A Shared Secret

Kuba entered his father and Marta’s bedroom only for a moment. That was what he told himself, standing by the dresser with one hand slipped into the second drawer from the top. Downstairs, the dishwasher hummed, the television was off, and Andrzej had been gone since morning. Marta was supposed to return late from some meeting, at least that was what she had said over lunch. The house was quiet, too quiet, and it was that very silence that emboldened him.

He pulled out a thin, dark piece of fabric, smoother than he had expected. He held it in his hands, as if he could still pretend to himself that it was only about the touch, an impulse, a stupid reflex. His heart pounded in his throat. He stood between the bed and the dresser, tense, pissed off at himself, and yet he didn’t put it back. Quite the opposite—he squeezed it more tightly.

He heard footsteps in the hallway only when it was already too late.

The handle moved briefly. The door opened unhurriedly. Marta stood in the doorway with her handbag slipping from her shoulder, wearing a light blouse and a dark skirt, as if she had returned from an ordinary evening rather than straight into the middle of his humiliation. First she looked at his face. Then at his hand. Then back at him.

Kuba froze.

— I was just... — he began, but his voice failed him.

Marta didn’t come in right away. She leaned lightly against the doorframe and narrowed her eyes. She didn’t look shocked. That was worse.

— Just what? — she asked calmly.

Kuba instinctively wanted to hide the underwear behind his back, but the gesture was so childish that he hated himself for it. He lowered his hand to his side and clenched his jaw.

— I’m sorry.

— That’s not an answer.

He said nothing. Blood pounded in his ears. He wanted to slip past her, run to his room, slam the door, and pretend that nothing had happened, but she was still standing in the doorway, calm and motionless, certain that he wouldn’t move.

— Show me — she said.

He raised his hand like a condemned man surrendering evidence. The fabric hung between his fingers. Marta watched for another moment, then stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The click of the lock sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.

Kuba jerked his head up.

— Marta...

She didn’t answer immediately. She set her handbag on the armchair beneath the window, then calmly turned the key in the lock. Only then did she look him straight in the eye. There was neither panic nor theatrical outrage in her face. There was, however, a kind of cool curiosity that tightened his stomach more than fear did.

— Since you’re already rummaging through my things — she said — we’re not going to pretend I don’t know why you came in here.

— It’s not like that.

She gave a quiet snort.

— Don’t insult me with a pathetic lie.

She took two steps toward him. He instinctively backed away until his calf hit the edge of the bed. He didn’t sit down, only remained there, taut as a wire. Marta stopped close to him but didn’t touch him. Her gaze slid down to the fabric in his hand and returned to his face.

— Your ears are red — she observed dryly. — Even now.

Kuba lowered his eyes.

— I said I was sorry.

— And I didn’t say I wanted an apology.

That threw him off balance. He blinked as if he had heard her wrong.

Marta extended her hand. For a second he thought she would take away what he was holding, or slap him with the cold precision she seemed capable of. Instead, she only touched his wrist, very lightly, and lowered his hand so that the fabric was once again clearly visible between them.

— Since you took it already — she said quietly — put it on.

Kuba froze so suddenly that it was as if someone had cut off his air.

— What?

— You heard me.

— No.

— No? — She repeated it calmly, without raising her voice, but there was such certainty in that one word that it sounded more threatening than a shout. — Or should I call your father and the two of us have a talk about what you’re doing in our bedroom with my underwear in your hand?

Kuba went pale.

— Why are you doing this?

Marta tilted her head. — Because I want to see whether you’re as brave as you thought you were five minutes ago.

The room grew stifling. The dishwasher still hummed softly downstairs, absurdly ordinary compared with what was happening here. Kuba looked at her helplessly, trying to find a joke, a provocation, anything in her face that would let him retreat without being completely humiliated. There was nothing of the sort.

— Marta, I...

— Put it on — she repeated.

She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. She stood upright, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, as if she wasn’t the one standing by the door with the key, as if she hadn’t, with a single move, overturned everything that had seemed simple only moments before: shame, escape, an argument. There was no room for any of those scenarios now.

Kuba swallowed. His fingers were visibly trembling. For one more moment he remained motionless, clenching his jaw so tightly that it began to hurt. Then he looked away, as if he couldn’t bear meeting her eyes, and began to obey her with shaking movements.

Marta stepped back, giving him room, but she didn’t look away for even a second.

That was the worst part. And the most unsettling.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t moralize. She didn’t rescue him. She watched.

He fought with his breathing, with the feeling that he was about to burn alive from the sheer awareness of being watched so closely. Every movement seemed too loud. The fabric rustling against his hands sounded like noise. When he finished, he instinctively wanted to cover himself, cross his arms, sit down, anything to make himself smaller beneath that gaze.

