This segment mirrors my own project more than any other in the series. Magda is intrigued by Tomek and wants to hear from him first hand how he experiences what she does. She also wants to know what he thinks and feels as he observes. I feel that I do something the same with the Dekalog, I watch closely and I retell, not to recap what is going on, but to share what the experience of viewing this film means to me moment by moment.

Tomek asked Magda to ice cream, but it is clear immediately that she agreed something more adult. He is in a suit, without tie, she is in a dress. There are other couples in the restaurant. It is likely she chose the locale. We never see any food on the table or even any servers. It’s like they discovered a restaurant without food, just awkward silences to be filled with candid conversation.

She asks him to repeat what he said in her hallway. Tomek says that he loves her. Magda retorts that love does not exist. She asks how long he has been watching — about a year. He volunteers that his friend watched her first. This is his lone friend, who is with the Polish armed forces in a UN peacekeeping mission in Syria. The old woman in the apartment is his friend’s mom.

Magda asks him what he does when he’s not spying on her. Tomek replies that he likes to study languages. He learned Bulgarian, he says, because there were two Bulgarian children in his orphanage when he was growing up. He has since learned English and Portuguese. Tomek says that he has a good memory, remembering just about everything in this life, but not his parents.

She wants to know what he has observed. She has him describe what she does with men, where she has sex, what some of the men looked like. She asks if he remembers a thin man who used to bring her gifts. Tomek said he did, and that he liked him. She says that she did too and wished he hadn’t moved away, first to Austria, then to Australia.

This jogs another memory for Tomek. He pulls out a stack of letters he has stolen from her. They include his correspondence from Australia. Magda expresses what a pest Tomek has been — calling in gas leaks, prank calling, giving her fake mail notices. But then she just shrugs it off and says “it doesn’t matter.”

Then, she tutors him on how to be affectionate with a woman. She asks him to stroke her hands and points out another couple as an example of how to do it. Tomek applies his own gentle method.

We next see them on the street, walking not quite arm in arm. Magda sees a bus and makes another of those famous Dekalog wagers: if we catch the bus, you will come back to my apartment. If we don’t then you will not. They race towards the bus, seem to miss it, but then the bus stops. We don’t see them get on.

But the next scene is in Magda’s apartment. Except now, someone else is looking. The old woman has found the telescope and she is peering at them. We get some more talk about what she does when men come over — she is adamant that what she does “has nothing to do with making love.”

To close the segment, we see the old woman looking back at them again. Tomek and Magda have come to some sort of understanding through this strange but strangely optimistic evening of talk. They have been able to work through the nearly hopeless circumstances of them meeting and come to the edge of something happening between them.

But we still do not know — what is capable of happening between them?