Song

Warsaw met Ayla not with a sign, not with a vision, and not with some whisper from underground worthy of a continuation of the ancient prologue.

Warsaw greeted her with an announcement on the train.

First a thin click in the speaker, then a female voice, too polite for six in the morning, said something about the next station, transfer, caution when getting off and gratitude for the trip. The voice was flat, clear, without the slightest desire to become destiny. It was just doing its job. There was an honesty to it, almost harsh. No roots, no bones, no old cold, no breath against breath. Just a carriage, glass, a bag on her lap, someone else’s elbow nearby and the smell of coffee from a paper cup from the man opposite.

Ayla sat by the window and watched the gray morning stretch behind the glass.

The city has not yet fully woken up, but has already begun to make noise as confidently as if it had never slept. Somewhere along the tracks the brakes squeaked. A man walked along the platform with a suitcase, one wheel of which was knocking out of rhythm with the other three. In the next seat, a girl was writing a message with two thumbs as quickly as if she was saving someone’s life, although on the screen reflected in the glass, Ayla only managed to see: “no ale serio???”

Seriously, yes.

She's back.

This word turned out to be heavier than the bag.

She returned - which means now she had to open the door again, sort out her things, answer messages, check the calendar, remember who she promised the recording to, to whom - a rehearsal, to whom - a corrected fragment, to whom - “yes, of course, I’ll look after I return.” People are very fond of the phrase "after returning." It sounds as if a person will bring with him from the road a ready-made new version of himself: sleepy, enlightened, with internal files neatly laid out. In practice, a person more often brings dirty socks, disrupted sleep patterns and a strange ability to hear the refrigerator as a personal insult.

Ayla was in approximately this state.

Only the refrigerator was still waiting ahead.

The bag stood at her feet. In her side pocket was a ticket, a crumpled check, a small wooden spoon, which for some reason she took from Ivar’s house, although it was an ordinary spoon, and a phone that managed to collect twelve notifications during the night. She didn't open them. Notifications lay inside the phone like small fish under thin ice: they moved, glittered, and demanded to be noticed.

She closed her eyes.

And almost immediately she heard too much.

Not louder than usual. Not mystical. No new sound, no celestial string, no inner choir that could save a person from having to pay for utilities. It’s just that everything that used to form a familiar urban background suddenly ceased to be a background.

Rails. Wheels. Speaker. Someone's coughing. Paper cup in fingers. Zipper on the jacket. The rustle of a package. A distant metallic blow that passed through the floor of the car and echoed in her teeth. The voice of a child asking his mother why the train speaks in a woman's voice if it is a train. The mother replied: “Because that’s what they wrote down.” The child was not satisfied. Ayla mentally took his side.

Because that’s how it’s written down—the adult world’s convenient answer to everything it doesn’t want to hear again.

She opened her eyes.

There were houses outside the window. Balconies, wet spots on the facades, billboards, gray windows where someone was already standing in the kitchen, someone else was sleeping, someone was looking at the phone with the face of a man whom life had downloaded before he agreed. The city had not one sound, but many small, uncoordinated parts. And yet they did not fall apart. The tram around the bend clanked like an impatient conductor who had been put in charge of an orchestra made of water pipes.

Ayla grinned.

It was good. So she could still grin.

When the train stopped, people got up almost simultaneously. Bags, jackets, shoulders, other people's apologies, a short "przepraszam", someone stepped on someone's shoe, someone sighed as if this shoe was the last straw in the history of European civilization. Ayla walked out with everyone else, and the cold air of the platform hit her face.

There was something homey about this blow.

Not cozy. Homemade things are rarely cozy right away. Homework is when the world again demands from you accuracy in small things. Don't forget the glove. Don't lose the key. Do not let the bag strap slip off your shoulder. Don’t stand in the way of a person who is late as if it’s not work that awaits him, but the judgment of the gods, just the office version.

She went upstairs.

