… Ada is peeling potatoes; the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada eats wieners with peas, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada is sewing a carnival costume for her daughter, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada is cutting her son’s hair, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada is sitting with her brother and sister at her mother’s set table, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada kisses mamma good-bye, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada is drinking coffee with Balsam, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada goes shopping, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada is falling asleep, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head. Ada gets up in the morning, the Tormentor pounds at the back of her head …

It is as if there are two Adas. One, who continues to live her daily life; the other, who knows the dreadful truth, but has not yet decided what to do about it. The second Ada totally rules the first. She torments, tires, and does not allow her to breathe. No one would ever understand or believe it if she tried to tell them what is happening to her. She is surrounded by bright people, but she is full of darkness. She feels guilty that she can’t get a grip on herself. Sometimes she, run down and tormented beyond belief, finds herself at the door of the out patient clinic, but she never has enough courage to enter. No, once she did go in, saw a long corridor and worn-out people sitting by the doors to the doctors’ offices. It seemed like a totally hopeless scene. She could not bring herself to join the people waiting.

When in the evening she smokes her cigarette at the small ventilating window, her husband comes into the dark kitchen and asks her:

“What’s wrong with you?”

One of the Adas wants to throw her arms around her husband, to have a good cry and to tell him everything, about the pain in her left side when she pees, about her dreadful fear and certainty that she has cancer and will soon die, about the Tormentor that does not leave her for even one blessed moment. But the second Ada wrestles her arms behind her back and presses her hand against her mouth so that she can barely breathe. When Ada is set free, she takes a puff of her cigarette and answers her husband:

“It’s nothing, just a bit of a stitch in my left side …

“Sometimes one gets a stitch here and there,” her husband concludes, taking a beer from the refrigerator and going to watch television.