The silence in Director Walczak's office had a different density than the silence in the basement. The one downstairs was the silence of dead things patiently waiting to be discovered. This one was the silence of held breath. The silence of a predator pretending to be a stone.
Stanisław Walczak sat behind a desk that looked like a fortification. Mahogany, glass, neatly arranged stacks of folders. His hands, clasped on the surface, were smooth, well-groomed, with nails trimmed so short they exposed pink, vulnerable fingertips. They didn't match a man who had just threatened to end my career.
"Marta," he said. His voice was soft, almost paternal. That was the worst part. If he had shouted, I could have defended myself. Against tenderness, I had no armor. "You know how much we value your precision. You are... how do they say it? Meticulous."
I didn't respond. I sat upright in a chair that was slightly too low. An old psychological trick. I watched the dust dancing in a shaft of light filtering through the blinds. Dust was the same everywhere. Democratic.
"However, meticulousness must go hand in hand with discipline," he continued, running his finger along the edge of a folder lying before him. He didn't open it. He didn't need to. I knew what was inside. System logs. Entry and exit times. A list of signatures I had ordered out of sequence. "Lately, your interests have been... drifting. Toward areas that have already been catalogued. Closed."
"An archive is a living organism," I said. My voice sounded hoarse. I hadn't had water since morning. "Sometimes you need to return to old signatures to understand new contexts. It's a standard verification procedure."
Walczak smiled. It was a smile that never reached his eyes. His eyes remained alert, grey and flat as concrete.
"Procedure," he repeated, savoring the word. "Precisely. Procedure requires a supervisor's approval for queries that extend beyond current assignments. Procedure requires that materials from the sanitary section — and the files from the Górowo hospital fall into that category — be made available only through a special protocol. You don't have special clearance, Marta."
I felt a tightening in my chest. It wasn't fear. It was a physical reaction to a lie. The air in the office had suddenly become too thick, smelling of old coffee and cologne worn by men trying to seem more important than they were.
"Those files are not classified," I said slowly, weighing each word. "I checked the index. Signature C-1981-89 is open. Why are you lying?"
Walczak's face stiffened. For a fraction of a second, the mask of the benevolent bureaucrat slipped, revealing something ugly and frightened beneath. He reached for a glass of water. His hand didn't tremble, but the movement was too sudden. The water swayed dangerously.
"Don't use that word in this office," he hissed. "This isn't a matter of lying. It's a matter of... professional hygiene. There are projects that should remain dead in the archive. Digging them up serves no one. And certainly not you."
He stood and walked to the window. He stood with his back to me, looking at the grey parking lot. His figure in a well-tailored jacket suddenly seemed smaller, hunched beneath some invisible weight.
"I received a phone call," he said quietly, as if speaking to the glass. "From above. They asked about you. They asked why an employee of the digitization department was interested in the closure of a psychiatric ward from thirty years ago. Those are not questions I enjoy answering, Marta. Those are questions that generate problems."
"Who called?"
He turned sharply. His eyes no longer held concrete. There was panic, which he tried to cover with irritation.
"That's irrelevant!" He struck the windowsill with his palm. The sound was dry, hollow. "What is relevant is that you stop. You go back to your geodetic maps and notarial deeds. If I see one more order for Górowo signatures, if I see you in the basement after hours... it will be a disciplinary hearing. A blacklisting. You won't find work in any archive in this country. And I know there's nothing else you can do."
That stung. More than the threat of dismissal. What stung was the truth contained in that sentence. I was made for cataloguing the past. Without it, I was just a collection of habits and fears.
I stood up. My legs were stiff, as if I had been sitting there for hours.
"Is that all, Director?"
Walczak sank back into his chair. He looked tired. He rubbed his face with his hand.
"Go home, Marta. Rest. You look like you haven't slept in a week. And leave those ghosts alone. They don't pay the bills."
I left, closing the door behind me quietly, with an almost reverent gentleness. The corridor was empty. Fluorescent lights hummed above my head, and the linoleum gleamed with chemical cleanliness. I felt dirty. I felt that this building, which had always been my refuge, had suddenly transformed into a labyrinth where every turn was being watched.
I stepped outside. The air tasted of exhaust fumes and dampness. It was oppressive; a storm hung over Warsaw, unable to decide whether to strike. The sky was the color of a bruise.
On the way home, I looked over my shoulder three times. No one was following me. The street was indifferent. People passed me, staring into their phones, sealed inside their small bubbles. And yet the skin on the back of my neck was burning. That feeling every animal knows — the awareness of being watched before the predator reveals itself.
Rationalize, I thought. Walczak is a coward. He's worried about his position. Someone from the ministry is auditing, and he's panicking. It's normal. Bureaucracy.
But my body didn't believe those explanations. My heart was beating in my throat, fast and uneven, like a bird held in a fist.
My apartment was on the third floor of an old tenement building. The stairwell smelled of cabbage and damp. Climbing the stairs, I counted the steps. One, two, three. A crack on the seventh. A stain on the twelfth. Rituals. They keep the world in check.
I stood before the door. I took out my keys. My hand wasn't trembling. I was proud of that small stability.
The lock yielded with the same familiar click as always. I pushed the door open.
Silence. But different from Walczak's. This was my silence. It smelled of old paper and the lavender I hung in my wardrobe.
I stepped inside, locking the door with both bolts. I leaned against it with my back and closed my eyes. You're safe. This is your fortress.
I opened my eyes and looked at the desk.
Everything was in its place. The laptop. A mug with half-drunk coffee (I need to wash it). A pile of notes arranged in a neat stack. The headphones.
I froze.
The headphones were lying on the right side of the laptop. The cable was coiled in a loose loop.