It was wet outside. Warsaw knew how to be wet without rain, simply by internal decision. The asphalt darkened, the cars hissed, the bus opened its doors with the tired sigh of a large animal that again needs to swallow people. The kiosk smelled of coffee and rolls. Somewhere nearby a van honked. At the bus stop, a woman in a red hat spoke on the phone in Ukrainian, quickly, softly and angrily. Two students were arguing in English about who should buy the tickets. An old man with a dog stood at the crossing and looked at the red light as if he was personally disappointed in the city's regulatory system.

The traffic light clicked.

The green man appeared along with a dry electronic squeak.

Ayla stopped.

The squeak was normal. She had heard it a thousand times. For crossing, for the blind, for everyone who is used to walking when the city allows it. But now this squeak did not just allow movement. It cut the air with short, equal strokes and for a second it became like a small knot through which the entire intersection coordinated itself: cars, people, brakes, steps, a dog, wet asphalt, a bus, a girl with a phone, her own hand on the belt of her bag.

She thought about Ivar.

Not about him. Not about his face, not about the house, not about his voice at the stove. About a phrase said so briefly that there was almost nothing to quote in it. He wasn't talking about music then. It seems about the roads. Or about the fact that a single pointer does not know the entire path, but can be precise in its place. She then argued. Inside, of course. From the outside, she pretended to listen calmly. Musicians know how to look calm when a whole cabinet of sheet music falls inside them.

The traffic light continued to squeak.

Ayla crossed the road.

There was no revelation.

On the other side of the street, she was sprayed by a car.

“Great,” she said out loud. - Now it’s definitely home.

The old man’s dog looked at her with sympathy, but without unnecessary mysticism.

The apartment greeted her with that smell that only comes from your own home after leaving. Not dirt, not dust, not mustiness - rather the absence of a person who has already begun to slightly control the space. The air was smooth and closed. Her old shoes stood in the hallway. There was a scarf hanging on a hook. On the floor near the wall lay an empty box of strings, which she did not throw away before leaving, because “later.” “Then” was generally the main custodian of household garbage.

The key turned in the lock with slight resistance. The neighbor's door to the right clicked almost simultaneously.

Mrs. Zofia leaned out of it.

Mrs. Zofia was small, dry, wearing a robe with a pattern that could be seen as a warning to humanity. She lived on the floor longer than Ayla in the world, and had the rare talent of opening the door exactly at the moment when someone wanted to pass unnoticed.

— Wróciła pani? - she asked, although the answer was standing in front of her with a bag, a wet coat and the face of a person who could now lie right in the hallway and consider this a cultural practice.

“Wróciłam, pani Zofio,” answered Ayla.

— Daleko było?

Ayla thought for a second.

Far away.

How to explain the distance to the place from which a person returns with the feeling that familiar things no longer have to be the same? How do you tell your neighbor that you were in a house where the stove seemed like a heart, the water like a memory, and the word “Sampo” ceased to be a legend about a wonderful thing and became an almost awkward reminder of the human habit of turning everything into an object? No way. It wasn't Mrs. Zofia's fault that the world was sometimes too complex for an elevator between floors.

“Far,” said Ayla in Polish. - But by train it’s bearable.

Mrs. Zofia nodded. This was the correct scale of reality.

“Kwiatki żyją,” she said. - I watered. But one seemed offended. He had character before.

“It’s a fern,” said Ayla. — It considers itself an ancient forest.

“So, let him pay czynsz, if he’s ancient,” said Mrs. Zofia and closed the door.

Ayla laughed.

The laughter was hoarse, but real. It ended quickly, leaving behind an unexpected void. Not bad. It’s just that in this emptiness one could hear water flowing in the pipe behind the wall. Somewhere above, someone turned on a faucet, water hit the old pipes, went down, trembled in the wall, hissed, and for a second became like that underground sound that she could not tell anyone about without turning the story into a souvenir.

She took off her coat.

Hung it up.

I left my bag in the hallway.

