Hanna thanked me, which was more than my stepmother would have done, and set about making her pie. I considered what to do with the rest of my day. It was Saturday and I might have gone to the shops or even to see a film at the one cinema that still admitted Poles. I didn’t want to run into any of my old friends, though, or worse yet, Krys. So I climbed the stairs to the tiny garret on the fourth floor of our house, which used to belong to Maciej. It was a narrow space with a sloping roof that required me to stoop not to bump my head. But it was the quietest part of the house and the room farthest from Ana Lucia’s, with a view of the Old Town cathedral spires across the weathered rooftops of our street. I claimed it as my bedroom after my brother left and spent much time there painting. Oil colors were my favorite medium and my teacher Pan Łysin´ski commented more than once that I might study at the Academy of Fine Arts. Of course, that felt like a long-forgotten dream.

Today I was too distracted to paint. I looked across the river in the direction of Dębniki, thinking again of the girl in the sewer. I wondered how long she had been down there and whether she was alone. Later as night fell and the sounds of Ana Lucia’s dinner party carried on, I curled up in the old chaise lounge that occupied most of the space in the garret, wrapped in an old quilt my brother had left there. I was tired from the long walk across the river and back and my eyes grew heavy. As I drifted off, I pictured the girl. How did she sleep in the sewer? Was she cold? My house, which I had always taken for granted, suddenly seemed like a palace. I slept in a warm bed, had enough to eat. These basic things now felt like treasures. I knew then and there that, despite my fears and hesitation to get involved, I would go see the girl again.

Or at least I would try, I decided the next morning, after I woke, stiffly unfolding myself from the chaise lounge, where I had spent the entire night. I would return to the sewer grate, but there was no guarantee she would be there. I dressed and went down to breakfast, planning my secret return to the place where I had seen the girl. I thought of a half-dozen excuses I could give Ana Lucia if she asked where I was going. But her party had carried on deep into the night and she did not come down to breakfast at all.

I put on my coat and hat and prepared to leave, then stopped again. I should bring something for the girl. Food, I decided, remembering how pale and thin she had looked. I walked to the kitchen. Recalling the smell of Hanna’s sumptuous cherry pie baking, I hoped there might be some left over from dinner the previous night. Hanna kept the kitchen spotless at my stepmother’s insistence, though, and there were no bits of food or leftovers lying around at all. I reached into the bread bin and opened a tightly wrapped loaf, ripping off as big of a piece as I dared and shoving it in my pocket. Then I started from the house.