (Box of Stilettos; 2002), Dziewczyny z Portofino (Girls from Portofino; 2005) and Przystupa (A Girl Called Przystupa; 2007). Illegal Liaisons (Nielegalne zwiazki, 2010) sold 27,000 copies in Poland and is her first novel to be translated into English. In 2011 Plebanek received Poland’s Zlote Sowy literary prize for her contribution to promoting Poland abroad. She is among a group of international artists whose portraits are exhibited in Brussels Gare de l’Ouest for the next decade. She writes a regular column in the Polish weekly Polityka and has worked as a journalist for Reuters News Agency and for Poland’s highest circulation daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. She lives in Brussels, Belgium.
about the translator
DANUSIA STOK has translated novels by Marek Krajewski, Andrzej Sapkowski, and Agnieszka Taborska; nonfiction books by Mariusz Wilk and Adina Blady Szwajger; and screenplays by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. She compiled, translated, and edited Kieslowski on Kieslowski. She is a member of The Translators’ Association / The Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. She lives in London, England.
Copyright
Published by New Europe Books, 2013
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Copyright © Grazyna Plebanek 2013
Translation © Danusia Stok, 2013
Cover image: Dirty Windows © #2 1994, Merry Alpern
Interior design by Liz Plahn and Justin Marciano
Translated from the original Nielegalne zwiazki © Wydawnicto W.A.B, 2010
First published in English, in the UK, in 2012 by Stork Press
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.