Then I entered the room, which was at once an apartment, a work space and proof that a musician rarely has free horizontal surfaces. On the table were cables, a pencil, a notepad, two picks, someone else's booklet from the festival, an open package of band-aids, a small voice recorder, a napkin with a dried coffee stain and three sheets of music that, in a good way, should have been in a folder, but the folder was under the laptop, and the laptop was lying where it was once supposed to be eaten.

There were cymbals at the window.

They didn't look mysterious.

And thank God.

A large professional instrument rarely looks mysterious to the one who carried it, tuned it, protected it from humidity, argued with transport, looked for a place on stage, explained to the organizers that “let’s put it somewhere on the side” is not a technical solution, and once almost cried over a broken hammer forty minutes before the performance.

The cymbals were not a symbol for Ayla. They were the body of the work.

Wood, strings, legs, case, setting, weight, smell, usual height. She knew how to sit down, how to move her hand, where the instrument responded immediately, where it required precision, where it became capricious after the cold, where the sound became too dry if the room had eaten up the air. She knew him not as an object, but as an extension of her own professional nervous system. Money, deadlines, scenes, rehearsals, irritation, joy, other people's expectations, her skill, her stubbornness, her fatigue and that strange kind of love that is rarely recognized as love because there is too much work in it passed through the cymbals.

She came closer.

She ran her finger along the edge.

Dust.

“Hello,” she said.

The tool, fortunately, did not respond.

If he had answered, Ayla would probably have gone back to the entrance and asked Mrs. Zofia to call not an ambulance, but someone from the genre structure repair service.

In the corner, on a separate shelf, lay a case with a small kantele.

Fifteen strings.

Ayla didn’t look there right away. That is, I looked, of course. Precisely because I didn’t want to look. The human gaze does not like discipline at all and will definitely go where it is forbidden. The cover was gray, simple, almost invisible among other things. But he stood alone in the room. Not physically - there were books around, a box of microphones, an old scarf, spare strings. Separateness was different. Like a person who is silent at the table, and everyone gradually begins to speak more quietly, although he did not ask anyone to do so.

The kantele was not a working tool.

That didn't mean it was a toy. Vice versa. It was precisely because it was not work that it was more difficult. On the dulcimer you could play an order, correct a fragment, record a track, show a technique, get into the craft, hide in a task. Kantela was not allowed to hide. It was small, clear and merciless in its simplicity. Too few strings to drown in mastery. There's too much silence between them to pretend you can hear.

Ayla turned away.

“Not now,” she said.

The phrase sounded as if she was speaking not to the instrument, but to a part of herself that was sitting in the corner and patiently waiting for it to stop being fed with busyness.

The phone vibrated.

She sighed, took it out of her bag and finally looked at it.

Messages poured out onto the screen with the joy of minor officials who had gained access to the body of a citizen.

Marta: “Are you already in Warsaw? I don’t want to be intrusive, but I will be intrusive.”

Macek: "Ayla, potrzebujemy krótkiego wejścia cymbałów do środy. Nic trudnego. Jak zwykle magia, tylko taniej."

Unknown number: "Dzień dobry, czy byłaby Pani zainteresowana udziałem w nagraniu..."

Martha again: “If you died in the northern forests, send a sign. But a better file.”

Ivar: one message sent last night.

She didn't open it.

Martha opened first. It was safer. Martha was a singer, an organizer, sometimes a human disaster, but a warm and helpful disaster. She knew how to simultaneously support, push, joke and forget that people sometimes need to sleep. They were connected by several projects, two serious quarrels, one funny trip to Poznan, where they mixed up the hall, and many years of mutual knowledge: if Marta writes “I don’t want to be intrusive,” it means that intrusiveness has already put on its coat and is standing at the door.

Ayla typed:

"I'm home. I'm alive. The northern forests were released without a fine."

The answer came almost immediately:

"Suspicious. Usually they take bail for this."

