Petro Skolyk–Felix relationship

Petro Skolyk’s relationship with Felix grows from a shared attention to making things into one of the household’s most consequential bonds. Petro does not win Felix over through sweets or display: the connection takes shape in the workshop and garden, through tools, drawings, excursions, and sustained companionship. When authorities come to claim the boy, Petro’s bond with him becomes practical protection, with Stefania’s help.

Beginning in the Workshop

Petro’s involvement with Felix starts when the boy shows interest in stone. While Petro draws in his upstairs workshop or works a large block in the garden, Felix quietly edges closer. Stefania, watching from a hiding place in the currant bushes, notices Petro’s expression change when he sees the boy nearby: his eyes brighten, and his moustache seems to soften. The narrator initially suspects that Petro has taken an interest in Felix merely to provoke her, but the small signs of pleasure she observes complicate that suspicion.

Within days, Felix is sitting beneath the plum tree and helping Petro. He passes him tools, gathers stone chips so they will not get in the way, brushes dust from a carved boat, and looks after a cigarette that might catch Petro’s moustache. Their contact is organized around the work rather than conversation: Felix can participate without being pressed to speak or accept the kinds of attention he has resisted from others.

A Shared Routine

As the relationship settles, Felix follows Petro into the workshop and garden with solemn concentration. He continues to make startling movements and to draw plans of the city, but he also begins eating breakfast with Petro, sharing rolls and milk or buckwheat and millet pancakes. Stefania longs to embrace him, yet restrains herself because she fears he will flee and stop eating. Felix remains distant from her, except for a moment on the roof, while his closeness with Petro becomes visible in ordinary routines.

Petro makes a large ball from old pieces of leather and rags, and he and Felix take it to Lindengasse or Elizabeth Park. They throw and kick it, rolling in the autumn grass and returning with muddy clothes. Their play brings household consequences: Stefania must wash the dirt and grass stains and worry about them being out in the cold. On one outing the ball strikes the elderly Countess Potocka, knocking off both her hat and wig. Petro and Felix face the prospect of a serious complaint, but Petro promises to make a new tomb for the countess’s late husband, whose old grave has deteriorated. The incident shows their shared play spilling beyond the household and Petro assuming responsibility for what they have done.

Petro also takes Felix to see horses at Tloumatch. The narrator describes one of them recounting the visit while the other relives it, absorbed enough to forget to chew a biscuit. After a hunting trip to Mykulychyn, Felix draws the head of the eighteen-year-old deer killed by Count Hoyos from several angles, giving it a large, moist eye. The trips supply subjects for Felix’s attention and drawing, while Petro’s willingness to take him along extends their companionship beyond the workshop.

Making, Gifts, and Care

Drawing becomes one of the clearest forms of fellowship between them. Petro spends money freely on paper for Felix, and the two often draw side by side, with the same concentrated gesture of biting their tongues as they forget the rest of the world. Stefania brings them cold meat or cabbage pirozhki and watches their work while they eat. The scene links Petro and Felix through shared concentration, and places Stefania’s food and service alongside their creative partnership.

Petro’s gifts are chosen to engage Felix’s curiosity rather than simply to indulge him. He gives him a coachman’s horn, magnifying glasses, and iron dental forceps, not sweets or bagels. The objects belong to a world of tools, observation, and practical fascination, matching the activities through which the two have become close. Petro and Felix also attend a railway engineer’s demonstration of mechanical novelties, including a machine that dispenses matches for a coin. Their shared interests thus reach from stone and drawing to the new devices of the period.

The Threat to Felix

The bond is tested when a police commissioner warns Petro that officials will come for Felix. After the commissioner leaves, Petro takes Stefania by the shoulders and tells her to feed the boy continuously with lard and dough. Stefania doubts that Petro is serious or sane, but she cooks, while Petro seats Felix beside him and insists that he eat. Their effort extends across meals and into the night, the garden, and the workshop; even when Felix protests or becomes sick from eating too much, they resume after he rests.

Two weeks later, bailiffs in black suits arrive with green-uniformed gendarmes, led by the general of the Lviv gendarmerie, and demand the boy. Petro presents Felix, now visibly plump, and challenges the officials to fit him into an illusionist’s hat or a barrel for sauerkraut. Stefania demonstrates the difficulty of getting the hat over his cheeks. Adèle then helps defuse the confrontation by offering the general Lithuanian kvass, and the officials leave. Felix is safe. The immediate means of protection is bodily change achieved through feeding, but its cause is the adults’ coordinated response: Petro devises the plan, and Stefania carries out much of its labor.

A Bond Recognized as Family

The relationship is not free of tension in Stefania’s account: she first interprets Petro’s attention as a way of irritating her. Yet the sequence of shared work, play, travel, drawing, and protection gives that initial reading less and less explanatory power. Petro’s attention is patient and specific to Felix, and Felix responds not through sudden intimacy with Stefania but by joining Petro’s activities and accepting the objects and outings they share.

Later, Petro tells Stefania that without her none of it would have been possible, that the household would not be the best of homes, and that she is their family. His words make explicit the care that the earlier episodes distribute across the household: Petro’s bond with Felix is sustained not in isolation but through Stefania’s food, work, and protection as well. The relationship’s significance lies in this combination of companionship and responsibility. Petro gives Felix a place in his daily work and attention; when that place is threatened, he acts to keep the boy with them.