Before I get carried away with my judgments about Tomek, I need to apply some Montaigne to this discussion. In numerous essays — most notably “On the Power of the Imagination” – Montaigne notes how little control we have over our bodily reactions, including our autonomic responses to people.

So before I condemn Tomek, I need to acknowledge that he can’t help it if his heart skips a beat when he sees Magda, and he finds the feelings she creates for him addictive. What is he supposed to do, give his body a lecture? He calls her because her voice intoxicates him. He spies because he’s entranced by her beauty. No morality, even those written on stone tablets, can override the way people make us feel.

And sometimes the connections we feel can be downright spooky. Tomek awakes in the middle of the night, looks out his window, and sees Magda arriving home in a car, mid-argument with yet another man. She storms off towards her apartment, Tomek watching in the darkness from above.

Magda appears clearly upset as she enters the apartment. Without removing her coat or scarf, she grabs a milk bottle from the refrigerator, then spills it on the kitchen table. Instead of getting more upset, she turns pensive and runs her finger through the spilling milk. She then buries her head in her hands, and although we (like Tomek) can only see the back of her head, it is clear she is crying.

Tomek doesn’t seem to be making any noise as he watches, but the old woman/roommate seems to have a connection to him. She snaps awake and calls out his name. He continues to watch her run her fingers through the milk in sadness.

The next thing we know, Tomek is pushing a milk cart in his new (second) job. As he gets to Magda’s building, he runs into a character we will get to know in Dekalog 9, a doctor with his bicycle (who we later discover he rides obsessively).

Before he makes his milk rounds, Tomek slips another postal notification into Magda’s mailbox. And then we cut to Magda walking into the post office, Tomek’s eyes lighting up as he sees her. I’m left feeling bad for Magda for how she’s being manipulated, but also completely understanding why Tomek feels the need to do this. He simply has to see her.

She asks Tomek if it was him the last time and he responds, Yes. So this is the third time she’s seen him face to face and still does not remember Tomek. He looks up her fictitious notification and, of course, finds nothing … but now Magda is upset, and she asks to see his manager.

This doesn’t go well for anyone, because the manager is very unpleasant and begins to accuse Magda of trying to hustle the post office out of money. She then flags down the postman for that building, he takes a look at the notification and says it is not in his handwriting, it must be a fake. So Magda leaves not only frustrated, but also accused by a postal worker of some vague transgression. It all has a Kafkaesque feel to it, perfect for Eastern Europe.

Feeling guilty about what he’s just unleashed, Tomek races to catch up to Magda after she leaves. When he catches up, he admits that he wrote the notices. She asks him why he would do that. Tomek replies, “I wanted to see you.” She shrugs at that and walks off. After she gets about 10 steps away, Tomek yells, “You cried yesterday.” She walks back and asks how he knows that.

Tomek now spills the beans: he watches her. He lets her know that he spies on her through the window. She tells him to fuck off. Tomek turns and sheepishly, slowly, starts walking away. As she watches him, Magda lets out a small laugh — there’s part of her that’s amused by this.

It was brave of Tomek to begin to admit what he’s done. And while Magda was naturally upset by the news, she was also intrigued by Tomek’s interest. Now she will want to find out more.