Ayla smiled.

Martha continued:

"Listen, we have a small fire. Very cultural, within the budget. We need a short cymbal intro for the recording. Thirty seconds. Maybe forty. Nothing complicated. Just something lively, ancient, modern, feminine, but not overtly feminist, Slavic, but not a folklore museum, northern, but without snow. You can do it."

Ayla re-read it.

Then again.

“Alive, ancient, modern, feminine, but not feminist in the forehead, Slavic, but not a folklore museum, northern, but without snow” - this was not an order, but an attempt to summon a demon through a technical task.

She wrote:

"Martha, this is not a brief. This is a diagnosis."

Martha replied:

"Yes. But paid."

Ayla sat on the edge of her chair.

Paid diagnosis is the basis of an independent musical culture.

She opened Ivar's message.

It was short:

"Did you get there?"

That's all.

No instructions. Not a symbolic phrase. Neither "listen to the city." Neither "do not confuse Song with technology." Nothing like that. Just a human “did you get there?”, in which there was more concern than convenient wisdom. For some reason this touched her more than if he had written at length.

She typed: “Yes. Warsaw is noisy.”

She thought about it and added: “As if I’m glad that I can be irritated again.”

Sent.

No response received. And that was good. Ivar didn't have to become a 24/7 helpline for people who had returned from an important location and now didn't know how to respond to Martha.

Ayla put the phone on the table.

It immediately vibrated again.

Martha: “Just don’t go into philosophy. We need a file, not a state of mind.”

Ayla closed her eyes.

That's why she loved Martha. Sometimes a person who doesn't understand anything about your inner earthquake saves you by asking you to export a WAV.

She went to the kitchen.

The refrigerator was indeed offensive.

It hummed low, evenly, complacently. Not loud. Even decently. But after the journey, its hum took such a place in the apartment, as if the refrigerator had also decided to intrude into her day without an invitation. Ayla opened the door. Inside were a lemon, a piece of cheese of dubious fate, a jar of olives, two carrots and yogurt, which had already moved from the category of food to the category of a moral issue.

“You didn’t come back the same either,” she said to the yogurt and threw it away.

The kettle clicked.

Water entered the cup, hit the dry leaves, and steam rose. This sound had to be simple: water, ceramics, tea. But Ayla suddenly heard something too familiar in it. Not north. Not Ivar's house like the picture. Rather, that stove, near which the warmth was not comfort, but order. That water that not only stood in a bucket, but held within itself the memory of movement. That strange calm in which Sampo ceased to be a thing, because the whole world for a moment turned out to be not a warehouse of useful things, but a living device of participation.

She abruptly put the kettle on the stand.

“No,” she said. - Now it's tea. Just tea.

The tea was just a little offended, but it remained tea.

She returned to the room with a cup, turned on the laptop, and opened the folder with work materials. Colored rectangles shone on the calendar. Rehearsal. Record. Call. Draft of the game. Confirm participation. Reply to the letter. Pay for the strings. Take the microphone. Not only did the world not stop due to her internal shift, but it seemed to speed up slightly while she was away.

She opened an old project.

Tracks appeared on the screen. File names. Waves of recorded sound. Everything is neat, rational, manageable. A person may look at the wave and think that the sound has finally become visible and obedient. There he is, lying on the screen. You can cut, move, clean, enhance, suppress noise, align, export. Modern magic with settings menu.

Ayla put on her headphones.

Pressed play.

A recording of cymbals made before the trip started playing.

She remembered this day. She remembered the room, the microphones, the irritation from the lamp that was humming, she remembered her own satisfaction with the second take. Everything sounded good then. And now it sounded good. Clean, precise, professional. No disaster. No reason for a dramatic pause.

And yet something didn’t add up.

Not on record. In it.

She paused the playback.

She took off her headphones.

She listened to the room.

