This segment starts with a lie. Anka is examining the shards of glass in the door that Michal shattered and he says, while changing his shirt, “it was a draft.” She gives a bemused “hmm,” sits down and asks if he has a cigarette. He lights one for her and hands it over.

She informs him that he won the game, so he can ask her anything. She promises to give a straight answer. But instead of waiting for his question, she poses a question to herself: “why did I read the letter?” She looks up at him and says “because you wanted me to.”

Michal doesn’t respond. He smokes, then sits down, holding some kind of beverage in his hand. Anka continues on, saying that the first time she saw the letter was by accident, when she was 15 1/2, when they were moving. She put it back, but was now aware of the letter. At first it was exciting, this secret to be revealed only at his death.

She says next that she noticed how he always took the letter with him when he went away. But not this time. This time he left it. She says he left it on purpose, and he gives a small nod.

So she took the letter and carried it around for three days, she says. She then leaves the room to get a letter. She tells him that after a week, she went down to the river to open it. She hands him the letter to inspect, he responds that was certainly an exhaustive answer.

It’s not a truthful answer either. We know this because she left out things we’ve already seen — going to the basement to get stationary, practicing her mother’s penmanship, asking her father’s colleague if her mother might keep secrets. None of this was included in the exhaustive answer.

She asks if he ever read it, and he responds no. She already knew the answer to that question. But next, she reveals some truth, that her answer wasn’t exhaustive. She says in acting school she is told to always think why you say things … she does this while caressing Michal’s left hand. “What’s your intention? What’s your subtext?” She asks if he wants to know the subtext.

Michal quickly answers no but she gives it to him anyway. The subtext for Anka, she says, is that she’s felt for years that she knew what that letter said. She says that ever since she had her first boyfriend, she always felt like she was being unfaithful to someone whenever she was with him, and she couldn’t understand it.

This is a psychology I understand very well. When I carry a hidden desire for someone, the space for everyone else just seems to clear. Everything that happens in such a state feels inauthentic, like a challenge to my true feelings.

She then states it more bluntly — it was Michal who she felt she was cheating on. She looked for someone different from him at all times. She says that when a man touches her, she thinks of his hands — and she continues to rub his hands as they say this. Michal doesn’t look at her throughout this speech. He looks trapped, forlorn, perhaps guilty.

Then she says that when she’s with another man, she really with … and here she brings his hand to her face to keep from saying the words. She looks over at him and asks what she should call him now. He gives a mild shrug and says I don’t know.

Anka gets up. Michal buries his face in his hands. She comes back with two small glasses of vodka for them. She clinks his glass. They slowly cross arms and drink. There’s a long silence. She says “I am Anka.” And then the doorbell rings, breaking the tension.

Sometimes we need to tell lies to get at a deeper truth. Anka reveals them in this scene. But what about Michal. What’s his truth? How much of it is he willing to share?