I always place my headphones on the left side. I'm left-handed. It's an unconditional reflex, built over years of work. I take them off with my left hand and set them down to the left. Always. Without exception. Even when I'm dead tired.
I approached the desk slowly, as if the headphones were a bomb. Maybe I was mistaken? Maybe in the morning, in a hurry...
No. I remembered that moment. I got up, took them off, put them on the left, beside the mouse pad I rarely use. Now they were lying on the right, next to the lamp.
Someone had been here.
Cold spread through my stomach, heavy and sticky. I looked around the room. Nothing was missing. The laptop was in place. Drawers closed. Books on the shelves stood in perfect order.
That was worse than a burglary. A thief leaves chaos. A thief looks for valuables. Whoever had been here was looking for something else. Or... wanted to leave a message.
"I know where you live. I can come in. I can touch your things, and you won't even notice."
I touched the surface of the desk. It felt foreign. Contaminated. I pulled my hand back as if burned. Suddenly my own apartment had become a trap. The shadows in the corners lengthened, took on shapes. Was someone in the wardrobe? Under the bed?
I began to check. Methodically, systematically, though my hands were trembling so badly I could barely open the wardrobe door. Empty. The bathroom — empty. Under the bed — only dust.
I returned to the living room and sat down in the middle of the rug, pulling my knees to my chin. I didn't turn on the light. The dusk thickened outside the window, turning the furniture into dark monoliths.
Someone had touched my headphones. The same ones through which I listened to my mother's voice. The same ones that were my shield against the world.
I felt nauseous. The violation of my privacy was a physical assault on my space. My sanctuary had ceased to exist.
The phone rang suddenly, slicing through the silence like a knife. I jumped, letting out a stifled yelp. The sound was unnaturally loud in the dark room.
I looked at the screen. Tomasz.
I hesitated for a moment. My thumb hovered over the green receiver. Was he part of this too? Was his father... No. Paranoia. Walczak was right, I was losing touch with reality.
I answered.
"Hello?"
"Are you awake?" His voice was rough, low. I could hear the hum of the street in the background, car horns. He was calling from the city, or from an open window.
"Yes," I answered. My voice sounded foreign. "Someone was in my apartment, Tomek."
The silence on the other end lasted a second, maybe two. When he spoke again, his tone had changed completely. The tiredness had vanished, replaced by steel.
"Are you there now?"
"Yes."
"Are you safe? Doors locked?"
"Yes. Nothing was taken. Just... they moved things. The headphones."
"Listen to me carefully. Don't go out. Check the locks. I'll be there in twenty minutes. But first I need to tell you something. That's why I'm calling."
I heard the sound of a lighter. He drew on a cigarette. I knew he had quit, but I didn't comment on it. Nothing mattered right now.
"I opened the box," he said. "My father's. I sat over it all night. There was a lot of junk — receipts, old newspapers. But I found a notebook. Black, small, A6 format. From 1981."
I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles went white.
"And?" I whispered.
"Father was making notes about other patients. Obsessive ones. He described their behaviors as if he were a guard, not a fellow inmate. There are initials. H.M. — that's probably Halina. Z.K. — your technician, Kutera. But there's also one name written out in full. In capital letters. Underlined three times."
I held my breath.
"What name?"
"Anna Solak," said Tomasz. "And a note written underneath: 'She hears what we cannot hear. She is the key.'"
The world spun. Anna. My mother. A name my father hadn't spoken in twenty years. Spoken in Tomasz's voice, it sounded like a verdict.
"Are you sure?" I asked, though I knew he was. I could feel it. It was like the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place with a quiet, satisfying snap.
"I'm looking at it right now, Marta. There's something else. A date beside the name. November 14th, 1981."
I looked at the calendar hanging on the wall. November. The month I was born in. But in 1981, I was three years old.
"I'm coming over," said Tomasz. "Don't sit there alone. If they got in once, they can get in again. Take the most important things. And Marta?"
"Yes?"
"Don't trust anyone from the archive. If my father was right in his notes... then that experiment didn't end in '89. It only changed its form."
He hung up. I was left alone in the dark apartment, phone in hand, and the headphones lying on the wrong side of the desk. They stared at me like two black, dead eyes.
Anna Solak. The key.
I stood and walked to the window. Down below, in the glow of a streetlamp, a car was parked. A dark sedan. The engine was running — I could see a small cloud of exhaust. The windows were tinted. I couldn't see who was inside.
But I felt that they could see me.
I pulled the blinds shut. My fingers trembled. Walczak had talked about procedures. About professional hygiene. He had lied. This wasn't about bureaucracy. This was about cleanup.
And suddenly I understood what Henryk had felt, writing his diary. The same cold. The same sense that the walls had ears, and one's own mind was occupied territory. The taste of grease in the mouth.
I went to the wardrobe and took out a backpack. I stuffed in the laptop, an external hard drive, a folder with copies of the recordings. At the very bottom, hidden under a sweater, I placed the small dictaphone. My dictaphone.
If they come, let them come. But they won't find what they're looking for. Because what they're looking for isn't in my notes.
It's in my head. In the voice of a little girl that sounds like my own voice.
I stood by the door and listened. The silence on the stairwell was heavy, sticky. I waited for Tomasz. Every minute stretched like an hour. One sentence from Tomasz's father's notebook kept knocking around my head: "She hears what we cannot hear."
I closed my eyes and tried to listen.
And then, somewhere on the edge of hearing, beneath the hum of the city and the buzzing of the refrigerator, I heard it.
A quiet, rhythmic scraping. As if someone were dragging a fingernail across metal.
The sound was coming from inside the wall.