Rain washed the smell of heated asphalt off Krawiecka Street as Lena crossed the gate of tenement number 12 for the first time in years. The high arch, the stripped plaster, the black neon of the bakery across the courtyard that hissed, blinked and went out again - everything looked the same as it had when she was a child, and yet something was different. The silence, perhaps? Too dense for the early evening. Aunt Irena was buried that day. After the wake, Lena returned alone, with a rucksack and a carton of documents she had received from the notary. "The inheritance is not big," he said. "A few sketches, a notebook, a key without description." The key without description now lay at the bottom of the carton, heavy as if made of lead, with a microscopic number stamped on the side: 5/0. My aunt's third-floor flat smelled of turpentine and dried jasmine. The walls were full of paintings in which the tenement appeared once as a deep well, once as a high ravine full of stairs. Lena worked on tenement revitalisation projects every day; she knew these walls from technical drawings by heart. Yet Irene's watercolours had something about them that she could not encompass with a grid of plans. She slid a piece of cardboard off her chair and began arranging things on the table. A stack of envelopes with cut-outs, a bunch of failed keys, a canvas-bound sketchbook. The latter attracted her immediately - on the cover, in Irene's calligraphy, was the title: 'Atlas of Silence'. She swallowed her saliva. She opened it. Instead of pictures, there were maps. A plan of a tenement, its cross-sections, repeated drawings of the same courtyard, but with a different detail each time: an extra wall here, a narrower staircase there, and little notes in the margins. "If the bakery's neon sign flashes three times - count the steps anew," he says. "The fifth floor doesn't count like the others". "Don't look straight into the mirror in the lifts after midnight". Lena raised an eyebrow. She flipped the page and froze. In the midst of the sketches lay a thin piece of baking paper, stamped with some old, faded ink. A plan of the townhouse, with a corridor traced in pencil where - she knew from practice - the roof was supposed to be. She looked through the tilted window at the sky. The clouds were clearing, but the bakery's neon sign was still hissing, as if trying to say something. She slowly closed the sketchbook, slipped the 5/0 key into her pocket and walked out into the stairwell. The carved handrail was cool, the stairs bore the marks of thousands of shoes. Downstairs a dog barked, the sound of a bicycle rolled down the hallway. Lena went down to the ground floor, where Mr Meller, always wearing a blue jumper, sat in the caretaker's glassed-in cubicle. He raised his gaze from above the crossword puzzle. "Miss Lena. Are we going back?" - he muttered, without asking. "For a while," she replied. "Do you remember... anything above the fourth floor?" He giggled without merriment. "Apart from the roof? No. There are pigeons and aerials on the roof. And above... there's no higher." He hesitated, squinted. "Mrs Irena sometimes walked around at night. She counted the steps, whispered. I said: what for, Mrs Irena? And she, that silence has floors. What do I know." Lena returned to the cage. She thought about the drawing: "The fifth floor doesn't count like the others." What did that mean? Walking up, she counted: ground floor - one, first - two, second - three, third - four, fourth - five. She stopped at the landings, checking: doors, bells, mailboxes. Everything matched. Except for a trifle: on the fourth floor, the handrail on the left had one less decorative ball than on the others. A trifle, but a trifle nonetheless. She returned to the flat and spread the "Atlas of Silence" on the floor. Between the maps she found short sentences about times of day, about the wind, about sounds. "The entrance opens when the bakery lets out the first smell of the morning - or when the neon sign goes down." "The lift lies." "The clocks have no voice here." The evening thickened. Lena brewed a cup of tea, but couldn't sit down. At the window, the bakery's neon sign hissed again, once, twice, a third time - it went out and came back on, as if performing a test. At the same moment, the old kitchen radio, long disconnected, buzzed softly and fell silent. Something shifted in the air, like a tinkle. Lena stood up. With the key in her hand, she walked out onto the cage. Darkness fell; the movement of the detector did not work immediately. A flight of stairs opened up in front of her, the steps looked different than they had a few hours before - an impression, perhaps. The neon light outside illuminated the greasy glass of the cage windows, giving any edges a greenish glow. She began counting aloud. "One. Two. Three." "One. Second. Three." Each word echoed, but the echo did not