Refrigerator. Pipes. Tram outside the window. Elevator at the entrance. Something small and metal fell somewhere above. A neighbor's child uttered a long "maaaamo" that contained more ancient invocation than half the festival programs. The phone hit the table softly from the new vibration. The wood of the cymbal slightly responded to the dryness of the room. The tea was cooling almost silently, but now it almost had a form.

She put her headphones back on.

Pressed play.

The professional recording filled her head. And suddenly it seemed too confident. Not bad. Not dead. Simply made as if the sound was a material that she took, processed and put into place. Like fabric. Like clay. Like a text that can be corrected to an acceptable state. It was normal. That's how they work. This is how you get the result. That's how they pay. So they don’t go crazy waiting for the invisible Song, who, by the way, does not sign the contract and does not send an advance.

Ayla got angry.

At herself.

This was the most convenient.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Now I don’t like a good record.” The next stage is to talk to the teapot and write a manifesto against the metronome.

She opened Martha's message and wrote:

"We've got the reference, duration, tempo and who came up with it all."

Martha replied:

"Reference now. The pace is fluctuating. Who came up with the idea - people with money, let's not scare them with questions."

Then the audio file arrived.

Ayla downloaded it, listened to the first seconds and realized that “northern, but without snow” meant a synth background that looked like fog from an expensive water commercial. At the ninth second, a female voice entered without words. At the twelfth second there is a drum that tried to be ancient, but was clearly born in a plug-in.

She wrote to Martha:

"There's a drum pretending to have ancestors."

Martha:

"So, help him find his family."

Ayla laughed again. It's easier this time.

The work was funny. The work was lively. The work was absurd, paid and completely mundane. And for some reason this is what saved her. If after Ivar’s house she had been immediately surrounded by people talking about meaning, signs and the path, she might have run to Mrs. Zofia to discuss the fern. But Martha asked for thirty seconds of cymbals for the orphan drum. This was exactly how the world returns a person to the body.

Ayla took out the hammers.

Her fingers settled on them with familiar precision.

An old movement. Her weight. Her balance. The right one is a little different, the left one is freer. Do not pinch your wrist. Don't think too much before the first hit, otherwise your body will begin to replace the music with a plan. She sat down at the cymbals, placed a time diagram on the tablet in front of her, and turned on the click.

Time.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The click was merciless. Unlike people, it was not interested in where you were, what you understood and whether you returned with an internal crisis. It just clicked. Smooth. Confident. Almost offensively helpful.

Ayla played the first test.

Technically everything was in place.

The phrase fell into tempo. The intro picked up the harmony. The hammers passed cleanly. In the third measure she gave a slight embellishment, in the fifth she delayed the beat by a hair so as not to sound like a library of samples. It was exactly what was usually required: lively, precise, professional, with enough character, but not so much that the customer would be afraid of the real character.

She stopped.

Listened.

Okay.

And empty.

Not dead. Empty is different. The dead lies. The empty may be perfectly polished and even ring beautifully, but inside it there is nothing to catch the breath on. Her test was correct. So correct that she wanted to ask: who is needed here anyway? She? Or her set of skills, well kept in her hands?

Ayla leaned back in her chair.

The cymbals in front of her were silent as an honest witness.

She played again.

Now it’s rougher. With less caution. Added a dry hit, almost unnecessary. Gave the lower strings more wood. Removed a nice delay. It turned out more interesting. But then a professional voice rose in her head: it would be too noticeable to the customer, Martha would ask to soften it, the sound engineer would say that it was interfering with the voice, people with money would be afraid of the drum’s ancestors.

She played the third option.

Compromise.

The compromise sounded like a person who came to a party in comfortable shoes and apologized in advance.

Ayla put down the hammers.

“I can,” she said quietly. - That's the problem.

The phrase hung over the instrument.

It was not beautiful. God bless. Beautiful phrases are sometimes the first to run to betray the truth, because they want to be quoted.

The phone rang.

Martha.

Ayla accepted the call.

- Are you alive? - Martha asked without greeting.

