… She braids her daughter’s hair, irons the creases in her husband’s and her son’s pants, fries four eggs, serves mamma’s cucumber salad with oil for breakfast, does the wash on laundry day, bleaches the whites, rinses the socks twice, vacuums the rugs, deals with the dust dreadfully collected on the television and the book shelf, makes stroganoff for supper with mashed potatoes to be served with mamma’s marinated beets, perhaps prepares a fruit compote – the liquid-y kind, without potato starch. Work at the office is almost like rest, limited pay but steady … has a cigarette with the girls, a lunch of wieners with peas, cheese salad, tomato juice, coffee with Balsam. When she scours the stores, she can always find something modern, even with the lack of money, she always manages to be “with it.” Perhaps her husband has some new romantic infatuation, but he still loves her. Last night, when she was crying, he hugged her and gently caressed her head. Saturday they will go to mamma’s, meet up with her brother and sister and their children there, eat mamma’s delicious food, sit and chat a while, slide down a hill, throw snow-balls. But again she feels that pain in her side …

Ada buys a medical encyclopaedia. Sometimes the pain appears when she pees. Therefore, it must be her kidneys. If she only has the pain when she pees, then she simply must have caught a chill. If the pain persists all the time … Ada reads the word “tumour.” A short while ago one of her young colleagues at work died of cancer. His heart was strong but he spent a year bed-ridden. All his relatives had been totally worn down from taking care of him. They borrowed money in all sorts of places for the medication and other treatment expenses. The wife walked around as grey as last year’s snow, with blue circles under her eyes. The only good thing was that they had no children.

From the moment she opens the encyclopaedia, she is beset by the Tormentor. The evil one weighs her down in the mornings, evenings, afternoons and nights. She has life-force to spare; she is strong. She imagines how horrendous her dying would be. She would be a burden to her husband, children, sister, brother and mother. They, who already are stretched to the limit making ends meet, would each in their turn have to look after her. She would have to bear long, protracted suffering. She would wither away and deteriorate in front of them all. Not being able to get to the toilet by herself any more, she would have to pee and shit in pampers. She would vomit from the radiation treatments. Her hair would fall out. To alleviate the unbearable pain she would be shot full of pain-killers until she would be in a trance-like state and not herself when she eventually died. She has cancer for sure. Because she has the precise symptoms described in the encyclopaedia. Why should she go to a doctor, who will tell her exactly the same thing? Probably very soon blood will appear in her urine. And that will be a certain sign.