“You know what, Ludzio? You’re a crazy one. Look around you.” We were protected by the high grass, the sun shining on us. “Why would we leave all this?”

That evening we climbed to the top of the Palace of Culture and saw the city lying before us, its vastness suddenly tiny, its end—the chimneys of the factories and the forests behind the last houses—a secret resolved. The Wisła snaked itself through the middle and continued on, beyond the human-made structures, toward the mountains in the south and the sea to the north. The mist of the day’s heat dissolved above the blocks. Summer was at its height; time was suspended. And I never wanted it to run again. Like a dice, spinning and spinning without ever coming to a standstill.

The weeks passed, and I hadn’t seen Karolina since the camp. I decided to visit her. She rented a room from a crane driver in Żoliborz, in the far north of the city, the only part Bowie had ever seen, when his train stopped on the way from Moscow to Berlin, just a couple of years before you and I met. It made him write “Warszawa,” a terribly desolate song. But Żoliborz isn’t the worst neighborhood by far. It’s residential, made up of 1930s Bauhaus-style flats, a run-down garden city. There are trees everywhere, large and oblivious, and carpets of grass occupy every space between the gray buildings. In summer, it’s a two-colored world—gray and green. But, of course, Bowie saw it all in winter, when there is only one color left.

I knocked on Karolina’s door. The crane driver opened it, wearing curlers in her hair and a dressing gown around her barrel-like body. She knew me, although she never showed any sign of it. With a dry “good morning” she led me along the corridor, which was decorated with empty packets of Western cigarettes (Camel, Ambassador, Marlboro) arranged on a shelf. She led me toward Karolina’s room at the far end of the flat and knocked on her door before I could. Her curlers shook in her short hair.

“Miss Patocka,” she cried, “another man for you!” She threw me a satisfied look and walked off. The door opened, and Karolina’s face appeared, breaking into a smile.

“Ludzio, it’s you.” She kissed me on both cheeks, her blouse soft against my bare upper arm. “Come in, close the door.”

She walked across the room, picking up clothes that were lying strewn on the floor, the chair of her desk, the bed, and pushed them into a wardrobe in a corner.