As the first star tried to break through the milky veil of clouds over Krakow, Lena stood in the gate of an old tenement in Kazimierz and drew in her lungs of damp, frosty air. The snow was not fairy-like, rather sticky and heavy, but the roofs and gutters were covered with a white line, as if someone had outlined the city with chalk. Candles were flickering in the windows on the second floor, where Grandma Sophie used to live. She didn't know if it was good or bad that she remembered every detail: the rough sound of the key in the lock, the smell of cloves stuck in oranges, the creaking of the stairs at certain times of the day. This was to be the first Christmas Eve without her grandmother. Lena had returned to the flat only because it would be so silly to spend the evening alone, in a rented bedsit at the other end of town. And here, in this kitchen with its slightly crooked tiles and a doorframe that remembered other winters, there was still a white lace sideboard, and a wafer lay in the middle, as if someone had prepared it and gone out to get fresh bread. Putting the bag of borscht, ravioli and poppy seed on the table, Lena thought about what she had found in the letterbox that morning. An ordinary postcard, faded, with a view of Krakow in the snow. Only that the stamp was from years ago, and the date stamp, which could not be read well, looked as if it had rubbed off from waiting. She turned the card over a dozen times that day. The handwriting was neat, somewhat old-fashioned. Just a few sentences: Lena, Christmas Eve at midnight. Listen to the clock in the corridor. If you hear the thirteenth bell, go to the attic. Leave the place empty and don't put out all the lights. There was no signature. Nor was there any additional clue as to whether it was a joke or a mistake. Someone must have known what the clock meant to them. Old, tall as a child, with a heavy pendulum chosen by her grandfather, it had set the rhythm in Sophie's flat for years. It stopped ticking in the spring, around the time Grandma fell asleep for the last time. Since then it has stood, as if offended at the world. No one has fixed it. - 'Someone's playing around,' Lena muttered to herself, pouring borscht into the pot and arranging the plates. - 'Or they want to make a fool of me. Nevertheless, she placed an extra plate on the table, sliding the hay gently under the white tablecloth. In the window she hung a paper chain, exactly like the ones she used to glue with her grandmother as a child, although paper today was more expensive and time was as gripping as breath. Silent music drifted from the speaker of the old radio. No one was coming, no one was calling. The neighbours were probably singing carols. Mr Staszek from the third floor had already leaned his mop against the railing before noon and wished Lena peace; now he was probably cutting carp at his sister's in Prokocim. When the clocks in the churches began to announce the evening of the shepherds, Lena sat down in an armchair by the window and took a piece of paper in her hand. She couldn't help smiling: the snow in the photograph looked perfect, the way snow should look on postcards, regardless of the reality. She felt her hands getting warm, like when her grandmother used to cover them with her shawl, laughing that Lena was always freezing. And yet something in those few sentences kept her unfamiliar alert. She went to the hallway and stood in front of the clock, resting her fingers against the wooden front. It was silent, cold as a wall. In the twilight of the corridor, silence floated like snow coming in on boots. Dinner had passed. She ate a little of each course. She held the wafer in her hand, saying a few words only to herself and to the picture of Sophie in the frame on the sideboard. Maybe it was funny, or maybe it was necessary. She left the empty space untouched. The candles burned slowly, dripping wax onto the teacup saucers, because Grandma never liked candlesticks. She remembered everything, as if someone was whispering in her ear. Don't put out all the lights. Around eleven o'clock she walked from the kitchen to the hallway. The clock was still silent, the pendulum motionless, as if suspended in time. She lit a small lamp, the one with the flower shade, because it was cosier and less lonely that way. She took a torch from the table, just in case. The thought of the attic was nonsensical, but as nonsensical thoughts go - it didn't want to disappear. She had a fragment of Sophie's story in her head about Christmas Eve, when, in wartime winters, someone would tap on the roof and people would exchange wafers quietly, by candlelight, listening to see if a gendarme was coming. Just before midnight something changed. First Lena felt it in the air: as if the flat had taken a slightly deeper breath. Then a quiet, almost invisible tick... tick... tick reached her ear. She stopped, unsure whether it was the radio or her imagination. But it wasn't a radio. It was the clock beating. Slowly at first, with difficulty, like an old man rising from a chair, then more surely, with each hesitation regaining its former pace. - 'Impossible,' she whispered, though no one was there but her. She stood facing the tall case of the clock, looking at its dark, polished wood. The hands were approaching twelve, and the pendulum glided, sweeping the twilight in the corridor. As midnight approached, the metal heart sounded in the flat in a clear, nasal tone. Lena began to count. One. Two. Three. The twelfth sound reverberated down the marble staircase of the cage and escaped towards the windows, beyond which the snow was falling thickly. And then, although everything should have quietened down by now, another tone reached her ears. The thirteenth. A long one, as if the air didn't want to let it out. A shiver ran down her spine, not from the cold, but from a violent surprise that has no words. The card in her pocket trembled, though it was probably just her fingers. She picked up the torch and the key to the attic door, which always lay in the same bowl on the sideboard, under a bunch of ribbons and a file of bills. The corridor came out of the shadows with Christmas tree lights from the door next door, decorated with gold tissue paper. The ladder to the attic was cool, metal, with paint marks on the rungs. Lena climbed cautiously, hearing the scrape of carols in the distance and the creaking of boards somewhere overhead. The dark wood attic door had a faded plaque that read Wierzbicki. The smell of dust, old wood and apples that always lingered in the crates after autumn clung to it. In the torchlight, the light was as narrow as a corridor of memories: cords where laundry used to dry, a rack of slightly worn-out blankets, boxes of toys that no one used anymore. On the left wall a ribbon hung in a bow, the same ribbon that Grandma used to tie parcels with. Just inside the door to their cubicle, number fourteen, she could see the marks of someone's shoes in the fresh dust. She couldn't ignore it. - Hello? - she called out quietly, although it immediately seemed absurd to her. Who would be there? A cat? A draught? The key entered the lock with resistance, as if it had lived there for weeks in solitude and no longer wanted to let anyone in. Lena pushed back the bolt and gripped the cold handle. In the light of the torch she saw that a soft dust had settled on the metal, yet just at the edge someone seemed to have wiped it off with a sleeve. Her heart pounded faster than the ticking of the clock below. Above the rooftops the further bells of the city rang out, belated, unsynchronised. The world was doing its business as usual, and Lena stood between the floor and the sky, at the door to a cache of pasts she couldn't imagine. She swallowed her saliva, thought of the empty space left at the table, the card without a signature and the thirteenth tone that still sounded in her ears. She was going to press the handle and open it at once, quickly, before the fear had time to build up. And then she felt a distinct, unmistakable movement. The handle on the other side vibrated, as if someone's hand, invisible in the darkness, was at the same moment trying to open the door from the inside.