return evenly - as if the cage had its own rhythm to hit. On the fourth floor, she stopped and touched the missing ball of the handrail with her fingers. The chill of the wood was no match for the August evening. "If the bakery's neon sign flashes three times - count the steps again." She sighed. Downstairs hissed: one, two, three. She backed up one step, as if playing an obscure game of class. Next to the lift, the brass trim glittered. The button plate was old, polished by her neighbours' fingers, each button with Mikado-like cracks. Numbers from 0 to 4, no surprises. And yet, when she pressed 4 for a test, for a fraction of a second - she would have sworn - a thin, flickering line appeared between the 4 and the arrow, like an incomplete sign. It went out before she could blink. "The lift is lying." Lena didn't get on. The stairs seemed more secure. At the mezzanine she heard a creak. She turned abruptly. A cat - red-haired, with a thoughtful look - was sitting on the step, tail curled around her paws. He looked at her, then up at the top, and whined protractedly, as if urging her on. She thought she had seen him here as a child. Can cats remember people? He squinted his eyes. He moved forward, climbing silently a few steps, and disappeared around a corner. As Lena moved again, the stairs lengthened in a way she couldn't name. Her feet took steady steps, yet the platform she was heading for was not approaching as quickly as it should. A chill pulled at the air; it smelled of dust and something damp. The neon sign outside the window went silent for good, as if someone had pulled the plug. From downstairs came the single strike of a clock from Mr Meller's flat; then that thick silence returned, in which even one's own breathing seems alien. On the next platform, where there had always been a small stash of brush, she found something else. A short corridor diverged to the side at an odd angle, and the wall was covered with a pattern she had not seen before: twisted shoots of seaweed, as if from an herbarium engraving. From the ceiling dangled a thin bulb on a cord of braided fabric. A worm of light danced in the bulb - a precarious yellow. She paused. Her cheeks were burning, her palms were damp. She took the 5/0 key out of her pocket. It was getting cooler in her hand, as if it was taking heat away rather than giving it back. Deeper, already in that side corridor, a door with frosted glass loomed. Her silhouette was reflected on the glass, but crookedly, as in an old mirror, which does not hold a plane. A tiny plaque hung above the doorframe, and on it was stamped something so pale that she had to come closer: 5/11. She took a step. The floor creaked, as if the ribs of the house were responding to pressure. A cat, which had disappeared somewhere, came out from around the corner and rubbed against her calf, then sat down opposite the door, looking at her, then at the handle, and muttered impatiently. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, a shiver ran down Lena's back. From her aunt's flat - or perhaps from somewhere else - a soft sound reached her, like the pull of a bow across a single string. A single note, long suspended, followed by nothing. The worm in the light bulb went out too, leaving her in a twilight that had a slight greenish edge. She reached out her hand. The doorknob was icy. She attached the key to the lock. It wouldn't fit on an ordinary door - it was too old, too heavy, too... different. Yet the lock seemed to be waiting. Before she could slip the key in, someone's footsteps came from the corridor behind her. One slow thump of a heel against the tiles, then another. She turned her head; no one. Only the seaweed drawing seemed to ripple slightly, as if the wall was breathing. "Don't look straight into the mirror in the lifts after midnight." - read Lena in her head and suddenly, completely reflexively, she looked at the lift shaft on the left. In the dark mirror, she could usually only see her own face and the flickering specks of light. Now, for a split second, right next to her reflection stood the figure of Aunt Irene, in the coat she wore in winter, with her hand raised as if to greet her. She smiled slightly, as she always did, with that brief frown at the corners of her mouth. When Lena blinked, the image disappeared. The lock on the 5/11 door vibrated slightly, as if someone had moved it from inside. The cat made a low sound, almost a gurgle, then tied its tail into a tight loop. Lena tightened her fingers on the key. For the first time since entering the townhouse, she felt that she was really entering where her aunt wanted to lead her - and that she would not be able to turn back if she crossed the threshold. She put her ear to the frosted glass. On the other side something rustled. And then, very quietly, as if someone was speaking through the fabric, she heard her own name: "Lena..."