— Physically, yes. Artistically, an investigation is underway.

- Great. Let the investigation proceed quickly, we have a deadline. How do you like the material?

— Drum can be adopted. But you need to work with documents.

- I knew that you would find a common language with the orphan.

— Martha, who wants “northern, but without snow”?

- People who were in Norway once on a business trip and now have a wound from beauty.

— That explains a lot.

- Listen, you're strange.

- Thank you. I tried.

- No, really. You write as usual, joke as usual, but the pauses between words sound as if you are checking whether there is a hidden hatch.

Ayla looked at the cymbals.

- Maybe I'm just tired.

- Maybe. Or maybe you were kicked out of the ancient forest for violating safety regulations.

Ayla closed her eyes.

- Almost.

- I'm kidding.

- I know.

- Ayla?

- What?

- Didn’t you accidentally become very wise there? Because I can't stand it. I need a dulcimer player, not a person who answers the question "what's the tempo?" with the words “Where are you hurrying?”

Ayla laughed. Already for real.

— I didn’t. At most, less convenient.

— This is tolerable. You weren't a folding chair before.

— Very flattered.

- I can. Listen, seriously. Can you sketch today? Not the final. Just so that I send them and tell them that a real person is working, and not that we found an “ethnic shimmer pack” for nineteen euros.

Ayla was silent.

Work. A normal request. Normal period. A normal person on the other end, who does not understand that something has shifted inside her, but hears that it has shifted. And she doesn’t go in there with a flashlight. She just asks for a sketch.

“I can,” said Ayla. “But it might not be quite as usual.”

- Great. We already have “as usual” in the “old good solutions” folder. Make it so that I can say, “Oh, this is weird, but not so weird that we get fired.”

— High bar.

- I believe in you. And at moderate risk.

Martha hung up.

The room became a room again.

But after the conversation there was more air in her. Humor didn't eliminate anxiety, but it made it breathable. Ayla got up and opened the window. The cold air came in sharply, with the smell of wet asphalt and someone else's breakfast. Somewhere below, a car door slammed. The tram passed down the street with a metallic, slightly tired ringing sound. From the top floor came the sound of a vacuum cleaner: a stern hymn to domestic determination.

Ayla listened.

Not like a musician looking for material.

This was the opening.

Previously, almost any sound could become material. The tram is rhythmic. Pipes - texture. Neighbors' voices are a random batch. A vacuum cleaner is a joke that can be inserted into a conversation. The world was a huge storehouse of sounds, and Ayla knew how to walk through it with a professional basket. She didn't do it rudely. She did not steal. She did not devalue it. She loved sound, noticed it, cherished its features. But still, somewhere in the depths of the habit there was a movement of the hand: take, turn, use, turn on, play.

After Sampo this movement became noticeable.

And that’s why it’s awkward.

She remembered the stove.

Not the whole story. Not events. Not the road. Not explanations, which were not explanations even then. Just the warmth of the stove, near which it was impossible to feel like the owner of the fire. The fire was not a supply. It participated. Water was not a supply. Home was not the place where meaning lay. And Sampo could not be taken as a thing, because everything that was taken immediately became smaller than itself.

Ayla thought she understood then.

Now, standing at the window in Warsaw with an open laptop, an order from Martha and a refrigerator that continued to hum confidently in the kitchen, she for the first time suspected that understanding was the most suspicious of ways to take again.

She closed the window.

Sat down.

Not for the cymbals right away. First to the table. She took a notepad and wrote:

"Don't look for effect."

She thought.

Crossed out.

Wrote below:

"Don't pretend that you're not looking for an effect."

It was more honest.

Then again:

"What's already sounding here?"

She looked at this phrase and winced. Too beautiful. It’s too similar to the beginning of a master class for people in linen shirts, who will then say that the sound found them on its own, but you have to pay in advance for participation.

She crossed that out too.

Left a blank line.

The empty line looked more professional.

Ayla picked up the hammers again.

