Instead I took care of Pani Kolecka, watched her get better little by little with the medicine the doctor had given her. A weight lifted from my soul. She was weak still, but the fits grew shorter and fainter. I’d make her tea and sit by her side and listen. She told me about the journeys she’d made with her husband, the work trips they’d gone on abroad, to Tunisia and Algeria. She showed me her photos, of dry, desert-like landscapes with palm trees and orange-brown earth and low square houses made by hand. There she was, a younger version of herself in an ankle-length dress with flowers and a straw hat, looking proudly into the camera. Next to her, her husband, tall and stocky, his square face content, a big white hat on his head. Everything had been different there, she said, smiling to herself. She told me how they used their right hand to eat and their left to clean themselves.

“Those Arabs are very different to us. But so kind.” There were photos of them, tall, dark men in white robes and sandals and beautiful beards. She showed me the rocks they’d brought back, the basalt and the crystals, the granite and shimmering minerals. She held them before me like the greatest treasures on earth and talked of her late husband and how much she missed him, and her small eyes shone like those precious stones.

“You need to hold on to what you have,” she murmured, more to herself than to me, her veiny hands clasped around a cup of tea. “You never know when you’ll lose what you hold dearest.”

I nodded, pulling her in for a hug. She smelled like home, of mothballs and comfort. I thought of you.

Finally, the rains stopped. The world had been washed, and the city was still standing. Soon after, I received a note from Professor Mielewicz, asking me to come to his office the following week. I went into the bathroom with the big pair of scissors from the kitchen and began to cut my hair. Strands floated into the sink and onto the floor, lightly, like feathers, like the flocks of leaflets released by my hands. My head felt lighter. I looked at my face, smiled at myself, cut everything even. I looked good, I thought, shorn and new. Outside, the air already smelled different. Fresher, sharper—summer was gone. The autumn wind caressed my head, made it feel like new skin. The ladies walking their dogs down in the courtyards had changed into coats, wore them unbuttoned as they gossiped with one another, leashes tied around their soft, wrinkled wrists. Puddles filled the holes in the streets. The flowers and berries had disappeared from the market stalls, replaced by mushrooms.

I boarded the tram, rattled along with it, saw the banks of Praga colored in a riot of dark greens and reds. I got to your street, to your house, ran up the stairs to your door. You opened up and we held each other, my face in your neck and your warm breath in my ear like gentle whispering. Your hand caressing my new hair.