She is an attractive, athletic thirty-year-old. He is a charismatic hypnotherapist of German origin. They meet in a park; he stands up for her and saves her from oppression, she takes the bait. In a plot that could develop into a simple story with a happy ending, the true characteristics of the two quickly become apparent. The protagonists are not the people they want to be seen as. The game begins with the discovery of dark secrets, mental health and even life at stake.
Ela, the young woman we meet in the prologue, is in fact a woman-child. She experienced the trauma of harassment in her early childhood, which the reader learns about slowly, and she only seems to exude independence. The mysterious saviour, Helmut, wastes no time and gains her trust step by step. Noting the woman's obsession with a healthy lifestyle, he feeds her unhealthy snacks. The gesture, which in other circumstances can be considered paternal, in this case bears the hallmarks of a hidden need for domination. Sensing the woman's subcutaneous fears, he offers her a hypnotherapy session. The mother tries to reach the inner world of the heroine, insisting - almost violently - on meetings with a psychiatrist. It turns out that for a long time now the young woman "felt nothing", she is blocked both in the sexual sphere and on a deeper level - in the sphere of feelings.
There is one person that Ela can expose herself to. At first aggressive and closed towards Helmut, she gradually begins to open up and feel happy under his influence. However, these positive feelings are only associated with Helmut's presence. In the end, she rejects everything else - her work, her interest in reality, she breaks off all contacts. The relationship between Ela and Helmut turns into a kind of dark power struggle. It seems that there is chemistry, suppressed eroticism between the characters, but this is only Helmut's strategy. Ela becomes a toy in the hands of a psychopathic hypnotist. Helmut gradually takes away her self-confidence, promises her work, promises intellectual development (importantly, he gives her de Sade's Justine to read), exquisite life, and finally - earth-shattering sex. He instinctively senses the victim's repressed trauma and knows how to deepen her addiction to him. Soon, the final confrontation takes place, a deep hypnosis lined with possessive intentions. As in a good thriller, at the last moment the victim awakens a dormant power to articulate the "NO" clearly. Rational sense returns, the capacity for self-determination returns; Ela wakes up as if from a dream. Birds return home...
In this dark psychological drama, there are several levels of interpretation, including those of a psychoanalytical nature. The fact that the action is taking place today in Gdańsk, a multicultural city, leads to ambiguous overtones. Helmut is, after all, a German, and young Ela was hoping to follow her father's footsteps and become a Hebrew translator. Helmut's toxic, almost organic sadistic attitude towards Ela is an echo of the pathological relationship between the race of 'masters' and 'subhumans', a destructive energy that has not stopped resonating in contemporary Europeans. A text, much like a labyrinth, leads us into the darkness of the psyche and does not allow us to break away until the last line of dialogue.