Chapter 18
Three dark days and three light nights passed in a room with narrow doors and a window under the ceiling. Twice a day a tall, thin man in white hospital clothes came to me, took a wobbly chair and opened a thin notebook, then carefully read in a low voice. I was glad that he did not rub his forehead and did not sob in the palm of his hand. He did not ask me anything and did not call me anything, but it seemed that my whole life depended on this accidental man in professional clothes again. Three times a day, thin and thick, coarse and soft women, rumbling or barely creaking with narrow doors, declared their important and inevitable presence. I almost did not feel the fine needles that they were digging into my arms and the thin looks that they were digging into my face, even th
