Qingting Fashu

The dragonfly comb is a three-pronged hair ornament of chrome and finely colored glass, shaped as a dragonfly on a cherry branch. Passed between Adèle and Stefania during a visit to Father Josef, then returned to Adèle by Josef and later declared missing, it becomes more than a decorative object: its repeated transfers expose the intimate claims and carefully performed misunderstandings within their household.

Appearance and First Gift

Adèle takes the comb from her jewelry chest while she and Stefania prepare to visit Father Josef. She has dressed for the occasion in a pale lilac Greek-style gown she embroidered herself, with new lace gloves and a violet-plumed hat; Stefania has braided a wreath into her hair. Adèle asks Stefania to wear her usual bun at the nape, then presses the comb into it despite Stefania’s protests. The teeth go in so sharply that tears spring to Stefania’s eyes. The gift is thus both tender and physically forceful: Adèle adorns her companion, but does so in a way that makes the gesture impossible to mistake for a neutral exchange.

The comb’s design is unusually particular. Chrome and delicate, multicolored glass form a dragonfly perched on a cherry branch, a small image whose crafted intricacy stands apart from an ordinary hairpin. Its later significance grows from this specificity: the object can be recognized, retrieved, and handed back, while its ownership remains open to competing claims.

Ivanka Recognizes It

At the priest’s home, Ivanka displays albums of fashion illustrations and describes clothing, jewelry, and hair ornaments in minute detail. Among the elaborate accessories she presents are combs decorated with insects, flowers, birds, and branches. Adèle becomes increasingly absorbed in Ivanka’s descriptions. Then she steps toward Stefania and sharply pulls the dragonfly comb from her hair.

Adèle tells Ivanka that she should keep it, adding that she had immediately seen the dragonfly belonged to her. Ivanka holds the comb on her palm and stares at it; her eyes grow veiled, and her lower lip trembles slightly. The scene shifts the comb’s meaning from a gift within Adèle’s household to an object Ivanka seems to recognize as hers. The evidence does not explain the history behind that recognition, but makes its emotional force visible in Ivanka’s reaction. Stefania, meanwhile, asks where the well is and offers to fetch water, turning away from the charged exchange.

Repeated Return to Adèle

As the visit ends, Father Josef helps the women into their carriage and hands the comb to Adèle. The object has returned to her once more. Adèle exclaims angrily that this is the second time, and Josef politely asks her not to do it again. Without looking at him, she takes the comb between her fingertips and gives it back to Stefania. She then pointedly asks whether Josef remembers what they had agreed; he confirms that he does.

The exchange gives the comb a recurring, almost procedural role. It passes from Stefania to Ivanka, from Ivanka’s possession back to Adèle through Josef, and from Adèle back to Stefania. Each transfer is accompanied by words that cast the object differently: as a gift, something that belongs to Ivanka, an unwanted return, or something Adèle can restore to Stefania. Josef’s reference to an agreement makes clear that the repetition is not simply an accidental chain of handovers, although the terms of that agreement are not stated in these passages.

The Missing Comb and Feigned Forgetting

Later, Adèle tells Petro that her dragonfly comb has disappeared. Stefania is astonished and reminds her that Adèle gave it to her. Adèle widens her eyes in apparent surprise, then Stefania specifies the moment: when they were returning from the priest’s, as Father Josef accompanied them to the carriage. Adèle acts as though the memory is coming back. Stefania knows, however, that this is a performance and that Adèle remembered the exchange all along. Adèle finally concedes that she had completely forgotten, reluctantly.

Petro gives Adèle a heavy look and asks what her new game is, telling her to leave the priest alone. The comb’s disappearance is therefore not presented as a straightforward loss. Its absence becomes an occasion for Adèle to revive the earlier handover while pretending not to remember it, and for Petro to recognize a game involving Father Josef. The object’s repeated circulation has made it a material prompt for concealed intentions and selective memory: visible enough to be identified, yet useful precisely because the people around it can dispute what happened to it and what the exchange meant.

Narrative Significance

The comb’s story is built from changes of hands rather than from a single act of ownership. Adèle initially puts it in Stefania’s hair; at Ivanka’s home, Adèle removes it and offers it to Ivanka; Josef later returns it to Adèle; Adèle passes it back to Stefania; and afterward she calls it missing while pretending to have forgotten the last transfer. These movements connect a domestic gift to a moment of recognition and then to an interpersonal maneuver whose full agreement remains unstated.

Its finely made dragonfly and cherry branch also matter because the comb is never treated as interchangeable decoration. The novel gives it a distinctive shape, a painful first placement, Ivanka’s trembling response, Adèle’s sharp removal, and a later contested absence. Through those concrete details, the ornament becomes a compact record of relationships being enacted indirectly: attachment and control coexist in the gift, while recognition and denial coexist in the comb’s passage from one woman to another.