The wheels scraped warningly along the white strip marking the road from the wayside.
“Shall I take over?” asked Megi. “Pull into a gas station. There ought to be one in five kilometers.”
“No, there’s no need. I thought the jerk behind was going to pass us.”
Megi fell silent; after a while she settled her head on Jonathan’s jacket, which she’d squeezed in between her shoulder and the window. Without her daily make-up and with strands of hair falling on her cheeks, she looked like yet another child in his car. Suddenly he thought that moments like these were necessary in order to be happy with one’s lot, brief moments of separation beneath which lurks valuable intimacy. He wanted to say it out loud – he knew Megi would understand – but she was already asleep.
Again he saw Andrea. She lay beneath him on the crumpled bedspread. (She’d succumbed in the end, allowing him to make love to her where she slept with Simon, but refused to remove the spread so their smells wouldn’t mix.) A huge wave of tenderness swelled up in Jonathan, flooded his nose and mouth; from his throat emerged a sound that was neither a cough nor sob. He glanced at the rear-view mirror: the children were avidly following the animated adventures of cows and bulls. He wiped his eyes with the outside of his hand and shielded his right cheek with it so that his wife, should she awake, wouldn’t see it was wet.
By the sea, where Megi spent most of the time with the children so that Jonathan could have a break from daily responsibilities, he felt a little like a country dog that, let off its chain, doesn’t dare venture far from its kennel. He ran along the coast trying to shake his head free of unwanted thoughts, but whether he jogged against the sun or left it behind him, Brussels – and the woman with whom he’d fallen in love – was always in front of his eyes.
He was tormented by the thought that his lover was not chasing after him as he was after her. Admittedly, she was tender when they met, admired – in text messages – his sense of humor, intelligence, the charm of an outsider, contagious sexual enthusiasm, and sophistication. And yet Jonathan sensed an imbalance in their commitment.
When it had dawned on him, he began to probe in an effort to extract as much as he could from her: he inundated her with compliments, provoked confessions, screwed her until she was breathless. He even dug his heels in a couple of times to keep her “on hold” and make her miss him – he didn’t reply to a message, sometimes two, and waited. But when he let it go and stopped contacting her, Andrea also remained silent. She didn’t ask, didn’t sweet-talk him but accepted his decision. Then he was the one who couldn’t stand it any longer and ran to her. He had once asked her why she did this, why she let him go. She hadn’t answered. The worst thing about all this was the calm certainty that he was at her mercy. She kept dancing in front of him, the bitch in a red dress.
Only once did she come after him – after she’d omitted to invite him and Megi to the party in which mutual friends had been included. She’d apologized, written about some misunderstanding or oversight. But he’d lost his temper and remained unmoved in his silence for two weeks. “No, sixteen days,” he corrected himself and accelerated his trot along the Baltic shore.
He returned to the rented room and took a shower. The children’s scattered toys, his wife’s drying swimsuit, the pattering feet of his mother-in-law who’d installed herself in the room next door, all jarred on his nerves. He liked Megi’s mother a great deal but instinctively avoided her now – he was, after all, hurting her daughter.
He went out again, crossed the dirt roads and, clenching his teeth, assured himself what a good thing it was he’d broken up with Andrea. Good, very good. His long strides marked the rhythm: “Good, good, good.”
He returned for lunch. He leapt up the stairs and neared the door. The children were making such a racket that it was obvious no adult was keeping an eye on them. He was about to peer in when he heard familiar voices coming from his mother-in-law’s room. He glued his eye to a gap in the door. Megi’s mother was sitting on the divan, her daughter had just emerged from the bathroom in a bathing suit he’d never seen before.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Megi’s mother. “Who’d have thought you’d had two children. Look how slim you are!”
“But doesn’t this stick out, this here …?”
“Nothing sticks out. It lies on you perfectly, take a look for yourself!” She picked up the rectangular mirror from the sill and handed it to her daughter. “And don’t be so silly. Enjoy what you’ve got. You’re at a wonderful age.” His mother-in-law sat down on the divan again, her thick hair fleetingly falling over her face. “The truth is that when I was young I was also blind to the way I looked, and only realized once I was over thirty. But I was happiest with myself in my forties, and later.”
“Jonathan doesn’t want me,” said Megi suddenly.
Her mother didn’t say anything.
“I don’t even know when it started,” Megi’s voice faltered, as if she were in a hurry. “He doesn’t fancy me, doesn’t say I’m attractive. He doesn’t say anything. He’s there but he isn’t there.”
“Isn’t?”
“Even physically.”
Jonathan heard the divan squeak as Megi sat down next to her mother. For a moment they didn’t say anything, his mother-in-law held her daughter close.
“I didn’t think I could tell anyone,” said Megi finally. “Jonathan is my friend after all, that is, my husband, man, but above all…”
“Fortunately he’s one of those men you can usually depend on.”
“That’s true. Although he didn’t stay home with Tomaszek, remember, when my maternity leave was over.”
“But he’s with them now. Being a parent is one thing, being yourself another. It’s knocked into men’s heads that, above all, they’re to be themselves, the rest will be done for them by women anyway. That needs to be worked on if it’s to change. It’s already happening in your generation. You’re friends, partners.”
“Do you think so?”
His mother-in-law nodded and patted Megi on her bare shoulder.
“Don’t worry, some things can be changed, fortunately. And those that can’t…” She waved it off and got up to put the mirror back on the sill. “There, look at him!” She indicated the window. “For pity’s sake, has nobody told him he looks like a tree trunk in those briefs.”
Megi sits in a fishing boat moored on the sand. She knows by heart the phases of the red sphere plunging over the horizon, the speed of the process, and the expression of reverence on the faces of those around her. Holidaymakers wade in the water, their hands behind their backs, which makes them look like conscientious penguins. Megi turns her eyes away from the disc of the slipping sun and gazes at the horizon where the sky meets the water in a gray embrace.
“Where are the children?” Anxiety needles her. “Ah, with mom!”
Mom… A couple of years ago Megi overheard some relatives grumbling in the kitchen about her mother. “Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” they griped, thinking she couldn’t hear them. Megi stopped in front of the door but didn’t hear the end; someone was approaching in the hall and she had to pretend she was rearranging the plates she was carrying from the table.
“Doesn’t fall far…” It was true. She’d learned her maternal skills from her mother and grandmother. She, like them, looked after the house and nosed the little ones like a lioness – even if she did so through Jonathan at times. He was her eyes, her husband – well trusted.