— Hands down — Marta said immediately.

He obeyed. Like an idiot, he thought, hating himself. Like someone who could still have run away a moment ago but wouldn’t be running away anymore.

Marta studied him for a long moment. Then she walked past him and checked the lock once more, as if to be certain. The quiet clink of the key against the metal sealed everything.

— Good — she said.

That single word struck him harder than an insult.

She turned away from the door and nodded toward the chair by the dressing table.

— Stand there. And don’t you dare turn this into a joke, Kuba. You’re not a child anymore.

He walked over, feeling the softness of the carpet beneath his feet and his own trembling, which he couldn’t control. He stood where she had ordered him to, stiff, ashamed, aroused by all of this in a way he was afraid even to name in his thoughts.

Marta watched him for another moment, then sat on the edge of the bed opposite him. She straightened her back, crossed one leg over the other, and clasped her hands over her knee. Like a judge. Like a woman who no longer intended to surrender control.

— Now — she said quietly — you will look at me and stay here until I decide what happens next.

Kuba raised his eyes. This time, he didn’t look away first.

Locked Doors

Kuba stood motionless by the dressing table, as if someone had driven him into the floor. The bedside lamp cast a warm, subdued light that left him no shadow in which to hide. Marta sat opposite him, calm, her hands clasped over her knee. She said nothing. She only watched.

The first minute dragged on like wire. Then the second. Kuba felt his ears, neck, and the skin on his chest burning. He tried to breathe evenly, but his breathing kept coming apart. Once he opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something.

— No — Marta snapped immediately.

He closed his mouth.

Her gaze was neither hysterical nor amused. That was worse. Attentive. Precise. The kind that weighed, remembered, and offered no relief.

— How long has this been going on? — she asked at last.

Kuba swallowed. — I don’t know.

— That’s not an answer.

— For some time.

Marta tilted her head slightly. — “Some time” isn’t one either.

He clenched his jaw. — A few months.

She didn’t flinch. — And you thought I’d never find out?

— I didn’t think.

— That, at least, I believe — she said dryly.

The room became so quiet that he could hear his own pulse ticking. Marta’s gaze moved over his face, neck, shoulders, lower, unhurriedly, without pretending to look anywhere else. Kuba endured it perhaps because he had nowhere left to run. Or because that was precisely what was destroying him the most.

— You’re looking at the floor — she said.

He raised his eyes immediately.

— Better.

That “better” once again sounded like a touch in a place where there shouldn’t have been one.

Marta stood only after a long while. Slowly, without suddenness. Her heel clicked lightly against the floor as she took one step, then another. Kuba tensed all over but didn’t retreat. She stopped close enough that he could smell her perfume, warm and slightly stifling in the closed room.

— Look at me properly — she said quietly.

He looked.

She didn’t touch him immediately. First she simply stood there, allowing the tension to build between them like something alive. Then she raised her hand and brushed her knuckles along his chin, forcing him not to lower his face.

— Do you know what’s worst about this? — she asked.

Kuba said nothing.

— That you really see. — Her voice was almost indifferent, but something harder lurked underneath. — For so long. So stubbornly. As if nothing else existed.

Her fingers slid from his chin. They lingered for a moment at his neck, barely brushing the skin.

— Andrzej never looked at me that long.

The sentence hung between them, heavier than everything that had come before.

Kuba flinched as if she had struck him. Not because she had raised her voice. Precisely because she hadn’t. She said it plainly, without embellishment, without tears, without all that theatrical hurt. Like a fact she had long since no longer needed to hide even from herself.

— Marta...

— Don’t say “I’m sorry” now. — She pulled her hand back. — Or anything clever. You’ll ruin it.

He frowned. — What?

— The moment when at least one of us isn’t lying.

For a moment they looked at each other up close, without any protection. Finally Marta exhaled through her nose, turned away, and walked over to the bed. She sat down again, but differently this time, more heavily. As if she had suddenly felt a weariness she had refused to let in before.

— Come here — she said.

Kuba hesitated for only a second. Then he approached.

— Closer.

He stopped right in front of her.

Marta looked up at him. — You’re still shaking.

— You’re not.

The corner of her mouth twitched. — Don’t be so sure.

She reached out and placed her hand on his hip, where the thin fabric was the most absurd evidence of what was happening right then. She didn’t squeeze hard. The touch alone was enough. Kuba closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.

— Open them — she said.

He obeyed.

— Good boy — she tossed out, but without tenderness. More as a test of what he would do with those words.

He did exactly what he had been afraid of: he trembled even more.

Marta noticed. Of course she noticed. She stood up once more, now without any distance between them. Her face was very close. Kuba could feel the warmth of her breath on his lips, though she still hadn’t touched him. For a second he thought it was another game played along the edge, that she would stop just before it.