This time she did not turn on the click right away. She sat. She listened to the room. Not long enough to avoid falling into solemnity. Just as long as a person needs to notice: she is not the only one making the sound.

Pipe.

Tram.

Fingers on the wooden handles of the hammers.

A teaspoon that she did not bring to the kitchen.

The neighbor above put something heavy on the floor.

The phone quietly lit up, but did not vibrate - apparently, it decided to sneak up intelligently.

Ayla struck the low string.

The sound came out softer than she expected. No better. Just not where she was aiming. She did not immediately correct it. She let it go. Then she responded with a second blow, in short. Then a pause. During the pause, a tram passed. She thought almost irritably: ideal, of course, public transport now also wants to be included in the arrangement.

But irritation did not have time to close her ears.

The pause after the tram turned out to be more accurate than her invented delay.

She tried again.

Low string. Short answer. Pause. A dry hit in the middle register. Another pause. A slight trembling at the top, but not a decoration - rather a trace. She wrote it down. She listened.

This worked worse as a ready-made intro.

And better as a conversation starter.

She sent Martha ten seconds with the caption: “Very crude sketch. Don’t show people with money without a helmet.”

Martha replied a minute later:

"Strange."

Then:

"Alive."

Then:

"With a helmet you can."

Ayla exhaled.

Small victory. No, not a victory. It's too strong a word. A small continuation of work without an immediate retreat to the old way. So be it.

She stood up to finally unpack her bag.

Things came out of the bag: a sweater, a notebook, a charger, a cloth bag, a book that she didn’t open, socks, a wooden spoon, another check, a small pebble that fell into her pocket unknown when. She put everything in its place except the spoon and the pebble. They remained on the table, like two witnesses without testimony.

In the notebook between the pages there was a dry pine needle.

Ayla didn’t remember how she got there.

She took it with two fingers. It was thin, brittle, and weighed almost nothing. A small northern remnant in a Warsaw room, among cables, notifications and deadlines. You could make a symbol out of this. Very easy. Too easy. She placed the needle in the ashtray, where there had been no ashes for a long time, only paper clips and spare guitar picks.

Let it lie.

Not everything needs to be understood right away.

The city became louder in the evening.

It always happens: the day collects sounds, like clothes collects the smell of the street. Doors slammed downstairs. In the next apartment, someone was frying onions. Water flowed through the pipes again. The elevator rose and fell with such an expression of mechanical fatigue that Ayla began to sympathize with it. On the street, someone laughed too loudly, then coughed, then laughed again. There was light in the room from a table lamp, and in this light the cymbals looked not mystical, but workmanlike: wood, metal, shadows, fingerprints.

She brought the sketch to twenty-eight seconds.

Not final. Not something you can give up. But it’s no longer just a test. There was still room for air. Several of the blows were almost unsightly, and Ayla, to her surprise, did not straighten them out right away. At one point, a tram recorded by an open microphone through a window fell into a pause. According to the rules, it had to be cut out. In life, it kept the phrase on the ground.

She saved the file.

The working name was given: marta_north_no_snow_sketch_01.

Then she thought about it and renamed it: marta_baran_sirota_v01.

Martha will like it.

The phone lit up.

Ivar replied:

"Let it make noise."

Ayla looked at these two words for a long time.

You could get angry. It would even be necessary, for the sake of decency. “Let it make noise” is also an answer. It is very convenient to say this when you are not the one who has to send a sketch tomorrow, answer Martha, explain to the customer why antiquity doesn’t have to sound like a library of samples, and at the same time try to understand why your own mastery suddenly became not a house, but a wall.

She typed:

"Easy to say."

Erased.

Wrote:

"It is already making noise."

Erased.

Placed the phone face down.

Ivar was not the center of this room. He should not have become one. He was there somewhere, like a signpost that one day ended up at a fork in the road. But if you keep looking at the sign, you may never follow the road. It was an unpleasant thought. Especially because it was her own, not his.

