When I came to my senses, I was on Marszałkowska Street, and there you stood, talking to a guy in a pair of sunglasses, the one Hania had danced with at the party. He introduced himself as Rafał and gave me his hand with a wry smile. It was unnerving not to see his eyes. We looked at each other, you and I, but we couldn’t say anything.

The sun was already weak and descending; it grew colder, but I didn’t feel it anymore. From where we stood, on the city’s straightest, longest street, you could see all the way to Constitution Square, with its gigantic Stalinist buildings and carvings of muscled workers and strong, healthy mothers, and even farther, past the damaged Church of the Holiest Saviour and toward the tiny square beyond, where Hania and Maksio lived. It was only four o’clock, but night had already started to envelop us. We stood and waited under the neon sign of the restaurant—a large red “Mozaika” in handwritten style—like a beacon of something better and more modern that might brighten our lives. We talked to Rafał, but my mind was absent. I can’t remember a word we exchanged. I can’t remember anything until a black Vespa stopped right in front of us. Hania was wearing a biker jacket and high boots, her hair untied, and Maksio had on a thick Alpine-style sweater the color of cream. All their clothes looked new and foreign. I stared at them in awe, as if they were a pair of actors from a Fellini film. We kissed on the cheek and shook hands. They seemed genuinely glad to see me, and already the tingling warmth of flattery began to soothe my nerves.

We walked into Mozaika, where it was warm and soft. A low-ceilinged room decked out in red carpet and uniformed black-tie staff, and—again—those giant potted palm trees, each leaf big enough to wrap a baby inside, reaching into the room languidly and lazily and utterly aware of their own magnificence. The people there were the sort one never saw walking in the street, and so one would have been excused for thinking they didn’t exist: women with large wavy hair, heavy bright necklaces and fox collars, and men in well-cut suits and serious, clean faces, smoke dancing up from their American cigarettes more slowly and more preciously than in the outside world.