She didn’t stop.

The kiss wasn’t gentle or romantic. It was probing, hungry, and a little angry. Kuba responded at once, too quickly, too forcefully, as if something inside him that had been wound tight since the moment she entered the room had snapped. Marta braced her hands against the back of his neck and pulled him closer, then broke away first.

— Enough — she said, before he could reach for her lips again.

He was breathing softly. — Enough?

— For now.

For a moment he looked as if he wanted to protest. Then he saw her face and fell silent. There was no retreat in it. There was a decision.

— Come on — she tossed out.

Not to the marital bed. To the door. She opened it, listening for a second to the empty hallway, and nodded. Kuba went out first, stiff and still dazed. Marta turned off the lamp, closed the door behind her without locking it, and followed him through the dark hallway to his room.

It was cooler inside. A desk piled with things, a half-closed wardrobe, a sweatshirt thrown over a chair. The ordinary mess of a grown man who still lived with his father. Marta entered and looked around the room once, as if assessing foreign territory, then closed the door with the ordinary handle.

— Should I turn on the light? — Kuba asked.

— No. This is fine.

Light from a streetlamp fell through the blind in thin strips. Marta took off her shoes, set them neatly beside the wall, and sat on the edge of his bed as if she had been doing it for years. Kuba stood in the middle of the room and stared at her helplessly.

— You’re not going back? — he asked at last.

— No.

— And if your husband...

— He won’t come back before night today. Tomorrow morning he’ll be in the kitchen as usual. — She looked at him sternly. — You’ll be as usual too. Do you understand?

— Yes.

— Good.

She pulled him by the hand. This time without an order, but with no room for refusal either. He sat beside her. They were silent for a moment, listening to their own breathing and the distant hum of a car outside the window. Marta lowered her head onto his shoulder, as if testing not so much his body as the possibility of doing something without explaining herself to anyone.

Kuba went still. Then, cautiously, very cautiously, he rested his cheek against her hair.

— Don’t get too many ideas — she muttered.

— A little late for that.

She gave a short, almost inaudible snort. — Yes. That’s true enough.

They lay down without hurrying. Marta didn’t undress any further; she only undid the top button of her shirt and adjusted her skirt so she could arrange her legs more comfortably. Kuba turned off his phone, slipped it under the pillow, and lay down beside her, on his side, facing her. In the half-light, her eyes remained open for a long time.

— Kuba.

— What?

— I won’t give anyone what happened in that room tonight. Do you understand me?

— Yes.

— It’s ours. And it stays quiet.

He nodded, though he knew she might not see it in the darkness. Marta reached out and laid her hand flat on his chest. She didn’t move it farther, didn’t provoke him. She simply held it there. The weight of that hand calmed him and, at the same time, kept him from falling asleep right away.

Eventually Marta’s breathing grew slower. Her fingers relaxed, but she didn’t remove her hand. Kuba stared at the ceiling, then at the strip of light on the wall, then back at her. He didn’t know which part of it all was more unreal: the fact that she was lying beside him, or that in the morning the house would still be standing just the same.

When he closed his eyes once more, all he could feel was the warmth of her body beside him and that new, heavy silence, which wasn’t emptiness but an agreement. One no one had signed, and one that couldn’t be undone.

Before Breakfast

Kuba woke before the alarm went off. At first he didn’t know why. For a moment he lay still, his head heavy and his throat dry from shallow sleep. Then he felt the warmth beside him and tensed all over, as if electricity had surged through him.

Gray dawn squeezed through the blind. The room looked ordinary, which made it even worse: the desk, the chair with a sweatshirt thrown over it, the mug from last night’s tea beside the bed. And Marta, on his bed, turned away from him, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Her shirt was wrinkled, her hair slightly scattered across the pillow. She didn’t look like someone who had been caught. More like someone who had stopped wherever she wanted and would soon leave without explanation.

Kuba raised himself slightly onto one elbow. The mattress shifted.

Marta opened her eyes at once. Alertly. Without the fog of sleep.

For a second they only looked at each other. At night everything had been simpler because it had been dark. At dawn, the walls, the doors, the kitchen around the corner, the table where everyone would soon have to wear an ordinary face—all of it returned.

— What time is it? — Kuba asked quietly.

Marta turned her head toward the electronic clock standing by the desk. The digits glowed faintly blue.

— Twenty to six.

She sat up slowly. Her skirt slid over the duvet with a dry rustle. She ran her fingers through her hair, tucked it behind her ear, and sat upright for a moment, her gaze lowered, as if checking the day’s plan in her head. Kuba watched the line of her neck and felt something in his stomach between pride and nausea.

