La statue de pierre

La statue de pierre is the stone woman on the roof of the Anger household, a fixed architectural presence that becomes the hidden container for a succession of stolen religious treasures. The figure first appears to shelter Felix in a familiar, almost tender pose; when the roof collapses in the final fire, the objects spill from the jar she carries, turning an apparently supernatural mystery into visible material evidence.

Appearance and Place in the House

The narrative identifies the statue through its position and posture rather than through a detailed description of its origin. It stands on the roof beside the chimney, and Stefania sees Felix sitting in its arms. Later, as she climbs through a round opening and lifts the metal hatch, she finds him curled around the stone woman, embracing her against the cold. The sculpture’s extended arms and the jar on her head become especially important when the roof falls: the arms reach forward as the stone figure crashes beside Stefania, while the jar releases its contents.

The roof is not an ordinary, accessible part of the house. Stefania is astonished that Felix can reach it through a round opening so narrow that even a cat could not squeeze through. His ability to get there remains unexplained, particularly after he has gained weight from her meatballs and dumplings. The difficult hatch, the cold wind, and the approach of frost make the roof a precarious hiding place, separated from the domestic rooms below but still physically attached to them. The stone woman thus marks a threshold within the household: visible from inside when light throws Felix’s shadow, yet concealed above the rooms where the family lives.

Felix and the Statue

Stefania recognizes Felix beside the statue when a pale shaft of sunlight passes through the colored-glass ceiling and projects a shadow in front of her. The image confirms to her that he has returned to his old roof-top habits. She is distressed by the recurrence because Petro is trying to settle Felix’s situation, obtain papers for him, and remove him from suspicion surrounding the thefts. Instead, Felix’s presence by the stone woman risks renewing the very suspicions Petro hopes to end.

The danger is also domestic and social. Stefania knows that if Adèle sees Felix on the roof—or sees his shadow appear in another shaft of sunlight—the discovery could become a scandal. She imagines Adèle accusing Petro of wanting to make the boy his son and master of the house, and accusing Petro and Stefania of plotting to drive her into the street. Stefania therefore climbs up discreetly, calling to Felix gently and offering warmth and something good to eat. In that moment the statue appears to be a refuge for a child whom the household’s competing loyalties have made vulnerable, even as its concealed contents will implicate him in the larger mystery.

The Missing Sacred Objects

The statue’s significance grows from the wave of thefts that has unsettled religious communities. Petro reports that an ancient monstrance has vanished from the cathedral of Saint Anne at Ozeriany without any trace: the doors were locked and bolted, the windows intact, and the interior undisturbed. The disappearance invites a miraculous explanation, as if angels had passed through the walls and carried the vessel heavenward. Other accounts broaden the pattern beyond one church. At the Old Synagogue in Tchortkiv, a silver etrog container disappears from secret hiding places; the rabbi says it held something else as well, a secret he will not reveal. At Brody, the missing objects include a sacred kiddush cup, a Hanukkah lamp decorated with a walking golden lion, and an emerald-inlaid yad. Their loss recalls a pantomime in which Yahweh Sabaoth transports the Jewish people and, in stages, their belongings, temples, animals, and homes to the heavenly Jerusalem.

In the Anger household, the conversation turns from supernatural interpretations to the possibility of theft by human hands. Petro suggests that the clergy themselves may be responsible, while Father Josef proposes a connection between the disappearances and the performances of Ernest Thorn, the magician and swindler. The suspicions are sharpened by Felix’s unusual ability to get into narrow spaces and by the rumors attached to the missing treasures. At one point, Mr. Baumel grieves over the theft of Jewish ritual objects, including Torah ornaments and a crown stolen from a synagogue in Zhytomyr, and calls the losses a dire sign. The statue eventually gives these scattered reports a common, physical location.

Exposure in the Fire

The final revelation comes as the house burns. The roof collapses with a deafening crash, and colored glass rains down over the fire. The stone woman falls through the destruction beside Stefania, her arms outstretched. From the jar on her head spill objects whose separate disappearances had fed the growing mystery: the sun-rayed monstrance from Ozeriany; the two gold patens, one depicting the Nativity at Bethlehem and the other Christ’s tomb; a delicate chest set with dark-red stones; the silver etrog container on curved feet with its vegetal ornament; the blackened kiddush cup; the Hanukkah lamp with its walking golden lion; and the emerald-inlaid yad.

The heap also contains a hair ornament and a chrome comb bearing a dragonfly on a cherry branch, as well as a Tissot watch with a fine chain curled around its case and a birdcage-shaped charm. The sacred vessels and the personal objects appear together in the same cache. What had seemed like separate, baffling vanishings is revealed as accumulated, physical theft, hidden in plain sight within the household’s architecture. The statue is no longer merely a suggestive silhouette above the rooms: its jar has become the container that brings the concealed evidence into view.

Narrative Significance

The stone woman holds together two modes of explanation without making them equivalent. Early reports make the disappearances seem like signs of an approaching end of the world, while the conversations around the Anger table test ordinary criminal explanations and connect the losses to the magician Ernest Thorn. The eventual fall of the statue supplies concrete proof that the objects were hidden, but it does not erase the fear, religious significance, or social suspicion accumulated around their absence. The figure’s apparent stillness has concealed a store of movement across communities and places: sacred objects removed from churches and synagogues have been gathered into one domestic hiding place.

Its role is also bound to Felix’s precarious place in the household. Before the collapse, Stefania sees the boy in the stone woman’s arms and worries that the image will expose him to renewed accusation. In the fire, the sculpture itself is violently exposed, and its hidden contents surface at the same moment as the house’s danger peaks. The statue’s transformation—from a roof-top refuge and recurring shadow into a broken container—is the object’s decisive narrative action: the domestic space that seemed to shelter Felix also holds the evidence that can make him suspect.