After some silence and delay, the first thing Michal says next is that when he went away on long trips or found other reasons to be out of the house, he hoped something irreversible would happen. He wanted Anka to find someone, get pregnant and start a family so his discomfort could be lifted.

But here Anka responds with her most important lines of the episode: she didn’t have a child because Michal would have responded with that same calm, accepting smile he always gives. She didn’t want to hear from him “tough luck, sweetie. Scrape your insides out. Fine with me.”

In Michal’s admission last scene that he didn’t want to restrict her freedom and her admission here that she oppressed by that freedom we finally get at the root issue of this episode. It is not about sexual tension between a father and daughter. Rather, it is about a father-daughter relationship so precious to the father that he cannot bear to let go of it and let his daughter grow up.

Anka says she didn’t want the irreversible to happen, that such an event would simply let Michal off the hook without doing anything, just like the lingering unopened letter he carried with him, to be kept safe until his death.

Michal goes back into his room and starts to unpack. Anka brings the letters into the room and tells him that she’s putting the letter back, she doesn’t want it. There’s silence between them, Michal seems to be keeping himself busy with small chores to avoid more talk.

Anka goes into the living room, grabs his hands, and talks about how he’s stroke her back when she cried. They hug. Anka says that sometimes she’d cry on purpose so he’d reach under her pajamas and stroke her back. She said it made her shiver.

And then she asks him: you never wanted me to grow up, did you? He nods. She notes how he forbade her to wear bikinis when her breasts developed. He took her to the mountains when she got her first period as if that would stop it (no idea what this means.) Then notes that he never re-married to anyone.

She then sexualizes it for the first time in the episode. She asks him if he was waiting for her. She steps into her room and takes off her shirt. She tells him: I’m not your daughter, I’m all grown up. Don’t you want to touch me?

Michal does not answer. He walks to her side, grabs a sweater, puts it around her, then hugs her. She accepts that as an answer. But then asks him to answer one more question: why did you want me to read that letter? He says that he wanted the impossible. She responds that “you didn’t know it was impossible.” He answers no … and says that is why he struck her that day for the first time at the airport.

He sits down, brings her to his knee and continues: because you read the letter, because I wanted you to read it, because of your mother, because she wrote you things she never told me, because I love you, and you’re not my daughter.

I find the next couple of lines puzzling: because things could have been so different and because of those days that will never come back. How could things have been different? If her mother lived? If she knew he was not the father and was sent away to live with another family member after her mother’s death, she would not have fallen in love with this man, who likely would never see her, and now have the opportunity to start a romantic/sexual relationship now. The only reason they have a strong bond is because of the love and attention he paid over all of those years.

But the segment closes out with them returning to the reverie of her father stroking her back when she was sad, and they hum a song together that they used to share in those times. There are still some important things to unpack in these segment.

First, notice how they return to this childhood bliss after fully examining their feelings. This is not a sexual memory, it is a warm, protective family memory. Second, notice Michal’s description of “the impossible.” He cannot articulate exactly what he wanted it to be. You could assume that his desires were so dark he couldn’t voice them. But I think he couldn’t voice them because they weren’t so simple.

Very often the things we desire are not easily explicable. As I stated in the last essay, when we yearn for another person, all we know for sure is that we want that person to take up more space in our lives. What did Anka want? For Michal to get angry and protective when she was with other men. She wanted a more typical fatherly response from him. And what did Michal want? For Anka to remain a child forever.

We saw early in this episode where Anka could potentially go from here. The way she reacted to her teacher/director in the rehearsal showed that her psychological history probably points her towards relationship with older men who will push her in certain directions, not with men her age who idealize and sexualize her. Until she resolves these strange feelings with her father, she cannot do that.

Perhaps Michal too will need a woman who reminds him of Anka in some ways, someone who needs his protection and care. He cannot move into this kind of relationship until he accepts that Anka is no longer a child and must build her own life.

There are still two segments to go in this episode, but the important psychological work has been done.