If I had a completely different life

Łazienki Park

I wonder what it would be like, thought Szacki, if I were to park in the courtyard and go up to the flat on the second floor, and find that girl waiting for me? If I had a completely different life, different CDs, different books on the shelves, if I smelled a different body lying next net to me. We could go for a walk in Łazienki Park, I'd tell her why I had to be at work today — let's say at an architectural studio; she'd say I was brave and that she'd buy me an ice cream near the Theatre on the Island. Everything would be different.

How unfair it is that we only have one life, mused Szacki, and that it so quickly bores us.

— from Entanglement, by Zygmunt Miłoszewski.

This book is interesting to me on two main counts: 1. The victim (this being a crime novel) was engaged in Family Constellation Therapy, which is a real thing and a terrifically weird thing. 2. It's very rich from a cultural perspective — life in contemporary Poland — with mentions of everything from the Green Day concert in Katowice to the commemorative stamp issued to honour ski jumper Adam Małysz ("the Polish Batman").