Dora is a mountain holiday destination that Stefania remembers as an intimate landscape of childhood freedom, shared with Adèle before marriage and domestic service reshaped their lives. Recalled through mountain paths, forest rooms, cold streams, and the rituals of washing and caregiving, it becomes more than a place of leisure: it is the setting where their lifelong closeness took form and a refuge Stefania can revisit in memory when she knows she will never truly leave the Anger household.

A recurring holiday and refuge

Adèle went to Dora or Yaremche in different years, and Dora was one of the places where she vacationed almost annually while her father was alive. Stefania went along, officially because the mountain air might put color into her waxen complexion, but the explanation carries the familiar arrangement beneath their outings: someone would have to empty the chamber pots. Even a holiday that seemed to offer rest therefore retained the structure of service. Stefania’s later recollection, however, is not chiefly about the labor assigned to her. She remembers the trips like other people remember their first love.

The two girls stayed with Zuzanna Ferenz, an eccentric older woman whose two-story wooden villa stood amid mountain scenery. In Stefania’s memory, the route to the house and the land around it acquire the dimensions of a childhood kingdom. The remembered setting is both a real holiday destination and an alternative to the constricted domestic world in which Stefania later lives: a place where she and Adèle wander together, make their own routes, and transform the landscape through play.

Villa, host, and mountain surroundings

Stefania recalls approaching through a winding path, looking out over haystacks and fences toward blue mountains and a distant line of forest. The cold, damp air carried the smell of thyme and manure. Their host’s villa had a slender central turret and an unusual lace-like balcony; its two floors contained a large salon and eight bedrooms. Around it lay a disheveled cherry orchard mixed with apple, plum, and quince trees. Behind the garden, trees murmured while the distant sound of a waterfall threaded through the grounds.

Zuzanna Ferenz’s house also opened onto a lively world of animals and local work. Her dog Joke greeted the girls by gently gripping a hand in his teeth, an affectionate gesture that hurt slightly without causing injury. In autumn, trout leapt from a fast stream, turning in the air; in hot weather, Ossyp, who helped Zuzanna, dislodged fish from roots and stones. Joke caught fish in his jaws and held on until they stopped convulsing, then spat them onto the gravel. The holiday landscape is thus not simply a pastoral backdrop: its waters and animals have their own force, and the girls’ delight sits beside the rough facts of predation and survival.

Forest paths and childhood play

The forest became a boundless house in which the girls felt at home. Its character changed with the weather and light: it could be sunlit, shadowed and damp, dense with mushrooms and moss, or quiet beneath layers of needles. The girls imagined nymphs whispering in hazel trees and listened to the forest’s creaks, hoots, and snaps. They often avoided the paths made by people, choosing their own route instead. On steep slopes they clung to trunks, bushes, and grass, sometimes crawling on all fours; after climbing, they collapsed into moss among bilberries, blackberries, and ferns, licking dew and the last raindrops from fallen maple leaves.

Their games extended the landscape into fantasy. They imagined living in the ear of a gentle giant, protected by conifers and larches growing on his stone head. They called him uncle and listened for his breathing, muttering, and laughter. The forest gave their closeness a shared imaginative language: it was a place to explore together, and a world that seemed to shelter them from ordinary rules.

The excursions also carried real risks and physical contrasts. Ossyp sometimes took the girls high into the mountains, to pastures where his brother watched sheep and horses. The grass there was short and sharp, and patches of snow could still be found. At a torrent, Stefania entered the icy water while gripping a large stone so the current would not sweep her away; the cold made her bones ache unbearably, yet she felt strong enough to break the rock. Adèle, by contrast, hid her face in her hands and cried at the thought of the cold. As evening darkened the peaks, someone played a trembita on a neighboring mountain, its sound carrying over the slopes like a lament. Ossyp then urged the girls to return, their bare feet black and pricked and their hair smelling of smoke.

Care, memory, and attachment

After returning, Stefania washed Adèle, and Zuzanna washed Stefania. Zuzanna silently scrubbed her with a wet sponge while Stefania recounted the day’s encounters and adventures. The sequence makes care a part of the holiday’s daily texture, but it also shows how early the roles between the girls had begun to take shape: Stefania tended to Adèle even in a setting remembered as free and joyful. The vacation’s intimacy and its service obligations are intertwined rather than cleanly separated.

As an adult, Stefania turns to these memories when quarrels with Adèle make her pack a suitcase and threaten to go to Zuzanna’s. She knows that she will never actually leave the Anger household and that she is attached to it for good. Dora therefore functions as an inward refuge: a place she can return to in recollection when departure is only a gesture. Her nostalgia preserves the girls’ childhood bond, but it also sharpens the contrast between the freedom of their woodland wandering and the dependency that has come to govern their adult relationship.

Narrative significance

Dora’s remembered openness contrasts with the unequal mobility of the world around Stefania. Adèle could travel for holidays; Stefania accompanied her, performing the work of care even when the destination was presented as a restorative outing. Years later, another possibility of departure is imagined in the form of a transatlantic journey with Velvele, but the novel closes on Stefania’s lucid recognition of the illusion in which she has lived. Against that ending, Dora remains a remembered space of companionship and chosen paths, not proof that Stefania ever possessed an independent life beyond service.

The place also complicates the story’s image of nature as uncomplicated escape. The forest invites invention and intimacy, while the mountain stream can overpower a body and the dog’s fishing turns the beauty of animal life toward violence. Dora holds both conditions together. Its remembered landscapes are sensuous and protective, but they do not erase labor, physical vulnerability, or the different ways Stefania and Adèle experience the same world.