Another summer. The air was charged with electricity, I felt it on my skin. It smelled like ozone and wet earth. I was sitting on the railing of a tiny porch used to store oversized utensils and shoes. Dark green paint was peeling off, in some spots to bare wood. I was staring at hailstones hitting a puddle. From the circles on the water, I was guessing how long the rain would last, hesitating to go inside. The bedroom was the only room survived the fire, and a new house, by that time already old, was built around it. My grandma told me a legend about ball lighting. It could go through closed windows and burn you while you were asleep.

Another summer. By the time I came, lilacs were already fading. If I saw a five-petalled flower, I ate it and made a wish. It tasted bitter. I was standing by the washstand in the shadow of the playhouse, water draining down a hole in the ground. The dispenser, nailed to a rustic post, was buried in white hydrangea, fed by the constant moisture. But hydrangea didn’t smell. An old jasmine shrub grew by the porch with a few modest flowers scattered over its degenerated branches, and I was addicted to its smell. Around the corner, untidy peonies could knock you down with their bittersweet aroma. By the time they were gone, poppies took their turn. But poppies didn’t smell. Behind the peonies, there was a tall linden tree. We harvested its heady honey flowers, dried them in the attic, and brewed against the cold. My great-grandparents were farmers, but they saved a small patch of pine forest in the corner of the lot. Ground there was covered with lilies of the valley. Flowers of this poisonous grass smelled heavenly, but you needed to kneel to the earth to feel it.

Another summer. The old playhouse seemed never drying completely. Chests and their stuffing were soaked in a viscous mixture of damp and dust. Annual cleaning was helpless against the heavy smell of wet rotten wood. I cherished moments in that scaled-down house – sitting on a scaled-down bench by a scaled-down window and sorting out scaled-down ceramic animal figurines, left behind by the past generation of children. Though, the real hideout was the attic. Separated from the rest of the world by a tall shaky metal ladder, it was out of reach or desire for adults. The tiny room had an old heavy desk, a seasoned chair of an indeterminate color, an antique wardrobe full of retired clothes, and a simple bed that I shared with my sister. Next to the wardrobe, behind a stack of boxes, there was a scaled-down door. I discovered it by accident while looking through the junk in the corner. It wasn’t locked. I squeezed through the door and waited a minute before my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I was certain that my room was the only compartment in the attic. When I stepped from the door and looked back, I realized the room was just a small box, standing in the middle of a huge dark area of unknown.

Another summer. We had a guest staying with us. He took over the attic room. Next to the bed, on which I no longer slept, he built a narrow bench of rough pine boards. He believed that sleeping on the raw wood was good for his back. In the morning he stood on a small terrace at the entrance to the attic, leaning both hands on the railing and exposing his bare skin to the sun. He believed that the morning sunbathing preceding gymnastics was beneficial to his health. His body was different from the usual body of an elderly man. It took me a while to get used to it, to stop staring at him blankly or turn away embarrassedly. Bright sunlight reflected off his skin at an acute angle emphasized the relief. It looked as if small balls, about one inch in diameter, were scattered randomly under the skin, casting long morning shadows across his arms and torso – a distorted image of a human as an aftermath of the long-faded events. He continued to live and enjoyed the process of life, perhaps even more from the day death kissed him, leaving the shrapnel pieces permanently stuck under his skin, soaked inside, and covered with layers of tissue over time. Turning his body into a message.