— I’ll get up in a moment — she said.

He didn’t ask, “And what now?” He was more afraid of that question than anything since yesterday. Because the answer could flatten everything—or, on the contrary, turn it into something he wouldn’t be able to bear.

Marta got out of bed. She was barefoot, quiet, certain. In the half-light she adjusted her shirt, fastened the button she had left undone for the night, and smoothed the fabric over her hips with her hand. Then she bent to pick up her shoes and, with one hand braced against the wall, slipped her foot into the first, then the second. Every movement was precise, economical, without nervousness.

Kuba sat up, the duvet sliding down to his knees.

— Marta.

She looked at him over her shoulder.

— What?

He faltered. Everything in his head sounded either pathetic or too harsh. “Stay a little longer” was stupid. “Will this happen again?” was even worse. In the end, what came out was the simplest thing.

— Nothing.

The corner of her mouth twitched faintly, without a smile.

She approached the bed. She didn’t sit down. She stood right beside him, so close that he could see the faint marks left by the folded pillow on her cheek. She reached out and adjusted the collar of his T-shirt, as if he were a kid about to go downstairs to school. The gesture was more brutal than the kiss the night before.

— Listen to me carefully now — she said quietly. — Downstairs, you don’t stare at me like an idiot.

Kuba swallowed.

— Sure.

— You don’t say any more or any less than usual. Don’t make that tense face of yours, because your father will spot it right away.

— All right.

— If I ask whether you want scrambled eggs, you answer normally. As if you’d gotten up after an ordinary night in your own room.

— Because I did.

At that, she looked at him more sternly. Not offended. A warning.

— Don’t get smart now.

— I’m not.

— You kind of are.

A brief silence fell. Kuba clenched his hand around the duvet. He wanted to grab her by the wrist, hold her back, make her stay here just a little longer, not there in the kitchen, not in the role of his father’s wife. But it wasn’t night anymore. At dawn, she was setting the terms again.

— And you? — he asked at last.

— What about me?

— Will you pretend?

Marta leaned a little lower, until there was very little distance between their faces.

— I won’t pretend. — Her voice was calm. — I’ll behave normally. That’s not the same thing.

He felt something tighten beneath his ribs. Because she was right, and that made it even worse.

She straightened. She reached over the bedding, picked her single light-colored hair off the pillow, and flicked it onto the floor. Then she glanced toward the chair where his sweatshirt was hanging.

— Open the window for five minutes after I leave — she tossed over her shoulder. — It smells of you in here, my perfume, and that damn stuffiness from sleeping. Let the room air out.

— Marta.

This time she didn’t answer right away.

— Yes?

Kuba looked up at her. — Will you come back early today?

It was a risk. He could hear for himself that it had come out too quickly, too greedily. Something sharp flickered in her eyes, but she didn’t pull away.

— Look at how brave you already are after one night — she said quietly.

He lowered his gaze. — That came out like shit.

— It did.

A second passed. Then another.

Then she touched his chin with two fingers and lifted his face back up. A brief, firm gesture.

— First, survive breakfast.

She withdrew her hand, turned, and walked to the door. She pressed the handle very carefully. Before opening it, she listened for a moment, her head tilted slightly. The house was still asleep; somewhere deep inside, only the refrigerator hummed, while outside came the distant sound of the first car in the neighborhood.

The door opened a crack without a creak.

Marta looked back one more time. There was no tenderness in it. She was checking whether he understood.

— Five minutes — she reminded him.

— I know.

And she left.

Kuba sat motionless, listening to her footsteps in the hallway. Soft, steady, unhurried. Then the bathroom door clicked shut. A moment later, the sound of running water. Such an ordinary sound that it was almost absurd.

He didn’t get up until he heard her move farther on. He opened the window. The cold morning air rushed in at once, sharp and damp. He braced his hands on the sill and drew it deep into his lungs. Nothing was moving in the driveway yet. The neighboring house had its blinds drawn. Everything was still, as if the night had left no trace at all.

When he went downstairs a few minutes later, he could hear butter sizzling in a pan from the kitchen, and smell coffee. Marta stood at the counter with her back to the entrance. In the bright morning, she looked neat, almost severe: her hair pinned up, her shirt already smooth, her face cool. With one hand she stirred the eggs; with the other, she reached for the salt.

She didn’t turn around right away. Only when he stepped farther inside did she say in an ordinary tone:

— You’re up. Want scrambled eggs?

Kuba felt his throat tighten around that one banal sentence. He braced a hand against the doorframe so she wouldn’t notice.

— Yes — he replied. — Thanks.

Marta nodded, as if there were nothing more to add, and sprinkled chives into the pan.

Three plates lay on the counter beside her.