Ayla stood up.

She walked up to the shelf with the kantele.

She did not open the case.

She just stood there.

Kantele was silent. Normally, honestly, without playing with fate. Small gray case, fifteen strings inside, wood, silence. She could open it, pick up the instrument, play a few sounds, check what had changed. It would be dramatic. Even convenient. Too beautiful, too timely, too similar to a gesture that itself asks to be placed in the right place. But Ayla was not obliged to serve drama at the expense of common sense. She was tired. She was hungry. She had a working sketch, wet boots in the hallway and a fern with claims.

She did not open the case.

Instead, she went to the kitchen and made herself scrambled eggs.

This turned out to be wiser than any immediate mysticism.

The frying pan clicked on the stove. The oil hissed. The egg cracked on the edge of the bowl with a small wet sound. The salt spilled out too generously. Ayla cursed. Then she thought that if Song always sounds, then it will have to somehow coexist with over-salted scrambled eggs. The universe has probably seen something different.

She ate standing up.

Then she sat down, because Mrs. Zofia, even without being present, could have condemned such an attitude towards digestion.

While eating, she heard the neighbor’s child behind the wall saying “maaaamo” again. The mother answered something tiredly and affectionately. Then the TV turned on. Then water. Then the elevator. Then Ayla’s phone again received a message from Martha:

"I sent a piece. They said: interesting. It's either good for them, or they were scared. In any case, we live."

Ayla wrote:

"Tell the drum that the adoption process has begun."

Martha:

"You're definitely back."

Ayla looked at this message.

Was that true?

The body has returned. The bag is back. The cymbals were here. The calendar was here. Warsaw outside the window was noisy, as it always was. Mrs. Zofia was watering the fern. Martha demanded the file. The refrigerator was humming. Nothing was a miracle. Nothing said: now there is a new life. And it was almost insulting. A person returns from a place where the world has momentarily ceased to be a storehouse of things, and at home she is greeted by yogurt that needs to be thrown away.

But maybe that's exactly how it should have been.

If the ordinary disappears after the important, it means that the important was too weak: it could not withstand the kitchen.

Ayla removed the plate.

Returned to the room.

The cymbals stood in the twilight. Kantele was silent on the shelf. But now the kantele’s silence was not a challenge. Rather, it was the right not to participate at first request. Ayla suddenly realized that she had respected tools all her life, but she respected them like a master respects good material, a good tool, a good work partner. It was real respect. Not false. Not rude.

It just wasn’t enough now.

She sat down on the floor next to the shelf.

Without opening the case, she placed her palm on top.

The fabric was cool.

She didn't hear anything.

And that was right.

Because if she heard something special now, she would almost certainly try to immediately understand, write it down, repeat it, use it, build it into a path, make it a sign, turn it into evidence, send it to Ivar, tell Marta, keep it for herself.

Kantele remained mercifully silent.

Ayla closed her eyes.

Water passed behind the wall.

The door slammed downstairs.

The traffic light at the intersection, invisible from here, may have clicked again and started beeping for those crossing the street. The tram took a turn. The refrigerator was humming. Somewhere on the table, the phone was waiting to be picked up again. Inside the cymbals, the wood slowly cooled after her touch. There were many sounds in the room, and none of them asked to become its material.

She sat there for several minutes.

Then she opened her eyes.

The words came without solemnity, almost dryly, like a work note that must not be forgotten:

It wasn't the sound that she lost.

The sound did not go away.

It was in pipes, trams, messages, cymbals, scrambled eggs, Mrs. Zofia, Martha, traffic lights, in the memory of water, in a funny drum without ancestors, in the silence of a kantele, in her own breath, which she too often mistook for personal property simply because it came out of her chest.

She lost something else.

The former right to consider sound as her material.

Ayla removed her hand from the case.

It became quiet not because there were fewer sounds.

It’s just that for the first time that day she wasn’t in a hurry to do anything with them.